There's More to Melon Than Fruit Salad Filler

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

Some call it “fruit salad filler”. I call it one of the world’s most underrated fruit categories. Whatever you call it, chances are there is more to the humble melon than meets the eye. With flesh in shades of pale tangerine and translucent lime green, melons like cantaloupe and honeydew are the most recognized and perhaps most passed-over of the fruits on your typical fruit tray. But with new varieties of melon from Central Asia popping up in American fields and making their way to US markets, the melon might be on the verge of a resurgence. It may be time to consider the melon, both old and new, and the ways to make it more than just filler on the fruit salad tray.

The name “melon” refers to both the plant and the fruit of the modified berry that grows on vines and that we commonly see in large round or oval forms in the market. For cooking purposes, we most often categorize melons like watermelon and cantaloupe as fruit, but bitter melons and winter melons of the same family are used as vegetables, showing up in savory dishes across Asia as well as parts of the Caribbean and South America. It is from the genus Cucumus melo that most fruit melons we know, such as honeydew and cantaloupe, are derived. Each of these often large orbs shares the characteristics of a thick rind with webbed or smooth hard skin on the exterior. It is the interior soft flesh that is eaten after scooping out and discarding the netted seeds in the center.

When melons are good they are great. The sweet musky notes of a cantaloupe and the lighter cloying honeydew can stand alone as a meal when they are at their peak. Too often however the flavor has been bred out of the once glorious fruit leaving a watery taste and grainy texture. With such bad commercial breeding results it is no small wonder that melons in American have been relegated to such a low status on the fruit totem pole.

Unlike most fruits such as berries, apples, pears, and peaches, melons do not lend themselves to traditional dessert roles such as fillers for pies, cakes, and tarts. This is why perhaps it is time to consider the possibilities for melon outside of traditional fruit roles. When melons are good, and this is the time of year when they are, it is worth considering their repositioning from lonely fruit outcast in a salad bowl to a key player in savory dishes instead.

Melons already make occasional appearances on late summer menus in the starter section, often paired with prosciutto and a good olive oil or pureed for a light, chilled soup. A salty, fatty prosciutto or Iberico jamon is a good foil for honey sweet cantaloupe. Drizzled with a bit of green and grassy olive oil the dish can almost stand alone as a light lunch. Honeydew can be brightened up with chili, lime, some mint and brown sugar to taste, whizzed together in a blender for chilled soup on the table in minutes.

I have recently seen melons served two ways that have me thinking about using them as key components of main courses as well. A rather good vegetarian chef recently served a hearty lunch where the central dish consisted of warm lentils with cubed cantaloupe over romaine greens. I recreated this at home substituting canned cannellini beans quickly stewed in white wine and herbs with a very simple balsamic and olive oil vinaigrette. A little shredded prosciutto satisfied the carnivore in me, although it was certainly filling and flavorful enough to stand up as fully vegetarian meal on its own.

The other savory meal was a bit more surprising. Unlike Americans who treat melons as second class citizens of the world of fruit, Asians from the realms of Uzbekistan and Afghanistan to the plains of China revere their multitudinous melon varieties. At a typical Cantonese restaurant on a recent trip to Hong Kong, a Chinese diner at a neighboring table suggested I try the melon soup. Although it was translated as a cantaloupe, the way that the orange flesh dissolved on contact with my spoon into the rich pork broth suggested it really could have been any variety of melon common in this part of the world, from popular Chinese Hami melon or the similar looking, milder European cantaloupe which we eat extensively in the States. Whichever it was, combined with what appeared to be slivers of ginseng and bits of stewed pork shoulder, the result was a satisfyingly rich and earthy broth with sweetness from the melon that melted in and married to the broth as soon as my spoon cracked the surface.

Like the red headed step child of the world of fruit, melons have too long been cast aside as the poor man’s fruit filler. But as any Mad Men devotee can attest, a red headded Joan can really steal the scene when given the proper role to play. So consider the melon in spite of its fruit moniker to be more of a key player in savory portions of the meal and you might just find yourself giving melon the credit it so rightfully deserves.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 2 cans (14 ounce size) cannellini beans
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic
• 8 fresh sage leaves
• 3/4 cup white wine
• 3 hearts of romaine
• 1 small cantaloupe
• balsamic vinegar
• olive oil
• salt
• black pepper
• 1/4 pound prosciutto (optional)