On a Roll with Melons–And a Vid on Making Muesli
4 September 2007 by Jean Johnson
I confess. Since my husband and I divorced, I’ve spent more than one holiday on my ownsome in the company of less than inspired food. But this Labor Weekend, Laura my gardener–and cooking–pal included me at her family’s table. She did wild Alaskan salmon and yellow pan patty squash with lemon thyme on the grill. I brought insalata caprese since the my Brandywines make such thick beefy slabs, and I’ve kept the sweet basil pinched back so it’s still a hit.
The food was first rate, including the cucumber and onion salad Laura made. “It’s my mother’s salad, so I think I’ve got it right,” she said, asking me to fold a blend of yogurt and sour cream into the thinly sliced onion rings and peeled cucumber rounds while she went to snip some fresh dill for the garnish. I thought the fare so delicious that she sent some home with me.
The next day was a garden wedding, but the day after I got into the salad for lunch. The onion, especially, had mellowed into the creamy dressing. If anything the dish was even better than on the first night.
Me being a fiddler, though, in went some melon. The sweet against the savory. The tender flesh of the cantalope against the crisp cukes and onions. Like a 12-year-old I know, Shellsea, says, “It was so totally cool.”
On a Roll: One thing leads to another in a functioning kitchen of course, and once a melon is cut, it’s time to go for it. So this morning for breakfast it was chunks on cereal with raspberries that are also producing in my garden right now.
The meal was a snap as usual with the cereal a flash version of Swiss Birkermuesli: a handful of dry rolled oats and a couple big spoons of ground flax seeds that I do myself in the coffee grinder and keep in the fridge.
I’m out of milk and yogurt so used a blend of cottage cheese, ricotta, and sour cream that I stirred up the other day with a little honey. With a bit of cinnamon and a few chopped walnuts, there was breakfast. Yet another meal that was “so totally. . .”
A morning’s work stands between me and lunch, but melon will most likely be part of the midday party. I’m thinking salad. There’s a container of garbanzo beans (from the big pots I make every so often) unfreezing in the sink. And green and red sweet peppers in the garden plus some jalapenos and hot striped lime-colored peppers called Fish.
Also some interesting Japanese salad greens called mizuna ready to pick. I’ll use a little salty fish sauce to combine with the sweet of the melon and the spicy chiles. Then all it will take will be a careful splash of vinegar to turn the salad into the type of dishes I had in Thailand last year. More, as the Thai cook from whom I learned, said, “It’s healthy. You get the flavor and no oil.”
Melons on a roll. Who ever would have thought. And all without picking up a measuring cup. So totally cool.
