Tuesday 20 August 2013

A TASTE OF SUMMER FROM THE SOUTH OF FRANCE




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.


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.


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.


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.....


Prawns


So for a taste of the South of France, those fields of sunflowers and road side stalls stacked with melons try this.


A simple supper

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