Welcome to the last Dish of the Month for 2016!
This is the thread for reporting on the Citrus Salads that you make during December. You can always come back at any time in the future to share a citrus salad that you made.
What a perfect dish for December. Even if your oven and all of your crockery is working overtime with holiday baking, you can make a citrus salad with only a knife and a bowl.
We’re not looking for regular fruit salad here, we’re looking for those wonderful savory side and main dish salads that include citrus fruit. And, yes, we’re looking to incorporate the real fruit, not a dressing with a squeeze of lemon or lime. Other ingredients may play a role, large or small. Think greens, seafood, meat, fowl, vegetables, cheese, etc. etc., but always with chunks, slices, supremes, dice, whatever, of citrus fruit. And please don’t limit yourself to oranges and grapefruit! What’s in your market? Do you get finger limes? Pomelos? Buddha hands? Go for it!
Please take a look at the voting thread. There’s a lot of discussion and a quite a few ideas and links for citrus fruit salads:
http://www.chowhound.com/post/home-co...
Remember, when you report on your citrus salad, please share your ingredients, your method, and your outcome. Photographs are always encouraged. Per Chowhound rules, please do not quote an author’s recipe verbatim, as that would be copyright infringement. If you use an online recipe, you are welcome to share a link. But you needn’t stick to recipes, go wild, be creative!
RADICCHIO SALAD WITH ORANGE SEGMENTS AND PARSLEY
I saw the winning dish was citrus salad, which is funny because and I happened to have all the ingredients for this salad, inspired by the linked recipe.
The original recipe calls for walnuts, which I left out because we don't like nuts in salad. I did, however, swap out the olive oil for walnut oil in the orange vinegrette. That is a very nicely balanced and flavorful vinaigrette, the salad was very good.
Since Clementines are coming into the grocery stores now, I thought I'd share a salad that features them. The recipe originally came from Gourmet magazine (November 2008) and is available online.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/foo...
I substitute flat parsley for the cilantro in the original since I first made this for a meal served to a friend who tastes soap when she eats cilantro. I liked the results and never went back to the cilantro version. I also segment the Clementines; I don't see any advantage to slicing the fruit in horizontal slices as specified in the recipe. Finally, I slice the red onion in half before cutting into slices. I might feel the whole rings would be more appropriate if I cut the fruit in slices, but the half-moon shape of the onion slices looks nice with the shape of the Clementine segments.
I strongly suggest you read the online comments section. Lots of ideas for personal variations (e.g. adding avocado cubes, substituting Granny Smith apple for the jicama, etc)
As part of our New Year's Eve festivities, I bought Clementine salad to a dinner with friends. I ended up making several tweaks to the recipe I've already shared. Here are last night's changes:
I used arugula instead of cilantro or flat parsley. Since I was making this salad for a large number of people, I wasn't in the mood to deal with prepping lots of cilantro/parsley. I bought two large clam shells of organic, pre-washed arugula which required no prep. The peppery flavor of arugula worked well. In fact, my husband who normally doesn't care for arugula said he really liked the peppery flavor in this salad.
I used orange juice for some of the lime juice in the dressing because the limes I had weren't particularly juicy and were spectacularly bitter. I added somewhat less than an equal amount of orange juice. (Remind me never again to buy a bag of limes from Costco. This is the second bag that has had issues with the quality. The dividers between the lime segments were so thick that getting much juice out of each fruit was a big effort. When I finally got enough juice, the taste was excessively acidic.) I also added two teaspoons of Maille Dijon mustard to help emulsify the dressing. I think I liked the dressing with the addition of orange juice more than the straight lime version.
Several of the guests aren't fans of spicy flavors. For example, we never order spicy dishes when we're eating out together at a Chinese restaurant. I worried that our friends wouldn't like the sliced raw red onion, I did a quick pickle of the onion slices. The marinade really tamed the bite of onion.
Here's the link to the recipe I used: http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/quic...
Lobster and Avocado Salad with Oranges, Ruby Grapefruit, and Buddha’s Hand
Not much to say on this, just some greens, supremes of navel orange and ruby grapefruit, alternating with avocado slices. Lobster meat on top, garnished with paper thin slices of one of Buddha’s fingers. Dressed it with the juice accumulated from supreming the fruit, a little oil, a dash of lime juice, finely chopped Thai basil, and some chile flakes. Easy and tasty!
