Salad For Dinner

In the summer I usually lose my appetite and generally eat very little apart from salads. I practically live on salads, fruit and ice cream. This salad is a meal in its own right, and served with a slice of peasant bread, it will keep you full for quite a while.I made this recipe simply by combining my favorite ingredients - prosciutto, tomato and herbal mustard, and then adding other stuff to create a balance and bind the flavors together. This time I made two changes from my original recipe: I couldn't find any lettuce, which is normally one of the ingredients, and I used a grapefruit instead of the usual orange, as I was in the mood for something with a bit more character.

Ingredients (per serving)

3-4 ripe tomatoes
1 cucumber
1/2 onion
8 slices (as thin as possible) of smoked prosciutto
1/2 grapefruit or 1 orange
60g (2 oz) cheese (grated or thinly sliced)
salt, herbs

For the dressing

juice of 1/2 lemon
3 tbsp oil
1 1/2 tbsp herbal mustard
salt to taste

Slice the tomatoes and grapefruit and divide the grapefruit slices into wedges, cut the cucumber into strips and the onion into rings. Layer the ingredients on the plate - first the tomatoes, then the cucumbers. Season with salt. Scatter the grapefruit wedges and onion rings. Rip the prosciutto up a little bit with your fingers and place it on top of the salad. Grate the cheese of your choice on top, or slice it thinly and scatter it around (note: you might need a slightly bigger quantity if you slice it. As for the kind of cheese, I suggest something sweet and pungent, with a hint of bitterness, like gouda). Sprinkle with your herb of choice.

The dressing:

Mix the lemon juice, oil and herbal mustard, season to taste, and dress the salad. If you can't find any herbal mustard, you can make it yourself, by adding a bit of dill, basil, cilantro (coriander), parsley and powdered garlic to your regular mustard. As for the oil, I use a special kind of super-healthy cold pressed sunflower and pumpkin seed oil, but you can use whatever you like. I guess olive oil is another healthy option, but I rarely enjoy its taste.