Pink Grapefruit Martini

A pink grapefruit martini is my contribution to July’s Food ‘n Flix. First off, I’ve been absent from Food ‘n Flix for several months now. The whole move and new job thing really slowed down my ability to keep up within anything that didn’t involve packing, moving, and getting oriented to work. I’ve missed being inspired by food in movies, though, so decided no matter the movie, I needed to jump back into it in July.

Except…sigh…the movie was Dirty Dancing. I vaguely remembered watching Dirty Dancing with my mom when I was in my early teens. I don’t think I got any of what was actually going on. I do recall being mildly annoyed by the plot, even as a pre-teen. I wasn’t impressed by Patrick Swayze and didn’t think much at all of Baby.

Very little in my reaction has changed since 1987. Still don’t think Swayze was all that. Really hate the character of Baby. Not impressed with all the dancing. Granted, I now at least have a clue about what was going on with the blonde, and spent half the movie wondering if Baby had considered birth control. The only thing that plucked a little bit at the nostalgia strings was the music. I did love listening to Hungry Eyes and I’ve Had the Time of My Life, though I have to confess, I did keep waiting for Unchained Melody to play and then realized I’d conflated two lame Patrick Swayze movies into one. Let’s just leave that there.

This is also the kind of movie I would have watched on my own when I was still in a job that required a lot of travel. However, I’m not in that job anymore, so my husband had to watch this one with me. At least I wasn’t suffering alone. I did dutifully take food notes throughout - my list looked like this: pot roast, maybe with Asian inspired flavors; watermelon; salami; pudding; pickles; toasted bagels; grapefruit; manly breakfast; danishes. The more I thought about the juxtaposition between the father eating a real breakfast (eggs? sausage? I couldn’t entirely tell) while the women ate grapefruit, the more I realized that what I really needed while watching this movie was a stiff drink. And frankly, if I’m going to have a grapefruit, it’s probably going to be a component of that stiff drink, and thus, the pink grapefruit martini was born.

I don’t love the movie, but I do love that I was inspired enough to make this drink. I decided that this must be why the mother in the movie was so checked out with what was going on with her daughters: she was busy drinking pink grapefruit martinis all day long.

The thing that makes this pink grapefruit martini special is adding a step at the start and broiling the grapefruit with a thin coat of demerara sugar over the top (you could definitely substitute brown sugar). Once the grapefruit was broiled and all caramelized on top, I let it cool for a bit and then juiced it. The sugar nicely complements the tartness of the grapefruit. A little gin and a little St. Germain and you have a perfect cocktail for getting through any movie from the 80s.