Have You Tried Broiled Grapefruit?

Fussellette and her Hurler are staying with us on a much-needed vacation from a St. John’s winter that will not end.  We’re not going to talk about how we’ve been mid-blizzard or mid-deep-freeze every day that they’ve been in Ottawa.

Anyway, Fussellette shares my addiction for grapefruit (the Pie hates them so I never buy them), and she was telling me that you can broil the suckers.  Hot fruit — who knew?

I looked at a bunch of “recipes” online, and some of them get really fancy, with honey or stevia or agave … one of them grated fresh ginger into the sugar and garnished the darned thing with mint.  I don’t think I can handle that level of sophistication on my breakfast foods, however, so I’m giving you the most basic version here.

Basically, you take your grapefruit.  You cut it in half.

You’re going to need to cut into the skin on the bottom to level it out a bit.  This is kind of important.

You’re also going to want to slice in between the membranes of the grapefruit …

and around the edge, just to loosen things up.

Then you take a couple tablespoons brown sugar, and you put it on top of the grapefruit.

I know it seems like a lot, but most of it will dribble off.  Flatten the sugar to cover the flesh of the fruit.  Try to avoid getting too much on the peel.

The sugar will absorb some of the juice.  Mmmm.

Shove that under your broiler (in a dish, for Pete’s sake, you’re not a savage) for 3-5 minutes, until it’s all bubbly and drippy.  I think in a less juicy grape fruit or one that was both (a) more level and (b) had more sugar on it, the sugar will caramelize like a pudding.

I love that the fruit swells and pushes out from the skin a bit.  It’s in your face, screaming EAT ME!

Then you scoop it up and eat it hot.  HOLY MOLY what an awesome breakfast/dessert treat!