Christmas recipe: Fruit salad with champagne granita

Name: Christmas recipe: Fruit salad with champagne granita
Yield: 8
Cuisine: Modern Australian
Ingredients: 220g white sugar; 250ml water; 2 lemons; 750ml champagne or sparkling wine

Elvis Abrahanowicz and Ben Milgate

December 5, 2016

Porteno's Christmas fruit salad (serve with champagne granita).William Meppem

Start this recipe the day before serving. If you're time-poor, use tinned peaches. And if you're flush, use fancy champers.

Ingredients

For champagne granita

220g white sugar
250ml water
2 lemons
750ml champagne or sparkling wine

For fruit salad

4 mangoes, peeled and diced, stones reserved for syrup
500g lychees, peeled, deseeded and halved
8 large peaches, blanched, peeled and diced or 2 x 825g tins peaches in syrup, drained and diced, syrup reserved*
4 punnets strawberries, washed and halved
500g cherries, deseeded and halved

For fruit salad syrup

250g white sugar
250ml water
200ml sparkling wine
good quality ice-cream or cream to serve (check ice cream is gluten-free if required)

Method

1. To prepare the granita, combine 220g grams of white sugar and 250mls of water in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir until sugar dissolves, remove syrup from heat and set aside to cool.
2. Finely grate the zest rind from one lemon. Juice both and combine juice, zest, champagne, rind and sugar syrup in a medium bowl, then pour into a shallow tray and place in freezer to freeze. Scrape with a fork every 30 minutes until completely frozen into ice crystals.
3. Prepare fruit as described, taking care to dice fruit to roughly the the approximate size of halved cherries. Place in a large bowl or a large lidded container with lid.
4. Combine 250g sugar and in 250ml of water in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add mango stones and stir until sugar dissolves then bring to boil and allow to cool. Strain.
5. Combine 200ml of cooled syrup with sparkling wine, pour over fruit and leave to macerate for at least one hour, or preferably overnight.
6. To serve, put the fruit in a serving bowl with champagne granita heaped on top. Finish with a scoop of ice-cream or with spoonful of lightly whipped cream.
*Tip: If using tinned peaches, replace 200ml of prepared syrup with saved syrup from tinned peaches.
ALSO: See Porteno's other Christmas recipes, octopus and prawn salad and a porchetta to complete your festive spread.