Tag Archives: salads

Watermelon Pecorino Salad

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This is such an awesome salad–I’ve used feta, but I think the pecorino would be great as well. The combination of mint and salt and melon. . .

the chef mimi blog

It’s been a long time since I’ve purchased a cookbook. I’m a little embarrassed at how many I own, although I do use them. So I promised myself I’d wait a while. And then there it was.

I was in a cute shop while on vacation, and the cookbook practically screamed at me. The cover was beautiful, but I’m not one to only judge books by their covers. Especially with how sophisticated food styling and photography have become.

But this book was a little different in that there was cheese in the cover photo, which always gets my attention! And right there were two of my favorites – Humboldt Fog, bottom left, and a Foja de Noce wrapped in walnut leaves, top left, a Pecorino that I discovered from the last cheese book I purchased. In any case, I couldn’t resist the book, called “The Cheesemonger’s Seasons.”
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The recipes are…

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Salad dressings…

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I’m in the midst of an indexing project that’s taking a lot of time–it’s reduced my cooking to pretty rudimentary–like making salads and sandwiches.  Thankfully summertime is good for salads and there is always the tomato sandwich.

One of the things I do with salads, even when rushed, is make my salad dressings.  Here is a link from The Kitchn for some easy salad dressings.

Bleu cheese is one of my favorites, so I’m always looking for a better bleu cheese dressing.  Have a wedge of Roth’s Kase Buttermilk Blue in the fridge just waiting to have a bit of it go into a bleu cheese dressing.  Maybe tomorrow…depending on how the indexing progresses.

Cool pink things for summer

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After the wonderful strawberry ice cream yesterday afternoon, I more “cool pink” for supper: watermelon with feta cheese and mint.

It’s right up there with beet soup for a refreshing summer meal or side dish.  I probably should not even call it a salad:  no dressing or anything except the natural juices.  I’ve seen suggestions for dressings such as buttermilk/lime, but I’ve not tried that–have some buttermilk in the fridge so maybe I’ll taste it with that  when I make more this afternoon.

There really is no recipe for this:

  •  watermelon, cut into pieces or cut with  melon-baller.  Use however much you think you might eat–I usually add some extra  because I will usually eat more.
  • mint–preferably spearmint  (Kentucky Colonel is especially good), chopped medium or cut into chiffonade–several sprigs
  • feta cheese–your favorite feta cheese, cut into small cubes or crumbled.
Toss the watermelon and the mint and let this chill in the refrigerator for about an hour.  You want the mint and melon to “meld”–if you don’t do this, you get separate flavors of mint and melon (which is not bad either) instead of something like mintmelonmint.  After this melding, add the feta cheese, and eat!
If the melon stands with the feta cheese, the texture of the melon becomes a bit soggy, presumable from the salt in the feta cheese,  so it’s best made freshly.  You can let the mint/melon mix stand in the fridge longer, though.
I suspect that other salty cheese could be substituted for the feta–e.g. pecorino or some of the Greek cheeses.