Recipe 11: Watermelon, Radish, and Feta Salad

I can be a pretty basic b*tch sometimes so the pink-ness of this salad got me pretty excited to eat it. Combine that with the tasty-ness of watermelon and mint and this recipe seems like a sure hit. I say, “seems like” because this recipe didn’t exactly turn out the way I expected. Hint: it’s because of my boyfriend.

The Shopping Experience

Everything was super easy to find. All the ingredients were all about to be found in one place. Even the small radishes, albeit not as small as the radishes in Jamie’s picture but good enough, were easy to find right away. That surprised me because I never noticed radishes being sold anywhere so I expected them to be hard to find.

During the grocery shopping, while I was bagging my bunch of radishes, I asked my boyfriend to do me a favour and grab the bunch of mint that we needed. What he actually grabbed by a bunch of basil instead. I saw it in our shopping cart and thought the bunch looked bigger than I expected but I didn’t think anything out it.

The Cooking Experience

Similar to the Smoked Salmon Plates, there’s not actually a lot of “cooking” going on since the only thing that required me to turn on the stove were the pine nuts. However, unlike the salmon plants, an aspect of this recipe was surprisingly time-consuming: thinly slicing the watermelon. 

Slicing the watermelon had a bit of a learning curve and just when I thought I had the hang of it, my hand would slip and I’d mess up by either slicing one too thick or so thin that I only ended up cutting a slice half the size. The watermelon felt so time-consuming that I actually asked my boyfriend to help me slice up the radishes because I was getting hungry.

Lucky for him, the radishes were much easier since they’re easier to grasp and less distractingly juicy.

While I was plating this salad, I finally realized that the “mint” was actually basil. As I tore the first leaf off, I thought it smelled delicious... but also not right. My boyfriend felt really bad about grabbing the wrong thing but it was definitely both our faults for not recognizing basil even though we eat Caprese salads all the time. We thought about going out to go grab the mint but out of laziness, we figured the salad would still taste pretty good with basil.

The Eating Experience

Even with the basil, the salad was great! I actually think the salad would have tasted equally good with mint and my boyfriend thought basil was actually a better choice so, to each their own.

The toasted pine nuts were subtle and added depth to the whole dish. The feta and watermelon complimented each other with their saltiness and sweetness. The radish was surprisingly spicy but the creaminess of the feta toned down the overall flavour. Overall, it was a good balance of salty, sweet heat.

Final Thoughts

You could say I didn’t exactly give this recipe its best shot this time because of the whole mint/basil thing but because it was so good anyway, I think we could have actually improved it. I’ll have to give it another shot sometime with the mint and report back. The watermelon I bought was a little too big so now I have a bunch watermelon to eat for after dinner snacks or to put in smoothies. A happy accident to finish off a recipe of accidents.

Total estimated cook time: 18 minutes

Total actual cook time: 46 minutes (damn you, thinly sliced watermelon!)