My persimmon salad recipe makes a pretty salad of mixed lettuce, persimmon, bocconcini, and purple shallots, sprinkled with pepitas and cranberries, and showered with fresh basil. Textured and fragrant, it’s quick and easy, coming together in ten minutes. It’s a wonderfully light yet filling meal on its own, a fantastic picnic side to roast chicken, and a brilliant barbecue salad with grilled fish, smoky lamb chops or spicy sausages.
If you’re in the northern hemisphere, where persimmon season starts soon, try my persimmon salad recipe. This speedy recipe makes a gorgeous persimmon salad of mixed greens, persimmon, bocconcini and shallots, sprinkled with pepitas, cranberries and basil. As a stand-alone salad, it’s a satisfying meal – a filling lunch or light dinner – but it’s also fantastic as a side. If you’re in Australia or elsewhere in the southern hemisphere, you’ll have to wait until summer for persimmon season.
If you’re a fan of fruit in savoury salads, you’ll love my persimmon salad. As a child, I thought veg went in savoury dishes and fruit was for dessert. But having lived in Southeast Asia for so long, where fruit stars in spicy salads – such as this Cambodian green papaya salad with shrimp, green mango salad with smoked fish, banana flower salad with chicken, prawn and pomelo salad, Burmese green mango salad, and Thai som tam – I adore savoury fruit-driven salads.
Although my introduction to the sweet and savoury/salty combination didn’t come from Asia but from Europe, with the Italian starter of melon and prosciutto – which Terence and I became smitten with at Italian restaurants in Sydney – which inspired my melon, prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella salad and Italian-cum-Mediterranean fig, mozzarella, prosciutto and chicken salad.
It was in the Mediterranean where we savoured that sweet-salty combination again with fruit and white cheese salads such as this classic Greek watermelon, feta and red onion salad and addictively delicious Cypriot watermelon, tomato and halloumi salad. (I know, I know, tomato is technically fruit).
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Persimmon Salad Recipe with Bocconcini, Pepitas, Cranberries and Basil
If you’re a lover of savoury salads with fruit, as well as those classic fruit and white cheese salad combinations, such as an Italian Caprese salad and Greek feta salad (tomato is a fruit, after all), and you’re a fan of persimmons, you’ll love this persimmon salad with mixed lettuce, persimmon, bocconcini, and shallots, sprinkled with cranberries, pepitas and basil. This salad is persimmon perfection.
Throughout persimmon season this year, I was lucky to get gifted persimmons by a kind Karen couple. They’re two of thousands of Myanmar refugees who’ve made a new life here in Bendigo in rural Victoria, where I’ve been caring for mum and battling a barrage of eviction notices in an effort to keep a roof over our heads. Thankfully, I found mum a new home and one of the positive outcomes of that traumatic period was the new friends I made.
The Karen couple work as gardeners at a school kitchen garden, a wonderful initiative in theory started by the legendary Australian chef Stephanie Alexander and ran by her Kitchen Garden Foundation. And I’m sure it must work in practice at some schools. Although in 18 months staying with my mum within sight of the garden, I only spotted a class of children in the garden on one occasion – on a tour. Sadly, not once did I see a child pick up a garden tool.
It was the lovely Karen couple who maintained the garden throughout the year, working one afternoon a week and on weekends to till the soil, plant seeds, weed, prune, feed the chooks, and harvest the fruit and veg. When I spotted them leaving one day with an armful of herbs, including loads of fresh coriander I’d been searching supermarkets for, I asked if I could have a little. Their eyes lit up, they handed me the lot, and went and snipped more for themselves.
We got chatting about ingredients and food, our mutual love of the food of Myanmar (Mohinga! Ohn no khao swe!), the food of Karen state, the seemingly never-ending civil war, the friends they left behind there, the family they were lucky to bring here, and their new lives in Bendigo.
I told them about my adopted home in Siem Reap, how I desperately missed my husband there (and got a hug), and my crazy cat Pepper (laughs preceded that hug), and how the people of Cambodia and Myanmar have a lot in common and are alike in many ways – mainly their kindness, and their sincere smiles.
