Californian Salad

I’m going to start by actually posting the entire recipe and instructions.

Ingredients

4 tomatoes
A small piece of cucumber, diced
2 sticks of celery, finely chopped
Salt and pepper
2 bananas, thinly sliced – yes really, bananas!
2 red skinned apples, cored and diced
Juice of half a lemon
Salad cream or mayonnaise
Lettuce or watercress

Sprinkle the tomatoes, cucumber and celery with salt and pepper. Soak the bananas and apples in the lemon juice for 10 minutes then drain. Mix all the ingredients together and bind with salad cream. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

This is enough for four, I halved it and was still quite a lot for 2 adults and one child as a side dish.

I have never heard of bananas in salad, apples yes but not bananas, when I first glanced at the recipe I thought it was banana shallots then realised they probably were not a widely used ingredient in 1948! No idea where the name comes from, when I googled Californian salad I was finding a whole lot of different combinations, none with banana though!

I really don’t know what to say about this. We all ate it, even 5 year old Abigail had a go, Stephen was not convinced by the banana at all and would suggest leaving that out. I disagreed, I actually quite liked it, I don’t know what it is I liked about it, there are so many contrasting textures and flavours; crunchy apple, soft sweet banana and sharp salad cream. We had it with some roast chicken but think it would go better maybe with some pork, as an accompaniment to a pork burger perhaps.

I would love other opinions on this as I think my taste buds are completely confused. If anyone fancies trying this please let me know what you think.

Would I make it again? I actually think I would, maybe chop everything smaller, and have it like a coleslaw with a pork burger.