Pomelo and shrimp salad recipe – let the fruit be the star of the dish
- Finding a good pomelo can be tricky, so when you do, make sure it takes the leading role
- The Asian ingredients can be found in any good supermarket
A pomelo looks like a large, slightly misshapen grapefruit, only it’s much more delicious, at least if you get a good one. The pomelo, which is one of the parent fruits of the crossbred grapefruit (the other parent is the orange), can be juicy and mildly sweet, with a diverse range of flavours – my favourite is when it tastes something like strawberries. A bad pomelo, however, has dry, fibrous flesh. Even the experts can have a hard time choosing a good one.
Thai pomelos, which tend to be smaller than the ones from China, are more expensive, but they are usually the ones I buy, both for eating plain and to use in dishes. Preparing a pomelo isn’t just a matter of cutting it in half equatorially (as opposed to slicing it through the stem ends) and scooping out the flesh, as you would do with a grapefruit. Instead, the pomelo is peeled of its thick rind, separated into segments, then the tough membranes are removed.
To peel it, use a sharp knife to cut the rind – without slicing into the flesh – into six sections from stem end to bud end. Insert a large, flattish spoon – bowl side down – between the flesh and the rind and separate the two by forcing the spoon down, following the fruit’s contours.
Pomelo salad with shrimp
There are many versions of pomelo salad and some have lots of filler ingredients such as lettuce, herbs or other types of fruit (grapes, strawberries or tomatoes). I like my pomelo salad to be quite pure, so the fruit’s flavour and texture are not muted.