The Lazy Cook’s Eye-Popping Christmas Fruit Salad

Christmas Fruit Salad: two ingredients, no fuss!

It seems like I go into so many things tush-first.

I didn’t set out to devise a Christmas dish yesterday, but it happened. My lunch included a fruit salad made of only two ingredients, kiwi and pomegranate, because that’s what I had on hand, courtesy of the most recent CSA delivery. It was not my intention to go all rah-rah-holiday with it, but after I tossed the two fruits into a bowl together, I realized that there was some serious Christmas potential in front of me.

If you want to make this salad, you need only these two ingredients, in whatever amount and proportion you desire. It really doesn’t need anything else. It’s an easy do-ahead and a fresh, welcome contrast to all those rich, wintery dishes.

This salad is for my cousin, Deb, who is a brilliant litigator, scholar and equestrienne, but who once cooked a holiday ham with the wrapper on. So she doesn’t take a hammer to the pomegranate and make her brother’s kitchen look like a scene in a third-rate horror flick come dinnertime on Christmas Day. So no one does this in anyone’s kitchen, here’s the fast, easy and tidy way to get the seeds out of a pomegranate.

If you’re not too well acquainted with kiwi, just remember that if it’s rock-solid, it will be sour. It needs a little pliability, a soft give when you lightly squeeze it. Peel it with a vegetable peeler instead of a knife, so you take away only the skin.

Here’s yesterday’s lunch fruit salad. I like this photo much better. The kiwis are a little soft and smoodgy, but they’re sweeter at this stage.