A Very Flexible Fruit Salad

It isn’t always easy—especially in the dead of winter—to find perfect fruit, which is what it takes to make an ideal fruit salad. But choosing what’s ripe and fresh may mean opting for less traditional combinations, and that can be fun. Choose berries and apricots in early summer; tomatoes (yes!) and peaches with basil later on. Apples and pears become staples in the fall, and you can augment them with dried fruit.

To tide you through the winter, turn to avocado and pineapple (maybe with chopped cilantro and a good squeeze of lime; a pinch of chili isn’t bad, either), or a mixture of citrus and bananas.

Try combining chunks of different melons, sprinkled with sea salt and chopped mint, or top sliced pears with hazelnuts, nuts, or crumbled blue cheese. In every case, figure about 1½ cups per person.

½ medium cantaloupe or honeydew, seeded, peeled, and cut intò chunks

1 mango or papaya (or the other half of the melon) seeded, peeled, and cut into chunks

¼ pineapple, peeled, cored, and cut into chunks

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

1 pint strawberries, hulled and halved

1 pint other berries (blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, etc.)

1 orange or other citrus fruit, peeled and segmented

1 Put the melon, mango, pineapple, and lemon zest and juice in a large bowl and toss; add the remaining ingredients and toss gently, taking care not to crush the berries.

2 Serve immediately, or refrigerate and serve within a few hours of mixing.