It's the funny-looking thing on the left in L.N's colorful citrus bowl photo, and it's a variety of citron.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha&...
Thanks for all of your kind words!
Yes, herby, just as Caitlin says. It's an odd fruit, no meat, no seeds, all peel! Great (grate?) for zesting.
This looks great! Not sure where my earlier comment went. This is a perfect meal imho.
I might have to add a lettuce leaf for it to qualify, but I think I just found my perfect date night/Christmas/NYE's party appetiser:
http://www.floridacitrus.org/grapefru...
I riffed on the recipe from Nopi in the link below (three-citrus salad with green chile, stem ginger and chunky salsa). Mine was two-citrus, one each pink grapefruit and navel orange, with Belgian endive and arugula standing in for radicchio and watercress. I was pretty faithful to the dressing, ingredient-wise, and used a bit less than half the given amounts. My one deviation was using the soft candied ginger I had instead of the stem ginger (would've had to buy a jar). The dressing (or "salsa") is a great foil for the sweet-tart fruit and bitter and peppery greens. The crunchy almonds, heat of the chile (I used a serrano), sweet-hot bursts of ginger, and fennel and coriander seeds added a lot of interest. I have a decent amount of the dressing left, which I'm thinking of using with citrus and avocado.
Can anyone help? I'm going nuts trying to re-find the technique that dissolves the pithy white stuff and allows you to separate out individual, oval-shaped citrus "seeds" or vesicles. They would be a fantastic ingredient for citrus salads and other dishes.
Thai Shrimp and Pomelo Salad (with Homemade Nam Prik Pao)
I worked largely from the recipe for Miang Som O (linked below), which really should be eaten with the ingredients wrapped in a lettuce leaf, but I had baby greens, so served it as a composed salad. The other ingredients were shrimp, pomelo, chopped ginger, sliced Thai bird chiles, chopped cucumber, sliced shallots, chopped whole lime, toasted cashews, and the dressing of nam prik pao mixed with fish sauce. The shrimp were seared with garlic instead of being poached as the recipe suggests.
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/20...
Making the nam prik pao took the most time, and resulted in an oven fire! Otherwise, just a lot of chopping. Plenty of heat in this salad, and the pomelo was a lovely cool contrast.
I'll happily eat your photo, it looks that good! How did the chopped lime taste? Was it bitter? I love whole chopped citrus in dishes. There is one with eggplant and whole chopped lemon, in Jerusalem I believe, that is delicious and a bit of bitterness is a welcome addition. I also saw a recipe with roasted lemon slices that sounds very appealing to me. Should be home next week to cook whatever I fancy, not necessary kid-friendly :)
I loved the whole chopped lime, not bitter really, just tart. The lime had pretty thin skin, which makes a difference. I know I've done something from Ottolenghi with citrus including the peel, can't recall what right now.
Safe travels home and I look forward to hearing about your "adults-only" food!
I riffed off http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/20... last night.
Dressing: 3/4 olive oil and 1/4 balsamic vinegar, with some nutmeg and cinnamon, salt and black pepper. Half an onion was sliced, given a dip in the dressing and went into oven on high heat (instead of broil) until soft and caramelised. Segmented some orange slices into the dressing, and added the orange juice from the leftover bits of orange.
After I was done with the rest of my meal prep, I tossed some butter lettuce in a little bit of the dressing, topped it with the orange segments, onions and some crumbly feta.
While the butter lettuce was the wrong choice and I will go for baby spinach in the future, this salad was pretty good, and worth repeating.
I don't have the exact recipe handy but can provide if anyone is interested. Last night was night one of Blue Apron delivery (home cooking - it counts!). There was a spinach and mascarpone cheese pizza paired with a roasted cauliflower and clementine salad. The citrus gets thrown in pan at the very end, and there's fresh oregano and red wine vinegar too, s&p too. Was super.
I love this DOTM, such gorgeous salads already posted! I'm hoping to get better with salads, I tend to be less than excited about making them but you all are giving good motivation here.
