Orange and Olive Salad

I wanted to be sure to include a few words about fruit salads—not sweet fruit cocktails in heavy syrup, but savory salads made like other composed salads. These may consist of fresh fruit alone, or fresh fruit combined with lettuces or other salad greens, with nuts and cheese often added for richness and texture. When there are no greens available and I desperately want something fresh, fruit salads are refreshing alternatives, either at the beginning or the end of a meal. Figs, apples, pears, pomegranates, persimmons, and almost all of the citrus fruits make good salads, with or without greens. All these fruits of fall and winter have an affinity for hearty chicories such as escarole, radicchio, and curly endive. Among my favorite fruit salads are an orange salad with black olives; avocado slices and grapefruit sections; persimmons or Asian pears with nuts and balsamic vinegar; and orange slices with marinated beets. Oranges and other citrus fruits need to be peeled and sectioned for a salad. When skinning the fruit, you want to remove all the outer peel and the membranes that enclose the sections, exposing the juicy fruit inside. You will need a small, sharp knife to do this. First, slice off the top and bottom of each fruit, slicing deeply enough to expose the inner flesh. Then, position your knife blade at the top where the fruit and peel meet, and carefully cut down following the contours of the fruit. Continue around the fruit, cutting from top to bottom, rotating the orange, until all the peel and membrane is removed. Trim away any remaining white bits of membrane. You can then slice the orange crosswise or cut between the membranes to free the individual sections. Apples and pears can be peeled or not, but to avoid oxidation, which turns the cut surfaces brown, they should be prepared just before serving. Persimmons must be peeled; this can be done in advance, but keep them covered so they don’t dry out. Fruit salads are usually dressed very simply, sometimes with nothing more than a drizzle of olive oil or vinegar, or with a vinaigrette made of some citrus juice and a touch of vinegar, a little chopped shallot, salt, pepper, and olive oil.