FuzzyChef Food & Pottery

In honor of BridgetownBites Salad Week and the fact that my porch thermometer reported 100F today (it's still 88F at 7pm), I thought I'd make two salads for dinner, neither requiring any heating at all, just cutting, washing, and marinating. Each also requires one obscure ingredient, but hopefully you can still make use of them for your own heat wave days.

When we have a heat wave like this, I don't want to turn on the stove, and I also don't want to go outside to the grill. So I look for dishes I can prepare which require no heat. Salads top the list, of course, and I could just do a green salad. But in the middle of summer, I can be more creative. Also, the heat wave already killed my lettuce.

I also wanted to take advantage of some produce I had. First, we'd recently been to Walla Walla and brought back a bag of their famous sweet onions (it's the season). Second, Nathan the Watermelon Man started deliveries this week, so I had a delicious Hermiston watermelon. This led to a Persian onion and barberry salad, and a Greek watermelon salad.

Persian Onion Salad

This onion salad comes to us from Naomi Duguid's Persia, with my usual tweaks, of course. It's a very traditional Persian salad, usually served to accompany grilled meats, but delicious on its own if made with sweet onions like the Walla Wallas. I don't recommend making it with regular brown onions except as a topping for meat; without real sweet onions, it would be too sharp to eat by itself.

The obscure ingredient here is dried barberries. These are a staple of Persian cuisine but only found in good Middle Eastern markets here in the US. Fortunately, I live near one. They are quite tart, so if you can't get them, try unsweetened dried cranberries, chopped. The recipe also requires the spice ground sumac, but most major supermarkets carry that these days.

The onion requires a bit of sitting, so start this recipe early.

• Two large Walla Walla, Maui, or Vidalia sweet onions, about 2lbs
• 1 Tbs or more kosher salt
• 1/2 to 2/3 cup dried barberries
• 1 tsp dried mint, or about 2 Tbs chopped fresh mint
• 1 tsp ground sumac
• 2 tsp sherry, champagne, or cider vinegar

Halve, peel, and thinly slide both onions. Layer them in a colander with a sprinkle of kosher salt over each of 4-5 layers of sliced onions. Let sit in the sink for around 1/2 hour. Soak the barberries in 1 cup cold water for the same period of time.

Drain the barberries. Put the sliced onion in a large bowl, fill it with cold water, mix it around, and drain. Then put the onions back in the bowl, fill it with cold water again, and let sit for another 15-20 minutes. This should remove most of the salt and any sharpness from the onion. Then drain the onions, maybe even drying them on a towel.

Toss the onions, barberries, mint, and sumac together. Drizzle over the vinegar. Let sit for a few minutes, then serve.

Greek Watermelon Salad

This type of salad will be more familiar to many readers. I got it from Diane Kochilas Meze years ago when it was less familiar to Americans, and have made it ever since. It's a very tasty salad, and a great way to use up leftover watermelon. Do use quality watermelon, though; if yours is bland or too watery the salad will be meh.

Kochilas' recipe includes a traditional, and hard to find, ingredient that most American recipes leave out: barley rusks. These add a strong, earthy flavor to balance the salad, and absorb the excess watermelon juice. The salad really isn't the same without them, so they're worth mail-ordering.

• Around 3lbs peeled and cubed watermelon
• 2 oz barley rusks
• 1/4 of a large (or 1/2 of a small) red onion, peeled and minced, around 1/2 cup.
• 2 Tbs chopped fresh mint
• 8-12 oz mild, creamy feta cheese, cubed or crushed
• black pepper
• 1 Tbs red wine vinegar

Crush the barley rusks, breaking each rusk into 4-6 pieces. Put these in the bottom of a large serving bowl. Cover them with the watermelon cubes, and then pile the feta, mint, and onion on top. Sprikle with black pepper, and drizzle the vinegar over.

Leave the salad 10-15 minutes for the watermelon juices to soak into the rusks. Then toss thoroughly. Some of the feta will break up during tossing, which is desireable. Serve.

I hope both of these recipes give you some options for dining during a heat wave, too. Have a good Salad Week!