I detest fruit salad.
In my opinion, this hotch potch of cold, uninviting fruit in its invariably sour juice should never be made let alone served as a pudding TO GUESTS! Single cream only adds to the watery misery.
The effort made in cutting up all that fruit into relatively evenly matched pieces; peeling the oranges whose juice will always run down your arm; coring the sticky, browning apples is disproportionate to the meagre amount of joy it could ever possibly bring the most Puritan of diners.
Better, in my view, to prepare individual china ramekins of frozen summer fruits sweetened with honey, perhaps with a little cardamon or a clove or cinnamon added and then topped with arctic white meringue and baked in the oven for half an hour. They look, smell and taste beautiful and take barely any more effort.
The offering in the picture up there is at least redeemed by pomegranates and lychees. Mouth-puckeringly sharp kiwis - why are there always so many kiwis around just after Christmas? - redress the balance for it must never actually be pleasant to eat. It is COLD food, and as such much more suited to a warm climate. If at all. The raspberry and melon one makes me want to shiver and I bet those blueberries are mushy. Tropical fruit salad can be not so bad. Mostly, though, fruit salad IS bad.
Fruit salad does nothing to round off a meal, rather, in its watery presentation as it's plopped by the ladleful into retro smoked glass dishes the message it gives to one's guests is:
'That's your lot. We could not make you something scrumptious that required a little more finesse. We are not inordinately interested in food and nor should you be because that is a sign that you participate in other sensual carnal pleasures and THAT IS SINFUL."
And there are always those little bits in it, aren't there: tiny, gritty, slimy greenish-white bits of goodness-knows-what fruit? The dregs that always somehow end up unappetisingly stuck to the side of your bowl. I have to avert my eyes to prevent myself from retching.
I am told that fruit salad is better for you than, say, fondant au chocolat or passionfruit tart. If that's the case, I'm sorry, but I shall forgo the fruit salad. If you have any cheese, I can finish off the wine.
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