Erez Komarovsky’s Middle Eastern Watermelon Salad For Summer

Watermelon salad Image by Goba Photography
This unique salad combines fresh watermelon with marinated char grilled peppers, salty cheese and herbs. Chef Erez uses Bulgarian cheese, which is a type of feta commonly paired in Israel with watermelon for a light dessert. Chef Erez suggests a slice of bucheron or fresh goat cheese if you can’t find great quality Bulgarian cheese.
1 lb. cold watermelon, cut into ¾” cubes
6 large romano* red peppers (long red peppers)
5 small oil cured anchovy filets, chopped finely
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 lemon
1 cup of fresh mint leaves
1 cup of fresh parsley leaves
Fruit, high quality olive oil
6 oz. Bulgarian Feta or 1 large slice of bucheron goat cheese
Finishing Sea salt, such as fleur de sel
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Roast the peppers over an open flame until charred on all sides. Place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap until cool. Peel, remove seeds and any liquid. Place in bowl and season to taste with salt. Add garlic, anchovy, and the juice of one lemon. Set aside to marinate while preparing the other ingredients.
Gently tear the peppers into long strips. Add them, along with the marinade, to the cold watermelon cubes. Gently fold in the herbs, season with sea salt and drizzle with olive oil. Finish with cheese and black pepper.
*Romano peppers are a long, sweet red pepper variety. If you cannot find them at your local market, replace with 3 red bell peppers.
__Danielle Rehfeld Colen is the chef and founder of The Inherited Plate. She graduated from the Institute of Culinary Education in New York, The George Washington University and has worked in professional NYC kitchens and in private homes for the last 10 years. Danielle has tested recipes at Real Simple, Women’s Day and wrote and developed recipes for her food column ‘What’s Cooking’ in The Riverdale Press for 5 years. Most recently, her work was published in The Boston Globe. She caters, teaches private cooking classes and cooks with professional chefs and home cooks from all over the world to preserve and share their authentic family recipes, stories and special culinary knowledge. She lives in NYC. Follow her on Instagram @daniellerehfeld @theinheritedplate and on Twitter @daniellerehfeld._
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Fast Forward Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s campus antisemitism crackdown has ‘gone way too far’
-
Fast Forward 5 Jewish senators accuse Trump of using antisemitism as ‘guise’ to attack universities
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.