Grapefruit Salad with Ground Cherries and Mint Sugar

Title sounds all classy, doesn't it? Well, I already had the mint in the fridge for something else, so this dish was prompted by my officemate leaving me a message on a Friday that she was out of the office, imploring me to find some use for a grapefruit and ground cherries that she had left in her desk drawer, since they wouldn't make it through the weekend and she didn't want them to go to waste.

The ground cherries are to the left, below. I had no idea what they were, but they come from my officemate's garden and she explained that they look like tiny tomatillos, but taste kind of pineappley. They also have little tiny seeds built in, giving them a subtle crunch like figs! Yum.

As per my usual, I didn't make this recipe up: epicurious has something similar that uses grapefruits, oranges, pomegranate seeds or dried cranberries (I used dried currants), and no ground cherries.


Anyway, there's not much to describe. I peeled the grapefruit over a bowls so that I could save any drippiness. I pulled the sections out of the white stuff as best I could. I took the ground cherries out of their husks, washed them, and cut them each in half.



Then I ripped up a bunch of mint leaves (but not as many as you see in the first picture - maybe 8-10?), and smashed them with the leftover grapefruit juice and some sugar in my mortar and pestle.

The currants went on top.

This picture is really shaky!