Join Culinate

With a free Culinate membership, you can:

  • Create your own recipe collections
  • Queue recipes for later use
  • Blog your culinary endeavors
  • Be part of our online community of cooks
  • And much more…
Join Now

Butter Lettuce and Spinach with Citrus and Avocado

From the book The Greens Cookbook by
Serves 4 to 6

Introduction

Light and dark greens, the mildly acid fruit, and the creamy avocado provide a lively dynamic in this simple salad.

Ingredients

Salad

1 head butter, limestone, or Bibb lettuce
1 small bunch young spinach leaves
2 ruby grapefruit
2 avocadoes

Dressing

4 tsp. sherry vinegar
2 tsp. raspberry or other fruit vinegar
1 shallot, finely diced
¼ tsp. salt
6 to 7 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp. mint, finely chopped
2 tsp. chives, finely sliced
~ Black pepper or Szechuan peppercorns

Steps

  1. Separate the leaves of the lettuce and remove the spinach stems. Discard any leaves that are bruised or yellow, wash the greens (wash the spinach in two changes of water), and dry them in a spinner.
  2. If the spinach leaves are small, leave them whole. If they are large, layer several leaves together, roll them up, and slice them into wide or narrow ribbons. Place them loosely in a kitchen towel and refrigerate until needed.
  3. Use a very sharp knife to peel the grapefruit. Slice a piece off the top and the bottom of each, then work down the sides, removing the white pith as well as the peel. Holding the grapefruit over a bowl to catch the juice, cut each section loose from its membrane and turn it into the bowl. (Later you can drink the juice.)
  4. Peel the avocadoes, slice them in half, and remove the seeds. Lay the halves cut sides down and slice them crosswise at an angle.
  5. Combine the vinegars, shallot, and salt in a bowl. Whisk in the oil. Taste, and adjust the balance of vinegar and oil if necessary. Stir in the mint and chives.
  6. Pour the juice off the grapefruit sections, combine the grapefruit with the avocado slices, and dress them both carefully with some of the vinaigrette. Toss the greens with the rest of the vinaigrette and lay them on salad plates. Set the grapefruit and avocado slices in and among the leaves. Add a grinding of black pepper (or roasted Szechuan pepper) and serve.

Notes

Aromatic Szechuan peppercorns, roasted and then ground with salt, have a flowery fragrance. But if you use them, omit the fruit vinegar and substitute sherry vinegar instead.

This content is from the book The Greens Cookbook by Deborah Madison.

Subscribe
Comments
There is 1 comment on this item
Add a comment
Unrated
100% recommend this recipe
1. by debra daniels-zeller on Dec 21, 2009 at 11:08 AM PST

This salad sounds so inviting. Do you use fresh mint? Since I don’t have any in my yard this time of year, would I get fresh mint in the produce section?

Add a comment
Rating

Think before you type

Culinate welcomes comments that are on-topic, clean, and courteous. For the benefit of the community we reserve the right to delete comments that contain advertising, personal attacks, profanity, or which are thinly disguised attempts to promote another website.

Please enter your comment

Format: Bare URLs are automatically linked; use this style: [http://www.example.com "place text to be linked here"] for prettier links. You may specify *bold* or _italic_ text. No HTML please.

Please identify yourself

Not a member? Sign up!

Please prove that you’re not a computer


Advertisement
Table Talk

Table Talk: November 17

A local-foods feast

Josh Viertel and Jennifer Maiser want to help you have a local-foods Thanksgiving. Read the transcript of their online chat.

Subscribe
Graze: Bites from the Site
Local Flavors

The beauty of breadcrumbs

Cherish the humble crumb

The Produce Diaries

Chia seeds

The latest superfood

First Person

Dinner of a lifetime

A changed man

Opinion

The evolution of fresh food

Back to the land — or at least to the farmers’ market

Most Popular Articles

Editor’s Choice