Fresh Spooned Grapefruit

One of the oddities of the winter is that a summer favorite--citrus fruit--comes into season in several areas, which is why oranges and grapefruits often filled the toe of Christmas stockings. Warm or cold, it is a refreshing start to the day and the scent is one of those that (unlike apple and cinnamon, for example) doesn't awaken the appetite and may even help suppress it. It also aides in the digestion of fatty foods that become more common in the winter (hence pineapple and clove on hams, orange and cranberry puree with turkey, and lemon on fish, in case you were wondering why those traditional conbinations were developed. The Victorians didn't always get it right but they tried to be very health conscious in their formal dining and special occasions as much as the rest of the year. No good giving important guests indigestion with those rich, elegant dishes).

Awhile back, it would never have occurred to me to write a recipe for something half the world did for breakfast, but I've since learned it is a lost art, its loss encouraged by silverware makers and restaurants. Grapefruit can be enjoyed in many forms: juice, peeled like an orange, sectioned and laid out on a cake, candied... my favorite is fresh spooned from the half shell/husk, especially pink or red grapefruit.

It used to be a little easier. I grew up with access to a grapefruit knife. A grapefruit knife is a short-bladed knife (but longer than a paring knife) with cerations/serations? all around the blade, (yes, both sides and around the tip) and a bend or curve near the tip end to help curl around and follow the curve of the fruit. The process can be done with a good sharp, flexible steak knife (good stainless, not hardened steal or iron, and not too long), but I would call the results merely adequate.

The process used even in fancy restaurants (such as old-fashioned cruise ships) is to merely cut around the outside of the grape fruit half. This is not only wrong but counter productive as it makes spooning out the sections more difficult rather than being an aide to eating. The better ones might then make a single slice outwards from the center and this makes the sections eatable if the section skin isn't too tough, but most grapefruit has pretty thick skin even on the inside and I'll end up peeling halof of it, which makes for messy eating. If I'm going to be eating the grapefruit skin, I'd rather just peel the thing and eat it in sections like an orange.

The proper method is to take the knife, start at the center point of the section, cut around the section until you reach the center again. Do the same individually for every section. Serve in a bowl a little wider than the grapefruit half. For tart white grapefruit, I sometimes sprinkle a little sugar on top. Some in my family sprinkle on a little salt (no, I don't get it, either, but they also like green olives in cocktails...eewww).

Along the way, the knife tip will help you locate and removed seeds and get under the grapefruit section to loosen the bottom. With a steak knife, it's hard to get close to the shell and underneath both, however, so there is more waste than there would be with a proper grapefruit knife. Eating with a thin, sharp-tipped teaspoon (we used to call them grapefruit spoons but I think they were just a different spoon designer's idea of a good teaspoon or dessert spoon shape) can minimize the loss, and the grapefruit husk can be squeezed into the bowl or onto the spoon for juice. I usually flatten the grapefruit in half and squeeze, then unfold it and fold it again the other direction to squeeze the rest with good effect.

Birdlovers can spread a bit of peanut butter in the leftover husk and nail it to a tree or bird feeder for a day or two (longer in cold weather, shorter in warm) to make orioles and other birds happy.

Flame lovers (with adult supervision) can get interesting effects from a candle by taking sections of peel, facing the outside close to the flame, and squeezing to get interesting color flares from the flame.

More practical cooks can remove the innards and whites from the outer peel and candy the citrus skin. (My favorite is gingered orange peel, but grapefruit works fine, too; I'll see if I can find the recipe.)