Looking for something unusual to bring to the 4th of July picnic this year? Well look no further!
There’s no getting around the fact that this salad sounds downright weird, but after you take the first bite you’ll be really glad you took the risk! This recipe is one of many I liked from this month’s particularly-good issue of Food and Wine magazine. When I saw this Watermelon Salad with Feta and Mint I immediately knew I had to try it to see if these ingredients really work together, and I’m happy to tell you that both Adam and I absolutely loved it. It will probably freak out a few of your relatives when they first see it though!
The photo in the magazine presents the salad beautifully by scooping the watermelon into balls with a melon baller. Were I taking this to a party, I would definitely do the scoops too! But for dinner at home, cubes were much faster and easier so that’s what I went with. Watermelons always scream SUMMER! to me, so I was excited to be biting into my first watermelon of the season on a nice sunny day (very welcome after 30 days of rain!). Summer’s here, folks!
We’ve only just started getting watermelon in the stores in New York and as one would expect from any start-of-season fruit, they’re really not that good yet. In my opinion, it would be a shame to use really-good watermelon for something like this salad. The only right way to eat a great watermelon is outdoors, biting into simple wedges and spitting the seeds out on the grass at your feet. Growing up we spent lots of time at our farm in Brazil, where watermelons grew in our orchard; On a crazy-hot Brazilian summer day, nothing beats sitting in the orchard competing to see who can spit out watermelon seeds the farthest! I’d take a strawberry over a watermelon any day, but my sister and dad are huge watermelon fans so I always think of them when I eat it.
And I’ve certainly never eaten it like this before! The recipe feeds 12 but I made it for 2 by using only about a pound of watermelon and about 1/5th of the other ingredients. This dressing is particularly awesome and I’ll certainly be using it in the future on other salads. I love that dash of Tabasco in there!
Oh, and the recipe says that olives are optional but don’t believe them! Unless you, like, hate olives (which I can’t even imagine honestly), you need to use them. The salty brine of the olives perfectly balances everything else and made for a veritable party in my mouth every time I got one in a forkful. All the ingredients work together to make a salad that tastes like more than just a sum of its parts, and that’s the mark of a great salad if you ask me!
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
The recipe does indeed sound a bit weird…but weird in a good way. I’ve recently (okay, this morning) decided I need to lighten up my diet and this should fit in very well. Thanks. (If you’re interested in the nightmare that prompted this decision check out: Nightmare in My Closet