Hey, Citrus Salad, Get Over Yourself

Hey, Citrus Salad. You're not the only delicious use for winter citrus. Yeah, yeah, I know you think you're cool, with your cheese, and your olive oil, and your salt and pepper, and your sassy combination of sour, sweet, and savory.

But you'll never be a baked grapefruit.* THAT'S RIGHT.

Have you ever tried a baked grapefruit? It's amazing. And it solves the mid-March problem of being sick to death of trying to convince yourself that peeling a clementine and eating it for dessert is satisfying in any way.

I was first served a baked grapefruit for breakfast, but I stand by my classification of this little delight as a dessert, because it satisfies several different cravings that routinely trigger my "I DESPERATELY NEED TO EAT DESSERT" craze right around the end of Jeopardy each night. First, it's sweet. Second, it's warm. Third, it involves turning on the oven and making something.

Turns out that baked grapefruit and regular grapefruit photograph more or less the same.

I'm not even going to go through the whole "ingredient list" and "steps" thing, because it's really simple. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Take a grapefruit, cut it in half, and use a sharp knife to loosen each little triangle of joy. Drizzle about a tablespoon of honey over each half, put the halves on a baking sheet (skin down), and bake them for about 10-15 minutes, or until the skin shrinks back a bit and the sections are puffy.

Serve the grapefruit immediately, so that it's still nice and warm. There's something so delightfully perverse about eating warm citrus that you'll be hooked immediately. And if you don't mind getting your hands sticky, you can squeeze the juice that's left behind into a glass and have warm grapefruit juice, which is also weirdly addictive.

On a semi-related note, I'd like to take this opportunity to lament the fact that, even though we're only a couple of states away from Florida, every grocery store in our area is selling California citrus. Lame.

*I still love you, though, Melissa Clark...I accept that you are the NYT Dining Section's attempt at replacing The Minimalist, and I think you're quirky and cute.