Blood oranges are everywhere on the internets. Like here, here, and here. And why shouldn't they be the center of attention--they're gorgeous. I know this sounds absurd, but when I cut into a blood orange, and see the inside, I feel mesmerized by the unexpected color and contrast. When I saw that blood oranges were four for $3 at Whole Foods I bought eight. I couldn't help myself. Some ended up in a fruit salad for brunch, and one I ate for an afternoon snack. Tonight there were two left, waiting patiently in my fruit bowl. I've seen more than a few blood orange, onion, and olive salads on the internets, which were intriguing. The other part of a blood orange salad that appealed to me was my 800 calorie lunch. I needed to some how balance the effects of Pastitsio (Greek Lasagna), and a salad seemed prudent. Knowing that I would use my blood oranges actually made the idea of a salad sound exciting.
So I put together a salad starting with blood oranges, and adding black olives, red onions, cilantro; then I topped it off with balsamic and lime. As I was assembling I started having a big psychological problem with the flavor combination. Olives and citrus? It just didn't seem right, but since I've seen some version of this recipe everywhere, I forged ahead. You can see from my photo below that I also had a problem with the onions; they just didn't look right with the oranges. If I were making blood orange salsa, it would have been okay, but for some reason placing those onion slices, those three tiny onion slices, on the blood oranges was really disturbing.
So I finally tasted the salad. The verdict: Yucky. The problem? The oranges were good with the cilantro, and the onions were okay. It was the olives that didn't belong. I ate the oranges, took a sip of water, and then ate the olives. I should have made the sorbet.
