Simplest Carambola-Avocado Side Dish

This dish takes moments to assemble. It can serve as the base for a composed summer main-dish salad—with chicken, or shrimp, or ham—or can stand alone as an unusual complement to an impromptu meal of cold meat or fowl. For this combination, the sourer varieties of carambola will do just fine, adding a pleasant acid lift to the creamy avocado.

Because carambolas store so well, keeping their grapy-lemony flavor for a long refrigerator stay, you can put this together spontaneously, whe