Summer cantaloupes at Union Square.
Recipes:
Cantaloupe and Tomato Salad with Black Olives and Tarragon
Cantaloupe Salad with Prosciutto, Frisée, and Basil
Spaghetti with Cantaloupe and Hot Chilies
My grandfather always salted his cantaloupe. As a child I found this weird. It seemed so old-world for an elegantly turned-out man who had in many ways become an urbane New Yorker. When I got a little older and was introduced to prosciutto with melon, I reasoned that his salty cantaloupe was likely a Southern Italian peasant version of this wonderful pairing. There are several dishes like this in the Southern repertoire. One, called pasta che sardi a mari, translating roughly as pasta with the sardines still in the sea, is a cut-rate but delicious vegetarian version of the elaborate Sicilian pasta con le sarde, and it’s a good example of the Southerner’s ability to create elegance from poverty (the pasta includes wild fennel, raisins, pine nuts, and sometimes tomato or cauliflower). (more…)
Erica De Mane 