Macedonia with apple blossom & mint

Whenever we stay in Italy at my in-laws' house, almost every meal is finished with a bowl of fruit salad or Macedonia di frutta. It's not that we don't have any other desserts, aunt Giuseppina's ricotta cake and my mother-in-law's apple tart are works of art, but typically there is so much food that by the end of the meal you cannot possibly stuff yourself with a cake. A bit of fruit salad, on the other hand, always sounds like a good idea.

Macedonia with apple blossom and mint
Ingredients:
1 ripe mango, sliced
1 banana, sliced
1 apple, chopped (for example, Gala)
about 200g strawberries, halved
about 100g of raspberries
2 kiwis, sliced
a handful of grapes, halved
2 mint sprigs (optional)
a handful of apple blossom petals (optional)
2tbsp of caster sugar
2tbsp lemon juice

I started by halving the strawberries, and leaving them in a bowl overnight, sprinkled with sugar. You don't have to do it. It's just I was worried they would go too soft if I leave them overnight without sugar, and we didn't fancy them yesterday night.
Cut all the fruit in the bite-size pieces. Mix the cut fruit and berries in a deep bowl, add the torn leaves of mint and apple blossom petals if using. Squeeze some lemon juice, so that the bananas don't go brown.

This fruit salad will keep well for a day in the fridge in the closed container.

Experiment with the fruit, the Italians love peaches in their macedonia, but they are not very tasty at the moment, flown from afar and tasting of nothing much, even when soft. Swap raspberries for blueberries or pomegranate seeds, add some sliced oranges or pears. Be creative!

Old apple trees in our garden

I have long wanted to try the apple blossom petals in a salad, and we are lucky to have several gorgeous apple trees: two old trees, one quite young, and a baby one, which I planted a couple of years ago, and this year it has got its first blossom.

Most of the ingredients in this fruit salad were purchased for the #MorrisonsMum challenge run by BritMums and Morrisons in conjunction with new price cuts (see more about it in my post Lemony salmon hash with spring onions).

Now let's calculate cost per serving. There was enough fruit salad for 4-5 portions. I used 1 mango (£2 for 2), 1 apple (a bag of 6 for 99p), strawberries for 99p, raspberries for 99p, kiwi at £1.49 per pack of 6 (now 99p), 1 banana (£1 for 5), grapes were from a box for £2 (about 1/4). Rose petals and mint were free from the garden, and are optional, so do not count in the total sum. The total would come to about £4.20 or less, i.e. £1.05 or less per serving. Perhaps not that cheap, but if you buy ready-made fruit salads in small punnets, they are more expensive and are not that fresh.

All the fruit and berries were delicious and fresh.

Raspberries and strawberries were so far the least expensive if you compare the prices with the other supermarkets.

Baby apple tree

Disclosure: as mentioned in the previous post with #MorrisonsMum hashtag, all bloggers taking part in the campaign received vouchers to help with the grocery shopping. All opinions are mine.

Lovely Chris from Cooking Around the World is taking us to Italy this month, and the theme is Italian sweets, puddings and cakes. I presume by puddings Chris means desserts in general.

And of course, adding my recipe to another fab linky, Karen's Cooking with Herbs.

And one more linky, No Croutons Required as hosted by Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen.