Spicy Melon Salad with Peanuts and Mint

Name: Spicy Melon Salad with Peanuts and Mint
Yield: serves 4
Ingredients: 1/4 cup fresh lime juice (from about 2 limes); 1 large fresh red Thai chile, with seeds, finely minced, or to taste; 1/4 cup fish sauce; 1 tablespoon sugar, plus more if needed; 2 small ripe melons; 10 fresh spearmint leaves, torn into thin strips; 3 tablespoons chopped salted roasted peanuts

December 9, 2011

In this recipe, fish sauce stands in for the salt to make a savory-sweet spicy salad or side dish. If possible, include two or more types of melon for variety. We get most of our melons from Whitted Bowers, a biodynamic orchard and farm just north in Cedar Grove that also offers a spin on U-pick berries: dig-your-own Carolina Ruby sweet potatoes. Cheri Whitted and Rob Bowers grow many melons; my favorites include the musky Emerald Gem (considered the finest melon in the world after it was developed in 1886), Pride of Wisconsin, and Sugar Baby, the icebox-size watermelon.

Recipe notes

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