The quest to prepare a really nice meal at the end of this months dinner party continues with the next item on my cold platter list ~ Rock Melon Shooters with Serrano Ham. I know when I introduced this dish in an opening article a few days ago I said it was going to be Prosciutto, but hey the supermarket didn’t have Italian … so I went Spanish … big deal. Either would work, so long as it is a nice air-cured raw ham with a nice salty flavour.
The weather certainly is warming up considerably during the day and in the supermarkets fruits like melons are cheap and abundant. I picked up a whole cantaloupe today for under € 1. The flesh was orange, sweet and juicy … just what I had hoped for. Now, the next appetizer I intend on doing for the Easter weekend dinner is a sneaky twist from the traditional melon wedge with Prosciutto wrapped around it. The sweetness from the melon combined with the saltiness of the dry-cured ham work really well to compliment each other. This really is a no-recipe recipe, and all you have to do is combine these ingredients and plate them up to your liking. If you can get up in the morning and make a fruit smoothie … then you can accomplish this with no problems. In this recipe I am using just one type of melon, but what is stopping you from mixing two or three different kinds together? Because the melon I bought was really sweet, I added some chunky apple puree from a jar to up the acidity a touch.
- 1 ripe rock melon (cantaloupe)
- 5 mint leaves
- 2 tbsp apple pure
- pinch of pepper
- 1/2 tsp honey
- 4 tbsp water
- 1 pkt Serrano ham
- 1 box Grisini sticks
1. Peel, de-seed and roughly chop the melon into cubes.
2. Add the melon, apple puree, mint, water, honey & pepper into a blender. Blitz to a pulp.
3. Pass everything into a strainer to separate the juice from the pulp. This step is completely optional. I just wanted to have more pulp than juice in my shooter glasses. Taste and adjust seasonings.
4. Place some pulp into the glasses and then spoon some juice around it.
5. Garnish with a mint sprig, grisini stick and Serrano ham. I wrapped the Serrano ham around the grisini stick and placed this across the glass top. Alternatively you can bake the ham in the oven under a hot grill to crisp it up, and just before serving the shooters lay the crispy ham on top of the glass.
All this can be done in 10 mins. And VOILA! A fancy looking appetizer to impress your dinner friends within minutes. This shooter also acts as a nice palette cleanser before moving on to the main course.
Serrano ham is sooooooooo good, even on its own … but add grisini sticks and I am done for. Given that this is just a dry run, there was a fairly sizeable portion of left over ingredients. I pretty much had like four grisini sticks wrapped in raw ham on the spot … nom nom nom! Then I had the cantaloupe to follow as a chaser. LOL! Best lunch to have on a hot sunny day.
~ ENJOY!! ~
2 comments
1 ping
Sarah Volpe
November 4, 2012 at 9:01 pm (UTC 1) Link to this comment
Viv I love your site for ideas, I’m going to make this my starter for my Xmas dinner this year, I’m going all out Italian like when I was little, and starting with Serrano ham is perfect!!
bubviv
November 5, 2012 at 2:03 pm (UTC 1) Link to this comment
Glad you think so. I had fun making these. And grisini sticks + Seranno ham = Excellent nosh!
Smoked Salmon Mousse in Pâte à Choux. » Food Flurries
August 11, 2012 at 1:03 am (UTC 1) Link to this comment
[…] Rock Melon Shooters served with Prosciutto and Grisini Sticks […]