Aug 04 2010
Watermelon Woe
At the risk of sounding like a pearl-wearing, picket-fence owning, bring-him-a-cocktail-and-slippers housewife from the 50′s, I’ll admit that I love Better Homes and Gardens. It’s kept up with the times and has a fresh-classic take on recipes and renovating. I particularly like the editor’s note in the first few pages because she seems like a high-powered lady who can also cook, entertain and live a beautiful life. Well, she could be a raging dope fiend with cooks and maids and assistants that scrape her up off the floor and put her together every morning. But at least she comes off as living a powerful and beautiful life in her column. And I like that.
But sometimes she waxes a little too poetic. Like this month she raves about the feeling of sinking your teeth into a watermelon slice and letting all the juices run down your chin. “Ah, summer!” she sighs. No. After the age of 10, there is nothing refreshing or exciting about eating a big hunk of watermelon except the taste. Your face, hands and clothes get all wet and sticky, you are constantly on the defensive against seed-chomping or -swallowing and once you take the first few bites, there is no way to continue without mushing your whole face down into the rind. Call me a warm-weather grinch but I don’t think any of this is fun.
But watermelon is delicious and the taste is certainly pure summertime so we eagerly cut into our first one with thoughts of more manageable chunks or maybe we’d fancy with a little sorbet or cocktail.
Unfortunately, our first CSA watermelon was a little under-ripe and such is the watermelon woe. It’s hard to tell when it’s perfectly ripe when there’s no way to see that bright red flesh until it’s too late. This was more of a pale pink; disappointing but all was not lost. Greg had been chatting with a friend of ours whose wonderful wife (and a best friend of mine) gave him pro grilling lessons as a gift. He mentioned that they were learning how to GRILL watermelon which, of course, intrigued my tongs-wielding husband.
The idea is simple: Baste slices with a 1:1 mix of honey and simple syrup and grill to caramelize both the syrup mix and the melon’s own sugars. This totally amped up the flavor of an otherwise weak melon but here’s the disappointing part: we totally misjudged how grilling would change the flavors. Normally, when sugars heat they intensify the sweetness-like with onions, for example. So we launched into that gooey, awkward face-in-the-rind eating that is supposed to be a mouthful of summer. What we got was way more savory than we expected. The grill flavor really came through and the sugars made a kind of smoky-sweet glaze on the fruit. Absolutely delicious in a salad or diced small and mixed into a compote to serve on top of chicken. Really weird and kind of off-putting as a snack.
So don’t shy away from grilling watermelon, just know that it’s best as a twist to savory and not refreshing at all. If you want refreshing, I guess you could take the BHG editor’s advice and let the fresh watermelon juices run down your chin like you’re 5 years old. Or, you could stay tuned for that sorbet and cocktail I had mentioned…