DH finds fruit in salad offensive so I'm usually not likely to make one unless we have company. But lately I've been keeping pre-prepped components for a Fennel & Orange salad in the fridge and throwing one together for lunch quite often. Except for the arugula everything is hardy & keeps very well.
Fennel, orange, red onion, kalamata olive, arugula.
Shave fennel & red onion thin with mandoline or slicer. Lightly chop arugula. Half olives lengthwise. Supreme oranges, save juice. Mix juice with some olive oil, cider vinegar, and sugar if needed.
Sometimes I mix the juice with just olive oil, or a splash of a store bought dressing called Garlic Expressions.
This Italian style fennel orange is one of my regular salads.
Today I sliced a fennel bulb (reserving the tougher outer layer for cooking in the pasta dish), cut up an orange. Diced about 1/4 of a red onion and tempered it in boiling water. What else - a half dozen dry oil cured olives (squeeze out the pits). Season with salt, pepper, olive oil and vinegar (a good Spanish sherry is my favorite, though today I just cider). About 3 servings.
Another pretty salad is orange and beets, dressed with oil and vinegar - this can plated artistically (e.g. flower like).
That's one of my favorite combos ever! I don't fuss with making supremes of the oranges- actually this time of year i like to use clementines. Sometimes i add in white beans to make it more of a meal
I finally found how to dissolve white pith from citrus segments, and the search was worth it. I wrote it up as a separate thread, here:
Orange and Cucumber Salad
This is a recipe from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. I used a Cara Cara orange. Basically, cut a cucumber into thin disks and spread on a plate, top with thinly sliced rounds of orange--I deviated here and went for something like half-moons. Top with thinly sliced radish (I used watermelon radish, obviously). Then top with mint. I thinly sliced mine because I thought it would be better than torn pieces, for this recipe. Dress with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt. I used Maldon. This was nice and refreshing.
I was inspired by a link Mme Fleiss put into the announcement thread http://www.thekitchn.com/colorful-rec..., and did a close approximation of it last night. I supremed 3 Cara Cara oranges and 6 blood oranges, thinly sliced some red onion, julienned some mint and added 1/2 cup (the recipe calls for 1/4) of regular crumbed feta and 1/2 cup toasted almond slivers. The dressing is olive oil heated up with cumin seeds, then some red wine vinegar is swirled in and it is seasoned with S&P. Pour this over the orange mix and toss. I was somewhat hesitant abut the oranges and feta, but the cumin and mint bring them together beautifully and this was absolutely delicious. Sweet, savory, crunchy, soft - really wonderful. If I didn't hate surpreming citrus so much I'd make this a lot.
That sounds really good!
Glad to know it's tasty. It's still on my to-make list.
Just had the leftover of this for lunch, and my goodness it was good.
I finally got around to making those yesterday, replacing three of the blood oranges with navel oranges for more color and using tipsy goat instead of feta because I was all out. Delicious! The blood oranges were the biggest PITA to supreme while the navel oranges were the easiest.
I searched online to find something to make with things I had on hand and found this Persimmon, Blood Orange and Pomegranate Salad. Followed recipe except I used navel oranges instead of blood and at the end I realized my pomegranate seeds had turned so I tossed some dried currants in instead. It was just okay. Not worth the fuss of the recipe to me..
I made this Winter Citrus Salad from the NYT cooking site with dinner tonight, http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/10.... No pictures. I did not have a blood orange so used both a navel and Cara Cara. Also, included a Meyer lemon per one of the suggestions in the reviews. Note that the picture with the recipe does not accurately depict the manner in which the Belgian Endive is supposed to be prepared; the recipe calls for slicing horizontally across the endives to create "ribbons, so that is what I did. The taste was very refreshing.
Tonight I made a salad loosely inspired by an ingredient list for "bittersweet salad" in Ottolenghi's PLENTY. I was planning on a fennel & orange salad from VERDURA, but I had some treviso radicchio I needed to use up and when I entered radicchio & orange in my EYB library, this came up. However, the recipe sounded extremely fussy, so I just riffed off it.
