Hot Watermelon with Goat's Cheese & Tomato

This is my adaptation of one of Ferran Adrià’s dishes from his famous restaurant, El Bulli, in Spain. Using guesswork, having seen a photograph, I copied the dish but added goat’s cheese and watermelon dressing. On another occasion I replaced the dressing with basil oil and put a slab of basil jelly under the watermelon - cut to the same size. Made this way or that, one fact remains, the idea belongs to Adrià and to him alone.

One large watermelon cut into 13cmL x 3cmW x 2cmH oblongs yields at least 10 pieces. You may not be preparing this for ten people so just use what you need and set the rest of the watermelon aside for another use. This is a very economical starter especially if you omit the goat’s cheese.

To serve 6:

1 small seedless watermelon cut (see above) all exactly the same size
6 medium tomatoes, skinned, deseeded, diced (concassé)
160g goat’s cheese broken into small pieces
100g pistachio nuts, peeled, skinned and roughly chopped
Balsamic glaze to garnish
2 tablespoons watermelon dressing (see below)
Micro herbs to garnish

Place the watermelon pieces on a grill pan covered with foil to protect the fruit, top with tomato and goat’s cheese and grill under a very hot grill until the cheese starts to melt slightly and browns a little. (A fan-forced oven is ideal to brown the cheese and heat the melon at the same time). Remove and place the melon pieces on serving plates. Scatter a few nuts on top, spoon a little dressing over the top to moisten and add the herbs. Mark each plate artistically with a little balsamic glaze and serve immediately.

Watermelon dressing: make a small quantity of French dressing but replace the sugar content with fresh watermelon juice. To make the juice, whiz a few pieces of watermelon in a blender, strain it and use as stated.

Serve with a slightly chilled Sangiovese 2007 from http://www.thelittlewinecompany.com.au/