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2 Segment the oranges and the grapefruit over a large salad bowl to catch all the juice and segments. Drain the juice into a small bowl and add the salt and olive oil. Add the endive and parsley to the salad bowl with the citrus segments.

3 Whisk the citrus juice with the olive oil and salt until the dressing is emulsified. Pour the dressing over the salad, and toss until the salad is evenly coated. (Covered, the ambrosia will keep in the refrigerator for 1 day.) Before serving, sprinkle the reserved toasted coconut over it.

CUCUMBER, TOMATO, AND OKRA SALAD

serves 4 • TIME: 10 minutes preparation, 10 minutes cooking

Cook okra for a few minutes in a hot dry skillet and you get something very special and very delicious. “Skillet-toasted” okra is an easy treatment of our favorite vegetable that will make okra lovers out of skeptics. In the course of writing our first book, we decided we wanted to cook out the “rope”—the sliminess—in okra because we didn’t want that texture in our Corn and Okra Pudding, and we loved the sweet caramelized-okra flavor that resulted. In this recipe, we treat the toasted okra almost as you would a crouton, scattering a portion over each serving of the salad.

Once you’ve skillet-toasted the okra, the rest of this salad can be thrown together easily, and all the ingredients can be found in the most pedestrian of supermarkets. Substitute plum or Roma tomatoes, pound for pound, if you can’t get vine-ripened. You can use frozen okra, but be aware that its increased moisture content and its cooler temperature will double the time it takes to brown in the skillet.

We serve this salad often, in small serving bowls or as a cold side with a main dish, but you could serve it on a plate over a small bed of arugula or watercress.

8 ounces fresh okra, trimmed and cut crosswise into ½-inch-thick rounds (about 2 cups)

¾ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste

1 pound vine-ripened tomatoes (about 3 tomatoes)

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 large seedless cucumber (1 pound), peeled, trimmed, and cut into large matchsticks (see Cucumber Shopping Notes)

3 tablespoons finely chopped scallions (white and green parts)

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste

1 Scatter the okra in a single layer in a dry 12-inch skillet or large sauté pan. Cook over medium-high heat, moving the pieces around frequently, until the okra is just browning around the edges, about 8 minutes. Remove from the heat, transfer the okra to a small bowl, and sprinkle ¼ teaspoon of the salt over it. Reserve.

2 Set a strainer over a medium bowl. Core the tomatoes, cut them in half widthwise, and using your pinkie finger, tease the seeds out of the cavities, letting them drop into the strainer. Tap the rim of the strainer against your palm for 30 seconds, until most of the flavorful gel clinging to the seeds dissolves and drips into the bowl. Discard the seeds. Chop the tomatoes.

3 Add the mustard, vinegar, and remaining ½ teaspoon salt to the tomato water, and whisk until the mustard is completely incorporated into the liquid. Add the olive oil in a thin stream, whisking constantly until the ingredients are thoroughly emulsified in a dressing of uniform, thick consistency.

4 In a large bowl, toss the cucumber with the tomatoes, scallions, and black pepper until thoroughly combined. Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss until they’re evenly coated. Season to taste with additional salt and black pepper, if needed.

5 Divide the salad evenly among 4 bowls, and sprinkle a handful of the salted toasted okra over each portion.

cucumber shopping notes ••• We call for seedless (“English”) cucumbers here because they tend to have more flesh per pound than the standard ones with seeds. But even a cucumber labeled “seedless” may have at its core a membrane of flesh that carries little flavor and has a strange texture, so make sure you trim it from the cucumber. In this recipe,