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Very few things in life exude summer like rosé and stone fruit. After a chilly winter and spring showers, a glass of chilled blush pink wine by the pool or at an alfresco meal marks a much awaited start to warmer months. But what if you merged these two symbols of summer into one refreshing concoction? The answer: cookbook author Sheela Prakash’s stone fruit salad with rosé vinaigrette. It’s sweet, tart, and bursting with fruity flavors—almost like eating a sangria.
Salads take center stage in Prakash’s aptly named new book, Salad Seasons, and this one shines especially bright in both color and flavor. Ripe peaches (you can use a combination of stone fruits you’d like) are dressed in rosé, honey, and lemon juice and left to mingle for a few minutes until the zingy-sweet notes of the dressing infuse into the flesh of the fruits. Bits of roasted hazelnuts are a welcome and filling surprise in each bite, providing a respite from the overall tartness of the salad. The mint adds an herbaceous layer that ties all the flavors together in a refreshing bow.
The rosé vinaigrette works really well with ripe peaches and plums but I find that it works even harder with ones lacking in the taste department. I tested this recipe with a few underripe peaches, letting them marinate in the vinaigrette for about an hour. Acidic rosé and lemon juice softened the hard peaches while the honey added a much-needed sweetness to the otherwise bland fruit.
I also ventured beyond peaches and plums to see how this vinaigrette would play with other fruits. To no surprise, it paired wonderfully with a combination of blackberries and strawberries, but the subtly bitter addition of grapefruit took the salad to new heights. And instead of mint, I opted for a light sprinkle of freshly minced rosemary—one of my favorite flavor pairings for grapefruit.
While you can play around with the fruit you use, rosé is the ideal type of wine for this dish. I had an annoying amount of Merlot left—just short of a proper pour—which turned out to be the perfect amount needed for the recipe in Prakash’s book. Sadly, replacing the rosé with red wine rendered the peaches an unpleasant color and the harsher tannins overpowered the fruit’s natural sweetness. And although white wine worked better than red, it didn’t accentuate the fruitiness of the peaches the way rosé did.
A fruit salad like this can go beyond the confines of formal mealtimes. I’ve eaten this stone fruit salad as a lunch main, dinner side, and spooned over vanilla ice cream for dessert. And if it’s too early for a glass of sangria, you can always have it as a fun start to your weekend brunch.
