Watermelon Mint Agua Fresca

There's no better use for a perfect watermelon than turning it into agua fresca. This is the drink that gets passed hand to hand at every crawfish boil, every Fourth of July gathering, every lazy Sunday when the heat rises off the bayou in shimmering waves.

My grandmother Evangeline kept a glass pitcher of this on her back porch from June through September. She'd send me out to the garden for mint while the watermelon chilled in the icebox. The mint grew wild by the cistern, and she'd tear the leaves by hand because she said knives made the mint angry. I didn't understand what she meant until I was grown and working in professional kitchens, watching cooks butcher delicate herbs with dull blades and wondering why their food tasted flat.

The beauty of agua fresca is its honesty. You can't hide behind technique or expensive ingredients. Everything depends on one thing: the watermelon. Get yourself a good one and you're halfway to something magical. At Lagniappe, we go through cases of watermelons every summer week, and I still thump every single one before it goes in the walk-in.