Archive for the ‘Fruit’ tag
Watermelon, Feta, and Mint Salad with Blood Orange Vinaigrette
Ok, so I know it’s the middle of winter, and we’re all in the mood for warming, comforting food. However, this week’s Food52 contest asks us to combine feta, blood orange, and mint. The combination of these three ingredients screams for a crisp, juicy, tangy summer salad. So that’s what I made. I paired it tonight with a spicy shrimp and rice dish, and I think it worked out very well. I make watermelon salads with mint quite often in the summer, and I worked in a few extra components to compliment the grab bag of ingredients that we were given this week. The beauty of this salad is how easy it is to make, and how tasty and unique it is.
Taste Test: Prickly Pear Cactus Margarita
Today’s taste test comes to us from the deserts of the Southwestern United States and Mexico: The fruit of the prickly pear cactus. This small, red fruit is commonly used to flavor drinks, candies, syrups and jellies since it has a lot of small, inedible seeds that make it tough to use whole. Not to mention the fact that the skin is covered in small, very irritating spines called “glochids” that need to be dealt with carefully before the fruit can be used. This is a plant that resists being eaten. All that aside, the fruit itself has a very pleasant, floral, sweet flavor and a bright, crimson color. It turns a regular margarita into something festive (and native, given that tequila is a cactus distillate).
Prickly Pear Margarita
