SCENE 1
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| crenshaw melon a winter melon also known as a 'crane'. |
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| canary melon an inodorous melon whose flesh is sweet |
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If there is a general sense of melon malaise in America, I believe it stems from
the fact that melons are, by and large, kind of tricky to peel and portion. Now
believe me, I've peeled and portioned a lot of melons in my time, and I do
believe that this is the best way. All you need is a good cutting board and a
serrated bread knife.
Start by cutting a wee little pancake off of both the vine end and the blossom
end. There. Now the orb will stand in an upright, secure position. Now place
your knife at the top of the peel and use a short sawing motion to the bottom.
Turn the melon a few degrees and repeat, starting the cut right at the edge of
the old one. And just work your way all the way around.
Try not to take too much melon, but you do want to get all the green off. There.
Now we split longitudinally and remove the seeds. I think I'll go to the sink
for this.
When it comes to seed removal, you've got 2 options. You can use an oversized
service spoon, but I personally find this a little clunky. I just go with the
clean hand method. Nice and simple.
When it comes to slicing, place the halves down and cut from end to end in
half-inch slices. Just like down at the old breakfast bar. Now some of you may
be
tempted to employ a melon-baller when it comes to melon portioning. After
all, this is named for a melon. It makes sense. But I think there's a little bit
of waste going on here. What do you think? [holds up a musk melon with lots of
holes but lots of waste] Well now that you've got the
cantaloupe ... oh, sorry, musk melon down ... how about we super-size our melon?
With the possible exception of a very large Thanksgiving turkey, this is
probably the largest thing you will ever try to disassemble in your kitchen. But
it's going to be tougher than carving up a turkey because it is very hard on the
outside and it is a heck of a lot rounder than a turkey. But believe it or not,
we can use the exact same methodology as we employed on our musk melon, although
I am going to switch over to a motorized electric serrated knife. And you can
see, I've armed myself for a little bit more mess. [he's wearing a plastic
poncho]
Step one, turn the watermelon
so that the flattest spot, the ground spot, is facing downward. That gives us a
relatively stable surface.
First, take off both ends of the watermelon so that you can stand it up. Then
just start filleting off the sides, one by one.
Oh, melon juice is really hard to get off leather, so you may want to get rid of
that [watch with leather wrist band] before you go any further.
Try to remove as much of the white as you can while leaving as much of the red
as possible. Portion by laying it down and cutting into 2-inch rounds. Then
stack up those rounds and cut them into pie-like wedges.
Oh, it's full. [the container holding the watermelon portions] I guess I'll just have to eat this. Pity.
You know, etiquette books written in the early 20th century, say that
watermelon seed spitting is perfectly polite. Mmm. This stuff's good and good
for you. Melon's an excellent source of folate, fiber, potassium. Some have
added doses of beta-carotene, vitamin C, iron, phosphorous and magnesium. And
watermelon is one of the only foods that delivers more of the anti-oxidant
lycopene than tomatoes. Mmm. Only tomatoes don't have seeds for spitting. Dang.
The world record watermelon seed spit: over 60 feet.
Use the word cooking and melon in the same sentence and a lot of melon lovers will look at you like you just got off the ship from, I don't know, Romulus 5. And that is a real shame because although they are really great when they are raw, melons bloom best when the heat is on. The secret is to use really, really, really high heat. How much heat are we talking? Wok this way.
Now this hot melon salad is a stir fry, which means we are going to use a wok
over a very, very powerful burner. Now you could do this in a really big
skillet, you know, in the kitchen. But the truth is, skillets aren't very good
for keeping a large amount of food moving, and most American cook tops don't
generate enough fire power. There aren't enough BTUs to really get this thing as
hot as we want it to be. Now this is going to happen very, very quickly. Once we
get started, the culinary train won't be a-stoppin'. So make sure you have all
of your mise en place, that's French for everything in place, in place.
