A New Ambrosia

Ambrosia is the name of a cold, sweet, chunky salad found in most southern cafeterias. We’ve reinvented it from top to bottom.

The original ambrosia calls for canned tangerine segments, canned pineapple chunks, mini-marshmallows, shredded coconut, and mayonnaise. It is bracingly sweet, but we often find it served, bizarrely enough, as a side dish with the main course, which seems out of whack – a salad created for someone who’d rather eat dessert first. But the idea of “a food for the gods” – a cool, creamy salad that isn’t coleslaw – appeals greatly to us, so we fiddled with the elements and came up with something new.

Here we substitute fresh grapefruit and orange for the canned tangerines and crisp cucumber and celery for the pineapple. Chopped avocado provides the soft creaminess of the marshmallows in the original. There is no mayo here, but instead a brisk dressing of buttermilk, lime juice, tarragon, and garlic, with the gentle sweetness of shredded coconut (a direct carryover from the original). It’s a salad with beautiful contrasting textures, pretty colors, and bright flavors. This ambrosia is as crunchy and cool as coleslaw but with herbal notes instead of vinegary ones. Like coleslaw, it’s brilliant paired with anything fried or spicy. Sometimes we serve a scoop of New Ambrosia over a small bed of arugula as the salad course in a larger meal.

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