🍍Australian winter fruit salad is simple fresh seasonal ingredients done right. Sunshine-y, juicy fragrant fruit to cheer cold rainy days ☔
Love a girls weekend
I was taking food for a girls’ weekend away in a holiday house. It was the middle of winter. I was bringing stuff to make a cooked breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, avocado and sauteed greens. I'd brought the ingredients to make nachos. I had made cinnamon rolls and a raspberry and white chocolate tiered birthday cake. Yummy indulgent calorie-dense food.
Local is best
I like a bit of balance though and wanted to bring something light and fresh and healthy. I decided on fruit salad to serve with Greek yoghurt and granola. I wondered if I would be able to source enough Australian-grown produce to make a (good) fruit salad. In winter. It's always good to support the local economy. Seasonal produce tends to be cheaper, fresher and better too. We're lucky here in Australia to live in such a massive country with a diverse climate.
We have some wonderful fruits that are available all year round. Three of those feature in this salad - pineapple, lime and passionfruit. Other fruits are at their peak in the colder months (yay!), such as oranges and kiwi fruit. That's why I've called this an 'Australian' winter fruit salad. Not all these fruits will be available in the country you live in in the colder months. Yes, you can argue that Australia is a ma-hoosive country with great distances to travel. How local is local? Most of us are lucky enough to enjoy a diverse variety of food that is grown further afield than our backyards.
Don't buy ready-made fruit salad!
I love a homemade fruit salad. You get to put in whatever you like. Shop-bought fruit salads avoid using fruits that are expensive. They also don't use the fruits that don’t package or transport well. Most fruit salads are over-represented by melon varieties. These are cheap and cheerful (and no good for us who try to stick to a low FODMAP diet).
What's in an Australian winter fruit salad?
Chunks of pineapple, passionfruit, kiwi and orange. A spritz of freshly squeezed lime juice to cut through the natural sweetness. Finely shredded fresh mint leaves add a pop of contrasting colour and flavour.
This is barely a recipe. It’s really a reminder that less is sometimes more. A reminder that you can enjoy wonderful light freshness in the colder months.
The fruits in this salad are low FODMAP, even if this salad were to serve only four people (and it could serve six).
No need to add sugar, there’s enough natural sweetness in the pineapple (provided you’re lucky enough to get a good one – it can be rather hit and miss!).
It smells delicious. As soon as you cut open passion fruit, the space you’re in fills with tropical vibes. Such a ray of sunshine whatever the weather outside.
How to serve
For optimal flavour and texture, serve the fruit salad at room temperature. Not fridge-cold.
The fact that Australian winter fruit salad doesn’t contain soft fruits such as berries, means that it keeps quite well, for up to 3 days. Delicious juice collects at the bottom of the bowl. Make sure you pour some of this over each serving.
Enjoy as is, or with Greek salad and granola. Comfort food doesn’t have to be stodgy carbs (although we love those too!).
📖 Recipe
Equipment
- A sharp knife makes preparing the fruit salad a lot easier with prettier results.
Ingredients
- 1 whole pineapple
- 4 passionfruit
- 2 oranges (try to get a seedless variety)
- small handful mint leaves
- 2 kiwi fruit
- ½ lime
Instructions
- Pineapple – top and tail with a sharp knife. Stand on one end and remove strips of the peel with a sharp knife from top to bottom. Lay the pineapple down and cut parallel groves to remove any ‘eyes’ that are remaining. Cut the pineapple in half down its length and then into quarters. Remove the woody core and discard (or eat if it’s tender and sweet). Cut the pineapple flesh into bitesize pieces.1 whole pineapple
- Oranges - top and tail the oranges. Sit on one end and remove strips with a sharp knife from top to bottom, removing both orange peel and the white pith. Less is more; you can always go back over it and remove more. Then, cup the whole naked orange in the palm of your non-dominant hand. Slice carefully on either side of each membrane down to the centre of the orange to pop out each segment. Rotate the orange around a little each time so that the segment you’re dealing with is uppermost. Once you have removed all the segments, you'll be left with a floppy fibrous skeleton. Squeeze this over the bowl to extract more juice. Discard/eat (this doesn’t go in the fruit salad).2 oranges
- Kiwi Fruit – use a small sharp knife to peel. Then chop into small pieces.2 kiwi fruit
- Mint – very finely shred the mint.small handful mint leaves
- Passionfruit – cut in half and use a teaspoon to scoop out the flesh.4 passionfruit
- Lime Juice - squeeze over the rest of the fruits to taste. Depending on how sweet the fruit naturally is, you may not need a whole half.½ lime
- Serve - combine everything with care and dish up. Drizzle over some of the fruit juice that collects at the bottom of the bowl.
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