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It’s been just more than a year since I moved to Oakland, California from Iowa City, Iowa, but I’m still dazzled by the farmer’s markets out here. Every time I go, it seems, I find something new to turn into a delicious dish. This week, it was an Ogen melon.
On Friday, thanks to a much-needed holiday, I had time to run down to the Old Oakland farmer’s market. While walking around the market, I noticed a young boy at the Hamada Farms stand offering samples on toothpicks of a small melon about the size of a pomelo. I made a note to come back after my initial swing through the market to have a taste and see if I wanted to buy a melon or two.
There’s a rule of farmer’s markets, though, and that is that you should try things when they’re offered and buy things that might run out on the first pass, and I violated the first half of the rule, in this case. By the time I returned, the young boy shrugged when I asked what the melon tasted like. “I had samples,” he said. “But I ran out.”
He called his father over to tell me about the melons, which I didn’t recognize. “Ogen melons,” he said. “They’re something like honeydew.”
I bought one and took it home, planning to make it part of my Fourth of July dinner. I wanted to celebrate Independence Day this year by eating a fully-local meal, and decided to combine the melon with an English cucumber bought from the Wilson Farms stand, and goat’s milk feta from Spring Hill Cheese Co. in Petaluma, California.
I managed to show absolutely zero food-shopping self-control and ended up at the Grand-Lake farmer’s market on Saturday, a trip that yielded, among other things, a bunch of purple basil from Capay Farms, which would offer some contrasting color to the cool green of the melon and cucumber.
The salad came together beautifully on Saturday night: Indeed, the Hamada Farms salesman was correct, and the Ogen melon is quite similar to honeydew. The one I purchased was so ripe it
almost split just when I touched the knife to its rind, and its sweet juices paired beautifully with the salty feta and the cool cucumber. The purple basil added flavor, and some salt and fresh-ground pepper amped up the flavor and added some savory sass to the mixture. For those who would like some proportions, I used about half an English cucumber, peeled and cubed, along with the full melon and about 2 ounces of feta, crumbled. I wanted a ratio of about two parts melon to one part cucumber.
This salad would have worked just as well with watermelon, had I chosen to go that route. In fact, fellow BlogHer Contributing Editor Alanna Kellogg offers a terrific recipe for a watermelon, cucumber and feta salad, and Catherine at Albion Cooks has a watermelon, feta and black olive version that I might just need to try later this summer. At The Traveler’s Notebook, Melissa offers a version with watermelon, feta, pine nuts and basil, and Sue at Coffeepot and Cornbread confirmed that Melissa’s version worked beautifully with walnuts instead of pine nuts.
A sweet-and-savory melon salad is a terrific summer side dish, and is dead simple to throw together for a potluck or impromptu barbeque. It’s a low-calorie, high-flavor way to enjoy summer’s bounty.
Genie blogs about gardening and food at The Inadvertent Gardener, and tells very short tales at 100 Proof Stories. She is also documenting her year in photos at 365 in 2009.
