Not Your Average Warm and Fuzzy Soup

Part I: The Fuzzy Melon Experience

After my visit to Baffoni Chicken farm, I did not leave with chicken; I left with a fuzzy melon. Fuzzy melon, aka fuzzy squash, is a vegetable of Chinese origin. It grows on vines that have very large leaves. As you can see, the fuzzy melon is ginormous. It was as thick and as long as my thigh! (It is also very heavy as you can see by my awkward weight distribution in the picture above.) Hannah, an employee at farm fresh, and I went to Baffoni Farm together.  When given the melon, neither one of us were not sure what to do with the gift, so we decided to split it in half and each take home a piece. Here is my account of the fuzzy melon experience (FME). The first shock was the fuzzy melon’s texture. I thought it would be hard to cut open, like a squash, but it was actually very easy. We cut it in half with a butter knife. Then, we were both surprised by the number of seeds the melon had.

Given its size,

one would expect for there to be a lot of meat to the vegetable, but no, there is actually very little to eat of the melon once you remove the seeds. The next challenge she and I both experienced was how to cook it. If it’s a melon, do you cook it at all? If it’s a squash, do you cook it like a curry, similar to eggplant parmesan, sauté it? And the seeds! They tasted pretty good raw, but should I bake them like pumpkin seeds or simply discard them? So many questions and not that much information on the Internet. Well, Benner and I took the plunge and decided to abandon our initial cooking ideas and make soup.

1) We treated the fuzzy melon like a butternut squash soup. First, the fuzzy melon was cut into pieces and drizzled in olive oil and salt. Then, in about ½ inch of water, the melon was cooked skin side up at 350F. The melon was cooked until it was easy to poke, about forty minutes, removed from the oven and then the skin was removed.

 2) In a medium sized pot, toss in 1 finely chopped small onion, 1 finely chopped carrot, and 1 tsp of fresh dill were sautéed together in olive, salt, cayenne pepper, cumin, and the juice of ½ a lemon. When the carrots were soft and the onion was translucent and on the cusp of browning, about 2 cups of vegetable broth were added. Once simmering, the inside flesh/meat of the fuzzy melon was added. Using a potato masher, the melon was mashed up and sat for about fifteen minutes. Then, the rest of the lemon was added. About ½ tsp of fresh dill was also added at this point.

 3) We finished the soup in the food processor so that it would be more like a bisque. We put in batches of the soup and began to puree it. Several—explosions of burning hot liquid forcing the cap off of the food processor and onto me later-- we had soup.

The soup’s flavor was unexpected. To me, it tasted like a pea soup that had been watered down. The aftertaste was even stranger, it was like a small punch of bitterness, similar flavors to a zucchini or an undercooked eggplant. During all of this flavor exploration, I also picked up hints of the carrot, so I guess fuzzy melon sort of tastes like carrot, zucchini, pea soup. I have to say though, my taste buds were not familiar with the fuzzy melon, and although I thought this soup tasted shockingly delicious, I had some trouble getting past the unfamiliar tangy bitter taste. Benner, on the other hand, loved it. He said the soup tasted good, and he even got seconds! He also made the pea soup connection and thought it had flavors similar to Indian cuisine. I think the fuzzy melon soup/bisque was a success. I would recommend this soup to people that like earthy winter flavors, like mom or my sister Juliana.

 I am not sure that I will make this soup again. Not because I didn’t like it, but I do not know when I will get the chance to cook a fuzzy melon again. There are also some things I would change about this soup.  In the future, I may add sweet potato, leeks, white pepper, and more heat. I felt like the fuzzy melon experience could have been improved; however, given the initial circumstances, I am quite proud that we in what we accomplished.