Carambola and Goats’ Cheese Salad
To celebrate my last day in the beautiful coastal town of Lo De Marcos, I made a carambola and goats’ cheese salad, using fruit picked directly from a tree that I’d been eyeing up for weeks in the main square.
It’s a super easy recipe (consisting mainly of peeling, slicing, and dicing!), but what it lacks in complexity it wallops in flavour, bringing together some of the wonderful Mexican ingredients that I’ve tasted so far.
Ingredients (serves 4)
80g raw almonds
1 red onion
2 limes
1 chilli
4 carambola / star fruit*
6 tomatillos**
2 avocados
2 mangos
1 cucumber
Bunch of coriander
1 orange
150g soft goats’ cheese
Olive oil
Salt
Roughly chop the almonds, toast in a pan until golden brown and leave to cool.
Finely slice the onion and set aside in a bowl with a pinch of salt, the juice of one lime, and a deseeded and finely diced chilli.
Slice the carambola into stars, the tomatillos into rounds, and the avocado lengthways. Roughly chop the coriander.
Peel the mangos and slice into strips. Peel the cucumber, slice lengthways, scoop out the seeds and cut in to half-moon shapes.
Assemble the dish in layers – mango, cucumber, onion and chilli pickle, carambola, avocado, tomatillo, a scattering of coriander, good pinch of salt, juice of half the orange and half the remaining lime, then repeat. Save a few carambola stars for the top to decorate.
Crumble over the goats’ cheese and toasted almonds, and drizzle with olive oil.
*Carambola ripen from very sharp / green, to sweet / orange - I used a combination of both.
** Tomatillos are available pretty much everywhere here in Mexico, but trickier to find fresh in the UK. If you can’t source any, use physalis / cape gooseberries instead (these are in the same family and have a similar flavour) and double up the quantity.