Papaya Shrimp Salad

If salads were clothing, they’d be mix-and-match separables — nearly any combination of ingredients can become a great salad.  It’s just a matter of choosing complementing contrasts: salty/sweet, soft/crunchy, earthy/bright.  Those contrasts are what makes each ingredient a noticeable part of the whole.

In this salad, for example, the lettuce is crunchy, but the papaya is soft.  The roasted beans are salty and earthy; the papaya is sweet.  The shrimp’s creamy character plays off of the chewiness of the green beans.  The capers are sharp in a briny kind of way while the lemon juice is sharp in an acidic, bright kind of way.  You could just as easily use another soft, sweet fruit in place of papaya (peach, mango, etc.).  Instead of shrimp, you could use crab or salmon.  Vinegar or lime juice would be a fine stand-in for the lemon juice.  Don’t have green beans?  Roast corn or bell peppers or asparagus instead.  You could even include a cooked whole grain like millet or brown rice to provide a chewy heartiness.

As you can see, salads can be whatever you want them to be.  Keep trying new combinations and writing down your favorites — pretty soon you’ll have a salad compendium of your own!

Papaya Shrimp Salad
Use whatever proportions you like for as many servings as you like. I used about 1/4 of a papaya per person, along with a handful of beans, three large lettuce leaves, and about 2 ounces of canned tiny shrimp.

Green beans, roasted*
Extra-virgin olive oil
Romaine lettuce, coarsely chopped
Papaya, diced (remove the seeds and skin first and discard them)
Shrimp, either tiny canned shrimp or cocktail shrimp
Capers
Dried dill
Freshly squeezed lemon juice

To roast the green beans, first preheat the oven to 375F. Rinse and trim the beans and spread them out on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Drizzle the beans with extra-virgin olive oil and sprinkle them with sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Toss them with your fingertips to coat the beans with the seasonings, then roast for about 20 minutes or until the beans are turning golden brown and are getting shriveled.

While the beans are roasting, you can assemble your salad. Either toss together or simply layer the lettuce, papaya, and shrimp. Scatter a small spoonful of capers and a sprinkling of dill over each salad serving, then dress with a drizzle of lemon juice and olive oil. Top with the roasted beans and serve promptly.

* Feel free to roast extra beans so that you’ll have enough leftovers to make another creative salad.

Enjoy!

The Jill

In the tradition of memorable beverages like the Harvey Wallbanger and the Arnold Palmer, I’m going to name my most recent smoothie/cocktail creation after my friend Jill.  Why?  Because she’s nuts about watermelons — she’s capable of consuming an entire melon in one sitting.  (I wish I could do the same with my beloved pineapples, but my tongue turns fuzzy after eating less than half of one.)

While I’m not quite as ardent about watermelons as Jill is, I agree that they’re one of the best fruits of summer: they’re messily fun to eat, you can have pit-spitting contests with seeded watermelons, and seedless varieties make a great base for a blended beverage.  Their extreme sweetness also means that they pair well with almost any other kind of fruit.  When choosing watermelons, look for ones that are unblemished and heavy for their size.  A slight yellowing at the stem plus a pronounced watermelon fragrance are usually good indications that the melon is ripe.  If none of the melons match that description, just plan on letting a melon ripen on your countertop (out of direct sunlight) for a few days.

The Jill

Blend trimmed chunks of seedless watermelon with a few fresh mint leaves and a spoonful of coconut milk until you reach your desired consistency.  (More watermelon = more watery and more coconut milk = thicker.)  For this martini-sized portion, for example, I used a quarter of a baby watermelon, a tablespoonful of coconut, and four mint leaves.  Other good additions include tropical fruits and/or any member of the berry family.  I used my remaining melon to make a smoothie with papaya, coconut, and mint one day; the next, I made one with strawberry, coconut, and mint.  Yum!

Pour smoothie (or cocktail, if you add a shot of rum while blending) into a striking glass, garnish with a sprig of mint, and serve.  You can serve The Jill on the rocks if you like, or you can toss a few ice cubes into the mix when you first blend your drink.

Enjoy!

Papaya

The best kind of fruit is the kind that yields all of itself to the cook:  flesh, skin, and seeds.  If it can be used in savory or sweet settings, so much the better!

Enter the papaya, a fruit that can be sliced, sautéed, and served as a vegetable when green.  You can scoop out the flesh and use the sturdy skin as a serving vessel for fruit salads, ice cream, or anything else that can be eaten with a spoon (a fork would rip through the “bowl”).  The sweet, silky-smooth flesh can be included in salsas and salads, puréed into sauces and smoothies, frozen into ice cream, and freeze-dried into chips.  Or you could add an interesting coolness to cocktails by serving them with frozen papaya-chunk “ice cubes.” (Mojito with papaya cubes, anyone?)

The seeds are edible, too, and resemble a cross between a caperberry and a peppercorn — they have the texture of the former and the flavor of the latter.  You can use them as garnish or include them in dishes that call for capers, like baked chicken with a delicate stock-based sauce or poached fish set off with lemon juice and sea salt.  Some cooks in southeastern Asia even dry out the seeds and then grind them the way we would grind peppercorns.

I think the best way to enjoy papayas, though, is straight off the spoon.  Just cut them in half laterally, scoop out the seeds (you might want to leave a few in for contrasting flavor/texture), and then spoon out curls of sweet papaya meat.

Enjoy!

Papaya & Pineapple Pudding

In the mood for something smooth and fruity?  While organic unsweetened applesauce is one of the tastiest snacks out there–try stirring in a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg for a real treat!–most fruit sauces/puddings consist of sugars, artificial colors, artificial flavors, and not much fruit.  The good news is that it’s very easy to whip up a batch of your own fruit treats.  You make them almost the same way you would make a smoothie–just use a very small amount of liquid (if any) so that you have a thick, creamy texture.

To make this “pudding,” I briefly blended one fresh papaya, a tablespoon or two of coconut milk, and about 1/2 cup of frozen pineapples until the mixture had a thick, pudding-like consistency.  (If you overblend and wind up with more of a liquid than a pudding, add more pineapple.)  Other fun options would be to mix in–by hand!–some dried fruit, nuts, or cooked grains.  Talk about an intriguing breakfast…or filling for crepes…or dip for other fruits!  From kiwis to blueberries, an endless variety of fruits are just waiting to be transformed into homemade puddings and sauces.

Enjoy!

[Note:  to prepare a papaya for the blender, cut in half long-wise and scoop out the black, round seeds.  Discard those, then hold the papaya half directly above the blender and use a spoon to scoop/scrape out all of the orange flesh.  You may wish to reserve the skins to use as pudding cups!)