Now we have to check to see if the wok is hot enough. We do that with just a
little bit of water. When it does that [flash boils], we definitely know it's hot enough. So
here we go. I'll wipe out the water.
| A tablespoon and a half of olive oil goes down. Quickly swirl. One red onion, small, sliced thin. I'm going to toss that for just maybe 30 seconds to a minute. |
1 1/2 Tbs. Olive Oil 1 Small Red Onion Slice Thin |
| Next up, the melon: 16 ounces of melon; that's about 2 cups. Now I like to use a mixture. I've got honeydew here, along with canta ... sorry, musk melon. It goes right into the pan. There'll be a lot of steam. Don't be alarmed. Now we're going to toss this and let it cook for about another minute, or just until the melon starts to take on a little color around the edges. | 16 Ounces Diced Melon |
And I should add: anytime that you're cooking outside with charcoal, or with LP gas as I am here, you always want to have ... [holds up a fire extinguisher] I don't even need to say it, do I? Hopefully we never will need it, but at least we've got it here.
| There. Now the melon is just about done. So I'm going to add a tablespoon of basil chiffonade, a very, very fine shred. That's going to release the flavor very quickly. Another pinch of salt and about half a teaspoon of black pepper. And we'll let that cook just until the basil becomes fragrant. |
1 Tbs. Basil Chiffonade 1/2 tsp. Kosher Salt 1/2 tsp. Black Pepper |
| There. As you can see, we're getting some nice color around on the melon, and the onion is definitely cooked, so I think it's time to exit the pan. But first, 2 teaspoons of red wine vinegar. That's just going to up the acidity because high heat has a tendency to lower the acidity of fruit. | 2 tsp. Red Wine Vinegar |
| There we go. Now this is going to go straight into our serving bowl and 2 ounces of feta cheese goes over that, and a tablespoon of toasted pine nuts. There we go. And we have the, well, the dish that breaks all the melon rules, a hot melon salad. Oh, got to turn this off. |
2 Ounces Feta Cheese 1 Tbs. Toasted Pine Nuts |
| casaba melon inodorous melon with great flavor |
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| orange fleshed
honeydew a winter melon considered
to |
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GUEST: Thing
Mmm. You know, heat may be a treat, but the amazing melon can deliver equal pleasure on the opposite side of the thermal wheel. I speak, of course, of the frozen delight known as sorbet. Now granted, the juice of just about any fruit can be made into sorbet, but melons are particularly well-suited to the task because their flavor and aroma come through even when they're very, very cold. And since their flesh is very smooth when pureed, you don't have to strain out any pulp. That means more fiber in the juice and that means a smoother texture. [tries to get some of the sorbet out of a container, but it's frozen solid] Okay, so we still have a little texture problem here. That could be caused by the fact that melons are about 90 percent water, and when water freezes, well, you know. So how can we convert this hard iciness into something a little bit more palatable? By adding antifreeze.
THING: [hands AB a bottle of car antifreeze]
AB: Edible antifreeze, that is.
GUESTS: 8 Woman Synchronized Swimming Team
SWIMMERS: [the swimmers form a large circle around AB who is standing the middle of a pool]
Let's pretend for a moment that these swimmers are water molecules inside our melon. Now as they get closer to the freezing point, they are going to slow down. Eventually, they'll hook together in a crystalline structure we call ice.
SWIMMERS: [the swimmers move closer and then form a square around AB]
Lovely though it is, this is a bad thing for us, because it means that eventually our sorbet will be hard as a rock. Nope. If we're going to keep our sorbet soft and scoop-able, we're going to have to prevent some of these water molecules from joining that crystalline structure. How are we going to do it? We're going to bind them up with sugar.
SWIMMERS: [4 of the swimmers have plastic tubes tossed over their heads]
So now when we churn our sorbet, we'll end up with zillions of eentsy beentsy little ice crystals ...
SWIMMERS: [only 4 of the swimmers can form a square which is now much smaller]
... completely surrounded by a very saturated sugar solution. In other words, a sorbet is really just a slush that remains scoop-able and soft, even at freezer temperatures.
Dating from 1585 sorbet was originally a cool drink made from fruit.
