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Do you ever have one of those moments when you're staring at a cantaloupe and thinking, "This should be a pasta sauce." No, just me? Perhaps you'll remember that I had two Cooking Guy trips to Japan. Two groups of people. One here and a few days later a second group. And thanks for asking, they were fantastic. More trips to come, stay tuned. You mean the Sand the Cooking Guy ass-kissathon? It's not the Sand the Cooking Guy ass-kissathon. It's was We had fun. Look, you want to see a couple pictures?
Here, here's one group, here's the other group. Do they look like they're kissing ass or having fun? Stop it, Max. I hope you can't hear him. You ever in bed at night and that little fly flying around? That's what Max is like sometimes. You just want to swat him. Anyway, there we were in Kyoto walking through the famed Nishiki Market and Sean, one of the participants of the trip, as we're walking along and Sean goes, "You know, I got a recipe you might like." And I go, "What is it, Sean?" Sean goes, "It's this melon pasta." I'm like, "Okay, I don't know. Melon and pasta don't really sound like they go together in my head." He goes, "No, no, you have to trust me on this." Anyway, this recipe is inspired by Sean. From
that day in the Nishiki Market, I've changed it a bit because that's always what I do. The base of it though is freaking cantaloupe. This cantaloupe will become the pasta sauce. And yes, the other things I'm going to mention, there's going to be the prosciutto. And as they say in The Sopranos, say it. Prosciut. And the arugula and other good things, but yeah, it's going to be great. Hey, speaking of the prosciut, that's where we start cuz we got to get crispy. Prosciutto, comes like this, separated by these little sheets. Now, you very simply could just take these pieces of prosciutto, put it on a parchment-covered baking sheet, and fling it into the oven, and it would be great. They might not stay flat.
It doesn't really matter for this recipe, but I like flat. So, I'm going to show you how to get these flat, so you could use it, you know, decoratively or whatever. So, two little racks for a baking sheet. And I'm just going to do this. I'm just going to take the slices of prosciutto. I don't need them all, but I'll just put them on here like this. I think you can guess where this is going. Right, Max? Right. What am I doing? What's going to happen? You're going to wedge them together. Attaboy. He's listening. Doesn't always listen, but he is right now. All right, so just take these kids and spread them oot, as we would say in Canada.
And I'll fling one more on. Get it? One more on. Okay. Second one goes on top like that. They're now wedged. These will go into a 375° oven until crispy, probably 10-ish minutes, I'll be back. All right, next up, it's time for the cantaloupe. So, let's cut this kid in half and see what we've got. You've got cantaloupe. What a surprise. All right, let's get rid of the seeds because they're nobody's friend right now. And we'll just do this. Just scoop like that. Out they come. And the other side. Come on, you. Don't want this
liquid stuff. Great, no seeds. Okay, now it's time to cut. Our goal now is this kid in, I don't know, you know, 1/4-in size pieces-ish. So, we'll just do this. It's all going to cook down, so it doesn't really matter too much. But here, watch. Let me just get a piece of this out. Like that. Good. Do that to the whole thing. Well, do that till you have about 4 cups, cuz that's what you need. Okay, let me scoop this up, and we'll get to some real cooking. And we start with a little olive oil, and some finely diced red onion or shallots. Whatever you've got, and I'm using red onion cuz I don't have shallot. All right. Let that start to warm up a bit. Get a little sizzle going. Nice. This is what you're looking for. That
little sizzle, some beautiful smell. Throw in some garlic. Now you're talking. Give this 30 seconds to get fragrant. And while it's on its way, add a pinch of red pepper flakes. One quick stir. Fantastico. And in goes our cantaloupe. All right. Everybody gets stirred around so it gets the benefit of the oil and the garlic and the red pepper flakes. And now over sort of mediumish heat, we're going to let this go about oh, 8 to 10 minutes till it really starts to break down. We want it to soften and collapse. Okay? There's really nothing to see until then. I'll stir it every minute or so, but other than that, just let it happen.
