How to Make Watermelon Feta and Cashew Salad

Learn how to make Watermelon Feta and Cashew Salad, as shown in this video by Chef John of Foodwishes.

Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com. This is 2007 Chef John doing Watermelon Feta Salad that 2006 Chef John did last year, but I found this old footage. This is a fantastic salad. There’s the watercolor version because the actual final shot looks so bad I ran it through a filter. But anyway, here is 2006 Chef John, take it away. Okay, step one of our Feta and Watermelon Salad is a half sweet, seedless watermelon. I’m going to use my melon baller here to scoop out the melon. I know you got one of these in your drawer somewhere. You’re just going to keep scooping until all of it is scooped out, and I really enjoy melon balling for some reason. I just find it relaxing and cooking is supposed to be fun in kind of a meditation—stupid thing is stuck, damn it, there we go. As I was saying, cooking is supposed to be fun and relaxing. Hello, sorry to interrupt. This is 2007 Chef John again. I think that was my first attempted humor during a video. Anyway, back to 2006 Chef John. So scoop out the melon. This lettuce is something we find out in San Francisco here. It’s called a Little Jim. It’s actually a hybrid between a baby romaine and a bit of a Boston lettuce, so it’s really sweet, tender, but it has the kind of leaf structure of a romaine. It’s really nice. If you can find it, definitely give it a try. If not, just use a Bibb Lettuce or Boston Lettuce or Butter Lettuce, any soft kind of sweet lettuce is going to work. So I separated all the leaves and we’re just going to basically arrange these on a platter and that’s going to be the base of our salad. So here we go, I put that on a platter. I pour the melon balls over it, arranged it nicely, and to finish, I’m going to top it with this beautiful Feta cheese. I’m using the Israeli Feta which was on the salad—the cheese market I go to. Any Feta will do. Don’t buy pre-crumbled. Crumble it yourself. It’s not hard. And that salty, sharp flavor of the Feta with that sweet watermelon is just an unbelievable combination. To make it a little more interesting, that little crunch, I topped it with some toasted cashew which are going to be really hard to see at the end here but trust me, they’re on there. And the dress, I used a rice wine vinaigrette, which— Which 2006 Chef John never showed. So anyway, Chef John 2007 version taking over, brining it home. All I meant by the rice vinegar dressing, it’s simply half rice vinegar, half olive oil, about a quarter cup of each, shake it up or mix it up, pour it over. A little salt and pepper and you have a delicious salty, sweet, unbelievably refreshing salad. I hope you give this a try. It’s really unusual, but people are going to love it. There’s the old watercolor version again, which I kind of like. It kind of looks cool. Thank God for filters. Go to the site, read the article and most of all, enjoy the rest of your summer and enjoy this dish.