By the way, about the book of culinary perversions.
There is one South Russian specialty, the mention of which in the capital causes walls and families to collapse from a prolonged FUUUUUUUUU.

I'm talking about pickled watermelon 🍉

Living in Moscow, the product seems so strange and not very popular that I almost believed it was some kind of southern local perversion. I thought so until yesterday, when I decided to spend a couple of hours studying the food trends of our strategic/decaying partners of Western countries.

And voila, in the US it's if not a trend, then a fairly represented product, and they pickle/salt not whole slices but only the rind, plus a bunch of homemade recipes on various sites.
True, they don't use them as a separate dish, but as part of salads, sandwiches, and even alcoholic cocktails (imagine the faces of Moscow's high society).

So, Make Russian South Great Again.