Author Notes: This is perfect mix of some of my favorite ingredients. I made it up along the way, but I knew that I definitely wanted to use watermelon, goat cheese and verbena. I wanted an interesting ingredient and to me summer involves verbena. Half of my family is from the south of France in Cannes and every summer at my grandparent’s villa we would have verbena tisane fresh from the garden after dinner. We grow it here in Westchester and the tradition continues. I had never used it in a salad but it works really well and adds a great refreshing taste. Overall wonderful for a hot summer night. —loli
Food52 Review: Not everyone is lucky enough to have lemon verbena growing in the backyard the way loli does, but this recipe is worth seeking some out. The herbal, citrus-scented vinaigrette lightly coats the sweet chunks of watermelon, and goat cheese adds a savory tang. We especially love the toasty crunch of the pistachios. We find that grinding the verbena with just a few drops of oil breaks it down quickly, and then the rest of the oil is easy to incorporate. We used only 4 ounces of goat cheese, but our watermelon wasn’t huge and had a particularly thick rind. – A&M —The Editors
Serves: 4
Prep time: 1 hrs 15 min
Cook time: 5 min
Ingredients
-
1/2
cup extra virgin olive oil
-
1
handful fresh Verbena Leaves
-
1
teaspoon coarse salt
-
1/2
seedless watermelon
-
1/2
pound fresh goat cheese
-
1/2
cup unsalted pistachios
-
2
tablespoons red vine vinegar
-
1
teaspoon Maldon Sea Salt
-
1
dash Fresh Pepper
Directions
- Roughly chop the verbena and place in a mortar and add the olive oil and the coarse salt. Grind for about 10 minutes and let it sit for about 1 hour at room temperature.
- Cut the watermelon into cube and place in a salad bowl in the refrigerator.
- Place the pistachios in a pan and on low heat toast them for 5 minutes.
- Remove the pistachios from the pan and chop them roughly. Set aside in a small bowl
- Crumble the goat cheese.
- Take the olive oil and verbena mix and put it through a small mixer. When completely mixed add the vinegar. Mix again.
- Take the watermelon out of the fridge, add the goat cheese, drizzle the vinaigrette, sprinkle the pistachios and finish with Maldon sea salt and pepper. Mix and serve!
1 of 19
Photo by James Ransom
2 of 19
3 of 19
4 of 19
5 of 19
6 of 19
Photo by Food52
Toasting the pistachios — be sure to watch them, they burn quickly!
7 of 19
Photo by Food52
8 of 19
Photo by Food52
Fresh verbena smells incredible.
9 of 19
Photo by Food52
10 of 19
Photo by Food52
Instead of starting with the verbena and all of the olive oil, we opted to grind the verbena into 2T of the olive oil, and then gradually added the rest of the olive oil. Be sure to put…
11 of 19
Photo by Food52
12 of 19
Photo by Food52
After the verbna, salt, and olive oil mixture sat for an hour, we made the dressing.
13 of 19
Photo by Food52
14 of 19
Photo by Food52
15 of 19
Photo by Food52
The salad is layered, starting with the watermelon, then the goat cheese.
16 of 19
Photo by Food52
Drizzling on the dressing…
17 of 19
Photo by Food52
And finishing with the pistachios, salt and pepper.
18 of 19
Photo by Food52
All done.
19 of 19
Photo by Food52