Ingredients are 1 thinly sliced head of treviso, 1 Cara Cara orange, 1 diced Persian cucumber, and a big handful of pomegranate arils. I dressed it with olive oil, lemon juice, maple syrup, and salt & pepper. It was pretty good, but I think my orange wasn't as great as it could have been.
Well i *think* this counts....
I really wanted miso tahini sauce, and i tweaked this a bit because it's too cold for salad. I used sautéed chard as my greens and instead of the grapefruit (not my thing) i swapped in segments from three clementines. I didn't end up using as much of the za'tar either. Great combo of flavors with the citrus and spice and greens and came together quickly. Looking forward to leftovers for lunch tomorrow
This is a bit lame but today for lunch I did a version of the radicchio salad from last night with a few key changes.
Ingredients:
-radicchio
-clementine
-pomegranate arils
-some grated mozzarella (sort of strange, but I had some leftover from pizza making)
-thinly sliced mint
-roasted unsalted peanuts
Same dressing (just done in bowl) of olive oil, lemon juice, a dash of maple syrup, salt & pepper. This version was more satisfying, and with a Wasa cracker made a nice lunch. Plus, my clementine pieces were juicier and more flavorful than the Cara Cara orange I had last night. Yay for Vitamin C!
This roasted carrot, avocado, and orange salad was a delight to make and eat – bright, delicious, and festive!
Make a cumin-coriander-thyme spice rub and roast the carrots. Whisk together a citrus dressing (I did lemon-clementine). Arrange the roasted carrots with orange segments, toasted nuts (pumpkin and sesame in mine), sprouts (I used watercress), Greek yogurt, and your zingy citrus dressing.
I love citrus salads, and this was a new one for me, and a winner! The fresh pop from the oranges is striking here against the deep, rich flavors and creaminess of the roasted carrot and avocado. I used Deb Perelman's recipe and added the oranges, which appear in multiple other versions of this salad.
I posted my full report of this salad on the smitten kitchen thread, here:
http://www.chowhound.com/post/cooking...
SALAD OF SMOKED TROUT, PINK GRAPEFRUIT, & RADICCHIO (Daniel Boulud in Best American Recipes 1999)
I had originally planned to make this as our main course, but when I saw the weather forecast I knew we'd want something warm for dinner. So, I made it as a side to a pasta. And we Loved it. I played with the recipe slightly (who needs croutons if you're having pasta on the side?), but basically you cut radicchio into strips, add some sliced scallions, diced skinned smoked trout, walnuts, and pink grapefruit slices and top with a dressing of cream and sherry vinegar with S&P. I didn't do any fancy plating, and skipped the called for cilantro. Really very good, and one could easily sub orange segments. I think I'll be making this one again, maybe next time in warmer weather as a main with baguette on the side.
I CHANGED THE FACE! :) When I told DH what the DOTM was he made a face. The kids mirrored him.
I used the Citrus Roast Lobster Salad from Fish Without a Doubt (p. 341) as inspiration. I was lacking in the salad department and used romaine cut in short ribbons, steamed broccoli florets and julienned stems, and celery. I had a bag of itty bitty shrimp that I marinated, per the lobster directions, with everything in the recipe except for the mint. Dumb because I had some but forgot.
This recipe is insanely good. The seafood and the dressing paired with the citrus was incredible. I used my neighbor's oranges and grocery store grapefruit cut into chucks. I have a tree that provided the lemon juice and subbed grapefruit juice for the lime in the dressing.
4 out of 5 of us inhaled our salad. My middle kid is a slow eater and discovered that he's not a fan of grapefruit. He liked everything else, though. I held back some of the citrus, in case we weren't receptive to the new flavors. My oldest and youngest finished it off after a heaping salad and two egg rolls.
I got a grapefruit 2 weeks ago, with ambitious plans and recipes identified. Today I used it's segments plus some "little cuties" fresh mandarin orange segments, diced fresh pear and quartered huge red grapes to top spinach in an extremely modest nod to DOTM.
It's been fun reading the creative salads others have tried.
