Watermelon Bites with Lemon-Balm Sugar

Crisp, ice-cold triangles of watermelon skewered with the bamboo 'ribs' from an inexpensive Chinese fan, then sprinkled with mint, or with a citrussy finish of granulated white sugar pounded with lemon balm.

Watermelon Bites with Lemon Balm. Plate by David Walters.

This is a lovely way to serve watermelon in cheeky little bites if you're expecting guests on a hot day. Watermelon has strong associations with the festive season in South Africa, because midsummer is when this fruit comes into high season. (May I have a little moan about how ruinously expensive watermelons are at the moment? Last week I saw some puny specimens at my local supermarket, each one selling for a whopping R79. Who can afford that these days?)

The ribs from a fan make pretty skewers. 

The fan-rib skewers? I came up with this idea a few years back, as a way of serving dragon fruit.  I buy these pretty fans by the dozen in summer because they cost next to nothing and are so useful for doling out to hot & bothered friends and family as the festive season comes swinging in. Fans like these can be bought at any Chinese shop or market.

If you don't have a fan to rip to pieces, simply pile the triangles high on a large platter and sprinkle with leaves or pounded sugar immediately before you serve them.

You will need to cut the peel off the watermelon triangles if your fan has delicate, bendy 'ribs', or they may droop under the weight.

Crunchy sugar pounded with lemon balm 

And on that topic: these are good with mint, but sensational with lemon-balm sugar. When I'd finished taking snaps of a batch, and I'd handed them out to family members lurking in the kitchen, my son complained that the taste of the mint leaves was 'ruining' the delicate watermelon flavour (he has the most sensitive palate in the family).

So I cut up another batch, and this time sprinkled the triangles with lemon balm and sugar. You can't buy lemon balm in supermarkets, but it's available at every nursery and garden centre, and it's worth buying a plant, because it will flourish in your garden: it's a vigorous herb requiring very little attention.

I imagine these would also taste heavenly with lemon verbena.

If you like this idea, try my recipe for ice-cold prickly pears with frozen rosemary sugar.

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Watermelon Bites with Lemon-Balm Sugar

• one half of a large, seedless, chilled watermelon
• a handful of fresh mint or lemon balm leaves (about a third of a cup/80 ml, loosely packed)
• one third of a cup (80 ml) granulated white sugar

First get your skewers ready.  Tear away the fabric on the fan and remove any blobs of glue. Snip through the little plastic 'stalk' that holds the fan's ribs together.

Cut the melon into half-moon slices about 5 - 7 mm thick. Now slice these into dainty triangles, as shown in the first picture, above. Cut off the peel if your bamboo ribs are very delicate (see my notes above).

To achieve some uniformity, use the first triangle you cut as a template for the rest.  There will be some wastage, but don't throw the left-over bits away.  Put them into a zip-lock bag or lidded plastic box and sling them into the freezer for use in future smoothies.

Using the tip of a sharp knife, cut a deep slit into the peel side of each triangle and push the thinner end of each bamboo rib deep into the fruit.  Refrigerate.

Just before you serve the watermelon, place the leaves and sugar into a mortar and pound energetically until you have a rough green powder.  Sprinkle this over the triangles and serve immediately.

Makes about 24 bites, depending on the size of your watermelon. 

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Dragon Fruit on Fan-Rib Skewers

With its blazing pink skin and strange lime-green scales, a dragon fruit looks rather like a prehistoric pod, or the egg of an alien from a far-flung galaxy.  I was intrigued to find dragon fruit, which I have never seen, let alone tasted, at my local Fruit and Veg city last week, so I bought two to take home and show my family.

I've used the bamboo 'ribs' from an inexpensive Chinese fan
 as skewers for the dragon fruit triangles.

The fruit caused a minor sensation, and my kids were particularly intrigued by the cool white flesh of the fruit, which is peppered with black seeds and encircled by an inner band of glowing - almost fluorescent -  fuschia pink.

This tropical beauty, Google tells me, is the fruit of a climbing cactus native to South America (Hylocereus species), and is also known as a pitaya and a strawberry pear.  There are several varieties, including one with vivid pink flesh, and they are cultivated chiefly in Central and South America, and also in parts of Asia such as Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. It has beautiful white flowers that bloom at night and are pollinated by bats and moths.

It's just as well that this is such a flamboyant-looking fruit, because it doesn't really have a blow-your-skirt up flavour. It tastes a little like watery green melon and kiwi fruit, and to my palate has an ever-so-slightly saline aftertaste. Various dragon fruit sites on the Net tell me it's refreshing (and pretty!) in a fruit salad, or served on its own, in chunks, between courses. It's also used in smoothies and sorbets, and as a medicinal drink. It should be served very cold, and is apparently delicious eaten straight from the freezer.

I wouldn't do anything else with dragon fruit but serve it as a novelty (it's perfect for a children's party). The delicate wooden skewers in the photograph above are the ribs from a paper fan I bought at my local Chinese market. I know it may seem wasteful to tear up a fan just for its ribs, but I buy these fans by the dozen, for around R5 each.

Chill the fruit very well before you cut it up, slice it into discs about a centimetre thick, and then cut each disc into six or eight.  Push the skewers through the skin (you may need to make a little cut if the skin is tough) and serve with a spritz of lemon juice.

Please note that the skin of the dragon fruit is not normally eaten (although it's not poisonous) and that I've left it on in the photographs because it's just so pretty. Having said that, I ate the skin, and suffered no ill effects.

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