With some free time on my hands today (for once) thanks to Labor Day, I decided it was time to cook! As I was hunting through a few cookbooks, Michelle said she wanted homemade pizza for dinner. I had been narrowing down my choices already and her suggestion gave me an opportunity to try a few new things.

When she said pizza, I immediately thought of the wonderful prosciutto and melon pizza from Via Napoli at Epcot that I’d been wanting to try to make at home for quite a while. But I was also eyeballing a recipe in one of Giada de Laurentiis’ cookbooks for a lamb burger wrapped in prosciutto. And as I was flipping through the same book, I had spotted a recipe for a simple tomato melon soup, with crispy prosciutto garnish. So my trio was set.

A couple hours later, I had gone to the store and whipped up a tasty plate of food. Michelle opted for her usual ham and pineapple pizza but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to Iron Chef it up for the night, serving myself three completely different small dishes, with prosciutto as the “secret ingredient.”

The lamb burger was fantastic, as was the pizza slice. Despite the fact that Boar’s Head prosciutto is pretty awful, it still worked well after being cooked in both dishes. (I’d much rather use some authentic Prosciutto de Parma but Publix didn’t have any, as they rarely do.) The soup, unfortunately, was not great. I believe I made it correctly, but it was just too simple a recipe and needed more ingredients/flavor. Two winners, one loser. And I’ll happily have leftover pizza with another lamb burger again tomorrow night.

The prosciutto is visible in the soup as the darker spots on top (crunchy crumbles). On the pizza, it’s the pinker portions peeking out from under the orange cantaloupe (no, that’s not cheese!). And the prosciutto is almost completely hidden on the burger, as it’s wrapped around the meat underneath the lettuce and basil.