French Fridays with Dorie - Crab, Grapefruit and Avocado Salad

Fanciful and confetti-bright...Dorie's words for this week's French Fridays Crab and Grapefruit Salad. It truly is, with bursts of color from sweet red and yellow bell peppers, and spicy green jalapeno, gently tossed with a classic trio of succulent crab, tangy grapefruit and buttery avocado.  The salad is nicely rounded out with cucumber, minced green onion, chives, a drizzle of olive oil, grapefruit juice, and squeeze of lemon.  What a refreshing way to ease into spring!

To serve four, you'll need a pound of jumbo lump crab. I bought a half pound at Whole Foods for the two of us, but it's still quite pricey. John thinks he's allergic to crab, after one bad reaction, but I've convinced him he just had bad crab.  I'm always careful when it comes to seafood, or anything for that matter, to buy a quality product from a trusted store. Grilled shrimp or scallops would also work well if you're not up to splurging on crab.

Dorie highly recommends cutting the grapefruit segments at least a few hours ahead of time to allow them to dry out as much as possible. Although composed of similar ingredients, this isn't ceviche.  The crab should also be drained if necessary and patted dry. I supremed, rather than segmented, the grapefruit. I also used two small pink grapefruits, which gave me about 20 supremes (Dorie uses one Ruby Red grapefruit).

Pink Grapefruit supremes

I used the same quantities of ingredients with my half-pound of crab as Dorie uses for a full pound, to stretch the salad into more of a meal. I also sliced the cucumber and bell peppers into paper-thin slices on the mandolin, as opposed to dicing them...just because I felt like playing with our mandolin we hardly ever use.

Dorie describes this salad as "fanciful and confetti-bright"

If serving the salad as a first course, it presents beautifully in verrines. A verrine is a confection, originally from France, made by layering ingredients in a small glass. You could layer the ingredients (Dorie tosses them all together), or even mold them into a stacked salad. However, after photographing the salad in verrines, I decided to serve it over baby lettuce tossed lightly with grapefruit vinaigrette.  With a hunk of crusty bread and two glasses of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, this made a wonderful dinner.

For our two entree salads, I used: 1/2 pound lump crab, supremes from 2 small pink grapefruits, 1/4 red bell pepper and 1/4 yellow bell pepper (thinly sliced), 1/4 cucumber (thinly sliced), 2 scallions (white and light green portions, diced), 1/4 jalapeno chile (diced), 1 small avocado (cubed, with juice of 1/2 lemon squeezed over), 1 tablespoon minced chives, and about 3 ounces baby lettuce tossed with grapefruit vinaigrette (olive oil, grapefruit juice, salt and pepper).

French Fridays with Dorie is an online cooking group, dedicated to Dorie Greenspan‘s newest book Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours. As members of the group, we have purchased the cookbook and cook along as much as we can. There is a new recipe each week, and we post about that recipe on Friday. We are asked to refrain from posting the actual recipes on our blog. The book is filled with stunning photography, and personal stories about each recipe, which makes it that much more intriguing. I highly recommend adding it to your cookbook collection if you haven't already!

Here are a few similar recipes that sound appealing:

Crab Balls with Grapefruit Salad (Jean-Georges Vongerichten, for Food & Wine)

Crab, Chili and Pink Grapefruit Salad (Jamie Oliver)

Hearts of Palm Salad with Ruby Red Grapefruit and Dungeness Crab (Kerry Simon, Simon Kitchen & Bar, Las Vegas)

Crab Salad with Grapefruit, Avocado and Fresh Herbs (Williams Sonoma)

Grapefruit and Avocado Salad (Emeril Lagasse, Food Network)