Cantaloupe Salad

As a way to show off how hard it is to mess up a salad I decided to do something a bit counter intuitive.  I happen to have a farm fresh cantaloupe that needs eating and more salad to make so I just put the two together!   I made the exact same salad I did last time with: corn tomato onions and garlic.  When I thought about it The idea of adding cantaloupe to this mix just seems wrong so I came up with two plans.

1) I would make the same salad and use a cantaloupe salad dressing

2) I would add chunks of cantaloupe to the salad and use the cantaloupe dressing

I will admit, the main reason I came up with two plans is because I assumed adding cantaloupe to the salad was a mistake. . .but ti wasn't and we will get to that more in just a bit.

First I want to elaborate on the cutting corn in half before you de-cob it.  This little trick works for any round thing.  Round objects are hard to cut, they always try to roll away and if you manage to get it in a non-roll-away position pushing too hard with your knife will send it rolling! Of course an obvious solution is to get a super nice knife that is so sharp you dont need to press hard.  The other is to make on simple cut to create a flat side.  A lot of the food we will cut will have a side we need to cut off anyway.  Here I cut the top off the tomato

which simultaneously gets rid of the 'stem' and gives me a surface to rest the tomato on.  Now slicing it into strips is easy!

The same feat is achieved with corn by breaking it in half so you don't have to balance it on point or stem.

Since I want the cantaloupe flavor to be noticeable in the dressing I switch from balsamic vinegar (which brings its own body and sweetness to the dish) for a red wine vinegar.  This vinegar is a bit more sour so we can get away with using a little less but more importantly it does not have a HUGE unique flavor that will fight with the fruit.  Chances are I could do it with balsamic but it turn the cantaloupe into an undertone.  I cut the seeds and the skin from the flesh of the cantaloupe and dice it finely until it is almost a mash.

This mash is added to the garlic/olive oil/ coconut oil  portion of the salad dressing.  I grind some pepper in and add a pinch of salt (yes I made it to the store).  Red wine vinegar goes in and we use a fork to whisk it up putting a little extra oomph in to try and mash up the melon more.  I made way too much salad dressing!  I mean just look at that. . .the acid is way out of proportion to the fat!  Well not really. . .the melon naturally sinks into the acid layer and makes it look bigger, so either get the ratio to your liking before adding melon or actually measure it out (which I dont suggest, you want to develop a feel for the tastes you like without measuring).

Well after a few bites my fears were assuaged.  The melon offers a soft sweetness and a delicate flavor which I love! My big concern was the texture but it really was similar to having chunks of avocado in a salad and felt normal to me.  really this reminds me of the character of a salad.  Most of the cookign we do blends flavors into one dish one network of tastes but a salad. . . a salad is really separate flavors that are brought together with a  dressing.  There are chunks of bell pepper and onion and corn and lettuce and when you eat them you know each one.  Each flavor could stand alone but on top of that one thing is the dressing which transmits the flavors so your bite of tomato, which tastes like tomato, has a hint of onion and cantaloupe and garlic.  this makes it so when you get that bite of cantaloupe with a  hint of tomato onion and garlic it does not seem out of place but fits in the musical collection of notes that make up your salads composition

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