How do you make a fresh tangerine salad?

Answer 1

This is an attractive salad to serve alone just as an entrée or appetiser, though of course you can serve it as a side salad with a meal.

Buy or make a good basic vinaigrette dressing, and put into a serving dish or bottle on the table.

You should be keeping your tangerines or mandarins in the fridge unless your kitchen is very cool. Otherwise, refrigerate the fruit, overnight if possible. This will make it easy to separate the segments without breaking the membrane.

Carefully separate the fruit segments, pull off any excess white pith, and leave the segments on kitchen paper in the fridge, another piece of paper over them.

Take a small bowlful of whole blanched almonds, or, preferably, almonds cooked in their skins, and put them into a plastic bag with some salt, ground pepper, and caster sugar; shake well to coat and set aside in the fridge.

Mix a combination of crisped light and dark salad leaves (iceberg lettuce, rocket, radicchio, whatever's good and in season, more dark than light if possible), torn into not-too-small pieces, in a salad bowl.

Arrange a salad plate or bowl per guest on the table, with a fork each; put a pepper-grinder and salt shaker or grinder on the table.

Cut a soft cheese such as Brie or Camembert into wedges on a small plate and put centrally on the table with a cheese knife.

Pour the almonds back into their bowl, shaking well first to keep excess salt and sugar back in the bag: they should only be lightly coated, and put the bowl on the table, with a dessert spoon for serving.

At the very last moment when quite ready to serve, mix the fruit segments in with the leaves and place on the table with salad servers.

Have iced water on the table, maybe with lemon or lime slices. A pleasant crisp, cool white wine with a slight fruity touch, maybe a dryish Reisling, will go well.

Fresh white bread and pats of butter could be offered.

Note: like many dishes I make, this salad is arranged so many of its ingredients are served separately, allowing guests or family to eat combinations of food which suit their personal tastes, or to experiment. This allows diners some control over what and how they eat, which is always popular, and promotes conversation about food as people help themselves to quantities they prefer.

On a more practical note, serving food this way makes it easy to cover and refrigerate leftover food for later.

This principal of giving diners a choice by separately serving food items works with most meals; for example, a casserole of beef could be served with a bowl of sliced fresh chillies, or fresh chilli sauce, on the side for diners who like it hot to help themselves.

Eating this way avoids the common problem of having a diner faced with food they love which has been made less pleasant for them because someone's added dollops of something they don'tlove to it. If it doesn't have to be mixed in, don't!