Five Element Salad
In "Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings" Edward Espe Brown presents a salad concept using five elements: a lettuce, a fruit, a nut, a cheese, and a “wild card flavor kicker such as olive, caper, radish, sun-dried tomato, or. . . red onion pickle.” The recipe he provides actually uses apple as the fruit, with a toss of orange juice. I used oranges and ruby grapefruit for the fruit, made the pickled onions from his recipe, tossed on toasted sliced almonds and chopped tarragon, and completely forgot about the cheese, which was not missed. Loved this salad!
The next night we had unexpected company for dinner, so I used the last ruby grapefruit, satsuma sections, added pomegranate arils, and shaved some pecorino. Again used pickled onions and toasted sliced almonds. Another hit!
Sneaking this one in under the wire. Made my favourite citrus salad for part of our NYE dinner. Similar to what some others have posted about already: arugula, grapefruit, thinly shaved fennel, red onion, parm shavings. Simple vinaigrette of grapefruit juice, white balsamic, grape seed oil, salt and pepper.
I also made a citrus salad on the last night of the month (and last night of the year!). Like TorontoJo's, mine included shaved fennel and red onion and Parmesan. For citrus, I used a Cara Cara orange and a couple of blood oranges. I added some toasted slivered almonds, and dressed it with a bit of white balsamic and olive oil.
LulusMom, on the strength of your opinion, I will plant a cara cara orange tree. In what country were the ones that you like grown? If USA, what state?
The few cara caras that I tried in Toronto were such insipid nothings that I don't grow one now.
To indicate the degree of my boredom with the cara caras that I had. "Now" is Auckland, New Zealand. It is transient, but substantial enough that grow about 40 citrus trees, about 35 varieties. I had passed on cara cara.
My surprise in NZ was how crummy the (commercial) apples are and how good the citrus is.
I have no idea where my cara cara oranges were from.
The fruit I had in Auckland, and the rest of NZ, was disappointing.
For how long were you in NZ in what season?
Fruit in NZ is complicated, but to be brief and inadequate.
NZ is an agricultural country and can grow almost anything and superbly. But it doesn't. And fruit is priced unreasonably high domestically.
It is agriculture for export, not domestic consumption. So for example of export distortion: NZ not that long ago had 3 million people, up to 80 million sheep and 3 million cows. The milk is superb. NZ produced a lot of cheese. Nevertheless, it was almost all (cow's milk) cheddar, which it sold by the boatload to England.
Let's take apples as an example of fruit. NZ has a large apple growing business and is a significant hybridizer. But it is apples for export. Varieties that are red, hard, under-ripe, and " good keepers". The apples have major Red Delicious parentage. More need not be said.
With a large portion of its population from England, I expected to find a treasure house of wonderful English varieties. Forget it, but many wonderful varieties (trees) are available to home gardeners.
Of what it grows, NZ keeps largely what it can't export. I am not a fruit lookist, but there is more to "poor quality" that just appearance.
Local citrus is great, but again the export problem. Also, citrus is imported from Australia (ughh!) and even California. You don't know what you are buying unless you make an effort.
Then there is the supermarket problem. It is its own problem, but it compounds the export problem. Most supermarkets are owned by Australian (ughh!) companies. The supermarket marketing mentality is not good for fruit, being a branch business is bad, being an Australian (ughh!) branch business is worse.
My sense is that there is something wrong with the distribution system. It screws both the farmer and the consumers- whereas in the USA, only
the farmer.
I've got one Cara Cara remaining in my fruit bowl. The sticker says it's the product of the USA -- I presume California.
Funny, LLM, when I read Caitlin's post, I was about to reply that Cara Cara oranges had been a revelation this month, but you beat me to the punch. Because of the meds he takes, my husband cannot eat grapefruit. I've found that that the Cara Caras are almost as tart. Love them.
I just realized I completely forgot to mention that there were also some pomegranate seeds in this salad.
Here is January's reporting thread on Seafood Curries: http://www.chowhound.com/post/seafood...
As I reported over on the COTM thread for Lidia Bastianich, tonight I made her recipe for Orange, Ecarole, and Red Onion Salad. This was so good.
Recipe linked here, https://lidiasitaly.com/recipes/orang... .
See my COTM report for the details of how I made it, https://www.chowhound.com/post/februa....
This will be repeated, although at my husband’s request, I will show a bit of restraint on the red onion next time.
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