Plums make sense in a fall salad, but the sliced fruit across these greens isn't quite a plum. It's a plumcot, a plum-apricot hybrid that combines traits from both fruits in one piece of produce.
Here, the plumcot gets paired with orange, lentils, goat cheese, and pecans. The mix brings fruit, greens, legumes, cheese, and nuts onto one plate, with a red wine vinegar dressing tying them together.
Plumcot Provides the Fruit Base
A plumcot is a hybrid of a plum and an apricot. Its appearance can lean toward a plum, while its flavor brings sweetness that works with both savory and sweet ingredients.
For this salad, one plumcot gets pitted and cut into thin segments. A regular plum can take its place when plumcots aren't available.
Orange Adds a Second Fruit
Orange segments sit beside the plumcot rather than serving as part of the dressing. That creates two distinct fruit components among the spring greens.
The combination also keeps the salad from depending on the plumcot alone. Each forkful can pick up tart citrus, sweet stone fruit, or both.
Lentils Turn the Greens Into a Meal
Half a cup of cooked lentils adds a savory element among the fruit and greens. Their small size lets them scatter through the salad instead of forming a separate layer.
They also give the plate more substance than a fruit-and-lettuce salad. The original recipe serves two and contains 11 grams of protein per serving.
Goat Cheese and Pecans Finish the Top
Crumbled goat cheese adds a soft component against the lentils and raw fruit. Chopped pecans bring crunch and fit the fall direction of the salad.
The goat cheese can also be left out. The remaining combination still includes plumcot, orange, lentils, greens, and pecans.
Dressing Needs Three Main Ingredients
There is no heavy dressing covering the fruit. One tablespoon of olive oil, one tablespoon of red wine vinegar, and half a tablespoon of honey form the dressing, followed by salt and pepper.
Assembly takes about 10 minutes when the lentils are already cooked. Divide four cups of spring greens between two plates, add the plumcot, orange, lentils, goat cheese, and pecans, then drizzle the dressing over the top.
The plumcot may be the ingredient that catches attention first, but the mix of stone fruit, citrus, lentils, goat cheese, and pecans is what makes this salad work for the shift into fall.
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