A Foodblogger's Mania: The Before and After of a Summer Salad

Does this happen to you too? Ever since I started blogging, I can't help doing this....every time I see a dish, the photo of a dish....I begin to think, to dream....how would I do it? It is not always a question of doing it better, sometimes it is your personality that goes with the new arrangement, "make-up" of a dish.....

If you follow my blog regularly....(thank you for that!!!!), or if you just bumped into it by this sort of "roulette" that it is a Google search.....and you saw me in the Isle sur la Sorgue and the world of antiques....you must remember I ate a huge summer salad (Ok, if you don't remember, which is normal, click here!)

Nothing wrong with that salad, which was a splash of colour and a burst of flavour! What is more, the salad was more than any tourist would expect: tasty, healthy, generous helping, good price....what else? As a client myself, I was very satisfied!!!!

But I felt some changes were needed: the melon slices, sweet as honey as they might be, were too thick in my opinion...the pork fillet had been cut in symmetrical slices, too geometrical...a bit of imperfection was needed there, curves to counterbalance so many straight lines...!

This is why I decided to arrange slices in a sort of tower, providing some vertical dimension to a flat scene, the playful ribbons of melons add visual movement...even if, we have to admit, in this new salad, the melon will be what the French call a "soupçon" (something in very little quantity) a hint of a flavour...a delicate touch! The vinaigrette has some honey in it, the pork fillet some mustard "à l'Ancienne" (the old-fashioned way), that means not creamy, but with the grains of mustard...Parma ham, radishes and cherry tomatoes, just like in the original version.

If you are very hungry, you will probably choose the other salad...Mind you! If I have to be honest, I have to confess that after I finished with the photos, I still thought I should have put less (obsessed by the "less is more"?) My daughter C, only person in my family that listens to me in my kitchen musings said: "Oh, mummy...less? what do we eat then?"

What do you think? What would you have done? I would like to know your opinion....