ffwD: Crab & Grapefruit Salad

This week’s recipe was approached with trepidation due mainly to my abhorrence of grapefruit. The fact that grapefruit needs gobs of sugar to make it edible is contrary to the idea of fruit. To me, fruit should be naturally sweet if it’s meant to be eaten alone. However, I gave this salad a whirl because of the lump crab meat. I mean, if a salad has delicious seafood, it must be worthwhile, right? So, I added grapefruit to my shopping list and hoped for the best.

During my shopping trip, I wondered how I would successfully maneuver segmenting a grapefruit when I’ve only ever seen it sliced in half. To that end, I skipped the prep work and purchased two single-serve, pre-sliced, packed in its own juice grapefruit cups. Yeah, I did it. Had I been squirted in the eye by my clumsy attempt at preparing a whole grapefruit, I probably would’ve thrown it out and not even bothered making the salad.

Anyway, while the grapefruit segments dried for two hours, I chopped the scallion, red bell pepper, cucumber, and mint, and I realized that this salad would be rather colorful and appealing, which made me hopeful for its taste. After picking over the lump crab meat and tossing all the ingredients together with a splash of lime juice, salt, and pepper, the surprising highlights turned out to be the crunchy bell peppers and the bits of mint. I even enjoyed the grapefruit! Though, I left them on the side and just mixed in a few segments every time I made a serving, just in case. (Baby steps.) I definitely wouldn’t mind making this again as long as the grapefruit is left “on the side” because it was a refreshing way to usher in springtime here in Chicago!

To see how others fared with this crab & grapefruit salad, check out French Fridays with Dorie where we make recipes from Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours.