This salad , one of the sweet and savoury salad made from ripe and half-ripe fruits, is a typical Creole salad that was traditionally eaten in the afternoon for afternoon tea in the absence of cakes and cookies. It was and is still rarely eaten as a dessert.
- 1 ripe pineapple -medium size
- 1/4 red onion -thinly sliced
- 3 tbsp sugar (may vary depending on sweetness of the fruit)
- juice 1/2 lemon
- ¼ tsp salt (may vary depending on sourness of the fruit)
- ¼ tsp cracked black pepper
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 chopped chilli- bird's eye ( or one goat chilli) (optional)
- 1 tsp vinegar
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Peel pineapple as discussed in the post, wash and pat dry
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Place the whole peeled pineapple on its side on the cutting board.
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Make incisions lengthwise from top to bottom about 1 ½ cm apart. The incisons have to reach the core, but do not cut across the core. Incise the whole pineapple.
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Once the incisions have been made around the whole pineapple. Make other incisions cross-wise around the pineapple at around 1 ½ cm interval from right to left.
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Once all fruit has been incised, place it upright and use your knife to slice vertically into the fruit again at around 1 ½ cm from the outside layer of the fruit. This should give you rough cubes of about 1 ½ cm. Cut through the whole fruit except the core, which, although can be eaten, is usually discarded.
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Place the cubed pineapple in a stainless or ceramic bowl and clean all working surfaces.
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In another small bowl, prepare a dressing by adding the sliced onions, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, cracked pepper and sugar and mix thoroughly
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Pour the sweet and salty dressing into the pineapple and mix with a spoon.
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Let rest for 30 minutes to allow all flavours to blend.
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Serve at room temperature or chilled
- If the pineapple a bit too sour you may decide to add extra sugar or vice versa if it is too sweet. Adding salt will also make the pineapple taste sweeter !
- To make the salad interesting and colourful, you can add grated pawpaw to it. For the salad the pawpaw cannot be too ripe. It has to be half-ripe ripe and still crunchy. In Creole we call it papay zon. The added texture and the combination of the sweetness of the pawpaw with the sweetish tartness of the pineapple create a totally different flavour dimension.
- Most Seychellois add some chilli to the salad. I suggest you chop your chilli very fine instead of pounding it. The flavour will be cleaner.
- If you want to reduce the sting of the onion, you may decide to soften the onion in some slightly salted water first before adding it to the salad.