How to make a blood orange, pomegranate and pink grapefruit salad

As the festive season is over, now it's all about being light and bright. But step away from the fad diets and instead go back to basics and create light and bright salads to awaken your taste buds

Rise and shine: post December, eat fresh fruit with bitter flavours for a wake up call (Photography by Julia Platt Leonard)

It’s the rare soul who hand on heart can say that they didn’t over indulge during the Christmas holidays. Mince pies, goose fat roasted potatoes and the odd cheese board (or ten), and we’re all feeling a bit like Henry VIII in his later years.

But if our eating is extreme during the hols, so is the January backlash. It’s all detox and fasting and odd diets and deprivation.

It’s New Year’s resolutions that are broken before we finish saying them. January doesn’t need deprivation; January needs balance.

Balance isn’t bad, in fact balance is very good. It’s not about calories but about reinvigorating our taste buds with fresh flavours, textures and bite. If Christmas is creamy luxury, then let January usher in some sour notes, bitter flavours and punch. It’s just what our jaded taste buds need to wake them up from a sluggish stupor.

Citrus is a natural. We’re spoiled for choice now, so why not take advantage? Balance the sour with salad greens like radicchio for bitterness and sprinkle with pomegranate seeds for crunch.

A hint of honey in the salad dressing mellows things out without removing the zing, while dill adds a welcome herbiness.

Natural citric flavours should be the flavour of January (Julia Platt Leonard)

Blood orange and pink grapefruit salad with pomegranate seeds and dill

Serves 4 as a side dish

2 blood oranges
1 pink grapefruit
4 handfuls of mixed greens such as radicchio, curly endive and oak leaf lettuce, about 200g total
¼ of a large pomegranate
10g dill

Dressing

Juice from the blood oranges and grapefruit, about 4 tbsp
1 tbsp honey
4-5 tablespoons vegetable oil
Salt and pepper

Slice a bit off the stem end of the grapefruit and repeat on the opposite end. Stand the grapefruit up on a chopping board on one of the cut ends. Take a sharp knife – a serrated one works well – and following the contour of the fruit, slice off the skin and white pith.

Hold the fruit over a bowl so you capture all the juices. Take the knife and make ‘v’ shaped cuts to remove each individual segment. Place the segments in a separate bowl and repeat with the two blood oranges. Squeeze the remaining pith over the juice bowl to extract any remaining juice.

Mix the citrus juices with an equal amount of oil and add in honey to taste. Season generously with salt and pepper and set aside.

Cut the pomegranate open and remove the seeds. Depending on the size, you’ll want to use a quarter to a half of the total pomegranate. Remove all the pith from the seeds and set them aside.

Gently wash the lettuces in cold water and spin in a salad spinner. Keep the leaves whole unless they are very large. Arrange the lettuces in a salad bowl or platter. Garnish with the citrus segments, sprigs of dill and pomegranate seeds. Drizzle with the dressing and serve at once.

@Juliapleonard