It’s grapefruit season and I just plowed through my first case, which I get from TerMarsch Groves in West Palm Beach. It is a total nod to my past. Throughout my childhood, my maternal grandparents spent the winter in a little beach house within the Lost Tree Club, a private community that catered to southern businessmen. I visited them during the Christmas break, and loved getting away from snowy Vermont where I was in boarding school. My grandfather used to spend the day in his room, watching sports with his day’s quota of Vantage cigarettes lined up on his desk, while my grandmother would take my sister and me to the Ter Marsch fruit stand, to drink sticky orange juice and dab ourselves with orange blossom cologne. There were always grapefruits in the white linoleum kitchen. I think every middle class kid in the 1970s had grapefruit at least once a week for breakfast.
If you ever wondered about the name, it may be that “grapefruit” comes from the French word grappes, which means cluster. Grapefruit does indeed grow in clusters, though it doesn’t taste at all like grapes. It is the most marvelous combination of sweet and tart. Surprisingly, a few slugs of grapefruit juice can postpone one’s appetite. Maybe that’s the real reason why the faddish “grapefruit diet” works, not its claims to help the body burn fat (due to the fruit’s low glycemic index—a measure of how quickly blood sugars rise after eating a given food). Anyway, I always lose a bit of weight during grapefruit season. But you should check with your doctor before going crazy with the stuff: Grapefruit interacts badly with 85 different medications.
There are many varieties of grapefruit: seedless and seeded, and with flesh in various shades of white and pink and red. Grapefruit is primarily a winter fruit, best from late fall until spring. When buying grapefruits smell them. Sniff at the stem end and if you don’t get slammed with a wonderful grapefruity aroma, then don’t buy it. Grapefruit don’t ripen off the stem, so they aren’t going to get any tastier if they sit around in your fruit bowl or fridge. Grapefruit skin should be bright, and firm, and when you give it a squeeze, springy. Keep grapefruit in the fridge. They will hold for a couple of weeks before the mold finds them.
Serves 4
Such a simple preparation, and yet it makes the grapefruit so much sweeter!
2 grapefruits, halved at the equator
½ cup Demerara sugar (sugar in the raw)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Preheat the broiler.
Serve immediately.
Serves 4
This dish reminds me of one you would get in an old fashioned country club, maybe stuffed in an avocado…so yes, it’s kind of retro but still quite delicious: tart and sweet and light. I like to serve it with saltine crackers. Remember them?
1 cup grapefruit sections (1 large grapefruit)
2 cups chopped avocado
½ pound crab meat
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
¼ cup olive oil
Lemon juice to taste
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Serves 4
This delightful recipe reminds me that ingredients in season together—in this case winter–often pair together. Also called Roman wild chicory or Catalan chicory, puntarelle, which means “little points,” looks a bit like dandelion greens growing from a fennel bulb. It is less leafy than its cousins in the botanical family Cichorium. Only the crisp white stalks are eaten, as the deep green leafy tips (or points) are very bitter. And even the stalks can be too bitter if they are chopped across the plant. But sliced lengthwise, kind of in long diagonal slivers, their bitterness is transformed into a taste delicately sharp. Like chicory and chard, my Italian relatives believe puntarelle cleans the stomach, and is good for the blood. (It is high in iron and vitamins A and C.) Sometimes I add sliced gravlox or smoked salmon to this dish. It’s wonderful.
1 cup grapefruit sections (1 large grapefruit)
3 to 4 cups puntarelle, the white parts sliced lengthwise
½ teaspoon chopped anchovy
1 garlic clove
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons shaved Parmesan cheese