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Crown Jewels: Winter Persimmon and Avocado Salad

January 22, 2013 By Isabelle Boucher 9 Comments | Filed Under: salad, side dish, vegetarian

22 Jan
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For the longest time, I was convinced that winter salads were a perfunctory gesture at best. Utilitarian sorts of salads, meant to satisfy a basic need for something cold and raw to balance out the hearty long-simmered staples of our winter diet, made of mixed greens, flavourless tomatoes and cucumbers, perhaps a little bit of shredded carrot to spruce things up. Healthy, perhaps, but boring as hell.

Persimmon and Avocado Salad

They paled in comparison to the glorious salads of summertime, which can easily inspire ode after ode detailing the perfection that is a single leaf of lettuce, picked fresh from the garden and still flecked with droplets of morning dew.

Simply put, summertime salads are easy. Even the most boring basic salad of lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes becomes a thing of beauty, because it’s made with freshly harvested vegetables that have been lovingly carried a few feet from my garden, instead of off-season produce tumbled around the back of a transport truck for thousands of miles.

Salads are the perfect example of why seasonal eating is the only way to go if you truly enjoy food.

Persimmon and Avocado Salad

But when I decided to change my eating habits last year, I realised that salads would have to become a year-round fixture on my menu, and that my off-season salad choices would need a little shaking up…

And lo and behold, I discovered that wintertime salads have an appeal all their own once you move past the basic formula.

It turns out that winter salads are about juxtaposition, in the contrasts between flavours and colours and textures.

Winter salads are made from sliced blood oranges with slivers of red onion and wrinkly oil-cured black olives, from segments of juicy pink grapefruit with thin wedges of buttery ripe avocadoes and tangy poppyseed-yogurt dressing, from wedges of earthy beet with sweet caramelised nuts and a scattering of soft goat cheese, or from paper thin shavings of fennel tossed with fresh parsley and flakes of salty parmesan.

Persimmons

And in the case of this particular salad, they’re made with thinly sliced wedges of crisp sweet persimmons and buttery avocado wedges on peppery argula greens, scattered with juicy pomegranate jewels and tossed in a tangy Dijon vinaigrette.

It’s a perfect antidote to the miserable shades of cold white and grey outside.

It’s the total opposite my perfunctory winter salads of yore, with the kind of palette I associate with exotic travel brochures, Gaugin paintings and Bollywood movies – bright emerald, pale lime, sunset orange, and jewelled ruby-red.

Persimmon and Avocado Salad

I’ll admit, I’d still prefer a plateful of thickly sliced ripe August tomatoes drizzled with a peppery olive oil and shredded basil, but these bright persimmon wedges definitely do the trick while I’m waiting for summertime to return.

//

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Persimmon and Avocado Salad

Persimmon and Avocado Salad


  • Author: Isabelle Boucher (Crumb)
  • Prep Time: 15 mins
  • Total Time: 15 mins
  • Yield: 4 1x
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Description

Brighten up a dreary winter day with peppery arugula greens topped with crisp slices of sweet persimmon, buttery avocado wedges and tangy pomegranate arils, all tossed in a tangy mustard and white balsamic vinaigrette.


Scale

Ingredients

Dressing

  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
  • 1 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
  • 1 tsp Dijon mustard
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Salad

  • 8 cups baby arugula
  • 1 firm-ripe Fuyu persimmon, quartered and thinly sliced
  • 1 large avocado, cut into wedges
  • 1/2 cup fresh pomegranate arils

Instructions

Prepare the Dressing:

  1. In a small bowl, whisk together olive oil, vinegars and mustard until combined. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Assemble the Salad:

  1. In a large mixing bowl, toss arugula with dressing until well coated. Distribute between four individual salad bowls, or transfer to a single large salad bowl.
  2. Arrange persimmon and avocado slices on the arugula, then scatter with pomegranate. Serve immediately.

Notes

The beauty of this salad is the contrast between the crisp, sweet persimmon against the soft, buttery avocado. Make sure to purchase the small, squat tomato-shaped Fuyu persimmons for this salad, as they’re sweet enough to eat even when slightly crisp, as opposed to the larger acorn-shaped Hachiya that are too tannic to eat until completely soft.

  • Category: Salad

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. debbie @ healthy eating plan says

    January 31, 2013 at 11:31 am

    Great Blog! This is very healthy and good for my healthy diet blog.
    Thanks for sharing.
    GOD BLESS

    Reply
  2. ita-liana says

    January 22, 2013 at 11:58 pm

    This is just crazy beautiful! What a great post, I eat blood orange salads alot at this time of year (it’s my Sicilian upbringing) but you’ve just opened my eyes to a host of new possiblilities! As usual, lovely photos and writing!

    Reply
  3. Jess says

    January 22, 2013 at 11:08 pm

    Someone just brought me a couple persimmons a few weeks ago and I had no idea what to do with them. I think I just sliced them and ate them, having never tasted a persimmon before. I kind of wish I had seen your recipe before that – they would have been beautiful in a salad!

    Reply
  4. dixya @ food, pleasure, and health says

    January 22, 2013 at 6:13 pm

    i have been shying away from salads because of the winter – its just my excuse to load up on carbs :P however, this salad looks absolutely delicious and your picture and ingredient choices are so good! i havent had luck with firm persimmons yet

    Reply
  5. Natalie says

    January 22, 2013 at 3:07 pm

    Lovely colourful salad!

    Reply
  6. Grubarazzi (@Grubarazzi) says

    January 22, 2013 at 1:52 pm

    This is gorgeous. I always love fresh persimmon in salads, but the addition of avocado makes it even better!

    Reply
  7. jamie @ green beans & grapefruit says

    January 22, 2013 at 1:02 pm

    This looks like the perfect winter salad! Fabulous components!

    Reply
  8. kelly @ kellybakes says

    January 22, 2013 at 12:46 pm

    I really need to start a salad board on Pinterest. I see all of these beautiful salads and then get to the grocery store and forget everything that’s in them and then stare blankly at the lettuce for a good few minutes. And this one seems simple enough that even I don’t have an excuse to forget what’s in it.

    Reply

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Hello! I'm Isabelle, and this is my blog. I'm a 40-something coffee-chugging, booty-shaking, bargain-shopping, trucker-swearing self-taught cook with a major addiction to vintage cookbooks. Come for the recipes, stay for the terrible puns! Connect with me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
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