Every year for the Oscars, I make homemade pizzas.  This year, following in my aunt Marsha’s footsteps, I made my new favorite- spicy sausage, caramelized onions, and fresh sage.  You can find the recipe here.  So delicious, but it definitely needed to be balanced out by something light and fresh and zesty.  Luckily for me, I recently spent a weekend in NYC and my new and fellow foodophile friend, Ari Douthit, bragged on his delicious citrus salad.  I don’t even like salads, especially my own, and I’m not lying when I say I could eat only this salad three meals a day for the next month.  And, at the party, it was The King’s Speech to my pizza’s Social Network- truly a prizewinner!

-Grapefruit
-Tangerines or Tangelos or whatever small Orange-y thing you can find
-Pistachio nut meat
-Green olives, pitted
-Cilantro, coarsely chopped
-1/4 Red onion, very finely chopped
-1 hot chili pepper
-white wine vinegar
-extra virgin olive oil
-pepper

Chop the chili and mix it up with the oil and vinegar.  Let the chili marinate in the dressing while you prepare the salad so the dressing absorbs the heat.

Slice the citrus crosswise and cutaway the peel, leaving flat discs of fruit.
Put the slices in a bowl.

Add dressing to the fruit.

Top with cilantro, onion, olives and pistachio (chop the pistachio nut meats in half)

Toss gently to get the fruit evenly coated with the dressing and garnish.

Pepper to taste

Note:  Ari pointed out, correctly, that I disobeyed instructions and sliced the red onion rather than finely dicing it.  It’s true- I forgot.  But it was still pretty delicious!

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