LA Inspired Street Food: Fruit Salad

If you’ve been to Los Angeles, you may be familiar with the fruit carts sprinkled throughout the city’s many neighborhoods. Carts are typically situated on street corners topped with a rainbow umbrella. Once you spot one, they’re hard to miss.

No matter where you are in the city, vendors stock their carts with the same tools and ingredients - a cutting board, a sharp knife, Ziploc bags, and a bounty of fresh fruits on ice. The secret to this fruit salad is the seasoning. Tajín, a spicy Mexican salt, combines with fresh lime juice for an extra kick and refreshing treat.

LA fruit vendors load up a ziploc bag to be enjoyed on-the-go.

Like any fruit salad, this recipe is very forgiving and can be completely tailored to your tastes. LA fruit carts traditionally use tropical fruits, like mango, melons, and pineapple, but feel free to substitute as you please.

Ingredients

• 1 small watermelon
• 1 cantaloupe
• 1 jicama
• 1 pineapple
• 1 cucumber, peeled and seeded
• 2 mangos
• 1 papaya
• Healthy dash of Tajín or chili powder
• Juice of 1 lime

Preparation

Chop fruits into bite sized pieces. Toss fruits with lime juice and Tajín salt or chili powder. Add an extra dash of Tajín if you can handle the heat.

Serving Suggestion

Serve in a bowl at your upcoming summer bbq. Throw the salad in a Ziploc bag and enjoy on-the-go like a native Angeleno.

10 Ways to Cook with Ginger

Ginger is a great source of vitamin C, magnesium, potassium, copper and manganese. It's also widely studied for its medicinal benefits, including aiding nausea and vomiting, relieving the pain of osteoarthritis, and possibly a factor in treating heart disease. Of course, it's also delicious in all sorts of dishes and versatile. Try it using one of the techniques below.

1. Make sauces, dressings and dips all perk up with the addition of ginger. For a simple dipping or marinating sauce, add minced ginger to soy sauce. For a salad dressing upgrade, stir a bit of minced ginger to an otherwise plain vinaigrette.

2. Combine it with red miso and tahini in this colorful Kale Salad with Ginger Miso Dressing

3. Enhance flavor. This Ginger Beurre Blanc Sauce would nicely flavor any seafood or chicken, for starters.

4. Add it to grain dishes and mashed sweet potatoes.

5. Spruce up a simple stir fry with beef, chicken, or veggies. In this Grilled Tofu with Cilantro Ginger Pesto, ginger combines with cilantro.

6. Add fruit. Apples, pears and other fruit are delicious when seasoned with ginger. Sprinkle minced ginger on top of the fruit before baking or cook the fruit in gingered butter until softened.

7. Pickle it. Pickled Ginger is great for cleansing the palate or a light snack. This version is easy to make and, unlike many commercial varieties, uses no food dyes.

8. Add it to sweets. Dried and ground ginger performs well in desserts, like spice cookies, carrot cakes, or pumpkin and apple pie fillings.

9. Stir into cream cheese for spreading on fruit bread.

10. Serve it with curry. Offer tasty little bites alongside curried dishes.