Discovering the joys of fruit salad

I am growing to appreciate fruit salad. I'm not sure whether this is a sign of advancing years, or if it's that I've become a bit more health-conscious.

In the past I've mainly come across it in restaurants or buffets, and I've always considered it a poor relation to, well, any other dessert, or cheese for that matter. It's not cooked for a start, and therefore hardly a real dish (I don't consider salad to be a main dish either). And all too often it seems over-stuffed with pieces of hard apple, presumably because apples are cheaper than other fruit. Invariably I would go for any other option.

Photo: mrsmaxspix

But what with cooking some of the time for my grandmother, who's quite keen on fruit salad, and trying not to put on too many extra pounds eating all these desserts that I wouldn't otherwise be having, I've given fruit salad a go.

I've realised
1) It's quite quick - a bit of peeling and chopping, but unless you are making an enormous one, it's manageable - and there's no cooking time.
2) It's quite healthy - as long as you don't serve it with loads of cream!

But what has won me over is the way it takes separate fruit and makes them into something different altogether, but in which the individual fruit still have their own identity. And I like the fact that it's not so much one dessert as a series of endless variations according to what you put in it. Melon, banana, grape and orange came out completely different to melon, plum, apricot and strawberry.

A few ground rules for a sucessful fruit salad:

1) Three types of fruit is the minimum, four or five is better still. More than five starts to get a bit confused.

2) You need a mix of colours, and ideally textures and shapes too. Blueberries always look beautiful on top, but other berries or grapes also show up well against cubes of fruit.

3) Go easy on apple and pineapple - too much apple makes chewing hard work (I like to cut it up quite small), and the strong flavour of pineapple can dominate.

4) You can use some tinned fruit in a pinch - apricot or peach halves, perhaps - but mix with fresh fruit unless the effect you are aiming for is a 1970s fruit cocktail. Soaked dried apricots would probably work too. 

I don't think you need anything else, but you could add a splash of your favourite liqueur (probably a fruity one like cassis) or a few mint leaves if you want. If you are not serving it straight away then some lemon juice will stop it going brown.