Local fruit salad just got even better: Try adding a hint of San Antonio spice

I’m officially declaring this season in 2025 the Summer of Salad. For much of July (and August may well follow suit), it was too warm to turn on the stove in my kitchen, let alone the oven. Salads provided me with nourishment, moisture, and crunch. Those salads included fruit salads.

I love fresh fruit. It’s sweet. It’s colorful. It’s refreshing. At this time of year, we are lucky enough to have stone fruits like peaches and apricots in profusion. We also have a variety of berries. I gleefully just purchased my first melon of the season at a farm stand, and I can’t wait for more. Neither can my cat Ruby, who shows no interest in grocery store melons but comes running when she smells fresh, local ones. I think their moisture calls to her, particularly when the weather is warm.

Mostly, I consume fruit unadorned. It doesn’t need a lot of embellishment. As a food writer, however, I feel obliged try to find ways to put ingredients (including fruit) into recipes. I consequently brainstorm a lot.

My brain would never have come up with the notion of putting pepper on fruit, however. Fortunately, I met Mary Elizabeth Cantu several years ago. Smart, energetic, and fun, Mary was the co-chair of the Mount Holyoke Club of San Antonio when I visited that city in early June.

Mary was an arts educator. She founded a wonderful institution in San Antonio called Spare Parts when she found she couldn’t afford art supplies for her classroom.

This organization helps arts educators and reduces waste by finding ways to re-use art materials that otherwise would be thrown out. It’s a creative idea, and Mary (who, sadly, died of a heart attack earlier this year at the age of 45) was a creative soul.

She and the Mount Holyoke Club imported me for a cooking demonstration. I led fellow alums in making several recipes from one of my cookbooks and talked to them about my passion for food writing as we all consumed the fruits of our labor. We had fun and ate well.

Mary couldn’t have been a better hostess.

Knowing the way to a food writer’s heart, she took me out to a memorable Mexican lunch before we got to work shopping and cooking.

After lunch, we made a whirlwind trip to Central Market to stock up on provisions for our cooking extravaganza. If this grocery chain had existed when I was in graduate school in Texas, I decided, I probably never would have left the state.

It’s an exciting shopping destination, one that takes pride in offering a variety of fresh foods and letting the shopper know where they came from.

Coming from New England, where fresh produce was only just starting to appear in farmstands at that time of year, I was completely bowled over by the ripe and colorful blueberries, tomatoes, corn, and peaches on the shelves there.

As we were touring San Antonio, Mary described one of her favorite desserts. In both Texas and California, she told me, restaurants and farmers market vendors are now increasingly serving fruit salad with a hint of spice instead of relying on sugar for flavor.

The basic components of this simple salad, as you can see below, are fresh fruit, lime, and a hint of pepper. Mary was kind enough to give me a pepper blend specially created for fruit salad. Unfortunately, I ran out of it so I resorted to cayenne and dubbed the result Cayenne Pepper Fruit Salad.

Be very careful! The first time I tried the cayenne I put in too much. My young nephew Michael immediately dubbed the result “Cryin’ Pepper Fruit Salad.” The boy had a point.

If you add pepper sparingly, however, the salad may well inspire you to dance around the kitchen. As I dance, I think of Mary Elizabeth Cantu.

This week, I’m making her salad with local melon, peaches, and blueberries. The sliced melon and the peaches provide lots of surface area for the lime juice and the pepper.

The berries aren’t necessary; they can’t really absorb much spice. They do supply a pop of color, however. Peaches and cantaloupe are, after all, similar in appearance.

If you would like to try a commercial spice blend, I recommend Penzey’s Pico Fruta. (“Pico” has many meanings but translates here to “pinch.” “Fruta” means fruit.) Pico Fruta contains citrus, pepper, a tiny bit of sugar, and a hint of cilantro. It thus combines and adds to several of the ingredients below.

Whether you make this salad with the Pico or from scratch, it will give you a new way to appreciate fruit. The hint of San Antonio spice brings a welcome dimension to our New England harvest.

The Salad

Ingredients:

6 cups chopped fresh fruit 

the juice of 1 large lime

cayenne pepper to taste (begin with a pinch or two)

1/2 teaspoon salt

a sprinkling of chopped cilantro (optional; I know the world includes people who don’t care for cilantro)

Instructions:

Place the fruit in a large bowl. Sprinkle the lime juice on top, then judiciously apply cayenne.

Taste the mixture, and add a little more cayenne if you think the fruit can handle it.

At the last minute sprinkle on the salt. (I think it makes the fruit taste a little sweeter.) Top with the cilantro if you are using it, and serve. Serves 6.

You may of course make smaller or larger versions of this salad.

Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.