Lighten Up It’s Spring! I am shedding winter and thinking and eating lighter. A simple salad with ever changing components is always a part of what I am eating. The simpler the salad, the greater the need to have the best quality ingredients. If you want the best of the season’s tender tasty salad greens, your local farmers market is your best bet. My papaya salad features a mixture of spring lettuces with papaya slices, macadamia nuts, and a blood orange vinaigrette. In my quest to “lighten up,” I was influenced by two different recipes; Ayurvedic Papaya and Blood Orange Salad from “In Nirmala’s Kitchen” by Nirmala Narine and Papaya, Orange and Bermuda Onion Salad from “The Golden Door Cooks Light and Easy,” by Michel Stroot. The resulting Papaya Salad is flavorful, healthy, fresh and light and a balance of sweet papaya and a tangy vinaigrette. Welcome spring and a new flavor palette.
Papaya Salad
Ingredients
- 1/2 small red onion thinly sliced
- 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
- 1/4 cup blood orange juice freshly squeezed
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 4 cups of mixed spring salad greens washed and dried
- 1 large papaya peeled, seeded and sliced lengthwise into 12 wedges
- 1/2 cup macadamia nuts roughly chopped
Instructions
- In a small bowl combine sliced onion and the sherry vinegar. Let it marinate for 15 minutes. Then strain the onion slices reserving the sherry vinegar. Set onion slices aside.
- For the vinaigrette, whisk together blood orange juice, lime juice, reserved sherry vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil in a small bowl.
- Place equal portions of the salad greens on 4 separate plates. Arrange the papaya slices and onion on the salad greens. Sprinkle each salad with chopped macadamia nuts.
- Drizzle the vinaigrette over each plated salad.
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