After a heavy Thanksgiving meal and next-day leftovers, perhaps a light and refreshing salad is calling your name.

This is a delicious, winter-appropriate, grapefruit salad with layers of flavor, texture, and crunch. It’s not your boring old salad by any means. It’s bright and colorful, and certain to wake up your taste buds.

Love when a dish incorporates flavors that excite all the tastes — sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. This salad covers them all.

There’s sweetness (but not too sweet) from the dressing, which contains a bit of coconut sugar to balance the sour/tartness from the citrus — lime and grapefruit. Salty and umami from the fish sauce. More umami from the shrimp. Bitterness from the radicchio (a member of the chicory family); although, with all the other flavors going on, the bitter element is well-integrated.

There’s a fresh component from the herbs — used (Thai) basil and mint. Cilantro would work too.

There’s a touch of heat from Thai and Fresno chiles. Of course, you could always ramp up the heat by adding more chiles or tame it by using fewer, milder chiles and/or seeding them.

The crunch comes from toasted coconut, crispy fried shallots, and dry-roasted peanuts.

I served the salad with coconut rice that I topped with thinly sliced scallions and more toasted coconut.

The hardest part is sectioning the grapefruit, which is a bit of a pain but worth the effort.

Hope you enjoy!

My latest and greatest discovery, crispy fried shallots. I want to put them on top of everything. The crispy shallots work particularly well in this salad. I purchased them here for my NYC friends.

Grapefruit Salad with Shrimp and Coconut Rice

serves 4 as a starter or light meal
12 to 16 large shrimp, peeled and deveined (3 to 4 per plate)
cooking oil
salt and pepper
2 large grapefruit, sectioned (sliced in half length-wise, into bite-sized pieces); reserve any extra grapefruit juice for the dressing
2 small heads of radicchio, roughly chopped
small handful of julienned carrots
small handful of scallions, thinly sliced on a bias
a few fresh mint leaves
a few fresh basil leaves, Thai, if possible (or Italian/Genovese)
1-2 chiles, thinly sliced (used Thai (hot) and Fresno (mild))
dressing (seed recipe below)
dry-roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
fried shallots, like these
*toasted coconut
lime wedges for serving

Heat up a skillet with a tablespoon or two of cooking oil. Add the shrimp, season with salt and pepper, and saute until they turn pink and opaque; just a couple of minutes per side is all they need. Set aside.

Place the grapefruit, radicchio, carrots, scallions, mint and basil leaves, chiles in a bowl. Toss lightly with some of the dressing, reserving some for serving on the side.

Divide the dressed salad among four plates along with the shrimp. Top with chopped peanuts, fried shallots, and toasted coconut. Serve with a small bowl of dressing and a wedge of lime.

*To toast the coconut: Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the coconut, stirring frequently until lightly browned. Transfer to a bowl. Set aside.

Dressing

1/4 cup fish sauce (nam pla)
3 tablespoons lime juice
3 tablespoons sugar (used coconut sugar)
2 tablespoons water
1 garlic clove, smashed to a paste
1-2 Thai chile, thinly sliced
reserved juice from the segmented grapefruit

Whisk all ingredients together.

Coconut Rice 

2 cups Jasmine or other long-grain rice (used brown rice)
1 cup coconut milk
2 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons shredded, dessicated coconut
toasted coconut for garnish
scallions, thinly sliced on a bias

Rinse the rice under cold water. Add all ingredients to a rice cooker and cook accordingly. Top with toasted coconut and scallions.

*You could also make the rice in a pot on the stove top if you don’t have a rice cooker.