Melon and Ginger - Sushi Style & Prosciutto Style

Ingredients:

I came up with the idea for this dish in an Italian deli. It's a play on the classic prosciutto and melon appetizer, replacing wonderful, juicy Italian meat with wonderful, juicy pickled ginger. Since both melon and ginger love salt (and heck, who doesn't), I top everything off with a pinch of sel gris for flavor and a bit of added crunch.

This is not an appetizer for everyone. It requires pretty high-quality melon to play equal partner to the pickled ginger, and the result is an extremely powerful flavor combination. That said, I'm not a big fan of pickled ginger and I still loved the heck out of this combination.

Ingredients:
- Assorted melons. In this case, one each yellow watermelon, honeydew, and "heirloom tuscan"
- Pickled ginger, a.k.a. sushi ginger
- sel gris

Step 1:

Begin by attacking the watermelon. It's pretty unstable, so carefully cut off one end

Step 2:

Then cut off the other end. Stand it up on its new, stable footing.

Step 3:

Cut long, curvy strips from the outside of the melon. Try to get all of the rind without chunking out any of its sweet, juicy flesh.

Step 4:

Continue until you have an amorphous blob of watermelon.

Step 5:

Now cut it lengthwise into 2 cm chunks.

Step 6:

Extract the juicy core, which is more solid and sweeter than the seed-bearing flesh.

Step 7:

Cut the melon's heart into 1-1.5 cm by 5 cm chunks, suitable for wrapping or otherwise mucking with.

Repeat for each chunk of melon until you have the heart pieces plus a whole bunch of seeded parts. Don't throw this stuff away, it's quite edible, just not texturally-suited for our current designs.

Step 8:

After the watermelon is done, apply similar treatment to the honeydew and tuscan.

Step 9:

Slice.

Step 10:

Chop:

Step 11:

Halve:

Step 12:

Open up your pickled ginger and pull out the longest and widest pieces.

Step 13:

Variant 1: Prosciutto Style

This works best with the longer, thinner pieces of ginger. Starting at one end of a melon piece, wrap your ginger around the melon once or twice. If you come up short, overlap a couple of pieces to get a proper amount of wrapping done. Distribute some sel gris long the top of the roll.

Step 14:

Variant 2: Sushi Style

This is a better method for the short, wide pieces of ginger. Lay a single piece along the top of the melon, like a piece of sashimi goes onto rice.

Top with a cluster of sel gris in the middle of the "sashimi."

Step 15:

Plated:

Step 16:

Prosciutto Style

Step 17:

Sushi Style