cool melon salad with hot bacon

August 18, 2010

Hello! Welcome to the new Eating for England! I hope you like the fresh new look. I am super excited about the blog’s new home and want to give massive thanks to Daniel Mortensen for being my web guru extraordinaire (as well as my blazing hot husband). He wins at life.

It looks like we lost some comments from the last post during the transfer and we’re ironing out some other bits and bobs, but apart from that it’s mostly smooth sailing. There will be some new features coming soon which I hope you’ll enjoy as well some awesome new content. I appreciate all your feedback so please let me know what you think!

Now. How about some of this:

For those of you who are on Twitter and following along as I tweet my daily food excitements, you know that as soon as I saw this idea on The Kitchn, I was sold and half way to the grocery store.

I don’t buy bacon that often, mainly because I love it so much that if I did I would soon turn into a big dripping piece of fatty meat. Mmmm. Try and get that image out of your head.

But when I see a combination like cool melon and hot bacon suggested, well, yeah. That’s danger, right there. Also, it means I get to have a bacon sarnie or two the rest of the week. Yessss.

Cool Melon Salad with Hot Bacon
adapted from The Kitchn

Ingredients

Serves two for lunch or 4 as a part of a larger meal

  • 4 or 5 strips of smoked bacon, cut into 3″ pieces
  • 1 small, sweet melon such as cantaloupe
  • several small mint leaves, torn if big
  • a small handful of arugula or spicy cress, washed and dried well

for the dressing:

  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • 3 tablespoons lemon juice – about one large lemon
  • freshly ground pepper
  • a few mint sprigs

Directions

  1. Start the bacon cooking. Slice the melon in half, scoop out the seeds and cut into wedges. Cut the skin off the flesh and the flesh into large cubes. “Keep the pieces generous sized,” says Nigel’s recipe. “Otherwise the salad will end up being ‘bitty.'” Remember to tend to the bacon while cutting the melon. Place the cubes in a bowl and chill in the fridge.
  2. Whisk the olive oil, honey and lemon juice in a bowl. Reserve.
  3. Drain the bacon. Toss the melon, arugula/cress and mint with a drizzle of dressing (you won’t need it all.) Add the bacon, toss again, and garnish with the fresh pepper and mint springs. Serve immediately.

Hot tip: If you measure the olive oil first, and the honey second, the measuring spoon will be coated with oil and the honey will slide right out. While the hot bacon and cooi melon are nice contrasts, this salad is equally good when all ingredients are at room temperature.

How do you feel about melon and meat?

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