Avocado Grapefruit Salad

Winter in the Pacific Northwest forces you to get creative with salads. While kale and Brussels sprouts are plentiful, you can’t have bacon Brussels salads every day. Enter the citrus salad. Winter is peak season for grapefruits, and I try to incorporate them into my diet as much as possible. But grapefruit on a bed of lettuce does not a salad make. Also, eww.

Growing up, my dad would often buy jicama, the not-at-all-appealing-to-look-at but satisfyingly crunchy, starchy vegetable. I’ve always thought of it as a fun snack. I had never eaten it in a salad, but I wanted to try. So I tossed grapefruit, jicama and avocado (what is a salad without avocado, anyway?) in a bowl with some lime juice, chili powder and salt, and dug in.

It was good. The bitter grapefruit balanced the fatty avocado, and the jicama gave it a nice crunch and some subtle sweetness. But it was missing something. After some research, I settled on pepitas. The hulled pumpkin seeds are slightly meaty, and produce a fantastic nutty flavor when toasted. (Seriously, toast those seeds. It makes a huge difference.) So I added those, threw the mixture on a bed of curly endive (What even is endive? And what is frisée? The Spruce Eats has got you covered.), and dressed it with a honey lime chili vinaigrette.

It was the perfect winter salad: light and refreshing, but not like those salads that make you feel as if you had just eaten air instead of actual food. So dig in, and know that even winter can bring bright, fruity salads.