Orange salad
I love oranges. That sticky feeling as the sweet juice dribbles down your chin. The decision as to how many slices to cut it into. The inevitable orange skin mouthguard or dracula teeth. They bring back memories of halftime in rugby as a kid; that muddy exhausted feeling where you felt if you just had one more orange slice who knew what superhuman feat might happen back on the field. I remember the afternoons when you’d come home from school to find that mum or dad had bought a crate of oranges and you just knew you’d be having orange juice for breakfast, oranges in your lunch box and oranges for afternoon tea, but you’d still want more. I remember driving around Queensland with G shortly before we starting living together and finding vendors by the side of the road with so much produce they didn’t know what to do with it. Eating them with a pineapple from that same street vendor in the dusty carpark of a camp site with the person you loved and being intensely satisfied by the simplicity of what you were eating. However, since moving to the UK, I’ve found it hard to replicate those same intensely satisfying orangey feelings – whereas oranges in Australia are amazing, oranges in the UK are simply nice. Reflections of an ideal orange, memories, but not the real thing. This salad has changed all that. With a little help from some friends, it covers up all the blemishes of a UK orange and creates the kind of salad which transports me back to those rich memories. Refreshing, delicious, simple. So simple I almost feel guilty sharing it here as a recipe. But then if you enjoy it half as much as I do it’s worth sharing.
