Melon Soup with Melon and Mint Sorbet - Refreshing
Melon Soup with Melon and Mint Sorbet is a cold soup of pureed Honeydew and Cantaloupe melon with a sorbet of Canary melon with mint. Orange, lemon and lime is used to enhance the flavours. To date, this is the only cold soup I have made. It’s lovely. I really need to make a few more.
This soup is sweet - not at all savoury. It could work as dessert as well as a starter. The types of melons I use for this recipe are the ones that you can usually find in most supermarkets in summer (and often around holiday times as well). You can use different varieties. Just make sure you opt for sweet ones. And pick something with peachy coloured flesh, like Cantaloupe, for soup part of this dish.
This recipe is an adaptation of a recipe from a recipe book called Appetizers, Finger Food, Buffets and Parties. It says it’s by Bridget Jones but I think this that might be a name publishers use when they don’t want to give the real name. The adaptation I made was to use varieties of melons I could find easily in the supermarket - and they work great. So feel free to experiment with the types of melons you will use.
The pictures in the book show this soup looking very velvety. I was unable to get the soup this smooth. To get it as smooth as I did first I blended it, then I pushed it through a sieve into a bowl. I was left with quite a lot of liquid in the bowl and a sieve full of thick melon. I then processed this flesh until it was as smooth as I could get it, added back in the liquid and blended it once again. And as you can see from the photo below it still was not exactly velvety. However it tasted fine and the texture was actually smooth enough.
Melon Soup with Melon and Mint Sorbet
Yield: Serves 4*
Suitable for: Gluten-free diet
Ingredients:
For the melon soup
- 1 very ripe honeydew melon
- 1 very ripe cantalouple melon
- 2 tbsp orange juice, freshly squeezed
- ½ tbsp lemon juice, freshly squeezed
- pinch of caster sugar, only if needed
For the melon & mint sorbet
- 1 very ripe canary melon
- 30g caster sugar
- 60ml water
- juice of 1 lime
- 1 tbsp fresh mint leaves, chopped
Instructions:
Make the sorbet
Add the water and sugar to a small saucepan, stir the sugar into the water until it has dissolved, bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for a couple of minutes until it has thickened into a syrup. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.- Halve the canary melon, remove the seeds and scoop out the flesh into a blender. Pour the cooled syrup, lime juice and chopped mint into the blender and blend till smooth.
- If you have an ice-cream maker, pour the mix from the blender into it and use to make the sorbet. Otherwise, pour the contents of the blender into a plastic tub. Place the tub in the freezer and freeze until the mixture is icy at the edges - about 1 hour to begin with. Scrape the icy bits off the sides and mix around well. Then, after 30 minutes or so, reprocess the mixture in the blender, pour back into the tub, freeze for another 30 minutes and repeat until you have a sorbet.
Make the soup
45 minutes before serving halve the honeydew and cantaloupe melons. Remove their seeds and discard them. Scoop out the flesh and put it into your blender. Add the orange and lemon juice. Blend until smooth. If you would like it smoother, pass through a sieve into a bowl. Place the contents of the bowl along with what’s left in the sieve back into the blend and blend once more. Taste and add a sprinkle of sugar if necessary.Serve with some mint leaves
Divide the soup among four bowls and add a few scoops of the sorbet into each bowl. Garnish with one or two mint leaves.
* With these quantities you will have enough soup to add 2 ladles of soup into 4 bowls and enough sorbet to add 4 small scoops of sorbet into each bowl.
Enjoy!