Weigh out 1 pound, 5 ounces of watermelon and puree in your food processor. This
is going to yield about 3 cups of puree total. There. Now move that to a
work bowl and mix with 2 cups of granulated sugar. And make sure you stir it
until the sugar is thoroughly dissolved. Then move it to the fridge.
So why bother putting this in the refrigerator when we're just going to turn
around and throw it in an ice cream churn? Because the faster the mixture
freezes in the churn, the finer the sorbet texture is going to be. So it makes
sense that we should have the mixture as cold as possible before it goes in the
churn to cut down on the freezing time. So give it at least 2 hours in your
fridge.
Now churn according to the instructions supplied by your churn's manufacturer. And remember, these cores need to freeze for a full 24 hours before you use
them. Then you can generally get 2 batches out of them before refreezing. Oh,
and always make sure that the machine is running when the mixture goes in.
Now in 20 to 25 minutes this is going to be as set as it's ever going to get
inside the churn. So we're going to remove it and get it into the freezer to
harden for several hours.
| galia melon a hybrid of a muskmelon & a honeydew |
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| santa claus also known as the 'Burse Turkey' |
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| Musk Melon
a mid-season melon named for |
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Ah, melon sorbet. And you can really smell the melon. Well, I can. You, you probably can't. Let's see how it tastes. Mmm. Well, the texture's dead-on perfect but it's a little on the sweet side. Like a ton of cotton candy sweet. I think we're going to have to replace some of our sugar antifreeze with, well, consider the following.
Whew! On the fateful night of April 14, 1912, Chief Baker, Charles Joughin, just
jumped off the back of the Titanic and started swimming. Now after frolicking
with the ice floes for a couple of hours, he was fished out of the chilly drink
by some nice people in a passing lifeboat. When questioned as to how he possibly
could have survived in those temperatures, he said that it was probably because
he was tanked to the gills on brandy. And he could be right. If he had enough
alcohol in his blood, it could have acted as a kind of antifreeze.
Now what does
this have to do with making sorbet? Well it means that if we replace some of the
sugar with alcohol, we can preserve that texture we've come to know and love
while getting rid of some of the sweetness. What kind of alcohol should we use?
Well, heck, nothing wrong with good old vodka. After all, it is relatively
neutral in flavor. Of course, Midori would be nice too, seeing how it's made
from melon and all.
| This time, we'll take the very same 1 pound, 5 ounces of melon, and we'll puree it again in our food processor. But that's not all. This time we're going to add 3 tablespoons of lemon juice. And of course, fresh-squeezed would be superior to the store-bought type. Then 2 tablespoons of vodka. But wait, there's more. Since we're thinking ahead, no reason not to go ahead and add 9 ounces of sugar. That's about one and a quarter cups. |
1 Pound 5 Ounces Melon 3 Tbs. Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice 2 Tbs. Vodka 9 Ounces Sugar |
[runs the mixture through the churn] Although you could certainly consume your young sorbet in its current slushy
state, I strongly advise that you stash this in your freezer and allow it to
harden for 3 to 4 hours. Believe me, your patience will be rewarded.
I hope that we've helped you to find a new perspective on a family of fruits that you may have taken just a wee bit for granted in the past. The melons. You know, there's no real mystery to melons. But if there's a trick, I'd say that it's in finding ripe melons in season, which as far as I'm concerned, is the only time they should be consumed. Luckily, they grow just about year-round somewhere in the world and they ship pretty easily. So you're in luck. Once you know how to pick them, sky's the limit.
J: Did I hear you say pick 'em? Well, you got any feelings about this here honeydew?
See you next time on Good Eats.
J: All right then, what about this casaba here? I tell you what, AB, I'll split
the action with you 70-30.
AB: 70-30?
JIMMY: 60-40 then. All right, all right. 50-50. And I tell you what, I'll even make you
my 5-star lock of the week. What do you say, AB?
Transcribed by Mike Diruscio
Proofread by Michael Menninger
Last Edited on 08/27/2010
I wonder what old Jimmy would think of my melons. You know, this is a pretty
enigmatic fruit, a vegetal Mona Lisa, whose exterior reveals very little of the
interior.