Watermelon-Tomato & Fennel Salad

It seems like every damn food magazine/blog/tweet I’m getting this summer is featuring a watermelon-tomato salad variation.  Watermelon and Tomato!  I KNOW tomatoes are fruits, but that combination still freaks me out on principle.  Sometimes it’s featured with citrus.  Sometimes cheese (usually feta).  In various combinations of heirloom this and locally-sourced that.  Which is awesome, but hard to get the kids to eat, quite frankly.  I finally caved a few weeks ago and made this fecked up Frankenfruit combination salad for a dinner party at our place and it was a WINNER!  Even in the under-21 demographic.  Here’s the version I made (which is surprisingly vegan and gluten-free), but you could totally sub out other kinds of melon.  I personally like it served alongside a nice, bloody, grilled T-bone steak.

FrankenFruit & Fennel Salad

3 cups watermelon, cut in 1” cubes

1 fennel bulb, sliced into 2” long very narrow slivers, plus some of the chopped fronds

1 cup (about 2 medium) heirloom tomatoes, cut into 1” pieces

2 oranges supremed*, with juice

2 Tbs. olive oil

1 tsp. champagne vinegar

A generous pinch of Hawaiian Alaea sea salt or kosher salt

Fresh ground black pepper

Toss all ingredients in a large bowl, fold gently to combine.  Awesome additions:  kalamata olives, feta cheese, or steak.  Hells yeah. 

*Supremed citrus= cut off all of the rind of the fruit, including the white pith.  Holding the naked fruit in your hot little palm over a small bowl, cut in between the white section walls, releasing the bare fruit sections.  Squeeze the remaining juice from the sectioned hull into the bowl.  Put all the fruit sections and juice in your salad.  Throw the rest of that shit in your compost, or feed it to the chickens.