Strawberry Salsa + Grilled Pineapple + Pineapple Cilantro Salad + Tropical Berry Bread

Strawberry Salsa + Grilled Pineapple

Recipe taken from here

I absolutely love strawberries, so I knew when I was watching Chef at Home that this recipe was definitely made for me, especially since it included coconut. Once the episode was over, I went on the internet, downloaded the recipe and instantly went to my kitchen to get started. I can't even tell you how amazing this dish was. It was so so good. It was light, refreshing, sweet, savory, everything you could ask for, oh boy! He says to serve it over ice cream, however, I thought the flavours were great enough without the added sugar and sweetness from the ice cream. This is a must-try recipe!

Strawberry Salsa

Ingredients:

• 12 strawberries, hulled and quartered
• 1 lime, juiced and zested
• 1 tablespoon honey or sugar
• 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
• 2 tablespoons chopped mint
• 1/4 cup shredded coconut
• Dash or two of hot sauce
  

Directions:

Toss everything together. Season with the hot sauce, taste and add a touch more if you like. The trick is to make the spiciness noticeable but not dominant, a way to balance the sweet and sour flavours of the salsa.

Grilled Pineapple

I decided to serve the strawberries with some grilled pineapple. For this all that was done, was I rubbed the pineapple down with some brown sugar and grilled it on the barbecue for a few minutes. It was really delicious. But, to be completely honest, I definitely prefer the taste of fresh pineapple with nothing added to it. I found the heated pineapple took away from the sweetness, yes I know that there was added sugar to it, but the natural sugars of the pineapple seemed to leach away from the pineapple. I will be trying this again, and next time I'm going to let the pineapple's marinate with a little bit of orange juice, some brown sugar and perhaps some lime zest or so.

Pineapple Cilantro Salad

I tried the grilled pineapple another time but without grilling it. This time, I took some cilantro, and some honey and simply tossed it together and I loved it. It was just... it had the juices of real pineapple!

Tropical Berry Bread

Next, I changed the strawberry loaf loaf recipe and added some different fruits and such, so here is what I did!

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 2 cups sliced strawberries
• 1 cup diced pineapple
• 1/2 cup raspberries
• 1 banana
  
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cups applesauce I decided not to put the 3/4 cup of oil since there was so much liquid from the fruits I didn't think it needed it.
  
• 3 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

As for the directions it's the exact same as the strawberry loaf. I did really like this bread, however, since I added all the fruit, it was a little wet in the middle, even with baking it in the oven for much longer. I really loved the flavours of this loaf. I didn't add the raspberries to the loaf, I sprinkled them on top, and while baking a lot of them sunk into the cake. Oh, it really was a great loaf! Yummmyyy!

Tropical Berry Bread

Enjoy!