Dragon Fruit & Gorgonzola Salad with Ginger Glaze

Ingredients:

I cannot credit any culinary influences for the inspiration for this dish, save perhaps my own mad genius and desire to work with a cool, unique bunch of ingredients. Despite this somewhat dubious origin, Eye of the Dragon Salad is a spectacular looking, very tasty dessert that would be equally comfortable at home or in a formal dinner setting.

Ingredients:
Two Dragonfruit. The dragonfruit is a native of Southeast Asia, and very hard to find in the states. It is a spectacular, brilliantly-colored fruit with a flavor somewhat reminiscent of kiwifruit. For this dish I used two varieties, though I have no idea of the precise name for each. Note the slight variations in external anatomy that mark them as different subspecies.

Step 1:

Pomegranate seeds, black plum, kiwifruit, longan, and gorgonzola dolce. Longan are closely related to lychee and rambutan, and have similar flavor. They have a tough brown skin and a large, dark seed. between these two inedible bits is a thin, tasty layer of pale white flesh.

Step 2:

Fresh ginger.

Step 3:

Start by slicing the ginger into 1/4 inch rounds.

Step 4:

Put it into a saucepan with 3/4 cup sugar, 1.5 cups water and a dash of salt and bring it to a boil. Let reduce to 1/4 or thereabouts, to a thick, syrupy consistency. This is a very easy glaze, thickened by low water content, wonderfully strong with ginger flavor.

Step 5:

Trim the dragonfruit. We want to use the body of the dragonfruit as our bowl, so cut off a small portion of the bottom to make it stand up nicely. Then trim off the top to make it pretty and remove any mold - it tends to grow in the recessed end of the fruit.

Step 6:

Now, cut across the fruit. Don't cut it in half; leave the bottom portion larger, like a bowl, and the top smaller like a lid.

Step 7:

Hey, what gives? These are the supposed to be the same fruit, but one's white on the inside and one's red! Cool, isn't it? Those black specks are seeds, by the way, and have a crunch/texture very much like kiwifruit seeds.

Step 8:

Now, we can't very well use a bowl that's already full, can we? Take a melon baller and scoop out nice big round chunks of dragonfruit flesh. Save it for the filling; it's quite tasty.

Step 9:

Leave a bit of flesh at the base so there isn't a hole in the bottom of the bowl. This one looks pretty much ready:

Step 10:

Now get the rest of the filling ready. Peel and slice the kiwifruit. Dice some up for the filling, leave the larger rounds for decoration.

Step 11:

Peel the longan, cut around the seed and remove the tasty flesh.

Step 12:

Tasty Flesh:

Step 13:

Slice the plum.

Step 14:

Then cut some into small pieces for filling. Leave other bits for garnish.

Step 15:

Open the pomegranate and remove some seeds.

Step 16:

Crumble and slice the Gorgonzola. Fairly large chunks are fine; this stuff is sweet, soft, and wonderful.

Step 17:

Mix the filling ingredients in a bowl.

Step 18:

Fill the dragonfuit body with fruit and cheese. Drizzle ginger glaze over everything.

Step 19:

Trim with kiwifruit, pomegranate seeds, and extra plum wedges.

The finished product: