fruit chaat

mon, sept 12th

I think you peeps might appreciate this salad while the weather's still warm. It's what I made today for my l-lady, and it's a variation of something my mother makes occasionally, usually when there is a guest in the house:

Mix together one can chickpeas with some fruit of your choice. I used

apple pear mandarin orange grapes

Toss with some salt pepper cumin powder/seeds and lime juice. And serve.

If I had it, I would have used chaat masala (instead of the salt pepper cumin) which is a spice mix I sometimes think of as the magic spice because you can pretty much add it to ANYTHING and the dish will go from bland to intensely flavourful in a matter of seconds.

You can also make this spicy fruit salad minus the chick peas. My grandpa and other folks in my family (and, I suppose, many other S.Asians) usually just chop a lot of fruit into small pieces and then mix it all up with lots and lots of sugar, salt and pepper. I always felt that it wasn't as pretty or healthy as (white?western?euro?) fruit salads because all the fruit end up kind of blending together, and you just can't savour each individual fruit (also, I think hearing my grandparents directing me to put 'more sugar!' or 'more salt!' or 'more pepper!', and obsessively taking the bowl to mix it up when I'd be making the salad was a bit of a turnoff, somehow)...but I think that deep down, I've always had some appreciation for the sweet and salty fruit salad. It is pretty tasty, after all.

Oh, and while googling 'fruit chaat' I discovered what seemed to be a 'classic' recipe for this fruit salad. The recipe called for the following fruits:

banana apple pear orange grapes guava pomegranate

I've had this classic version before and the guava and pomegranate seeds, well, they kick ass. I think I could eat guava forever...