Weekend Recipe 3/22/09 Take 2

I believe I missed last weekend, so here's another one that I actually just made today (turned out brilliantly, even though I didn't have some of the ingredients). It comes from The Dorn Cookbook, and has an interesting story before the actual recipe:

Watermelon Soup (Chinese)

The summer of 1942 in Chungking was one of stifling heat and extreme humidity. For over seven weeks the temperature never dropped lower than 100 degrees day or night. Add to the heat the depression from defeat after defeat in the Phillippines, the Pacific, and in Burma - from which latter place the Japanese had just run us out; and the crazy-quilt construction and fire-bombed areas of China's wartime capital on its rocky precipices - and you find a distinct lack of the pleasures which usually go with an ideal summer. One night John Davies, who had been born in China, took a few of us to a courtyard restaurant, its grape trellis limp with heat, it's mosquitoes too enervated to attack, and its patrons trying to act out a brave front. John ordered. After tea and melon seeds came our one dish of the evening - watermelon soup - and quite enough. What inspired genius of past centuries dreamed up this concoction no one will ever know. Not only is it beautiful to look at, but it combines a subtlety of flavors unlike any other dish I know. In the drabness of wartime Chungking it came as a novelty and a surprise. It takes time to prepare, but your efforts will be well rewarded.

1 watermelon about 20 to 24 inches long
Cut an oval of the rind about 10 to 12 inches long from one side.
Gouge out the meat just past the line of seeds.
.5 lb. diced pork
.5 lb. diced lean lamb, or spring mutton
Meat from 1 stewing chicken removed from bones
.5 lb. diced ham
Meat from 1 small duck removed from bones
1 pint diced abalone (Clams can be substituted)
1 cup diced fresh mushrooms
1 cup dried mushrooms
Meat from 2 small lobsters
1.5 cups bamboo shoots (or bean sprouts)
8 stalks celery, cut into 1 inch lengths
8 stalks Chinese cabbage, cut into 1 inch lengths
.5 bunch water cress
2 tbsps. dry mustard
1 tbsp. sugar
Salt and pepper to taste (use sparingly)
2 tbsps. soy sauce
3 onions, finely chopped
1 tbsp. caraway seed
1 quart chicken broth, from which the fat has been skimmed

Boil pork for about 1 hour. Remove the pork meat. Mix all ingredients except water cress, and including pork meat, in a large soup pot. Cover and boil slowly for 1.5 hours. Add water from time to time if too much broth evaporates. Cool enough to skim off fat. Place the watermelon in a bake pan with about 2 inches of water in the pan. Pan should be of a shape which will hold the watermelon upright. Pour all of the ingredients from the soup pot into the hollow of the melon. Place in a 450 degree oven and boil for 45 minutes. Just before serving, add broken up water cress. Serve soup in the hollowed watermelon, decorated with flowers. When serving individual portions, scoop off part of the melon meat with each serving. CAUTION: Melon should be firm. Do not use a fully ripe melon.

Serves 10 to 12

This recipe from The Dorn Cookbook is copywrited in 1953 by The Henry Regnery Company in Chicago. This reproduction of the text is intended for educational use only.