Strawberry & Parma ham salad

I just realised that it has been 10 days since my last post! I guess I was so wrong when I thought that the moment summer holiday arrives I will start posting something every day - babysitting my baby brother and visiting grandmothers seems to have taken all my free time so far. But nevertheless, I managed to prepare a delicious salad, which we had for lunch, but it could very well be served as a light dinner. I really love Parma ham (Parma ham with melon is one of my favourite) and this time my father had managed to get hold of freshly cut Parma - it was heavenly just on its own. But, instead of enjoying it on its own, I decided to incorporate it into a simple salad. It was really interesting to choose the rest of the ingredients based simply on the criteria that they would have to go nicely with Parma. Resisting the temptation to incorporate melon, I decided to choose a bit more interesting ingredients. Rocket is nice and peppery and therefore perfect as a base (if you prefer any other salad green, feel free to use something else) for this salad and the sweetness and juiciness of the strawberries nicely balances that. The Parma ham is quite salty already, so I did not add any additional salt to the dish. To make the salad a bit more sophisticated I added the almonds, with give it a really nice finishing touch. To sum it up - this is a healthy, tasty and quick salad that is perfect for those hot summer days when you are craving something tasty but light.

Ingredients
(Serves 1)
- 25g rocket
- 50g Parma ham
- 50g strawberries
- 1 tbs flaked almonds
- Freshly ground pepper, to serve
- Balsamic vinegar, to serve
- Olive oil, to serve (optional)

Directions
Place the rocket in a bowl / on a plate. Shred the parma ham into small pieces and scatter over the rocket. Then either halve or quarter the strawberries, depending on their size and then place them on top of the salad. Finally, add the flaked almonds, some fresh pepper and drizzle over with some balsamic vinegar and serve immediately.

If you wish, you can also drizzle the salad with some olive oil, in addition to balsamic vinegar, but I didn't as I prefer to have salads without or with minimum dressing.