Weekend Recipe: Gizzi Erskine’s Burrata with Grilled Peach, Melon & Parma Ham Salad

SERVES 4

PREPARATION TIME
15 minutes
COOKING TIME
5 minutes

Creamy burrata fits in pretty much any place that mozzarella goes. I’ve been eating the essence of this salad for as long as I can remember. It’s evolved for sure, starting as just melon and Parma ham, then adding some good olive oil, then some mozzarella, then making more of a dressing with sherry vinegar and now swapping the mozzarella for burrata and adding grilled peaches. It’s a brilliant salad that gets the best out of all its ingredients and will be a hit if you need to whip up something quickly for a summer
lunch or as a last-minute starter.

3 ripe but firm peaches, flat peaches or nectarines
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 x 200g balls of burrata cheese
½ Cantaloupe melon, deseeded, cut into 8–10 thin slices and skin cut off
12 slices Parma ham (or Serrano ham would do nicely)
a small bunch of basil, leaves picked
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

Heat a griddle pan over a high heat. Halve the peaches, remove the stones and then cut each half into three pieces.

Rub the peaches with a little of the oil and then lay them on the griddle and cook for 2–3 minutes on each side, or until charred. Remove with a metal spatula and transfer
to a plate to cool.

Drain the burrata and dry with kitchen paper. Tear up the burrata and spread it over the base of a large serving platter. Next, add the melon slices (I like to do this with no rhyme or reason to it: the more rustic the better). Add the ham slices to the platter, swirled into
rosettes. Then, when the peaches are cool enough to touch, add them to the salad and scatter the basil over the top. If you want to be really pernickety, you can lift up some of the burrata to overlap the melon and ham.

Now you need to make the dressing. Place the sherry vinegar in a small bowl with the remaining oil and plenty of seasoning and whisk with a sauce whisk or a fork. Pour this over the salad, finely grind over plenty more black pepper and serve.

Recipe extract taken from Gizzi Erskine’s Healthy Appetite by Gizzi Erskine, available here