Green salad with strawberries

Fruit in salads

I do detest fruit salads. Both the miserable concoctions festering in liquid in a hotel breakfast buffet, as well as (equally miserable) tubs of chopped fruit in the supermarket ‘food to go’ sections.

They don’t appear much elsewhere, except perhaps in tropical countries where the ingredients make them interesting and the water content makes sense to serve in place of desserts or starters.

The usual suspects: pineapple, melon, grapes and apple are lumped together with disregard to seasonality or locality, and they swim in unappetising watery juices.

When we stay in hotels, the Weather Man usually braves a bowlful if other options are meagre, pretending it’s not mainly sugar. I choose toast with jam: at least there the sugar is in plain sight, not masquerading as healthy.

But if you add fresh – the operative word, together with seasonal – fruit to a savoury salad, a side dish kind or a main course, that’s an entirely different story.

What fruit goes with savoury salads?

I should rather say what fruit doesn’t: anything too soft or mushy. Raspberries are out, cherries are too messy, plums too soft when ripe and only ripe plums are worth eating. Citrus works better in the dressing and oranges – only if expertly segmented. Bananas are too sweet, mushy and just wrong.

Any stone fruit is fine as long as it’s firm: peaches, nectarines and apricots.

Fruit from the gourd family, melons of all kinds and of course cucumbers are perfect. Figs and pomegranate are classics, and grapes (but when in season!) are very well behaved in salads, plus marvellous company to feta and other cheeses, obviously.

Apples and pears together with the botanical fruits that masquerade as vegetables - avocado, tomatoes and peppers – are all welcome in savoury salads too.

Layered salad with strawberries

This salad is really Pimm’s without the booze: cucumbers, mint and strawberries, sliced and layered on top of shredded lettuce. The lettuce works better if it’s a crunchy variety: iceberg, Cos or Romaine.

Dressing is simple: good olive oil and balsamic vinegar, drizzled separately. But strawberries like black pepper, which you might not have known, so make sure you use freshly ground pepper and shower the strawberries generously.

I’d advise to serve the salad layered not tossed, as it will look much prettier. If you insist on mingling the flavours, do it gently with your fingers.

More savoury salads with fruit

Chicken and melon salad with feta and avocado. Roasted sliced chicken breast is lovely paired with fresh melon, salty feta, filo crumbs and a few seeds.

Feta cheese, roasted grapes and crunchy walnuts are the perfect combination of juicy, sweet, crunchy and salty. It's a fantastic autumnal salad, to serve for lunch or as a starter.

Watermelon and feta salad is the simplest summery perfection, the salty-sweet combo in the most refreshing form. Whole or half a watermelon is really easy to prepare and much better value than prepacked tubs.

More strawberry recipes

Homemade strawberry jam made with jam sugar. The addition of lemon juice and black pepper hugely enhances strawberry flavour.

Strawberries and whipped labneh, a healthy version of the beloved Wimbledon dessert, strawberries and cream. Labneh, thick strained yoghurt, is as delicious as cream but leaner in fat and calories.

Slow roasted strawberries become jammy but not too sickly, coated in luscious syrup, and they have a multitude of uses in desserts, cakes and afternoon tea confections.