Fruity salads

I’ve got a bit of a thing about cooking savoury dishes with fruit. I sneak fruitiness into the most unexpected nooks and crannies: I love the unexpected kick and contrast it gives to dishes (and the curious-but-too-proud-to-ask look on the faces of dinner guests). We have a long history of cooking with fruit in the UK: Victorian cooking tomes are full of rich meat dishes containing hidden fruit, and the use of chutneys and conserves with meat and fish dishes goes back centuries. But the practice originated in the Middle East and was honed in the great courts of Shah Abbas and the Ottomans.