Cantaloupe in Vinaigrette

Category: Warm Salad		Cantaloupe in Vinaigrette
Ingredients: cantaloupe or muskmelon salt mustard seed Hungarian paprika walnut or grape-seed oil red wine vinegar		Cut in half a fine medium cantaloupe or muskmelon.* Spoon out the seeds. With a melon-baller, or the tip of a small spoon, carve roughly equal hemispherical pieces out of the fruit into a glass or ceramic bowl. Add a little salt. Mix a quarter teaspoonful of freshly ground mustard seed with the same amount of sweet Hungarian paprika in the bottom of a bowl. Add a drop of walnut or grape-seed oil while you beat with a fork. Adding a drop at a time, mixing well as you go, incorporate a teaspoonful of oil in all. Add a tablespoonful of red wine vinegar, and mix vigorously. Turn the pieces of melon in the vinaigrette, and let them stand, chilled and covered, until they are needed. Serve on a handsome leaf of one sort or another, although radicchio or other chicory would be our first choice, for both its beauty and bitterness. you might want to have some very recently toasted almonds to toss around the dish, as well as triangles of bread which have been rubbed with garlic and oil, and grilled.
Notes:		To assess the ripeness of cantaloupe, muskmelon, honeydew, and their ilk, press on the end where the blossom used to be. There'll be a bit of give to a ripe fruit. Also, have a good sniff. The aroma of ripe melon is hard to mistake! This technique will, unfortunately, not carry over for watermelons, which don't continue to ripen after being picked. Spanish paprika, which is often more readily available, will do but the flavour is different.
Recipe Index	More Salads:	Summer Squash Salad \| Young Beans \| Blood Orange Salad \| Warm Céci Salad \| Autumn Garden Salad Tart Salad \| Garlic Flower and Snow Pea Salad \| Green Mango Warm Salad \|
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