Watermelon, Feta, and Mint Salad

I've made this salad twice already this week. They serve it at Kramerbooks in Dupont Circle alongside a pulled pork sandwich, but it's good with everything. Seriously. Everything.

When the Human Vacuum and I hit Costco last weekend, they were hawking seedless watermelon two-packs. What kind of gluttons manage to consume two watermelons in less that 5 days? People who know about this delicious salad.

It's a refreshing breakfast. It's a marvelous side salad. It's a fruit and cheese dessert course. It truly can be all things to all people.

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Watermelon, Feta, and Mint Salad

In a large bowl, whisk together:
2 Tablespoons olive oil
Juice of one lemon (or other acid, such as rice wine or fruit vinegar)

Cut into small dice and add to dressing:
1/4 of a red onion

Cut into 1 inch dice and add to bowl:
1 seedless watermelon (or buy precut, I don't mind)

Crumble in:
1 chunk feta cheese, approximately the size of a deck of cards

Roughly chop and sprinkle on:
5-6 fresh mint leaves

Stir and begin to consume immediately, standing in the kitchen, before summer is gone.

NOTE: Delicious variations include adding toasted pine nuts, replacing feta with olives, replacing watermelon with honeydew. But the original is the best.

Cucumber Tangerine Salad with Goat Cheese and Pine Nuts

The name pretty much tells you everything you need to know--this salad sounds like a crazy person assembled it. But it tastes like that crazy person was really an idiot savant de salade. It's in the same spirit as the even crazier, even more delicious dish at the longstanding D.C. Greek and Turkish tapas hotspot, Zatiniya. There, they call it "Portakal Salatasi" which the menus describes as "oranges, red onion, pine nuts, kalamata olives and feta with orange blossom dressing."

You should really go to Zantiniya (Hint: Go early so that don't have to wait with the beautiful people at the bar for an eternity. The place is very chic) and have their version. But failing that, this is a tasty, quickie at-home version that omits the olives and is therefore slightly less threatening and more of a go-along-to-get-along side salad.

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Cucumber Tangerine Salad with Goat Cheese and Pine Nuts

In a dry pan, gently toast until golden:
1/4 cup pine nuts

Cut in quarters lengthwise:
1 English seedless cucumber (or a normal cuke, if that's what you have)

Peel and de-pith:
1 tangerine, mandarin, or other small orange-like fruit
Pull segments apart and cut each one in half.

Combine all of the above in a bowl, and toss with:
1 Tablespoon white vinegar (I used rice wine vinegar)
1 teaspoon rosewater or orangeflower water (optional)
1/2 teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste

Crumble on top:
2 Tablespoons goat cheese

Refrigerate until serving.

Beets and Cheese

The second in a series of odd eating when the Human Vacuum is out of town.

I consoled myself over the H.V.'s departure by buying about $30 worth of fancy cheese. One of the sillier purchases was a tiny glass jar of something called Miticrema, which I now know is a soft cream cheese-like sheep's milk cheese with a yogurty tang. I didn't know what it was when I bought it, of course. I'm just a sucker for tiny glass jars of expensive foodstuffs (see fig spread, caviar, french full fat yogurt, saffron, et al.)

Elsewhere in the grocery cart, a significantly less expensive pair of beets. I've never really loved beets. In salad bars, I find them quite alarming, lying there in coins that bleed magenta into the bin of chickpeas next door. But the recent craze for salads of layered roasted beet and goat cheese and walnuts/whatever in snooty restaurants has convinced me that I have been giving beets short shift. Having never bought a beet in my life, now was the time to face the beast, err, beet on my own turf. This dish always has a fancy description on restaurant menus, like "roasted beet napoleon" or something silly. You know what it really is? Beets and cheese, thank you very much.

And what better way to face the unfamiliar than with cheese?

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Beets and Cheese

Turn the oven on to 450 degrees.

Wrap in foil:
1 beet, peeled
Put it in the oven (no need to wait for it to preheat). After an hour or so, unwrap the beet and stick a knife in to make sure it's soft and tender. If not, rewrap and give it another 10 minutes or so.

Slice the beet into rounds and rub on a little:
Balsamic vinegar (I used a nifty fig balsamic which was a gift from my oldest ToastFriend, which added even more rich sweetness to the beet)

Then build a tower of alternating layers of beet and:
Spoonfuls of miticrema, goat cheese, or other creamy, strongly-flavored cheese

Eat standing up in the kitchen with a side of leftover chickpeas from a pan in the fridge. Or as a fancy hors d'oeuvre. Whatever.

(Note: I could only make myself eat about half of a beet in this manner--the cheese is quite rich.)