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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Cinnamon Marinated Fish

Cinnamon is usually thought of as a sweet spice, but it has a savory side.  In the absence of sweeteners, cinnamon has a peppery smoky quality that pairs nicely with fish.  The cinnamon comes across more strongly in the aroma of the finished dish and is subtle in the flavor.

If you want to do a "taste-test" batch of cinnamon oil, use just 1 cinnamon stick and 1/2 cup of vegetable oil.  It will be enough for 2 or 3 marinades.  When you crush up the cinnamon sticks, just pound them in a plastic bag with a meat pounder until they look like mulch. 

It's tempting to buy cheapie spices for this or use cinnamon sticks that have been hanging around since last autumn's spiced cider kick, but the fresher and more strongly flavored the cinnamon is, the better the marinade will be.

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Salsa V.

Despite looking like paper-covered green tomatoes, tomatillos are related to gooseberries, which probably still doesn't tell you much about them. Underneath the inedible papery husk, they are a bit sweet and tart all at once, rather like an unripe berry. They have the "green" flavor of a green tomato, but with a fruit-like acid tinge. And I caught my 18-month-old chomping on peeled tomatillos today like they were apples...there, does that help? 

I grow tomatillos in my garden for the express purpose of making salsa v.  One or two plants should do you, unless you REALLY like salsa v.  They tend to come in all at once (at least here in Zone 5B) which makes them ideal for this type of "putting up".  Rake in your whole harvest, make salsa and process...bing, bang, boom.  Any stragglers can go into late-summer fresh salsas.  This recipe scales up or down by the pound/pint, so you can make as little or as much as you want...the basic proportion for 1 pint of salsa v. is 1 lb. tomatillos, 1 jalapeno, 1 garlic clove, 1/2 onion, 1/2 tsp salt, 2-3 tbsp herbs.

Roasting the tomatillos before turning them into salsa gives a dimension of flavor not present with unroasted fruit.  You can sear them over a grill, under the broiler or on a cast-iron pan...or not at all, your choice.  Toss the dehusked fruits with a bit of oil, and give them a good 10-20 minutes of high direct  heat, until the skins are brown and the fruits are popping open.

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No-work freezer meals

These aren't recipes, really, but just ideas of very quick ways to perk up plain-jane food and a reminder that you can usually do what little work there is ahead of time to make life just that much easier on yourself. 

For the salad dressing chicken, I made a double batch to use up all the dressing from one bottle (2 batches of 1.5lbs. marinated chicken breasts each).  Salad dressing tends to hand around at my house, and I'd rather just use it all up in one fell freezer swoop.  I used Greek Vinaigrette and Roasted Red Pepper Italian flavors, but just about any kind of prepared dressing would be good.

Pacific sockeye salmon is particularly good RIGHT NOW (it's the season for Copper River sockeye in particular), so give this one a try even if you think you don't like fish.  Especially if you think you don't like fish b/c it's dry.  Baking it at a lower temp makes a huge difference in the final product, and I'm not sure I'll ever fix salmon another way now.

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Grilled Tofu Mexican Wraps

This is a partial freezer meal...you can freeze the marinated tofu, the tortillas, and the dressing for the slaw but not the slaw itself.  You'll need a fresh veg to complete this meal, either a package of cabbage slaw, shredded carrots, shredded lettuce or some other shredded crunchy veggie, or a combination of the above.  If you want insurance against forgetting to pick something up for Dinner Day if you're freezing ahead, get a package of frozen Mexican vegetables.  In a pinch, you can nuke them, dress them and fold them into your wrap.

Lime is the dominant flavor in the tofu marinade and in the slaw dressing, the former with the juice of a 1 lime and the latter with its zest.  You'll need a bit more juice to round out the dressing and marinade...orange juice would be great, but I rarely have OJ in the house any more and I used apple juice today.  The slaw dressing was a bit sweeter than usual as a result, but it went over very well with the under-3's. 


This is very seriously my favorite tofu recipe ever.  Ever, ever, ever.  That's why there are two totally gratutitous food porn pics above...couldn't decide which looked scrummier :D

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Chinese Maple Chicken & Grilled Marinated Bok Choy

No fake maple syrup please.  Did you know that artificial maple flavor is derived from fenugreek seeds which are a dietary supplement commonly used by nursing mothers to boost milk supply?  Makes you wonder why Mrs. Butterworth is so curvy.  I'd personally substitute molasses for maple syrup here if no real maple syrup is to be had.

This marinade lends itself well to chicken in a variety of formats.  I had planned to spatchcock mine and freeze it in the marinade, but life throws curveballs and I wound up roasting the whole bird with only a brief marinating period.  I think it would be especially scrummy on grilled chicken parts, too. 

And the maple syrup concoction did double duty as a browning agent/dressing for grilled bok choy.  Love grilled lettuces! 

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