Grilled peach, Parma Ham, chevin and rocket salad with a raspberry vinaigrette

grilled peach salad with goats cheese, rocket, parma ham and walnuts

This recipe or should I say idea, was inspired by a post I saw last week by Anne Myers from I Love Cooking. It spoke directly to my food soul and my taste buds, and I knew when I bought my big box of peaches on the side of the road in Stilbaai last week, this was one of the things I would be making with it.

I say idea in that I hardly think a person needs a recipe for a dish like this. It is all about the combining of certain ingredients that go so well together. And man oh man do these flavours just dance around in your mouth in pure synergy.

I grilled the peaches as Anne did, because I liked the pretty grill marks, but you could just keep them fresh and they would work just as well.

I have also become ever so slightly besotted with goats cheese (chevin/chevre) and find it goes so very well with fruit.

So for this salad all you need are the following ingredients and make it up according to you desired quantity:

chevin (soft goats cheese)
fresh rocket
thin slices of Parma ham, Prosciutto or similar
peaches cut in half or quarters
a few walnuts roughly chopped
a couple of tablespoon of icing sugar if you grill the peaches
black pepper

For the dressing I combined 6 Tbs olive oil with 3 Tbs of raspberry vinegar (you could also use red wine vinegar), 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard, salt and freshly ground black pepper in a small jar and shook it until it emulsified. *tip* olive oil to vinegar ration always 2:1. Anne uses a lemon infused olive oil which is a favourite ingredient of mine along with basil infused olive oil (in the Verlaque range). There are no real rules here.

Rinse the peaches and cut in half or quarters. Heat a griddle pan. Lightly dust each side of the peaches with icing sugar which helps to make the visible caramel marks. Grill the peaches on each cut surface for a minute or so until they just start going brown and then set aside. Get all the other ingredients together and assemble the salad how you would like, by arranging the bits in amongst the rocket leaves. Drizzle over the vinaigrette, sprinkle the walnuts, grind over black pepper and tuck in (pine nuts would also work well).

Sweet, salty, juicy and earthy with a nice little crunch from the walnuts.