Spicy Grapefruit Avocado Salad

Vietnamese food rocks. I might be slightly biased (ok – a lot biased) but I love the fact that most Vietnamese food hits all levels of tastes: bitter, salty, sour, sweet and spicy.  Having been raised on Vietnamese cuisine makes me a bit unforgiving with one-dimensional food flavors.

It’s hard to come up with recipes that hit on all cylinders (mostly from lack of time on my part). But here’s one simple salad recipe that I love because it provides my tastebuds with quite a party.  It’s not a Vietnamese salad but it’s just as sexy.  You can take out the red pepper flakes if you can’t handle the heat.

Ingredients
1 large red grapefruit
1 ripe avocado
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon mint leaves (chopped)
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
pinch of salt

Directions
To cut the grapefruit, slice the top and bottom of the fruit. Then carve away the peel with your knife so that you are left with just the fruit, making sure you cut away all of the white pith. Then cut between the white membranes to release the grapefruit slices. Set grapefruit aside and keep any leftover juices.

Cut the avocado in half, remove the seed and vertically slice the avocado into pieces. Combine the avocado slices, grapefruit, any remaining grapefruit juice, olive oil, mint leaves, red pepper flakes and a pinch of salt.  (Feel free to make this spicier with more pepper flakes – I just like a hint of heat in this salad).  Stir together and enjoy! Best served immediately.