Grapefruit and Avocado Salad
I have a hard time picturing how things will taste when combined. I’m sure this skill will develop as I cook more, but in the meantime, part of what I find so enjoyable about cooking is that it’s a discovery process. For example, that’s how I now know what leeks and bacon are all about. When I see those two lovebirds in the same place, I just shake my head because I know exactly what’s going to happen. And then thyme “accidentally” walks into the room, one thing leads to another, the footage finds it way all over the Internet, and now none of them can get a legitimate job.
I’m at the point now where, with many things, I’ll have a vague notion of whether a combination will be good. I made a red wine reduction sauce - something I bring up frequently because it makes me sound more accomplished that I actually am - that called for red wine, butter, shallots, and thyme. I didn’t know exactly how it would taste, but I did know that if it didn’t taste good, it was my fault.
Sometimes, though, I won’t have the foggiest notion of what two ingredients will taste like together, which usually results in a reckless exuberance for experimentation that I haven’t felt since mixing drinks my freshman year in college. Orange Slice and whiskey? Let’s do it!
That’s how I felt when I came across this recipe for a salad of grapefruit and avocado, although, to be fair, I can’t think of a scenario where I wouldn’t want to eat an avocado. In this way, I guess it’s much like whiskey. Sorry, grapefruit, you’re Orange Slice.
Also to be fair, this recipe came from my Alice Waters cookbook, The Art of Simple Food. I’ve made a number of dishes from this book (including my entire last post), and she hasn’t steered me wrong yet. Grapefruit and avocado? If you say so, Ms. Waters.
The recipe is, well, simple. First, you remove the rind and membranes. Alice Waters also taught me how to do this. Basically, you cut off the top and bottom so that you can just barely see the flesh, and then cut in downward strokes around the fruit, ideally leaving all the meat and none of the white membrane. Here’s my result; it’s not that I couldn’t see the remaining membrane, I just kept it to show that I, just like you, am a flawed human being:
Then you cut along the internal membrane to divide it into slices. Then you cut up an avocado, and put it all on a plate, alternating slices.
The vinaigrette is simple, too. First, there’s grapefruit juice “squeezed from the membranes.” I’m still unsure about this process, but luckily my knifework was sloppy enough that I took some flesh off too, leaving me with more than enough juice for the dressing. Then you add white wine vinegar.
Quick word about white wine vinegar: I didn’t own any, so I figured I’d go to the store and pick some up. That should’ve beeen pretty straightforward, right? Except that I went to Olivia’s, my neighborhood’s snooty market. Picture Whole Foods, but with condos on top.
I actually like the store a lot, aside from the price tags. The good news is that I knew they’d have white wine vinegar. The bad news is that it turns out they have a pretty large selection, which paralyzed me. Taster Number One was with me and urged me to buy the cheapest stuff. This was out of the question because it’s the cheapest for a reason, right? I suppose it would’ve been helpful to remember our dispute from the carrots, but I didn’t, so there I stood, agonizing over how I was going to spend $10 than I had to. I said I wanted to ask an employee which one was the best, but Taster Number One pointed out they probably wouldn’t know and would just make up which one was “the best.” This made sense to me, so I randomly picked one. How did I do?
In the end, I only used about a teaspoon of vinegar. So, time well spent.
Other ingredients in the vinaigrette were salt, pepper, and oil. In other words, it was a vinaigrette.
RESULTS
Not as bad as Orange Slice and whiskey, but not as good as my favorite combination, ice and whiskey. My main complaint was that the tartness of the grapefruit overpowered the flavor of the avocado. In my previous post about tofu with Thai curry sauce, I speculated adding salt might lead to the biggest improvement, and I think that might be the case here, too. More salt, either directly on the avocado or in the vinaigrette, might bring out the avocado’s flavor. Other than that, I’m sort of at a loss as to how to mellow out the acid of the grapefruit.
In any case, here’s the final result. I don’t think I’ll make this specific salad again, although I’d try some variation of it. Alice Waters has a few different versions, including this one (which is technically an adaptation by the linked website) that has a more interesting vinaigrette.
