Prosciutto, Melon, and Mint Salad

Perfectly simple and bursting with summer. Ripe melon and fresh mint are wrapped in a sheet of prosciutto make for a perfect bite-sized appetizer. Serve this Prosciutto, Melon, and Mint Salad with mint tea.

::Plus, gratuitous Dahlia shots?! Yes, please!::

We love cantaloupe. It’s got such a buttery, sweet flavor that’s hard to resist. Though it might seem like an unlikely pairing, topping cantaloupe with salty prosciutto ups the level of sophistication. Finishing it off with mint, makes this trio burst with summer flavors. While it’s so simple it hardly needs a recipe, the most important thing to procure are: a very ripe cantaloupe. This is the star player, and without a ripe, juicy cantaloupe, the recipe will fall flat.

Next, prosciutto! We’re partial to Trader Joe’s prosciutto. It’s sliced thin and has a really salty and mild flavor. To top it off – fresh mint from the garden.

It’s so easy. Want to know the hardest part? Cutting up the melon into uniform bite size bites. True story. Which is why we only photographed 3 melon squares – because the others didn’t cut so nicely.

Slice the cantaloupe into bite sized wedges (tricky tricky!), or cut into the size of finger foods. If your cantaloupe wedge is large enough, you can choose to wrap the prosciutto around the melon. Since our melons were tiny, we folded the prosciutto on top. For this purpose, and since we have kids eating, we thought tiny bite sized cantaloupes would work better.

Next, cut the prosciutto so it fits on top of the cantaloupe. If you have larger pieces of cantaloupe, then just wrap the prosciutto around the melon wedge.

Top with mint. Ta da! How easy was that?!

And because we were out in the garden harvesting the mint, well, how could we resist the dahlias that were growing?! So, just because, you get a dahlia photo.

Smile. Enjoy. Flowers.

Dahlias and prosciutto wrapped melon and mint. Because we just had to combine them.

A few quick notes on Prosciutto, Melon, and Mint..

• Prosciutto is the Italian word for ham. It’s a thinly sliced ham that’s very, very salty. It’s uncooked and dry-cured.
• Here’s a fun article that discusses the history of Prosciutto.
• It’s waaaay easier if you have a melon baller. This handy little tool scoops out uniform pieces of melon, which is way easier than cutting uniform squares. We typically use our small cup-cake scooper for melons, but this melon baller scoop gets great reviews!