Iron Chef: Home Edition

Using the dragon fruit, I wanted to show you a few appetizer ideas I thought were neat. I went ahead and cut into my dragon fruit to experiment with it and I have mixed emotions. As far as dealing with the fruit itself (i.e. cutting, shaping, texture), I was pretty pleased. It does have a similar texture to a kiwi and I can see how someone could liken the flavor to that of a pear. If the pear had hardly any flavor. Still, it was attractive and that's most of the battle, I think, when dealing with "exotic" ingredients.

I used part of it to make a fruit salad: I used the dragon fruit with a bit of diced orange, red pear, and a sprinkle of lime juice to add flavor to the dragon fruit. This worked out well and I used the lovely pink skin as a bowl!

The lighting was poor so I had to use the flash on my phone which kind of makes the oranges look radioactive.

Then I got to the creative part! I wanted to experiment with flavors and textures and lately I have been wanting to design little "pick-up's" for my next brunch or dinner party. I had limited ingredients on hand (I love a challenge), I'm sure you could do better with some planning, but what I ended up with made me happy.

Left: Layered dragon fruit, pickled ginger, raspberry, garnished with a twist of orange peel.

Center: Zucchini wrapped with nori, filled with carrot, red bell pepper, dragon fruit, and bacon.

Right: Hollowed out tomato, filled with balsamic reduction, bacon, and sriracha pepper, topped with dragon fruit.