Giada at Home: Family Recipes from Italy and California
Recipe Review
Queezle_Sister from Salt Lake City, UT
Summy melon - delicious and sweet with crunchy sugar flavored with mint.
This recipe calls for watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew, but who could never store all 3 in their refrigerator? My daughter has been wanting to make this, and we finally decided to give it a go with just cantaloupe.
Shaving the melon was a bit tricky - slices are cut with a vegetable peeler - parallel to where the seeds had been. We happened to have both a very ripe and a slightly green melon (thank you CSA farmer). We started with the ripe one, but it was very hard to get the think shaved slices (mostly a puddle of melon juice). The less ripe one worked much better. I think a newer/sharper peeler would also have helped.
The stunning addiiton of a granular sugar mixed with fresh mint really elevated this recipe. It not only gave a cool mint flavor, but the sugar gave an awesome crunch. I hope to borrow this mint sugar idea for other desserts.
UPDATE: This mint sugar, on slices of fresh (local) peaches, and a bit of yogurt was amazing!
Comments
friederike - 9th September 2012
I'm not really sure how you make the mint sugar - do you just pestle the mint leaves with some sugar and then let it sit for a while? It reminds me very much of the basil sugar my MIL once made and served with peaches - very delicious!
Queezle_Sister - 9th September 2012
Basil sugar - you (your MIL) are a genius!
I think we just finely chopped the mint and then mixed it with a fairly large-crystal sugar.
good luck and let us know how it goes.
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