Tag: melon

Cold pasta with melon – Italian Cuisine

The first dish you'll fall in love with this summer? Cold pasta with fruit

Do not be horrified at the thought of a dish of pasta with fruit. Try these fusilli with melon and change your mind.
Risotto with strawberries or blueberries is one of the most delicate and sophisticated first courses to bring to the table when you want to amaze your guests.
So why not try to combine the classic semolina pasta with a typically summer fruit like the melon?
More than a hot dish, this is an excellent pasta salad to be consumed on hot summer days, very easy to prepare and very practical to take with you to work.
Let's discover the ingredients and the recipe together.

Which pasta to choose

Let's start with the principle and then the choice of pasta format.
We recommend a short pasta because in this recipe the seasoning is not enveloping and therefore a spaghetti would be too dry. And then this pasta should be eaten cold and then pennette, fusilli, but also Sardinian orecchiette and gnocchetti are preserved better than a linguina or a tagliatella.
You can substitute pasta with cereals if you want a more nutritious and rich meal or you can opt for whole wheat pasta, very good also cold and perfect in combination with raw ingredients as in this case.

How to recognize a good melon

First look at it. It must not be dented and must have a uniform color peel.
Touch it to understand if it is hard or too soft and in the second case discard it.
Then smell it and if you can smell it it means it's the right one.

melon

Melon pasta recipe

The process is really very simple, you just need to assemble the ingredients.
Once cooked al dente, drain the pasta and let it cool seasoned only with a little extra virgin olive oil.
Then add some Tropea onion, plenty of basil, melon cubes (or balls for a more elegant presentation), fairly soft avocado slices, but not too much, and small mozzarella balls.
You can also use pesto to give more flavor to pasta and legumes if you want to enrich it. Chickpeas, for example, would be perfect because they give a touch of crunchiness that is always good in a cold dish.

A perfect presentation

If you want to offer this very simple recipe to your guests, make it a rule of art and then serve it in a melon cut in two parts and emptied of its pulp.
You will get some very nice single portion bowls to present.
Obviously the melon pulp should be reused in the dressing and therefore nothing should be thrown away, not even the seeds that can be washed, dried and baked in the oven with oil and salt.

If you like the idea of pasta with fruit, take a look at our gallery to find other inspirations.

Melon: how to choose it, keep it and prepare it – Italian Cuisine

The recipes with the best seller of summer dishes that go beyond the more classic "ham and …"

The melon it is summer: its intense aroma, which is already felt at the market or at the supermarket, which accompanies you in the shopping bag and which then continues to be released on the table, is summer.
When the heat knocks on doors, one of the things we all do in the kitchen is replace dinner with a nice plate of ham and melon. Or not?

How to choose the melon?

The melon is an annual herbaceous plant, the varieties are divided into summer and winter and therefore the first thing to do is to choose a seasonal one. Yes to the Retato melon, round with the skin drawn by a dense lattice, with a sweet pulp; Cantaloupe, very sweet, fragrant, with firm pulp; al Galia, with a very aromatic white pulp. To choose a good melon always remember to smell it: a fragrant melon has reached a good ripeness, if it does not smell and tends to green it will be unripe.

How to preserve the melon?

The melon can be stored outside the refrigerator but in a cool place, away from heat sources or direct sunlight, which speeds up maturation (so it should not be left on the balcony, for example). If you need to consume it immediately, the ideal is to put it in the refrigerator only a few hours before consumption. Be careful if you decide not to consume it immediately; especially the Retato matures and rots quickly, so in that case it is better to keep it in the fridge but away from the walls to avoid freezing.

The recipes we cooked for you

Tsamma, the melon of the desert – Italian Cuisine

The tsamma is a variety of melon native to the Kalahari desert, in southern Africa, famous for being a precious resource of water in the arid areas of the country

Many are the varieties of melon and watermelon spread throughout the world, but in Africa there is a very special and noteworthy one. It is about melon tsamma also said Citrullus lanatus or wild watermelon, native of the Kalahari desert, in southern Africa. This fruit, halfway between a melon and a watermelon, is known above all for the high quantity of water contained and for being a precious source of water in the arid and desert areas of the African continent.

Tsamma, unique variety of sub-tropical melon

This wild fruit, which grows spontaneously in most of western, central and southern Africa, externally resembles a small watermelon, but the light pulp, yellow or light green with black seeds, resembles a cross between a melon and a pumpkin. The tsamma can sometimes turn out vaguely sweet, but it is mostly tasteless. It is also good to know that if the taste should be bitter it should be immediately discarded as it could be poisonous. The melon has a diameter of about 10-20 centimeters and weighs just over a kilo, but when cultivated it can reach larger dimensions. The tsamma is not particularly interesting from a nutritional point of view; it is composed of 90% water, 7% of sugar and also has low concentrations of minerals and vitamins (B and C). THE seeds they are instead an excellent source of protein, vitamins, minerals and fiber. Traditional use in the kitchen requires the pulp to be consumed fresh or cooked, boiled or steamed, the leaves boiled while the seeds are commonly toasted and can be eaten as snacks or added to porridge or vegetable stews. One last curiosity: the seeds contain within them an edible oil that can be used as a condiment or as a body oil.

A melon as a precious resource of water in the desert

As we have seen, this type of melon is characterized above all byhigh water content. This, together with the nourishing seeds, makes the tsamma an essential food resource in arid and desert African areas, both for humans and for the animals that feed on them. For the San tribe of Southern African hunter-gatherers, the hunting season would be impossible without the hydration provided by the melon. Similarly in the Kalahari desert area, a term that can be translated as "great thirst" or "waterless place", the inhabitants owe their survival even to the tsamma melon.
There is a belief that a person can survive for six weeks by feeding only on this fruit.

David Livingstone, the famous nineteenth-century missionary and explorer, reported in his writings that he had encountered tribes in the arid interior regions of southern Africa along the Zambezi River, and that they managed to stay alive in the desert for several months a year, when water was scarce, thanks to this special wild melon.

Photo: Tsamma_Melone_ (Citrullus_lanatus) _Bernard DUPONT.jpg