Pink Grapefruit and Pepper Corn Salad (5 ingredients only!)

If you know the basic flavor components that make up a salad dressing, you can make your dressing with almost anything you have in your kitchen!

Here are the basic flavor components for a salad dressing.

Oils - about 50%
Acid - about 30%
Salt - about 10%
Sweetness - about 10%
Plus some added flavors like herbs and spices

This ratio will vary according to what you are trying to achieve but its the basic rule I follow. 
For example, if you want to make a sweet dressing you'll increase the sweetness and lower the other components like oli.

For this recipe I've used the pink grapefruit for the "acid" and "sweetness" component so we don't need to add any vinegar or sweeteners! 

It might be useful to write down the flavor components until you get used to this. For this recipe the chart will look like this.

Oil - Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Acid - Pink Grapefruits
Salt - Himalayan Pink Salt
Sweetness - Pink Grapefruits 
Plus some added flavors -  Pink Peppercorn

The flavors are not limited to one ingredient and you can have 2 or more ingredients for each flavors. For example, for "salt", you can use soy sauce and miso to create a Japanese dressing.

As this pink grapefruit salad dressing is such a simple recipe with only 4 ingredients for the dressing, we want to make sure we use quality ingredients as all the flavors from each ingredient will be the key feature. 

For the oil part I used ILIADA Early Harvest Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

 ILIADA Early Harvest is produced by the first batch of hand-picked Koroneiki olives, that are still unripe. Olives are cold-pressed within a few hours maintaining their quality and aromas, while the olive oil is bottled immediately, without going through any filtering. It has a strong aroma of fresh green herbs with a fruity & intense taste that goes well with the grapefruits. It’s a well-balanced extra virgin olive oil with low acidity and a pleasantly bitter aftertaste.

The key ingredient that makes this dressing special is the pink peppercorns.

 These peppercorns are full of flavors and not as spicy as the black peppers. It also has a sweet taste to it which is pleasant when you bite into it.

I hope you get to try this recipe when you get tired of your everyday salad and want something "fresh" on your table! 

Pink Grapefruit and Peppercorn Salad
(serves 2) 

Ingredients 
2 Pink Grapefruits, peeled and sliced
1 tsp., Natural Salt
2 Tbsp., Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 Tbsp, Pink Peppercorns

Mixed Leaves for the salad



Tools that might be useful to make this recipe
KAI Heat-Resistant Antibacterial Hanging Cutting Board
Japanese Fruit Knife
Mixing Bowl 

Instructions 

1. Peel the skin of the grapefruits with a knife and slice them horizontally and place them in a bowl. 
   
   
   
   
   
2. Add a teaspoon of salt ( we used Himalayan pink salt) and two Tablespoons of Extra virgin Olive Oil and toss the grapefruits. Sprinkle the pink peppercorns and let the grapefruits marinate for a few minutes so that the juice comes out.
   
   
   
   
   
3. To plate the salad, prepare your choice of greens onto the plate and decorate the grapefruits on top.
   
   
   
4. Pour the dressing over the salad just before serving.
   
   
   Enjoy!