Pineapple crush: Fruity salads and easy ice cream
Pineapples. Are they really a product of nature or did someone make them up? “Exotic” fruits are no longer unusual but, apart from rambutans, pineapples must be the oddest-looking — that top knot of leaves, the rough, prickly body, each diamond of skin studded with a tufty “eye”.
To Brits, pineapples represent accessible exotica because for years they came in tins. I’d no idea what a real one looked like when I was a child — pineapple just meant sweet, juicy rounds with a perfect hole in the middle.
My first parties — when I was six, and prepared with the 13-year-old from next door — always had it as their main focus. We threaded cubes of pineapple, tinned ham (Old York variety — we were classy) and cheese on to cocktail sticks, covered a grapefruit in foil and stuck these “canapes” into it.
Along with crustless salmon paste sandwiches and rounds of toasted teacake spread with golden syrup, this was our “party” fare. We’d set it out on the teak coffee table, don our miniskirts, put Martha Reeves and the Vandellas on the record player and issue invitations to our friends and siblings.
The parties that I throw now aren’t nearly as much fun.
As some stage, crushed tinned pineapple arrived, causing great excitement as it meant I could make a “cheesecake” from one of my mum’s cookbooks, based on bashed ginger nut biscuits topped with pineapple and cream cheese.
Then I went off pineapple. It now pains me, because of my ingratitude, that I hoped — when I visited my granny — that there wouldn’t be gammon steak with a pineapple ring and melting cheese on top. I thought it sickly, but those steaks weren’t cheap. Granny regarded them as a treat. She had egg and toast while Grandpa and I had the gammon and pineapple.
Pineapples aren’t on my weekly shopping list, but when I buy one I wonder why I don’t do it more often. Start eating chunks while you’re preparing it and you soon find a third of the flesh has gone.
1 clove garlic, chopped 1 long green chilli, chopped 2 tbsp palm sugar or granulated sugar 50ml rice vinegar 50ml fish sauce 50ml lime juice (about 2 limes) For the salad: ½ large pineapple or 1 small pineapple 10g mint leaves 10g coriander leaves 100g baby salad leaves ½ tbsp groundnut or coconut oil 400g raw king prawns, peeled juice of ½-1 lime
The flavour is big, floral, tropical, almost brassy in its lack of subtlety.
The best have a perfect balance of sweetness and tartness and simultaneously pique and sate thirst. Thepineapplehereiscooked,butI alsodoservethiswithraw(coredand chopped).IfIdothatIputthechillis inthedressing.It’sreallyimportantto getamild,fruityoliveoilforthis.
DIRECTIONS Put the garlic, chilli and sugar in a mortar and bash to a purée. Add the rice vinegar, fish sauce and lime juice, and season. Peel and quarter the pineapple and remove the hard core from each piece. Cut each quarter, on an angle,
with the dressing and serve, using a scooped-out pineapple half, if you like.
HOT PINEAPPLE, AVOCADO AND SPINACH SALAD WITH GINGER DRESSING 1 tbsp palm sugar or soft light brown sugar 1 red and 1 green chilli, halved, deseeded and cut into little shreds juice of 2 limes 1 medium pineapple, peeled and cut lengthways into wedges 125g baby spinach leaves handful of coriander or mint leaves (or a mixture of both) 3 ripe avocados, stoned, peeled and cut into slices
DIRECTIONS Bash the sugar and chillis with a mortar and pestle until the chillis are almost a purée. Add the lime juice, stirring to help the sugar dissolve, put in a dish and lay the pineapple wedges in it. Leave to marinate for about 30 minutes, turning a few times. Line the grill tray with foil, season the pineapple wedges and grill them, turning occasionally, until slightly caramelised and tender (about five minutes). Leave to cool a little (the pineapple can be warm or at room temperature). Combine all the dressing ingredients in a bowl. In a separate broad, shallow bowl, gently toss the spinach, herbs and avocado together with three quarters of the dressing, then add the pineapple and serve with the rest of the dressing alongside.
INGREDIENTS For the salad:
I’m a fan of Southeast Asian salads made with mangoes, but the prawn salad with pineapple is even better. You could torture me by offering me ripe pineapple with fresh chilli, fish sauce and lime, then whipping it away.
I’m sure my granny — if she were here — would still prefer the gammon option, though.