This classic summer salad of arugula, watermelon and feta is turned up a notch with a spicy and tangy ginger-grapefruit dressing. It’s a crowd-pleasing, flavorful side dish! As a bonus to this post, I share some details I discovered about the nutritional wunderkind that is watermelon…
WATERMELON. When I “sampled” (quality control, as my mom calls it) the watermelon as I was slicing it up for this dish, I could have sworn at that moment that I had never tasted anything so delicious! I was in my sweltering kitchen, with all sorts of ovens and stoves and vents going, and it was like as if I was hit with an extremely necessary cool breeze. Suddenly - it felt like summer.
San Francisco is known for its brutally cold summers, and these past couple of weeks have been truly glorious. I’m talking 75-and-sunny, all you want to do is go on long walks and wear sundresses. Well, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself because I am certainly wearing jackets every evening here in the Bay Area but it is certainly warmer than when we moved up here back in May, in which I found Nate sitting at our kitchen table IN A SLEEPING BAG. So yes. Finally. Watermelon season. Sleeping bags, you’ve been put away.
Mixing up watermelon with feta, red onion, and arugula is a go-to, crowd-pleasing dish. So many good flavors going on. Tangy umami from the feta, sweet and crunchy goodness from the watermelon, spiciness from the arugula, and whatever clutch flavor red onion always seems to provide. However, this dressing is something new, and something that I loved. It’s citrusy, spicy, and tangy at the same time. and provides a wonderful compliment to bring out all of the other flavors and textures of the salad. It’s one of those salads that you certainly feel like you can serve at a dinner party, or bring to a potluck. It’s super versatile, and that’s what I like about it. There isn’t much prep time either, and you can slice up the red onion and watermelon ahead of time and store the dressing for up to several days in the fridge.
That is, if you don’t eat all of the watermelon while making the recipe. My roommate “sampled” some of the watermelon too and proclaimed that it has “alkalizing” benefits, which got me googling. I found myself kind of blown away with the facts I found at Health.com. Watermelon is 92% water, it’s a fruit AND a vegetable (say whaa?), it’s a great as a post-workout refresher to relieve muscle soreness, it contains potassium and fiber, and the antioxidant lycopene. The article also told me I could eat the rind….
And I also found out July is National Watermelon Month! So if there’s not enough reasons already to make this dish (because it’s delicious), go ahead and pay homage to National Watermelon Month, and ingest all of those nutritonal benefits of this monstrous fruit/vegetable (snozzcumbers, anyone?)
- 4-6 cups fresh arugula
- ¼ cup feta cheese, crumbled
- 2 cups watermelon, sliced into small squares
- ¼ red onion, thinly sliced
- Juice of half a grapefruit
- Juice of half a lemon
- 1 inch knob of ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
- 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- In a large serving bowl, toss the arugula, feta, watermelon, and red onion
- In a food processor or blender, blend the grapefruit juice, lemon juice, ginger, white wine vinegar, olive oil, and a tiny bit of salt
- Pour over the salad and toss lightly
- Serve immediately with fresh cracked pepper
If you like this, you’ll love: Mediterranean Salad with Crispy Chickpeas
Thanks for stopping by! 
