Recipe of the Day - September 21 (melon soup)

[JadziaDax]

Melon Soup

When is the best time to eat a melon? Once it begins to soften and before it breaks down.

Judging the worth of many melons is literally right in your hands and under your thumb. Use your sense of touch to detect nuances of softening. Go straight to the melon's blossom end: the base of the fruit, opposite the stem. A melon is ready to pick or eat when the skin is fairy easy to depress.

Ingredients
6 lbs of your favorite ripe melon
2 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons lime juice
additional melon for garnish

Preparation
Peel, seed, and chunk the melon.

Combine with orange juice and lime juice and puree in a blender or food processor.

Finely mince additional melon pieces to make melon confetti and sprinkle over the soup.

Serves 5

[collide]

Best served chilled? I think I'd need some visuals for this one.

[Chingal0]

Melon Soup! Excellent! Buried deep in the cooking forum!


Some Martha Stewart variety. Looks funky to me.


Maybe more traditional. Still Martha tho.

Anyways, Melon soup is delicious, especially in spring/summer. Served chilled, its quite refreshing.

Possibly add mint to the recipe above. Salt too, just a little.

[collide]

Hmm, the second one looks more appetizing. This I'll probably save for a sunny day.

[Chingal0]

Also, I forgot to add...

Using other liquids besides OJ is good too. Champagne works well, reduced wines for say, watermelon soup works good too.

Dessert soups are also kinda interesting and fun. We did alot of them this summer, mango, strawberry, papaya, pineapple, etc. They are super easy and you can combine the 2 like in the top picture to contrast the color and flavors, making them elegant.

Im not quite sure of the exact recipe, but basic mango soup (dessert) is ..

Mangos - Peeled and cut into chunks your blender can handle (Ripe or unripe, you can sweeten them later)
Sugar to taste, probably 1c for 4 mangos
tiny tiny pinch of salt
Liquid to thin so the mango will blend - I suggest using champagne, reisling, oj, water, simple syrup or whatever else you want to experiment with. Water works, but imparting flavor with another liquid makes it that much better.
Lemon or Lime juice and/or zest - Mince zest or use a Microplane so you arent eating chunks of it

Basically puree your mango with liquid, you can strain thru cheesecloth or your basic strainer if you want, unstrained leaves texture which may be desirable or no, its your soup. Then add sugar to taste, should be sweet since its a dessert. Add juice and/or zest. Chill and serve.

Ill work on exact amounts as this is a tad cryptic, but I do 3-4 cases of mango at a time, and unless you are feeding 50-75, I doubt youll need that much.