Associated with dry ham, it is one of the rare fruits consumed as a starter rather than dessert. It divinely accompanies crustaceans.
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In the vast family of cucurbit, melon, or Melo cucumis, is one of the most difficult to classify species as it is polymorphic. The melon can be monoic (male flowers and distinct female, but united on the same foot), hermaphrodite (flowers that are both male and female) or a mixture. It can have striated or angular stems, oval or round leaves, varied sizes, smooth, rough or warty, white, yellow, green or orange, sweet, tart or insipid.
There are several thousand varieties: Melon d’Astrakan, originally from the south of Anatolia, Red Melon of Persia (small bariolé fruit), serpent melon (similar to a cucumber that can exceed 1 meter long), melon d ‘Water with green flesh (Honeydew, for Americans), Melon Piel Del Sapo (“toad”, in Spanish), winter melon or the tasty Cantaloup melon (or Charentais), often hybridized with the embroidered and big favorite of the French.
Its origin is indistinct, since we find wild-type melons from Africa to Southeast Asia. According to Georges Gibault (history of vegetables, 1912), “of all the fruits that the art of the gardener obtains, the melon is the one that has the most excited the gluttony of men. It is nothing like it, in Effect, that a good melon with a tender, melting, sweet, vineyard flesh, to delight the palace of a gourmet “.
Tradi
One of the rare fruits consumed as a dessert, the melon has become, in Italy and France, associated with dry ham preferably. A tradition that would find its source in former dietetic precepts advocating to consume fresh and aqueous products at the start of a meal, rebalanced by salt, fat and wine. A pepper mill and a few mint or basil leaves add to this summer classic.
innovative
If a good ripe melon is enough for itself, it also bends to all kinds of transformations: compoted or mixed in juice (when it is too ripe), marinated, confit in the oven, flame-burned Or fresh grated in julienne when it is green – seasoned with chili, cebette and lemon, it divinely accompanies the crustaceans. Without forgetting its peelings, which can be made an excellent flavored vinegar.