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| Melons in S France |
This
summer we're doing a house swap in the South of France which has been
fantastic. It meant a lot of tidying and organising before we left
home so our house was ready for another family to use, not easy after
a month of non-stop exchanges, friends and visitors, however, it has
been worth it. It is lovely to move into a proper home, so to speak,
not a holiday cottage in a real village.
The
village itself is tiny with an epicerie, butchers and tabac,
everthing you need on a day to day basis, with the usual rash of
hypermarkets not far away.
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| Market day at Céret |
On
a recent daytrip to Perpignan, a very pretty town in the south west
France one hour from the Spanish border, I had a salad in a
restaurant that was really good.
Simple.
Refreshing.
Tasty
and so easy to do, and unlike a lot of salads here there wasn’t an
onion or egg in sight.
It
had charenten melon, kiwi, water melon, lettuce and tomatoes with a
fine dressing and was one of the most refreshing things I’ve eaten
in a while.
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| Charenten meons |
Needless
to say we have had our own version many times since, always with
slight variations, depending on what is in the fridge, but the
essence is the same.
PERPIGNAN
SALAD
Serves
4 people
Preparation
time 5 minutes
No
cooking required!
INGREDIENTS:
¼
of a charenten melon cut into cubes about 1cm in size
2
kiwi’s cut into cubes
4
tomatoes roughly chopped
1
fresh green lettuce, washed and roughly torn into bite size pieces.
1
Slice of watermelon again cubed
For
the dressing mix 1 part white wine vinegar to 4 parts olive oil with
a pinch of mixed herbs, half a tsp of French mustard and half a tsp
of honey and mix well.
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| tomato,melon and kiwi salad |
It
sounds like a cross between a fruit salad and green salad but really
is gorgeous. Even those who aren’t normally particularly keen on
melon in our family like it, that’s saying something. We had it
with fresh prawns and crusty french bread which was gorgeous but it
would go equally well with roast chicken.....
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| Prawns |
So
for a taste of the South of France, those fields of sunflowers and
road side stalls stacked with melons try this.
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| A simple supper |
