Celery and Cantaloupe salad January 25, 2012

Nero Wolfe sometimes likes to put strange things together. In particular, his combination of fruit and savoury things is something I often question. Sometimes I understand the end result and completely agree that the apparently strange combination works, but sometimes, I don’t. I’ll always try making it – but that doesn’t mean I like or understand the end result. This cantaloupe salad is one of these occasions.

I started by chopping up celery hearts and cantaloupe, trying to keep them approximately all the same size. I ended up using some normal celery pieces too, so I had a good ratio of celery to cantaloupe.

I made a dressing of tarragon vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. The recipe called for currant jelly to be added to the dressing; not having any currant jelly, I substituted plum jam. Here’s the dressing all mixed up.

I tipped the dressing over the salad, and added a generous amount of poppy seeds and coriander seeds.

I mixed these all together and served.

I admit I wasn’t sure of this. The crunch of the celery was nice, and the dressing provided a nice vinegary tang. However, the overwhelming sensation was one of sweetness, from the cantaloupe. I understand that the sweetness was mitigated somewhat by the dressing, poppy seeds and celery, but overall I thought this was too sweet for my thought of what a (savory) salad should be.

Nero Wolfe still hasn’t converted me to his way of thinking about sweet and savoury together. However, I am willing to continue experimenting with these recipes in the hope that Wolfe’s theory of sweet and savoury will grow on me.