While iftaars are often typified by savories fried or baked, and a solid meal to make up for running on empty in the daylight hours; a good salad would not go amiss. 

Starfruit have such a sense of whimsy about them, I feel a good wish would not go to waste when eating them.

I tossed together a simple salad of fresh basil, baby gem lettuce, strawberries and gooseberries.

My favourite salads to make always involve some sort to berry and herb combination, the alchemy produced never failing to elicit fresh delight.

I softened the starfruit by cooking briefly in a light syrup of star anise and ginger-lime-rosepetal candy sugar.

This was left to cool before it was added to the salad.

The pan in which the starfruit cooked was deglazed with a bit of sweet balsamic reduction and pomegranate splash (a mixture of pomegranate extract and olive oil) to produce a truly disarming dressing.

Originally blogged here.