Alright, time to lighten up the wintery mood of our meals! While I’m honestly not fed up with Winter-themed comfort food at dinnertime yet, I’ve recently found myself prepping zingy, light and summery meals for lunch – looks like my inner clock is slowly but steadily ticking towards warmer temperatures while my tummy’s still kinda-sorta content being wrapped in a wintery comfort-blanket of sorts~!

So, since we’re evidently not quite at a true seasonal turning point just yet, I’ve picked a spritzy salad for you guys today that’s just perfect as a fingerfoody party snack, light lunch or dinnertime-starter any time of the year – a warmer-days-tease, if you will~ Here’s what you need for 2 lunch-sized servings~

The Smoked Salmon, Apple, Grapefruit and Avocado Salad
200-300g Smoked Salmon, sliced into bitesized ribbons or fiddled into roses
2 Heads of Baby Gem Lettuce
1 Grapefruit, peeled and filleted or cut into ½ cm cubes
1 Large Braeburn Apple, peeled, cored, cut into ½ cm cubes
1 Avocado, halved and pitted
1 Small Bunch of Radishes, very finely sliced
1 Lime – squeeze the Juice into a bowl designated to hold your salad, and add the zest to your yoghurt bowl
1 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
A very generous Pinch each of Sea Salt and Togarashi Pepper
Honey to taste

Before we get started, you’re going to have to decide on how you would like to present the salads.
Opt 1: In little fingerfoody lettuce-leaf cups – skip slicing the baby gem lettuce into ribbons and simply separate the individual leaves. Depending on the size/shape of the leaves you might have to grab another head of lettuce or slide two leaves into each other with the tips pointing in opposite directions.
Opt 2: In the (soon-to-be-)emptied-out avocado halves, your neat little starter-option with a dash of 80’s Style on top.
Opt 3: Well… on a plate. Or in a salad bowl of easily-maneuverable proportions.

1) Pop the apple cubes into a large mixing bowl, sprinkle them with a pinch of salt and togarashi before tossing them with the lime juice.
2) Carefully cut the insides of the avocado halves into ½ cm “dice” without slicing through the skin. Scoop the dice out into the bowl holding the lime-juiced apples and give them a gentle fold-through to cover them with the juice as well.
3) Top the mixture off with a layer of thinly sliced radishes and another sprinkle of salt.
4) Move on to the grapefruit and make sure to catch all of the grapefruit juices in the salad bowl as you work your way through the segments – squeeze every last drop of juice out of the grapefruit’s „skeleton“ into the bowl as well as soon as you’re done filleting it.
5) Gently place the grapefruit fillets or dice on top of the radish layer in your bowl.
6) Drizzle the contents of your bowl with the olive oil and boost the seasoning with another pinch of salt and togarashi pepper blend. By the way, if you don’t have this blend on hand, use black pepper, cayenne, a couple of chilli flakes and a dash of toasted sesame seeds.
7) If you’re prepping this way in advance, cover the bowl with a sheet of clingfilm and place it in the fridge – While this is a wonderful salad to prep in advance, I highly recommend not crossing the 3-hour mark though. If you need more time, keep the avocados out of the picture until it’s time to finish up, otherwise they might turn gooey on you.
8) Whether you’re prepping the salad to be devoured right away or in advance, now would be a good time to stir together the lime-yoghurt topping~
9) Once you’re ready to serve, carefully toss all the cubes and the radishes until everything is evenly distributed. Be gentle though, you might not want to crush the avocado cubes – while it actually doesn’t make a difference in taste, bruised avocado cubes don’t look as pretty.
10) Have a taste of the mixture – make sure to include an apple cube and a piece of avocado on your test-spoon – to judge the acidity-levels. Dissolve a bit of honey in a couple of spoonfuls of the dressing and fold it back into the mixture if some adjustments towards the sweet side of things is needed.

The Lime Yoghurt
4 Tbsp Low-Fat Natural Yoghurt
1 Tsp Extra Vrgin Olive Oil
1 Lime, Zest – yep, the one I’ve already listed for the salad above~
1 Pinch of Salt
1 Pinch of Hot Chilli Flakes
Opt: 1 Tsp of freshly grated Lemongrass
Opt: 1 Tsp of freshly grated Horseradish
Opt: Coriander leaves for eye candy~

Well. Stir everything until the mixture is well combined and either get ready to plate up or cover the bowl with clingfilm and let it sit in the fridge until you’re ready~

Assembling the Dish
1) If you’re serving it in lettuce cups or the avocado skins, brush the insides of the leaves/skins with a bit of lime-yoghurt and top it off with a couple of cubes – the amount depends on the size of the leaves. If they’re meant to be appear on fingerfood-trays, make sure you don’t fill them up too high, the salad would just fall off once someone bites into one end.
2) This, of course, doesn’t apply to the avocado-style – simply fill them up until your’re satisfied with the looks of them and arrange them on a pretty, lettuce-lined plate.
3) Top off the salad- or avocado cups with bitesized pieces of salmon and the very optional coriander leaves.
4) For the bowl or plate version, evenly distribute the salad, coriander and salmon bits on the plates and dot everything with drips of the yoghurt.

Enjoy~!

♥