Melons! They don’t get enough love. Sure, watermelon has a fanbase. They’re great for the Fourth of July, pressed juice and Jolly Ranchers. But we often ignore the other contenders in the melon lineup.
In season, we’d challenge you to find a taster, healthier treat than a ripe cantaloupe. Their use is limited only by your imagination. Recently, our wife prepared a top-notch summer salad with cantaloupe, mozzarella, prosciutto, basil, and balsamic glaze. We ate it alongside a pasta entrée (Cappello’s Almond Flour Fettucine). Technically, the salad was served as a side dish, but it stole the whole damn show. Sweet, salty, creamy. Fresh.
You may have noted that many internet recipes contain a wordy preamble. That’s due to search engine optimization (SEO). We wish we could write 1,000 words about melons. They deserve the praise. We’d love to share some riveting tale about backpacking across China and sharing a handpicked honeydew melon with a family of farmers. But we don’t have such a story.
Wait! Actually, we served for two years a Peace Corps volunteer in a Romanian village in the Moldova region where the main crops were sunflowers and . . . WATERMELON. During August, growers would set up on the roadside and sell the juiciest, most delicious melons you could imagine tasting. Don’t believe us? Here’s photographic evidence:
Now that we’ve droned on about barely relevant topics (and thanks for reading along), we’ll give you the recipe for our cantaloupe salad.
Summer Salad with Cantaloupe, Mozzarella, Prosciutto, Basil, and Balsamic Glaze
Ingredients
- 1 small cantaloupe, seeded and cut into chunks
- 1 cup of pearl mozzarella
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- 1/3 lb. of prosciutto, sliced
- 1 tablespoon of balsamic glaze
- 1 tablespoon of fresh basil leaves, rolled and sliced into ribbons
Directions
Arrange cantaloupe chucks on platter. Add pearl mozzarella. Sprinkle salt and pepper. Drizzle with balsamic glaze. Place sliced of prosciutto in bunches around platter. Garnish with basil ribbons. Eat!
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