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Fun Food: Watermelon Carving

Monday, August 1st, 2011

Of all the Fun Food posts we’ve written in the past 18 months, the story with the most enduring popularity continues to be the one about watermelon carving. Why watermelon carving? Perhaps, as we said last year, it’s because watermelon is such a fun, carve-able fruit. There’s something about that blank canvas that just cries out for creativity.

To get you started, the National Watermelon Promotion Board has some great carving tips and ideas (love that shark jumping out of the table baring its big white teeth!) to get your creative juices flowing. Hint: You don’t have to limit yourself to traditional watermelon-shaped objects. There’s a fish in there, and a robot, and even a snowman.

For this year’s watermelon carving issue, we’re featuring this cool party creation, courtesy of Chef Joe of Friday Night Out Catering in Berwyn, PA. This pirate ship is rigged together with a complex arrangement of dowels and string. The crow’s nest is made from a carved yellow squash.

As a companion to the main ship, he made two little fishing boats. The hull of the boats are from hollowed-out cucumbers; the sails are from watermelon rind with the white part removed so they are just a thin layer of green skin. He completes the picture with ornately carved carrots for the fishing nets.

If you’re not feeling architecturally inclined, but you have mad carving skills, don’t forget that you can still dress up your watermelon with some engraved artwork. Chef Joe used carving techniques to etch out this watermelon Mona Lisa. To do this delicate carving work, use a channel knife, which is often found at the top of a vegetable peeler. And even if your art is not quite up to snuff, you can still carve out words or messages in your watermelon (see the Watermelon Board’s page for this creation with the word “Celebrate” written on the side).

Inspired? Ready for a party? Time to pull out the knives and the melon ballers and get creative!

Summer fun food: Because food should be fun.

Questions about how to make the pirate ship or the Mona Lisa? You can reach Chef Joe at fnocatering [at] comcast.net

Posted Under: Just For Fun, Uncategorized | Tags: ,
This post was written by jollytomato on August 1st, 2011

Fun Food: Grilled Fruit

Sunday, June 19th, 2011

So it’s Father’s Day, and of course your natural reaction is to toss a whole bunch of meat on the grill. But what if instead of (or alongside of) all of that meat, you filled up your grill with…fruit? Grilled fruit is incredibly tasty, a real crowd-pleaser, and best of all it’s just about the easiest thing you can grill.

Just about any fruit will work well on the grill as long as you prepare it properly. The heat caramelizes the natural sugar in the fruit, bringing a deep intensity to the flavors. And most of us have access to such a good selection of fruit in the summertime that it’s practically a crime not to grill some of it as long as you have the heat on anyway. Summertime grilling favorites include peaches, strawberries, pineapple, bananas, nectarines, cherries and raspberries.

To get ready for our Father’s Day fruit-grilling, we assembled a plate of fruit that was cut and cored but not peeled (so for example, we left the skin on the pears and pineapple but cut out the cores). Then we sprinkled just a little bit of sugar on each of the cut pieces. If you are grilling bananas, you need to dot each piece with a small amount of butter so that it won’t stick to the grill. And for small and/or fragile fruits like strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, or cherries, you’ll want to arrange them on a piece of foil so that the pieces don’t fall through the grill. We also covered our raspberries with a dash of balsamic vinegar, so as they grilled they came out a little saucier.

Once you preheat the grill, watch the temperature very carefully. We tried to keep the grill no higher than 300 degrees. It helps to stand right next to the grill so you can make sure your fruit doesn’t burn. As soon as you see some nice grill marks on your fruit, flip them over.

After we served this plate of fruit, we were tickled by the reactions. “It tastes just like peach pie but without the crust!” exclaimed one young taster. Our seven-year-old was most impressed with the grilled pineapple. “This is amazing – did we just invent this?” he wanted to know. “Because we have to tell everyone to try it!” OK – done.

Weekend Fun Food: Because food should be fun.

Posted Under: Just For Fun, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , ,
This post was written by jollytomato on June 19th, 2011

Fun Food Saturday: Gingerbread Houses

Saturday, December 11th, 2010

How cool are gingerbread houses? You get to build a structure with food! That’s pretty hard to top in the fun food department. Sure, the ingredients might not be the healthiest, but chances are your kids won’t be eating it anyway. It’s more fun to keep the gingerbread house and look at it for a long time than it is to tear it apart and gnaw on stale gingerbread.

Many people we know go ahead and buy gingerbread house kits, but you can just as easily make the gingerbread on your own. We like this recipe and step-by-step instructions from Disney’s Family Fun. This recipe avoids the problem of having the walls cave in by building the walls around a cardboard “inner house” created from a shoe box. Hint: When you position the wall and roof pieces, hold them in place for at least a minute before letting go to make sure the pieces adhere properly. Also, don’t haul out the candy until you’re ready for the final decorations; otherwise your kids will start filling themselves up with the candy before any of it actually lands on the house.

Two quick notes about building materials: First, you don’t have to make it all about the candy. We’ve seen amazing gingerbread creations that make the most of pretzels, slivered almonds, cereal, raisins, and more. Second, if you don’t have gingerbread for whatever reason, you can use graham crackers for the house pieces. We have a friend who’s made beautiful creations year after year with graham crackers as the sole structural element – and you’d never know it from glancing at the house.

Have you made the best gingerbread house ever? Then put it up to the ultimate test: Enter it in the gingerbread contest at Food.com (there’s a house category and a cookie category).

Fun Food Saturday: Because food should be fun.

Photo credit: jetolla from morguefile.com. And disclaimer: That’s not our house – someone else with a lot more time and patience and fewer sticky-fingered kids made that one.

Posted Under: Just For Fun, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , ,
This post was written by jollytomato on December 11th, 2010
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