Local Watermelon Soup with Feta and Mint for Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammie) Sundays

In need of another cold soup for a very hot and humid weekend, I stumbled across an Eric Ripert recipe from the Today Show. There were three cold soups in the article (Chilled Avocado Lemongrass Soup, Chilled Heirloom Tomato Consomme and Local watermelon Soup with Peekytoe Crab), but local baby watermelons were on sale this week so the watermelon soup won out. 

I replaced the peekytoe crab with feta cheese and chopped watermelon and cucumber as any kind of crab is so spendy here and I would prefer to use it to make crab cakes or top a Crab Louie Salad if I am going to splurge on it.

Local Watermelon Soup with Feta and Mint 
Adapted from Eric Ripert via Today.com
(Serves 4)

6 cups diced seedless local watermelon
1 Tbsp minced ginger
1/2 cup lime juice
8 to 10 mint leaves plus more for chiffonade garnish
6 oz peekytoe crab meat (I omitted and added feta, & diced watermelon & cucumber) 
4 Tbsp olive oil (I omitted) 
1/2 lime

Place the watermelon, ginger, lime juice and mint leaves in a blender container and puree until smooth and season to taste with salt and pepper. (I chilled my soup for a few hours.)

Lightly dress the crab meat with olive oil, lime juice, salt and pepper. Plate 2 tablespoons of crab in the center of the soup bowls (using a ring mold if available) and pour the watermelon soup around the crab; garnish with mint and serve immediately. (Since I omitted the crab, I mounded the feta, watermelon and cucumber in the bowl and added the soup and garnished with mint. My mounding didn't really hold as well as crab would, so I ended up stirring it into the soup.)

Notes/Results: This soup is so refreshing and cooling that in addition to eating it, I wanted to soak in a tub of it. ;-) The lime, ginger, mint and salt keep it from being too sweet and I really liked the pieces of watermelon and cucumber and the crumbles of feta cheese that I added. Ripert doesn't mention chilling it in the directions but I liked it ultra-cold, after several hours chilling. If you like watermelon and feta salad, you should like this soup and it would work as a starter for a summer grilled dinner, or as a light lunch on its own. I would happily make it again

Linking up at I Heart Cooking Clubs where this week's theme is our From the Vine--Eric Ripert recipes from ingredients that grow on vines.  

 Lets take a look into the Souper Sundays kitchen and see who is here.

Debra of Eliot's Eats shared this Greek Garden Veggie Salad with Chilled Corn and said, "We had an impromptu cook out recently. We had family coming in a bit spur of the moment (which is fine because we always love to see them). I knew I wanted to grill but I didn’t want to do the boring fallback of burgers. I found this great sounding (and pretty simple) recipe online: Grilled Steak with Greek Corn Salad. I swapped out the called for cube steak (which I found really weird to grill) with some flank steak and I increased the veggie amounts for the salad and added some peppers. I have to brag and say that the tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and oregano all came from the garden."

 
Tina of Squirrel Head Manor made a take on Eric Ripert's Provencal Vegetable Soup and said, "Hot or cold weather makes little difference when we want soup.  It makes a good lunch. This is a vegetarian version with lots of lentils that I will certainly make again. The inspiration for this version comes from Deb's version  of Eric Ripert's Provencal Vegetable soup. She referred to it as summer in a bowl. So true!"

 

So nice to have Shaheen of Allotment2Kitchen back at Souper Sundays this week. She brought Etsis Turlu --Rich Summer Vegetable Stew and said, "I've been cooking quite a lot of Middle Eastern recipes recently. It started with the  Iranian Pearl Barley Soup known as Ash-e Jo or Ash-e-Jow early this year when we had freakish snow and with the unusual hot weather continuing, now I have Etsis Turlu. According to the cookbook author this Etsis Turlu comes from Turkey. With the rain over the weekend, it was the perfect excuse to make a stew more suited for autumnal days and colder evenings, but I have lots of summer vegetables including courgettes, marrows and green beans coming from the garden that I wanted  to make the most of it, even if it is the height of summer."

Mahalo to everyone who joined in this week!
 
About Souper Sundays:

Souper Sundays (going since 2008) now has a format of a picture link each week where anyone interested can post their soups, salads, or sandwiches at any time during the week and I post a recap of the entries the following week.

(If you aren't familiar with Souper Sundays, you can read about of the origins of it here. 

If you would like to join in Souper (Soup, Salad, and Sammie) Sundays, I would love to have you! Here's how...

To join in this week's Souper Sunday's linkup with your soup, salad or sandwich:

• Link up your soup (stew, chili, soupy curries, etc. are fine), salad, or sandwich dish, (preferably one from the current week or month--but we'll take older posts too) on the picture link below and leave a comment on this post so I am sure not to miss you. Also please see below for what to do on your blog post that you link up her in order to be included in the weekly round-up.

and 

On your entry post (on your blog):

• Mention Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays at Kahakai Kitchen and link back to this post. (Not to be a pain but it's polite and only fair to link back to events you link up at--so if you link a post up here without linking back to it on your post, it will be removed.)
• You are welcome to add the Souper Sundays logo to your post and/or blog (optional).

An InLinkz Link-up

Have a happy, healthy week!