Watermelon Every Which Way

The Dog Days of Summer have arrived. New England is in the middle of an August heat wave and no other fruit or vegetable screams of summer quite like juicy watermelon. It has to be one of the most refreshing ways to cool down your recipes in the kitchen. The bright color and refreshing sweetness add more than just a bit of color to your summer plate. Beat the heat by eating and drinking your way through my roundup of Watermelon Every Which Way.

Start with a shot of the juice straight from the blender. Cut chilled melon into pieces and drop into the blender. Voila. Shooters don’t necessarily have to include alcohol.

Fresh berries and watermelon with feta are one of my favorite summer flavor profile combinations. Cut a decorative edge on the scooped out melon to use as a unique bowl for serving.

I love soups any time of year, but cold summer soups with the freshest of ingredients are an especially good match. Watermelon Gazpacho is a fun twist on the usual favorite and still includes the tomatoes.

Watermelon Smash

Makes 1 drink

6 watermelon chunks (3 skewered on a pick, for garnish)
¾ oz. freshly squeezed lime juice
¼ oz. agave nectar
½ oz. St-Germain elderflower liqueur
2 oz. your favorite vodka

In a cocktail shaker, muddle 3 watermelon chunks. Add ice and the lime juice, agave nectar, St-Germain and vodka and shake well. Fine-strain into a chilled, ice-filled martini glass, and garnish the drink with the watermelon chunks.

Grilled Haloumi

Have you tried grilled haloumi? It’s a delicious salty cheese that holds its shape when heated and combines beautifully with the sweetness of watermelon. You’ll find it in a lot of Mediterranean dishes. I can’t wait to try this recipe from Camille Styles.

Before I leave you today, I also want to share a few things I learned about this yummy melon that hovers between being both a fruit and a vegetable.

• Watermelon is the product of a seed-producing plant and has a well known signature sweet flavor. It can also be traced back to the pumpkin and cucumber family. Every part is edible and the rind makes a pretty tasty pickle. It swings both ways.
• In addition to great flavor, a low calorie cup will give you 20% of your daily intake of vitamin C and 17% of A.
• It has more lycopene than raw tomatoes. 1.5 times to be exact of those healthy antioxidants.
• Hydration power. Watermelon is 91.5% water, and we all know how important it is to stay hydrated in this heat.
• The rind is loaded with citrulline which has been tied to improved blood flow in the body.

Watermelon Pizza anyone? So there you go – plenty of reason to chill out with a few tasty recipes using watermelon as a base, what I call Watermelon Every Which Way. Hot temps call for whipping up a few stat.

Image for Pinterest

Postscript-It had never crossed my mind when looking at paintings from the past in musuems to observe the food for information. Costumes and decor-sure, I do that all the time but not still lives of fruit and i’m not really sure why. Anyway, an agriculture professor from the University of Wisconsin uses a  Renaissance painting by Stanchi featuring watermelons to teach his students about the history of crop breeding. The fruits were more visually pleasing to my eye then, but probably taste better now. What do you think?