Grapefruit beurre blanc

This is so the opposite of the kind of thing I usually recommend preparing.  You cannot make this sauce ahead of time and reheat it.  You cannot divert your attention while you're making it.  You have to serve it as soon as you finish making it.  You have to stand at the stove for a solid 15-20 minutes, whisking all the while,  timed to coincide with the rest of dinner being ready, and under no circumstances should you walk away or fiddle around with other dishes or pay attention to your screaming children while you are making it.

But it is so tasty that it's worth it.

The traditional beurre blanc sauce is made with white wine and white wine vinegar in addition to a small vat of butter.  The tanginess of the vinegar cuts the richness of the butter and compliments a simply-prepared but full-flavored dish, often a seafood dish like lobster.  Since I was making grapefruit shrimp on the grill, I had 2 grapefruits' worth of juice to do something with (having used the zest for the marinade).  I decided to make a beurre blanc, replacing the white wine vinegar with grapefruit juice.  I'm sure Martha Stewart is rolling her eyes in despair, but it was delicious.

You can get some of the work done ahead of time for this sauce.  In fact, the butter needs to be really cold so it's better to cut it up and put it back in the fridge for a bit.  You can make the wine/juice reduction ahead of time too.  Since it boils down to just a tablespoon or two of syrup, leave the reduction in the saucepan rather than transferring it to a container...you always lose a little liquid when you pour back and forth between pots and there's just not much to start with.  Put the saucepan back on the stove over low heat for a couple minutes to warm it back up, then proceed to whisk in the cold-cold butter.

Really, do not get distracted.  Not while you're boiling down the wine and juice, not while you're whisking in the butter.  Reducing the wine-juice combo is something that just takes as long as it takes...you can't set a timer and come back to it.  It makes a syrup, and like working with an actual sugar syrup, it goes from not ready to ready to burned in a flash.  Adding the butter gradually keeps the sauce, well, saucy.  If you rush things, or let the sauce sit around too long after it's finished, it will separate (or "break") and you'll have a melted butter swirled around with syrupy juice rather than a cohesive, thick, rich sauce.  Not the end of the world, but not what the point of the exercise was.

A quick tip about reducing liquids...I am terrible at estimating volume so if I have a recipe that calls for boiling a liquid down to a certain amount, I pour that amount of water into my pan before I start cooking so I have a visual target (and then of course, I pour out the water and dry the pan before starting the recipe).

Plan to serve this with either a quick-to-cook protein (like grilled shrimp) that you can do pretty fast after you've got the sauce made, or something that doesn't require a lot of babysitting (like baked chicken or fish) to cook without attention while you prepare the sauce..

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Wretched excess, grapefruit style

Sauteed Grapefruit Chicken with Salad and Grapefruit Honey Dressing

It's that season...big boxes of all manner of citrus fruit everywhere...in the grocery stores, being hawked by your local high school band members, in the mail from far-away relatives.  Tangelos, tangerines, big navel oranges, small blood oranges, and of course grapefruit.

Personally, after one grapefruit breakfast, I'm done for the year.  But I've still got plenty to use up in the pantry.  The obvious secondary use for excess grapefruit is cocktails, but one Greyhound (like a Screwdriver, but with grapefruit juice) is also enough for me. 

And so I start marinating stuff.  Shrimp, chicken, salad...grapefruit brings a surprisingly sparkly and probably novel flavor to the party.  Here is a recipe I've previously blogged about for grapefruit marinated shrimp.  Today I've zested and juiced 2 medium grapefruit and I plan to get 3 dishes out them for 2 meals. 

Juice and zest divided: 4 tbsp zest with salt and pepper
for Sauteed Chicken (bottom left), 1/2 tsp zest and
1/4 cup juice for salad dressing (top), 1 cup juice
for Un-Buffalo Chicken Tenders (bottom right)

The salad dressing is a variation of a recipe from the classic red gingham Better Homes & Gardens cookbook and makes enough for 8 servings, so you can serve it with 2 separate meals.  The Un-Buffalo Chicken Tenders is a variation of this recipe that I created for my husband's grandmother so that I could "split" the recipe between a spicy version and non-spicy version without needing to cook a totally separate meal for those who prefer to skip the heat.  An overnight marinade in any type of acid (like hot sauce, citrus juice or apple cider vinegar) makes for beautiful fork-tender sauteed chicken. 

Both meals can be prepped ahead, though only the zest-marinated chicken can be frozen for any significant length of time.  The dressing will keep several days in the fridge.  The dressing will also require an immersion blender, electric whisk, food processor or stand blender to properly combine the honey with the other ingredients.

Be sure when you season your dishes not to go overboard with salt.  Citrus hits the same points on the tongue as salt so even a moderate amount of salt will be intensified in combination with citrus zest.

A tip about juicing any citrus fruit...put the whole fruit in the microwave for 10 seconds before juicing, especially if you've taken it straight from the fridge.

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Grapefruit Shrimp

Grapefruit isn't just for breakfast.  Here is some delicious citrus shrimp goodness.  If you like, you can peel the shrimp first though they turn out less dry with peels left on if you're sauteing/grilling. 
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