When I passed by while they were in the garden we’d have a chat. Or they’d gesture for me to stop and wait while they picked whatever was ripe and ready for harvest and would otherwise be wasted. During school holidays when they took time off and the gate was locked, I watched so much wonderful fruit fall to the ground and rot.
They knew what I liked, produce that could be used in Asian cooking that was hard to find in Bendigo, or was available but expensive. They’d bring a bunch or armful of something to the fence, tipping it into my open shopping bag. I was the happy recipient of everything from fragrant fresh herbs and incredibly aromatic limes to pomegranates so pink and shiny they looked like they’d been polished.
And that’s how I came to be gifted bags of persimmons and began experimenting with persimmon recipes, some more successful than others. If you’re new to persimmons, more about this wonderful fruit below, along with a few tips to making this persimmon salad recipe.
Tips to Making this Persimmon Salad Recipe with Bocconcini, Pepitas, Cranberries and Basil
I only have a few tips to making my persimmon salad recipe with mixed lettuce leaves, persimmon and bocconcini wedges, and purple shallots, showered with pepitas, cranberries and fresh basil. Let’s start with the star ingredient, the persimmons.
Persimmons
Obviously persimmons are the key ingredient here, and we’re lucky in Australia – the beauty of living in such an enormous country! – that at some time throughout much of year we can find persimmons. From summer through early autumn persimmons are harvested in New South Wales, while in autumn through to the start of winter, persimmons are picked in the more sultry climate of sub-tropical Queensland in northern Australia. More on Australia’s persimmon season here.
But this persimmon salad recipe is nothing if not versatile. If you can’t find persimmons, this salad would be wonderful with firm mangoes and papayas, stone fruit such as peaches and nectarines, melons like cantaloupe/rockmelon, and even pears. But try to source permissions, as they’re absolutely fabulous, although some readers have said they’re an “acquired taste”. A taste worth acquiring in my opinion!
More substitutions: swap the mixed lettuce leaves for rucola (rocket, roca, arugula, depending where you are); the bocconcini for another white cheese; and cranberries can be replaced with other dried fruit such as raisins and sultanas. Skip the onions if you can’t find purple shallots or red onions. Fresh basil leaves are non negotiable for this kind of salad.
Make the Vinaigrette
First make the vinaigrette or salad dressing: pour the extra virgin olive oil, white wine vinegar, pomegranate syrup, and salt into a lidded jar. Shake the jar well to combine the lot then give it a taste. Adjust the dressing to suit your palate if needed, and set it aside.
Assemble the Salad
On a large salad serving plate, spread out a bed of mixed salad leaves, arrange the wedges of persimmons and bocconcini on top, scatter the purple shallot slices, sprinkle on the pepitas and cranberries, and shower the lot with loads of fresh basil leaves.
Serve the Salad
Pour the pomegranate vinaigrette over the persimmon salad just before serving, then use wooden salad spoons to toss the salad, and set at the centre of the table (it’s such a showstopper!) or distribute the salad between plates.
Persimmon Salad Recipe with Bocconcini, Pepitas, Cranberries and Basil
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 1 tbsp pomegranate syrup
- ½ tsp sea salt
- 120 g mixed salad leaves - washed
- 2 persimmons - cut into slices, then quarters
- 220 g bocconcini - small fresh mozzarella balls, sliced into chunky wedges
- 1 purple shallot - finely sliced, or small red onion
- 1 tbsp pepitas
- 1 tbsp cranberries
- 1 cup fresh basil leaves
Instructions
- Make the pomegranate vinaigrette: pour the extra virgin olive oil, white wine vinegar, pomegranate syrup, and salt into a lidded jar, shake well to combine, taste and adjust to suit your palate if needed, and set aside.
- Assemble the salad: on a large salad serving plate, spread out a bed of mixed salad leaves, arrange the wedges of persimmons and bocconcini on top, scatter the purple shallot slices, sprinkle on the pepitas and cranberries, and shower with fresh basil leaves.
- Serve the salad: pour the pomegranate vinaigrette over the salad just before serving, then use wooden salad spoons to toss and set at the centre of the table or distribute between plates.
Nutrition
Please do let us know in the comments below if you make this persimmon salad recipe with bocconcini, pepitas, cranberries and basil, as we’d love to hear how it turns out for you.
