Monday Night Martha: Tomato Watermelon Soup

This is a slightly bizarre but delicious summer soup made of pureed watermelon and tomato. The soup is served cold and requires no cooking, so it'd make vegetarians, vegans and even the raw food crowd happy.

The recipe comes from Epicurious by way of Self Magazine. Self says the soup serves up generous portions of the "skin-saving antioxidant lycopene." That sounds dandy enough but we decided to try it out because we were craving watermelon one hot day and randomly Googled "watermelon soup". 


Buy a small, seedless watermelon and cut it into smallish cubes. There's no need to worry about the pale seeds because they'll pretty much disappear in the blender. Quarter the tomatoes.
 
It was surprisingly difficult to find ground almonds. Fry's sold a bag for close to $12.00 which seemed insane for a recipe that called for just a few tablespoons.

In true Martha spirit, we should have been super industrious and come up with a way to finely grind almonds ourselves using a mortar and pestle but we couldn't be bothered, so finally we plunked down $10.00 for a 16 ounce bag at Whole Paycheck. If you see ground almonds in upcoming Monday Night Martha recipes, you'll know why.

The rest of the recipe went off without a hitch. Obviously if you're going for the vegan thing, skip the feta cheese. What really made the soup zing was the shallot.

Don't skimp out on the garnishes, like the olives and mint, because they're vital too. This was a goofy sounding soup that tasted smooth and fresh and is perfect for summer.

The recipe allegedly serves four but we polished it off in a night. It's definitely not a meal unto itself because it doesn't have much heft to it, but it would be perfect as a side dish, along with some grilled vegetables or fish.