{"id":1629,"date":"2006-08-29T03:18:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-29T03:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elitemporaryblog.wordpress.com\/2006\/08\/29\/a-melon-made-sippable"},"modified":"2015-09-24T03:54:03","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T03:54:03","slug":"a-melon-made-sippable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2006\/08\/a-melon-made-sippable\/","title":{"rendered":"A melon made sippable"},"content":{"rendered":"
For someone who expends a lot of energy on her meals, I\u2019m a tad lazy when it comes to their attendant beverages. I mean, I like a good glass of wine\u2014or beer, or Lillet<\/a>, or port, or gin\u2014as much as the next girl, but for me, it\u2019s kind of an afterthought. I need something to moisten the taste buds<\/strong>, of course, but it\u2019s secondary to the meal itself. In some circles, this is tantamount to blasphemy, I know, but eh, well, it\u2019s just the way I am.<\/p>\n I could, I guess, blame it on my laughable inability to hold my liquor. (Legend has it that I once had a couple of beers and, with a slow roll of the head, innocently asked, \u201cHow many sheets to the wind<\/a> is it, again?\u201d) But that\u2019s not entirely it. After all, the second-class status of beverages<\/strong> in my book is not limited to those alcoholic. Heck, I can\u2019t even remember the last time I had a cup of tea or coffee\u2014an admission that may cause me to lose, sob!,<\/em> all social standing in Seattle\u2014and come to think of it, I seem to only drink juice on special mornings involving menus and waitresses and tables sticky with syrup. Most of the time, I just drink water. I am very well hydrated, and boring<\/strong>. But give me a beer, and I swear, I can make up for the boring part before the bottle is even empty. You won\u2019t believe how entertaining I am.<\/p>\n Now, all this said, you can well imagine my surprise when, yesterday evening, as the clock turned to dinner, my eye fell upon a ripe French Orange melon in our refrigerator, and my first instinct was oddly not to slice it and eat it, but rather to <\/span>sip<\/em> it<\/span>, of all things. This melon would have been fine, mind you, on the end of a fork or cradled in a spoon, but something took hold of me, and by god, it wanted a beverage<\/em>.<\/p>\n A glass of this would make a perfect partner for a platter of prosciutto or Serrano ham, or slices of baguette with butter, radish slivers, and salt. We quaffed ours with a salad of sliced lemon cucumbers, which we then chased with warm ratatouille, poached eggs, and baguette. With the possible exception of the melon itself, straight up, it\u2019s hard to imagine anything better suited to a late-August evening. And for a beverage, you know, that means a lot.<\/p>\n<\/a>
So, working from a rough soup recipe that came with our CSA box, we whizzed together cubes of juicy melon with wine, lime juice, a pinch of salt, and just enough sugar to make the fruit sit up and sing. For this type of melon, it didn\u2019t take much: a hybrid cross between the smooth-skinned French Charentais melon and the more nubbly, netted-skinned American cantaloupe, the dainty French Orange has sweet, dense, silky flesh <\/a>and a rich, pregnant aroma that fills the kitchen. Its flavor is not unlike a cantaloupe\u2014but the best cantaloupe to ever cross your lips<\/strong>. And made sippable with lime and sauvignon blanc, cross the lips it does, easily.<\/p>\n