CSA week five - grapefruit anchovy salad

Grapefruit and anchovies sound like an odd combination, I'll admit, but it's not as far a reach as you might think. I'm just substituting the grapefruit into a traditional Sicilian orange and anchovy salad. I was prepared to add some sugar to adjust, but I was lucky enough to have a couple unusually sweet grapefruit. I let them sit for an extra week after they looked ripe; Maybe that made a difference.

Ingredients:
1 medium and 1 small grapefruit, cut into supremes and then into bite-sized pieces
two stems flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
1 scallion, green part only, chopped
4 anchovy fillets, chopped
1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste (careful with the salt as you've got the anchovies)

1. Cut grapefruit into a bowl and drain the excess juice.

2. Add everything else, mix, taste and adjust seasoning.


This salad comes together a lot better than you'd expect. The balance is only slightly off a salad dressed in lemon vinaigrette. The salt cuts the bitterness of the grapefruit and the juiciness of the fruit buffers the saltiness of the anchovies. With everything balanced, the most prominent flavors to emerge are herbal with citrus tartness and olive oil unctuousness backing it up. Possibly that's because I started with two quite mild grapefruit. You'll have to bump up the other elements if yours are intensely sour and/or bitter.

Now that I know grapefruit goes with the salt and umami of anchovies, I want to try it with Worcestershire sauce. I'll let you know how that goes.