melon goodness

Watermelon itself is sweet, cool, summery, and totally cliché; watermelon pudding is sweet, cool, summery, and totally bizarre. I don’t know about you, but I’m the type to consistently choose unusual over normal. When I spotted the recipe for Sicilian watermelon pudding in the August issue of Saveur, I knew it was a dessert destined for my mouth.

Beware: the recipe sounds très simple, but it will ruin your entire kitchen. I mean, fat, pink, sticky globs everywhere. You can fix this problem by cleaning as you cook, but that just sucks all the joy out of creating a big, beautiful mess. Don’t even try this without a large, fine sieve and a lot of time. As with most pudding, you’ll be hunched over a big pot, forced to watch and stir til it boils, for about 40-45 minutes.

But I’m giving you the pessimism before optimism. Truth be told, once the pudding has attained a lovely coolness in the refrigerator and is topped by a quivering dollop of whipped cream, it bursts in your mouth with its gorgeous, forceful watermelon flavor. The texture is certainly odd at first, but the taste is unbeatable.

Gelo di Melone

6 cups watermelon, seeded and in chunks
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
Whipped cream, for garnish

Purée watermelon in a blender until liquefied, and set aside. Whisk together sugar and cornstarch in a big pot or saucepan. While whisking, drizzle in liquid fruit. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly and scraping bottom with a spoon. (Easier method: stir very regularly, occasionally cover pot with top to speed boiling.)

Boil, stirring constantly to prevent scorching, for five minutes or until it thickens slightly. Remove from heat and whisk in the vanilla. Using a rubber spatula, push and scrape the pudding through a fine sieve into a bowl. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4-6 hours.

To serve, spoon pudding in small bowls and top with a hearty amount of whipped cream.

blender salsa

Any true Texan will tell you that close behind (or sometimes in front of) a love of home cookin’ falls the brilliant, gut-stuffing adoration of Tex-mex. We hold that the best Mexican food is not just found in our state, it’s got a heavy dose of Texan in it, too. Hence the abundance of orange cheese and salty, salty chips.

Like most good Texans, I cherish a good, bracing salsa. My husband is a bit more devoted… he consumes at least one gallon of salsa every two weeks. It’s an addiction which I feed gratefully. (Hey, at least no empty bottles or video games are involved.)

So when Nanny and Daddy Tom loaded me down with a Wal-mart bag full of tomatoes from their garden, my gut reaction was to try something new and something for him — homemade salsa. Typically I don’t use a recipe when I make something simple, and this time was no exception, so forgive me if the measurements are a bit loose. Salsa should cater to your tastebuds anyway. This variety (cleverly fixed in a blender) has a robust tomato taste with a subtle cilantro and onion aftertaste and a final kiss of jalapeño.

Salsa

8-9 ripe, fresh tomatoes
3 jalapeños
2 small Noonday onions
2 cloves garlic
7-8 sprigs of cilantro
Generous amount of salt
Big sprinkle of garlic powder

Cut tomatoes in wedges and pulverize in a blender. Set aside. Trim and halve the peppers, removing the seeds of two of them. Finely dice the onions, garlic and peppers (a food processor works wonders here). Trim and roughly chop the cilantro leaves. Add all ingredients to the tomato mixture, give it a good stir, and season to your liking with salt and garlic.

Eat up!

Sidenote: I apologize in advance if you don’t have Noonday onions, which are the greatest in the world, but market varieties will suffice. I suppose.

cucumber babies

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I was surely an… odd child. I preferred reading to sweating, styled my own hair, wrote plays and forced my brothers into the boring princess roles, and generally attempted to wear as many colors as humanly possible on any given day. And though I had a couple Barbies and stuffed animals, in the summertime, my doll of choice was a cucumber.

My grandparents had a lovely, sprawling vegetable garden that produced an abundance of lovely, sprawling cucumbers. I mean, cucumbers as long as your arm and thick as a saxophone. They weren’t much good for eating or pickling, and somehow my Nanny and I decided they’d be best for playing. Cradled in the crook of my arm and wrapped with a couple of banana leaves for blankets, the cucumber took on the life of a doll after Nanny gave it a cartoonish, Sharpie face.

See? Odd, and yet, so cool.

I still love the sweet, crisp crunch of a cucumber, whether in pickle or fresh form. (I haven’t tried the former yet; that will be a future, autumnal post.) Always best when gleaned by the bag-ful from someone’s garden, these babies are delicious in a million different ways. Here are a few of my favorites:

* Chopped and tossed with fresh tomatoes, olive oil, feta cheese and garlic.
* Sliced up like chips and eaten with a coating of S&P.
* Diced and substituted for relish in tuna salad.
* Julienned and stuffed into falafel.
* Thinly sliced, on any sandwich.
* The French way: chopped and mixed with fresh mint, sea salt and a bit of plain yogurt.

Sidenote: The modern version of my cucumber baby, dubbed “Little Boonie” by my delightful Nanny, currently resides on my windowsill. It’s a comforting piece of décor.

pearls of wisdom

Today I was heartbroken to learn that Mississippi leads the nation in obesity. Closely followed by Tennessee and Alabama. Sigh. Texas, oh Texas, where is your fire? Until now, you always made good on your promise that everything would be bigger (and so much better) within your hallowed borders. I’m disappointed, mother land, truly disappointed.

One food item sure to tip those scales in our favor is the infamous corn-on-the-cob at our state fair. For four dollars, you can pile on all the calories you walked off among the bright lights and whirling machines with a giant ear of corn quite literally dunked in a vat of butter. (Let us all pause in reverence of the very concept: a vat of butter.) I’d imagine that baby has as many calories as five candy bars. But who’s counting?

However, lest our population dwindle because of that ever-pesky heart disease, today I proffer a beautiful, flavorful, simple way to make corn-on-the-cob that will make your mouth water and your waistband gape. I guess health really is more important than winning at everything.

And hey, we were once a full-fledged republic. Try to top that, ol’ Miss!


Perfect Corn-on-the-Cob

A couple ears of corn
Two teaspoons olive oil
S&P

Husk and clean corn. Brush each ear lightly with olive oil, sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper (or other spices - chili powder’s a good one), and wrap each ear loosely in foil, twisting the ends to seal each “packet.” Stick them in a 350-degree oven for 25 minutes, unwrap, inhale that delicious steam and immediately devour.

peachy keen

Georgia may be known across the country as a land flowing with milk and peaches, but we all know the sun shines brightest (and most hellishly) in Texas. And that means fuzzy-skinned fruit just as sweet and succulent as the ones produced by our Southern neighbors.

As soon as mid-June comes around, the skinny roads meandering through the Texan countryside play host to scores of itty bitty fruit-and-veggie stands, most of them run by overall-clad, dusty farmer’s wives or retirees with a piece of straw in their mouths. They stick signs by the side of the road with squished, painted letters promising “Shelled Peas! Melon! Jacksonville Tomatoes!” and, if you’re very lucky, one of those signs will hold the seven juiciest letters in the summer alphabet: p-e-a-c-h-e-s.

I don’t care if your wife is in labor or you’re already late for a funeral — when you see one of those signs, you pull over just as fast as you can. Take the two minutes to hand over a couple crumpled bills for that precious mound of homegrown peaches, almost always balanced in a little basket, then carefully dumped in a plastic Wal-mart bag for your enjoyment. At least when you get back in the car and time rushes you on, you can dampen its obnoxious ticking with your first bite of that gorgeous, peachy flesh.