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Pluots add sweet-tart crunch to salad

Recipe: Dish combines fresh fruit with dried cranberries, walnuts

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Debbie Arrington PUBLISHED JUL 19, 2020

Pluot salad — Add tangy flavor to a summer salad with wedges of pluots. The fruit is a hybrid
of apricots and plums. (Photos: Debbie Arrington)

Pluots can puzzle people. Sure, they're sweet-tart and crunchy, wonderful eaten fresh out of hand.

But what can you do with them?

Thanks to hybridizer Dave Wilson Nursery, dozens of pluots and close cousins apriums and plumcots are now available. Known as interspecific plums, these mixed varieties include plums and apricots in their parentage. But how that cross turns out can be amazingly different. That gives each variety unique characteristics.

Pluots range in skin color from pale yellow-green to darkest plum purple, often with contrasting flesh. The inherent blend of apricot and plum makes a wonderful jam as well as tarts and dessert fillings.

That sweet-tart-crunchy combo also is perfect for a fresh summer salad. The variety used for this recipe was Emerald Drop, which has very pretty yellow-green skin with tangy apricot-like flesh. But any pluot or aprium or plumcot would be tasty, too.

Two green pluots — These are Emerald Drop pluots but any variety of pluot
or aprium will do.

Pluot salad
Makes 3 servings

Ingredients:

3 pluots, pitted and cut into thin wedges
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped
2 cups romaine lettuce, chopped
1/2 cup cabbage, shredded

For dressing:
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon pear balsamic vinegar (or other fruity balsamic)
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Salad on plate — A refreshing salad, perfect for summer.

Instructions:

In a large bowl, combine pluots, dried cranberries, walnuts, lettuce and cabbage.

Make dressing. In a jar, combine all dressing ingredients. Cover and shake.

Drizzle dressing over salad ingredients and toss gently. Serve.

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RECIPE

A recipe for preparing delicious meals from the bounty of the garden.

Keywords:

recipes gardening Sacramento stone fruit pluots summer fruit backyard produce produce management

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Garden Checklist for week of Oct. 13

Our break in the heat has arrived. Time to get planting!

* October is the best month to plant perennials in our area. Add a little well-aged compost and bone meal to the planting hole, but hold off on other fertilizers until spring. Keep the transplants well-watered (but not wet) for the first month as they become settled.

* Now is the time to plant seeds for many flowers directly into the garden, including cornflower, nasturtium, nigella, poppy, portulaca, sweet pea and stock.

* Plant seeds for radishes, bok choy, mustard, spinach and peas. Plant garlic and onions.

* Set out cool-weather bedding plants, including calendula, pansy, snapdragon, primrose and viola.

* Reseed and feed the lawn. Work on bare spots.

* Dig up corms and tubers of gladioli, dahlias and tuberous begonias after the foliage dies. Clean and store in a cool, dry place.

* Treat azaleas, gardenias and camellias with chelated iron if leaves are yellowing between the veins.

* Clean up the summer vegetable garden and compost disease-free foliage.

* Harvest pumpkins and winter squash.

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