hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with watermelon pizza
that's right there are two kinds of people in the world those that think
topping a slice of watermelon with feta and olives is insane
and the people that have actually tried it and that's because while this does
seem kind of crazy once you taste this amazingly delicious
combination you understand you understand everything and you'll
probably spend the rest of the summer trying to get that first group of people
to give this a try so good luck with that and to get
started the first thing we're going to do is cut the largest watermelon we can
find in half and to be specific we're going to cut it
in half lengthwise which i like to do very slowly and methodically
by first making sure my knife is going through the rind right in the center
and then i'll cut down a few inches and turn it and continue slicing
and i will not attempt to go all the way through until i'm sure my cut is nice
and straight and my fingers aren't anywhere close to
the blade and then what we'll do once we
eventually get that cut in half is that we'll cut those halves in the quarters
at which point we can start creating our wedges
and it should be super obvious but let me make it official
and tell you that you definitely want to use a nice red seedless watermelon for
this since topping a watermelon with seeds
with feta and olives would be problematic to say the least
but anyway once we have that in quarters we are only going to take the best four
or five slices from the center so i'm going to cut this right in the
middle at the thickest point and then make some nice even slices about three
quarters of an inch thick and when it tapers down and becomes too
small for your liking we can just save those to eat as is later
most likely given those end pieces to the kids since it's been my experience
you have to be of a certain age to really appreciate this approach
and by the way if you did want to slice all the way to the ends and just serve
wedges that vary in size that's up to you
i mean you guys are after all the lords of your gourds but since we are calling
this pizza personally i think it looks a little
better if all our slices are about the same size
and then even though this is called a seedless watermelon we're still always
going to have a few of those white immature seeds here and there
which while you could leave i think we should remove with the tip of a spoon
and as we do that we're going to be leaving these little divots on the
surface which is a very good thing in fact once
we transfer these to whatever we're going to serve them on
we should actually take the tip of our spoon and make even more
and what those are going to do is prevent our feta and olives from falling
off our slice as we eat it which is one of
the problems with your average slice of watermelon pizza
right so this counts as my major innovation and that's it once we've
dinged our melon we can go ahead and crumble over our
feta and you know how in all those videos where we use cheese
i will almost always tell you to use whatever cheese you want
and that you're the jesus of your cheeses and whatever other variety you
like will work fine well i'm not saying that in this video
all right you have to use feta since it has the perfect combination of
creamy briny and salty to pair with our sweet juicy watermelon
of course if where you live there's another kind of cheese that's also
creamy salty and briny that's just like fat only it's called
something different then by all means use that
and then speaking of salty and briny we will also scatter over some pieces of
olive and i'm using both green and black well
actually not black purple okay those watery tasteless black
olives out of the can are not something i recommend here
and instead you should find a nice beautiful pitted purple kalamata olive
which has that much more intense flavor profile that really is going to work so
much better here and of course unless you're playing some
kind of sadistic practical joke we don't want any pits so be careful
and then once our olives are down we will do a very very light sprinkling of
freshly ground black pepper right just a tiny touch and yes of
course you could sneak on some cayenne but to me the fragrance of the black
pepper works a little bit better and then next up we're going to scatter
over some freshly and finely sliced mints
or if you want basil would also work here but the mint's a little sweeter
which i think pairs better with this and by eye i mean michelle thinks that
but i agree and then you could serve this as is right now
but i'm going to finish this up by dressing ever so lightly with just a few
drops of rice vinegar or maybe some other sweet vinegar like
balsamic and then last but not least just a few
drops of olive oil for just a touch of richness
and of course it will give that surface a little bit of a sparkle
especially if you're in the sunlight which while you're eating this would be
a great place to be and that's it our watermelon pizza is
ready to enjoy and i'm really kind of hoping you've
never had this combination before so that i'm the one that gets credit for
blowing your mind which is how unbelievably delicious this
is i mean the combination of that sweet juicy watermelon
with the salty brininess of the feta and olives and that sweet fragrant
herbaceous mint is just absolute perfection and this
always reminds me that when i was a kid i saw one of the adults sprinkle salt on
watermelon okay i don't remember if it was my father or my uncle
but i do remember being shocked as my young undeveloped brain could not
comprehend such a thing but now that i have an older undeveloped
brain it all makes absolutely perfect sense
i mean if friends of mine were having a big summer garden party
which they're not this is something i hope they would be serving
and i'm going to go ahead and sign off and finish those other three
and while i'm doing that i hope you go out and find these ingredients
and give this incredible savory watermelon pizza a try soon
so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts
a printable written recipe and much more info as usual
and as always enjoy
you