On using melon in savoury dishes
First up, I'm feeling quite a lot better these days. I have emergency painkillers for the when and not if, a referral to a surgical practice and frankly haven't been in pain since last weekend. I'm watching what I eat and trying to cook as much as possible. As luck would have it, work has slowed down enough that I have time to do this on most nights.
Our biweekly farm box is in full melon and grape season right now. It used to be I wouldn't get melons outside of shark fin melons (whose flesh I can freeze for months to throw into soup) because even when you get just one melon it always feel like too much melon. It's compounded by the fact once you open a melon, you then have to finish it within a few days if you can. Savoury melons, such as winter melons, aren't really a thing in America. I sometimes see it at the nearest Vietnamese market and virtually never get it. I actually really like winter melons it's just that hauling home a melon plus all the other Asia staples I buy takes some planning. Lately though I've been having a weird craving for honey melon and chicken salad. This was a staple appetizer in pretty much every Chinese wedding banquet I attended as a child. It's easy to see why. Throwing together melon, boiled chicken and mayonnaise takes little effort in bulk. It was one of my favourite dishes at those banquets because it's extremely kid friendly.
I'm pretty sure the dish itself is a recent invention in Cantonese cuisine as mayonnaise really only became popular once urban supermarkets were both part of the landscape and carried it. My suspicion is that the original salads probably used sweet Japanese mayonnaise, making the whole dish closer to Turkish chicken breast pudding in its sweetness. (Kids like this dish for a reason!) Ottoman palace chefs were the pioneers of throwing chicken and melon together and stuffing meat in sweet melons. As this recipe (which clearly is my next goal) states, there is a certain drama to opening the lid of a melon and revealing the hidden treasures within. An extra fancy way to make winter melon soup is to hollow and fill a melon with the soup ingredients, covering it with the melon top and steaming the whole thing for several hours. The soup is then served straight out of the melon at the table.
I was able to get unusual melon varietals with our farm box-it's actually one of the primary pleasures of my farm box, finding odd heirloom varieties of common food just to see what they taste like. In this I am not unlike my cat, for whom all food is subject to random cat tasting for quality assurance. Yes, he likes my melon and chicken salad. It has bird and a form of cream sauce. When I last made the salad, I had intended to read a book while eating. Instead, I had a cat loafed up on top of the open book, mincing closer to my food over the course of 30 minutes. How could I suspect such a cute, patient and clearly decorative creature of ill-intent?
I've also begun using the runaway shiso crop sitting on my porch in things not sushi. When life gives you shiso...you figure out how many things you can stuff shiso in. It looks like one can enclose small patties of meat in shiso before pan-frying, for example, so minced meat is in my immediate future. I had also seen Korean supermarkets carry what they call perilla kimchi pickled in a soy sauce solution. A quick look online yielded a fairly simple mix of soy sauce, fish sauce and garlic, which you marinate shiso leaves in for a few hours before using. I used this as the main flavouring in Vietnamese spring rolls with tofu and cheese as the main protein filling between vegetables, and they came out great. I'll probably try making a cooked vegetable leaf as a wrapper at some point. Apparently, collard greens are a good choice for that rather than cabbage. It would allow me to stuff more things in there given how large the leaves are. Then there's the actual Korean use of their perilla kimchi, which is to wrap mouthfuls of plain rice in it at the table, like they would with pieces of dried seaweed (I love doing this). Shiso can additionally be used as a substitute for basil. Clearly there is also pasta in my future.
Our biweekly farm box is in full melon and grape season right now. It used to be I wouldn't get melons outside of shark fin melons (whose flesh I can freeze for months to throw into soup) because even when you get just one melon it always feel like too much melon. It's compounded by the fact once you open a melon, you then have to finish it within a few days if you can. Savoury melons, such as winter melons, aren't really a thing in America. I sometimes see it at the nearest Vietnamese market and virtually never get it. I actually really like winter melons it's just that hauling home a melon plus all the other Asia staples I buy takes some planning. Lately though I've been having a weird craving for honey melon and chicken salad. This was a staple appetizer in pretty much every Chinese wedding banquet I attended as a child. It's easy to see why. Throwing together melon, boiled chicken and mayonnaise takes little effort in bulk. It was one of my favourite dishes at those banquets because it's extremely kid friendly.
I'm pretty sure the dish itself is a recent invention in Cantonese cuisine as mayonnaise really only became popular once urban supermarkets were both part of the landscape and carried it. My suspicion is that the original salads probably used sweet Japanese mayonnaise, making the whole dish closer to Turkish chicken breast pudding in its sweetness. (Kids like this dish for a reason!) Ottoman palace chefs were the pioneers of throwing chicken and melon together and stuffing meat in sweet melons. As this recipe (which clearly is my next goal) states, there is a certain drama to opening the lid of a melon and revealing the hidden treasures within. An extra fancy way to make winter melon soup is to hollow and fill a melon with the soup ingredients, covering it with the melon top and steaming the whole thing for several hours. The soup is then served straight out of the melon at the table.
I was able to get unusual melon varietals with our farm box-it's actually one of the primary pleasures of my farm box, finding odd heirloom varieties of common food just to see what they taste like. In this I am not unlike my cat, for whom all food is subject to random cat tasting for quality assurance. Yes, he likes my melon and chicken salad. It has bird and a form of cream sauce. When I last made the salad, I had intended to read a book while eating. Instead, I had a cat loafed up on top of the open book, mincing closer to my food over the course of 30 minutes. How could I suspect such a cute, patient and clearly decorative creature of ill-intent?
I've also begun using the runaway shiso crop sitting on my porch in things not sushi. When life gives you shiso...you figure out how many things you can stuff shiso in. It looks like one can enclose small patties of meat in shiso before pan-frying, for example, so minced meat is in my immediate future. I had also seen Korean supermarkets carry what they call perilla kimchi pickled in a soy sauce solution. A quick look online yielded a fairly simple mix of soy sauce, fish sauce and garlic, which you marinate shiso leaves in for a few hours before using. I used this as the main flavouring in Vietnamese spring rolls with tofu and cheese as the main protein filling between vegetables, and they came out great. I'll probably try making a cooked vegetable leaf as a wrapper at some point. Apparently, collard greens are a good choice for that rather than cabbage. It would allow me to stuff more things in there given how large the leaves are. Then there's the actual Korean use of their perilla kimchi, which is to wrap mouthfuls of plain rice in it at the table, like they would with pieces of dried seaweed (I love doing this). Shiso can additionally be used as a substitute for basil. Clearly there is also pasta in my future.