Spears and spheres of melon with parma ham and burrata

Sometimes you don't feel like cooking but you still deserve something lovely to eat

Sometimes with cooking there’s a trade off. You can spend a little and do a lot and you are rewarded and other times you can spend a bit more and you have to do very little. Like for instance a slow cooked lamb stew made using lamb neck which is very reasonably priced - work a little magic on it and leave it in the oven for a couple of hours and you are going to be rewarded. That reminds me, I have a recipe for you, an actually very excellent recipe. I will write it up. I digress…

Then there are other times when you are short on time, you can’t face actual *cooking* but you need something a bit more special than some buttered toast. That’s where the no recipe recipe comes in. The key when you’re doing anything this simple is to make sure you use really great quality ingredients, as there’s no where to hide and it will make all the difference. This is an assembling job - no actual cooking required, no need to turn on the oven. Simply make it look as pretty as you can and sometimes that’s good enough.

I know there are some of you that will protest at the idea of a salad for supper but it all depends on what sort of day you’ve had, what you had for lunch and who you are eating with. Would I serve this to a husband who only really thinks a meal is a meal if there’s meat and two veg…probably not. Would I happily enjoy this with a girlfriend or on my own with a fridge cold glass of wine? Absolutely.

You can always bulk this salad out with some toasted sourdough, or enjoy it as a starter while you wait for something else to cook.

I like the way the melon looks with the combination of spheres and spears but of course either way you like to do it will be just fine.

I used to think I didn’t like melon because a bad one, or unripe one can be a bit blah. But when you get a really great one…oof they are so good.

Here is my top ranking of melons (the list that absolutely no one asked for)

Cantaloupe - the orange one and also the sweetest one. Notes of honey

Honeydew melon - as I’ve used here ( I thought it was a cantaloupe before I cut into it!) Greenish in colour and sweet but not as sweet as a cantaloupe

Galia melon - white /green in colour and sweet in taste

Right so now looking at my reviews of melons, we can see that melons are all sweet and taste of, well, melon. Groundbreaking stuff from me!

To serve 2 as a starter you will need: