After a great Fourth of July weekend, I returned home to a whole watermelon sitting on my kitchen counter. It had been there, leftover from a supper club dinner, staring me in the face for a few weeks and I have been stumped as to what to do with it. Still full from a weekend of delicious BBQ’s, I was craving something very light and refreshing. That’s when I thought of gazpacho. So, I tossed the watermelon aside once again and headed over to my favorite recipe search site, foodgawker, and typed in gazpacho. Low and behold, there it was – a recipe for watermelon gazpacho! I quickly turned to google for a broader recipe search and to my surprise, watermelon gazpacho was actually quite a popular dish. This was perfect, so I ran out to the market and picked up some more ingredients and ran straight home to the food processor. I took a little from recipe A and a little from recipe B and being the shallot fiend that I am, substituted red onions for shallots. I have never cooked with one before, but I decided to include a jalapeno pepper that was included in several recipes that I cam across. I’m omitting this from the recipe below because one taste with the jalapeno and my mouth was intensely on fire. You may want to add a tiny bit, but I think this dish is just fine without them too. Here’s the recipe that I came up with…

2 1/2 cups watermelon
1 cucumber peeled
1 yellow pepper
1 red pepper
1 shallot
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
Juice of 1/2 a lime
1/2 tsp salt (I added a little more at the end)
Chives and pepper to garnish

In a food processor or blender, combine the watermelon and 1/2 of the cucumber and blend until pureed. Add the vinegar, lime and salt and blend once more. Finely chop the remaining cucumber, the yellow pepper, red pepper and shallot. Mix the puree with the chopped vegetables and top with chopped chives and pepper to garnish.