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Deep Mexico Fruit Salad | ![]() |
"I Love This Concept Even If I Feel a Little Overwhelmed."
That's what a long-time Kitchen Parade reader wrote last week when I first talked about our month-long cooking adventure in Deep Mexico: Ingredient-Driven Mexican Meal Prep. (Hello, Linda O!)
Funny thing is? For us, anyway, letting ingredients drive our meals is significantly simplifying our grocery shopping, meal planning, meal prep and cooking. With a limited number of ingredients and a focus on Mexican preparation styles, it all seems less overwhelming not more.

Take This Simple Fruit Salad
So before I share recipes that fit more traditionally into the idea of Mexican food, I decided to share this lovely fruit salad, one my husband came up with on Day 2 of our Deep Mexico project and which we continue to enjoy ever since.
Is it a "Mexican Fruit Salad"? Probably not. We do love a more traditional Mexican Fruit Salad, seasonal fruits and vegetables tossed with cumin, cinnamon or chili powder. So good!
But plates of fresh fruit kinda-sorta artfully arranged on plates completely fits our Deep Mexico concept of using ingredients commonly found in Mexican cuisine and treating them in a Mexican-ish way.
And it's truly simple, just fresh fruit arranged in a beautiful way atop a mound of cottage cheese.
And doesn't every plate look like those stylized round Aztec calendars you see in Mexico?
And then I found a photo I took in 2010 during the restoration of Templo de San Jerónimo, first built in the late 1500s at San Jerónimo Tiacochahuaya near Oaxaca, Mexico. Our salads mimic those four hundred-year old flower medallions, too! Ever since, we make sure to create round, symmetrical designs with pieces of fruit.
You'll Love Our Deep Mexico Fruit Salad If You ...
- keep pretty summer fruit on hand
- want a fruit salad that can serve one or a crowd
- appreciate beautiful plating but never feel up to it!

that I'm adding it to a special collection of easy summer recipes
published every summer since 2009.
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CONCEPT RECIPE:
DEEP MEXICO FRUIT SALAD
Chill time (optional): 30 minutes – 2 hours
Time to table: 5 minutes – 2-1/2 hours
Serves one to many
- Cottage cheese
- A variety of fresh fruit (oranges, tangerines, mangoes, pineapple, avocado, strawberries, etc.)
- Squeeze of fresh lime juice
- Drizzle of honey
- Sprinkle of cinnamon
- Something with crunch, toasted nuts or pumpkin seeds, granola, even pomegranate seeds, optional but good texture contrast
- Sprinkle of fresh cilantro, optional
Scoop a mound of cottage cheese onto a pretty plate. Now get creative! And artful! Arrange fresh fruit around the perimeter of the cottage cheese, letting some peak out. Surround the mound with fruit, showing off the different colors and shapes.
Add a squeeze of lime juice, a drizzle of honey, a sprinkle of cinnamon, then top with a few bits of something crunchy and fresh cilantro.
Serve for (or at) breakfast or lunch or as a starter for a light supper.
MAKE-AHEAD TIPS We like to chill the plates after they're all arranged, even a few minutes will make for a cool and refreshing salad.










Summer Fruit for the Win!
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This looks like a PERFECT spring and summer breakfast/brunch/lunch dish! Cottage cheese is incredibly good stuff (full fat for me, please -- the flavor is so much better, and the calorie count isnt that much higher). And it works so well with fruit. I'm not wild about cilantro with fruit (love cilantro, just not with fruit), but mint runs wild in our garden, so that'd be my choice. Really nice -- thanks.
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