Yup. Baked grapefruit. Not lying. While some people don't fully appreciate this humble yellow orb, those that do often only sprinkle a little sugar on top (or none at all) and eat while watching infomercials. (can you believe that my spellchecker recognized informercial?) I was leafing through our family copy of the New Doubleday Cookbook, and found a recipe for baked grapefruit. It said: Halve grapefruit, dot with butter and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 30-40 min. at 350, and baste occasionally with pan drippings. Way to be specific, cookbook. We have a few grapefruits in the fridge, so I decided to whip this up.
There weren't many more instructions than what the big fat book gave me, so I took a few liberties. Here's how I did it:
1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Slice 2 grapefruits and place cut side up in a glass baking dish
3. Slice off about 1 tablespoon of butter from that big 'ol stick in the fridge. Why the about? Because every grapefruit is different and you may need more, or you many need less. I needed less.
4. Shave off thin slices (not wafer thin, just thin) and cut in half. Dot the top of each half with the butter, and then sprinkle on a pinch of sugar.
5. Bake for 30-40 min., basting occasionally with the drippings. Or should you? Mine were very stable, and almost nothing dripped.
Now comes the challenge of eating. When I dug my spoon in, a few juice sacks and some liquid resulted. The taste? A warm grapefruit soup. Not very impressive. Mine could have been improved with a heck of a lot more butter and sugar. There were no drippings, so I think that there should have been more melted butter. If there were, the sugar would caramelize and the liquids would be a yummy sauce. But I did it wrong. Here's what I think you should do:
1. Follow my steps one and two
2. Cut 2 tablespoons of butter from the stick
3. Cut the butter into 4 equal parts (yes, one for each half. for you measurement fans, 1/2 tablespoon butter per fruit). Cube the parts, and dot over the fruit.
4. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of sugar over each half, and bake 30-40 min.
5. Baste the inevitable drippings occasionally
6. Take out
7. Eat
How to eat? I have no earthy idea. I just scraped it off the sides, and it suited me fine. If you make this and find a better way, please let me know! As of right now (4:02 p.m.), one of my prepared halves is in the fridge to see if they undergo some magical fridge transformation. This was a fine experiment, but as for me, I'm going back to the store to get some more grapefruit and infomercials. I think you can get those at info-mart, right? I encourage everybody to try this and not fail epically as I did. But hey, we can't all be perfect chefs all the time. :]
grapefruits are very odd pink fruits if you ask me, and are too sour, even if you put a lot of sugar on them. but maybe baking them or whatever would make them taste better. i would try it, but i would probably epically fail, and would waste the grapefruit that some starving child in africa would have enjoyed.
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