Magnificent and surprising hot melon salad
Magnificent – because it looks magnificent, surprising because you grill the melon.
You could adapt this recipe and make an impressive starter using very small melons. Cut in half, remove seeds, and fill the revealed cavity with burrata, bacon, cooked and peeled prawns and drizzle with pomegranate molasses.
If you don’t have any pomegranate molasses you could use thick, syrupy balsamic vinegar.
Magnificent and surprising hot melon salad
Serve with paper towels, crusty bread and extra pomegranate molasses for people to help themselves.
Serves – 3
Ingredients
- 80 ml/⅓ cup mayonnaise
- Half a cantaloupe melon
- 8 king prawns or small langoustes
- 1 burrata (250g/8 oz)
- 2 tbsps Pomegranate molasses
- Smoked salt
- Indonesian long pepper
- Basil
- Mint
- 80g/3 oz packet of pancetta or about four slices of very thinly sliced bacon – chopped small
- 8 cherry tomatoes, halved
- 3 fat cloves of garlic
- Olive oil for frying
Instructions
- Put plates in to warm.
- Get your grill hot. Cut the melon into eight thin slices. Sprinkle with smoked salt, and grill until two or three of the slices start to singe slightly – maybe as long as ten minutes.
- Bruise the garlic cloves so that the skin breaks, but don’t bother to peel.
- Heat some olive oil in a frying pan and add the garlic, the prawns (shell and all) and the cherry tomatoes (cut side down) and the bacon. Fry the prawns on both sides.
- Squeeze out the cooked garlic, crush, and mix in with the mayonnaise – put in a small bowl in the middle of a big round serving platter.
- Arrange the slices of melon and the prawns around it.
- Grind over some pepper
- Break open the burrata, and scatter over, tear over the basil and mint leaves
- Scatter over the bacon and the tomatoes
- Drizzle over the pomegranate molasses
- Serve with hot plates, crusty bread, extra pomegranate molasses, and lots of paper napkins or kitchen paper.
Music to listen to
It has to be Runnin’ Wild, from Some Like It Hot.
