Dates and apricots fruit salad

Definitely, today I am in the mood for sharing as many recipes as possible. This time, I am happy to tell a little foodie story for a very special combination I did find myself. 

Last year, I got a very special assignement, to prepare the catering for a small wedding here, in Berlin. The budget was tight and the time was also limited. Plus, I just got a new job, and was pregnant in the last trimestre and, well, all together it was a lot to do and cope with.

Somehow, I accepted the challenge of the catering, not only because I needed the money, but for the sake of the challenge as such. Me, who less than ten years ago was hardly able to differentiate between different tastes and foods, was now cooking for other - 50 - people too. 

Anyway, I took the assignment and started to do various testing for some fast and summer fit recipes. The clients were not sophisticated, but it was their unique wedding moment and thus, it was my duty to make it taste uniquely. 

Besides the special cake - which was millefeuilles, a nightmare for experienced cooks as well, but this is another story - they wanted some little finger foods, including tasty fruit salads. 

After many trials, my final choice was to mix fresh apricots with dates. No sugar needed, as the dates do have enough sweetness. The only condition was to keep them a couple of hours together in order to have a certain interaction between the two tastes. The ratio I used was of around 5 small apricots for 7 dates - the Mejoul ones are perfectly sweet. It is easy to prepare, convenient and healthy too. To be consumed either as an individual dessert or as a snake between meals, accompanied by a glass of champagne. 

Fruity salad, post-TuBishvat

I will not talk now about how many fruits I had in my TuBishvat salad. Just to give an idea, there were more than 30 but the work of art was not my work at all, so I will not start giving advice and stealing recipes. One week after, I was out of time and looking for a very light Shabbes meals and the fruit salad was the best answer to all my problems.

My combination was quite modest compared with what I had the Shabbes before, but there were still a couple of delicious fruits, namely:

- papaya (1)

- kiwi (2)

- bananas (2)

- dates (8)

- figues (8)

- strawberries (7)

- 100 gr. coco raspel

The sugar of dates and figues was enough for not adding any more brown or white sugar. Unfortunatelly, I was not able to find some blueberries and I avoided to add some lemon or tangerines or whipped cream. All I wanted was an original taste of the fruits.

The preparation took around 15 minutes. I kept the salad in the fridge for around 2 hours before serving. I am so sorry that the salad is no more...

A fruity raw sweet treat

I have a very good friend who switched her menu to raw for years and she has always amazing ideas for fruit salads and salads in general. Last week, she posted a delicious recipe: papaya, dates and banana. The colorful image associated with the tasty imagination of the combination of the three fruits haunted me for a very long time. After many unsuccessful attempts to find papaya, I ended up buying a dragon fruit that I added to the mixture of dates and bananas. I was tempted to add some honey or some brown sugar, but decided to leave it like that and do not change anything. 

I am still haunted by the deep taste of papaya, and hope to find it for the next week detox meal. Maybe I should try a different brand of dates as well.