Chilled Spicy Watermelon Soup with Crab Meat

Sweet, simple, spicy, and delicious. K came home with a watermelon the other day and, after tasting some delectable watermelon dishes which paired the sweet fruit with savory fare, I concocted a chilled summer shellfish soup. Here's the (non)recipe:

• Cut up enough watermelon to fit in a normal sized food processor. Process.
• Sweat some garlic, shallots, lemongrass, jalepenos, and ginger (I use my microplane with frozen ginger to keep things simple).
• Dump the pureed watermelon into the pot. Throw in some salt, black pepper, and cilantro, with some extra jalapeno to taste.
• Whip out your immersion blender. Immerse. Blend.
• Chill the new puree (or, if you like, strain it first)
• Form a mound of lump crabmeat (I use high quality canned claw meat) in the center of the bowl, slice some more jalepenos on top, and gently pour the chilled soup around the shellfish.

Les Philosophes (2/3)

A watermelon, blender, and a handful of spices walk into a bar. Bartender says, "You three think you're so cool, don't you?"

Watermelon soup. Chilled. Oh. Yes.

Mango Madness

I seem somehow to have lifted my food curse. Dinner was really pretty great tonight. With tropical humidity here in NYC this weekend (YUCK!!!) I decided to purchase a bunch of mangoes and see what I could come up with.

Mango Gazpacho with Shrimp
This is actually much easier than it sounds because if you can dig up all of the ingredients and a blender, it's pretty hard to screw it up. Take about 8 vine-ripened tomatoes and peel them (much simpler if you cut an "x" at the bottom and blanch them for 1 minute before shocking them in an ice bath. ) Chop them up and throw them into a bowl along with half a cucumber diced, half of yellow onion diced, half of a red onion chopped, 2 pressed cloves of garlic, and 2 minced jalapenos. In a food processor, blend together the juice of 1 lemon and 3 or 4 glugs of good olive oil. Put it on pulse and pour in the bowl of veggies, chopping until it is "rustically" textured (soupy but chunky). Add the zest of one lemon, the zest of one lime, and about 4 inches of microplaned ginger, as well as salt and pepper to taste. Pour into a large bowl and stir in 2 roughly chopped mangoes and about a dozen small boiled or steamed shrimp (or you can chop up larger ones if that's all you can get). Garnish with cilantro and lime. Sweet, salty, spicy, scrumptious!

Mango and Brie Quesadillas
Do all of your prep ahead of time, with piles of mango, sliced brie, jalapenos, and cilantro ready to go so your tortillas don't burn. Get a cast-iron or nonstick toasty over medium heat. Place a tortilla on it and move quickly. On half of the tortilla, layer sliced mango, brie, minced jalapenos, and chopped cilantro and fold the other half of the tortilla over omelette style. Press down with a spatula until the top sticks to the bottom. Let it cook on that side for no more than 45 seconds and then flip. Serve it with a cool sauce made of non-fat sour cream, the juice of 1 lime, lime zest, and chopped cilantro and garnish with a few more slices of mango. This dish is both refreshing and decadent. (Oh, and you might have noticed my dog Ben hiding underneath the table; he LOVES mangoes!)

If you're looking for a wine pairing for all of this (or if you're too tired to blend up some margaritas or Cran-quilas!), I suggest Cambrago's Soave Classico 2005. As the wine store clerk said, if you can deal with the fact that it's got Soave written on the label, it's actually a really great wine, and a nice bargain at $13.95.