Grapefruit Salad with Ground Cherries and Mint Sugar

Title sounds all classy, doesn't it? Well, I already had the mint in the fridge for something else, so this dish was prompted by my officemate leaving me a message on a Friday that she was out of the office, imploring me to find some use for a grapefruit and ground cherries that she had left in her desk drawer, since they wouldn't make it through the weekend and she didn't want them to go to waste.

The ground cherries are to the left, below. I had no idea what they were, but they come from my officemate's garden and she explained that they look like tiny tomatillos, but taste kind of pineappley. They also have little tiny seeds built in, giving them a subtle crunch like figs! Yum.

As per my usual, I didn't make this recipe up: epicurious has something similar that uses grapefruits, oranges, pomegranate seeds or dried cranberries (I used dried currants), and no ground cherries.


Anyway, there's not much to describe. I peeled the grapefruit over a bowls so that I could save any drippiness. I pulled the sections out of the white stuff as best I could. I took the ground cherries out of their husks, washed them, and cut them each in half.



Then I ripped up a bunch of mint leaves (but not as many as you see in the first picture - maybe 8-10?), and smashed them with the leftover grapefruit juice and some sugar in my mortar and pestle.

The currants went on top.

This picture is really shaky!

Rhubarb Chutney

I made this recipe last summer. I remember it well because it was the weekend in July when I had just purchased an ice cream maker and was preparing to freeze the canister so I could get started with this cherry gelato recipe - and my freezer failed. It turned out that it had been melting down for a while, and the hot-as-heck weather that weekend just accelerated the liquification process. All this is just to say that I didn't trust my frozen rhubarb chutney, because it had been sitting in the door shelf of the freezer and sat there, never really freezing, for a couple of weeks. We had it once on the day I made it, but I ended up throwing the rest out.

I'm determined that this year will be different! We had this stuff over lamb last summer. Last night, I made it again and we had it over chicken breasts. I've got some lamb shanks in the fridge, and we will put the chutney to good use again with them tonight.

This recipe makes me think of Easter eggs, for two reasons: the color (bright pink - no lamb accompaniment has the right to exhibit such a flashy hue) and the smell (hot vinegar - you just don't smell that except when dyeing eggs at Easter).

I will say that although the recipe tells you to cook the rhubarb, green onions, and currants for only 4 minutes (before the rhubarb falls apart), you will also get fine results if you choose to just have the stuff simmer on the stove forever while you do other things, treating the chutney as more of a jam. That's what I did last summer, and I remember us saying, "Ooh, this is good." However, you do end up with a more beautiful and chunky mixture if you stop cooking when the recipe tells you to - that's how I did it this time.

I got the recipe from Epicurious - originally published in Bon Appetit in April 2003. A couple of modifications:
-It calls for 1 3/4 pounds rhubarb. This year, I only had three (long and slender) stalks, totalling about a pound, so I cut back on all the other ingredients a bit. The measurements seem very flexible.
- It calls for 1/2 teaspoon "(scant) ground cardamom." I love cardamom, and I had smoky black cardamom pods (further discussed in this posting) just burning a hole in my spice cabinet, so I threw a black cardamom pod into the mixture and discarded it when I took out the cinnamon stick. Here's a picture of the black cardamom. Just imagine a lovely smoky smell.


-Oh, also - you might notice in the picture below that my cinnamon stick is an Andre the Giant among its peers. I got it from one of those bags in the Hispanic foods section at the grocery store. They are very economical and seem to work well for savory foods that call for a little cinnamon flavor. Normally they have a heavenly scent of Mexican cinnamon, although this one seemed a little dried out at the beginning.

So, the recipe.

Ingredients:
-1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
-1/2 cup red wine vinegar (you could also use apple cider vinegar - I looked at another recipe, very similar to this one, that uses apple cider vinegar instead)
-1 1/2 cinnamon sticks
1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons grated orange peel
1/2 teaspoon (scant) ground cardamom
4 1/2 cups coarsely chopped rhubarb (from 1 3/4 pounds rhubarb)
3/4 cup dried currants
4 green onions, chopped

Stir first 6 ingredients in heavy large saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves and mixture boils.

Add rhubarb, currants, and green onions; bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer until rhubarb is tender but not falling apart, about 4 minutes.

Cool to room temperature. Discard cinnamon. Cover and refrigerate chutney until cold, at least 1 hour. [Carrina's note: or if you are impatient, just spoon out whatever portion you are going to use right away into a separate container, and stick it into the freezer until it is sufficiently jelly-fied for your taste. I think I put ours - about 1 cup's worth - in the freezer for about 15 minutes. It was fine.]

(Can be made up to 2 days ahead. Keep refrigerated.) Bring to room temperature before serving.

The chicken is slightly overexposed here, but you can still see the beautiful pink of the chutney.