Okay, we're a couple minutes in. Look at this. That's all that liquid. That's helping these pieces of cantaloupe to get super soft. This is going to be really good. Okay. Keep going. That's what 2 minutes to go looks like. So that's 6 minutes altogether. Keep it going. You can see how great this is going to be. All right, looking great. This is after 8 minutes. Perfectomente. Oh, I splattered. Okay. Couple things to add. First is a little vermouth, 1/4 cup. And either white balsamic vinegar, and who has that? I don't. So here's your cheat. Couple teaspoons of white wine
vinegar and a little sugar. See? I'm not a stickler. I'm not going to make you go get a bottle of white balsamic and you're only going to use a tablespoon of it. Okay. Give this It's more minutes. Look at this. It's thickening nicely. Okay, couple things. We're getting close. First is couple tablespoons of butter. Oops, sorry. I splashed you, Max. My bad. Work this in. Mhm. And while that's happening, let's add some Parmesan cheese like this. Mix that. Oh, boy. It's getting good. Stirring lovingly.
Everything mixed beautifully. Almost. I can turn that down a bit. Next, some arugula. Nice big handful of it like that. And you know this is going to just wilt in beautifully. And add that little peppery bite that is so fantastic. Okay. Give this a minute. Now it's time for the pasta. And we're just going to go straight from the pot right in like that. This is fettuccine. It could be bucatini. It could be spaghetti. It bucarelli. Who's bucarelli? And now we toss. Now we mix. Oh, boy. Now look how thick it is, right? That sauce thickened up. The cheese helped. And now the pasta's helping. So we want
to now loosen it a bit. And what we're going to use, Max? Pasta water. Pasta water, exactly. I don't have a thing with me, so I'm just going to use my little bowl. Like that. And we've said it before, you want to use the pasta water because it has the starch from the pasta in it that just makes it better. Yes, regular water would work, but why not use something with flavor to it? Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Okay, I'm ready to plate this if you are. Shall we? All right, let's go. Okay, I forgot to add salt. So I'll add it now and I'll mix it.
We're going to be fine. Don't anybody worry. You don't want me the captain of a boat. Then you'd worry. But when it's just food, this I can fix. You don't want to get in the lifeboat and have me go oops, I forgot the life vests. But salt, that's good. Last minute, okay. In we go. Oh, that's beautiful. Listen, you could have pureed this sauce if you wanted, but I like it with these pieces in there. Okay, couple things. Some fresh ground black pepper is always important. Going to give it a little bit more cheese, like that. And then, remember these guys? Of course you do. Look at them. And we just go like this.
Little salty crunch, little salty bite. Oh, I love this. Okay, there you go. Bon appetit. There's your summer melon pasta with crispy prosciutto and arugula. And it's gorgeous. And to think I had to go all the way to Kyoto, Japan for the inspiration. Which by the way, I'd do in a second again. Guess what? I forgot one more thing. A little lemon zest. Just to brighten it up as they say. Just a little pop of citrusy flavor. Not too much. Great. Now we get a bite. So let's do this. Look how beautiful this is. Oh my gosh. Nice. One little piece of prosciutto on top. We're good to go. Bon appetit.
Mhm. One bite. It's exactly what I said at the beginning. You give this to somebody, they'll take one bite and they'll go, wait, what's in that? The sweetness is beautiful. You need that little bit of heat from the red pepper flakes. And this lets you have pasta in the summer that's not cold pasta, like a pasta salad. It's light. It's flavorful. It's it's a little citrusy. It's it's all the things of dream. You want to throw basil in, throw basil in. What I tell you? Like I'm just a guide. I'm basically your sherpa. No, the sherpas aren't guides. Are the sherpas guides or
they just carry stuff? They're your guides and they carry stuff. I'm your Sherpa. I'm here to show you the way. If you decide to make a change, keep it the same, whatever, that's all up to you. Okay. Well, I'm just going to stand here and eat the hell out of this. I'll give some to Maxi boy, too. Hey, Sean, thank you for the inspiration. It's fantastic. And uh maybe I'll see you on my next trip. We're thinking Vietnam. Stay tuned.
