Stephan Marshall
Cantaloupe and Mint Soup with Prosciuto and Arugula
We’re going to do our melon soup, okay. So here, we have a Sharlyn Melon which is a French style melon. It’s a little different from the cantaloupe where this has much more fragrance to it, more of a perfuminess to it. It’s also a little bit sweeter than the cantaloupe.
Okay. So we’re going to take the melon. We’re going to cut the ends off so it lays flat. And then, we basically just take the knife and go around the melon, okay? Now, what we want to do is we want to remove all the skin. Make sure you remove the green part, okay? The green part is a little bit bitter so you want to remove all of the green.
So, once that’s removed, then we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to cut our cantaloupe in half and we’re going to take the seeds out, a very simple process. Just drag your spoon down. Everybody knows how to do that. Just put the spoon in and try to get down removing the seeds. Once the seeds are removed, we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to cut this into a little tiny dice. Okay, so we cut this up, cut the other one up. You guys are going to love this soup because a) it’s like a 5-minute soup and b) it’s fantastic for a nice hot day.
Okay. Get the blender, everybody has a household blender. Then, we’re going to put our cantaloupe inside. Once our cantaloupe is inside, we’re going to bring it over here and we’re going to start the process of blending. So, we put that on there like that and we’re going to add a little bit of Riesling. In this case, I’m using a little ice wine Riesling, put some of that in there. What that’s going to do is that’s going to help the flavor of the cantaloupe because the ice wine or the Riesling has a lot of sugar content, so it’s going to bring some of the natural flavor of the cantaloupe out. We’re also going to use a little bit of midori because it’s also going to help heighten the flavor of the cantaloupe. Put the lid back on.
The last thing that we’re going to put in there is a little bit of orange juice, trim that down just a bit. So, we’re going to put a little bit of orange juice inside. Orange juice is going to help it give flavor, plus the sauce is going to help to start the process of moving the cantaloupe around.
Okay. And the final thing we want to add is that we want to add a pinch of salt becasuse believe it or not, the salt is also going to help bring some of the natural flavors out of the cantaloupe. Push that around in a couple of seconds and there you have it. There is your cantaloupe soup. So, what you’re going to do is after you make the soup, then we are going to take a little bit of fresh mint. Take some nice fresh mint and we will chop our mints up. And now, we’re going to do a process called infusing. What this is going to do is this is going to infuse the soup with the actual mint. So then what we want to do is we want to put some mints into a bowl and you go ahead and you pour your soup over the mints. Now, you refrigerate that for about an hour. If you want to refrigerate it overnight, you can do that as well. What you’re trying to do is you’re trying to extract the flavor of the mint out of your soup so you can put it in, mix it up, put a little bit of plastic wrap on top, and then put it in the refrigerator.
Alright. And through the miracle of television, we have some soup already made for you. The way I like to serve the soup, I like to take a nice little shot glass and I always like to serve a soup with a garnish. In this particular dish, the garnish is going to be arugula wrap with prosciutto. The arugula is nice and peppery. It is a nice combination with the soup and then you have the saltiness of the prosciutto which is also very nice with the soup.
I’m sure that everybody has gone to a restaurant and had prosciutto and melon before. This is the soup version of prosciutto and melon. So, what we want to do is we want to start with a little bit of prosciutto. And when you go to the market, they sell prosciutto on the packages. You want to look for a nice thin prosciutto, and this is nice and thin. You get some lettuce here, this is the arugula lettuce. So if you can see, it has-- it’s also known as rocket lettuce as well. If you go to the restaurant and you see something that says “rocket lettuce”, it is basically arugula. It’s just a fancy term that we use in the culinary industry. Okay. so we put a couple of these together. We’re going to make a nice little bouquet. And then after we make our bouquet, then we’re going to take our prosciutto here and we’re going to put it inside, so it’s just on the end so that everybody can see that. And you put it inside. It’s basically just a rolling process. You roll it up. And we’re going to cut the ends off. Once you cut the ends off, then you’re going to use a nice little wooden skewer, put it through the end. And then we’re going to take our soup. Now this can be used for a cocktail party. It can be used if you have kids. I wouldn’t recommend the shot glass for the kids, maybe a little Dixie cup, but this is a fantastic soup for kids. They may not like the arugula which you can serve in the soup as it is, like this. Put the toothpick on, just like that. And that’s how we serve our soup. The idea is to take the toothpick, eat the arugula and the prosciutto and then go ahead and shoot the soup.
Now, this is how it’s also served in a restaurant, just as a soup in a bowl. We could do that as well, but this is a very nice summertime soup.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services