As you know, last week I reviewed a great Italian restaurant called Bocca di Lupo. Overall, it was excellent meal, lovely homemade pasta, excellent crispy suppli, delicious creamy caffe alla nocciola and much more. However, like even the best restaurants, the meal wasn’t perfect. (Although, I must say it was quite close)

One of the dishes that seemed to disappoint me at Bocca di Lupo was the burrata. As I said in my review, I adore burrata! The cheese itself was excellent but what seemed to let me down in this dish were the accompaniments. Such an incredible cheese needs to be paired with lovely fresh, simple ingredients that complements and cuts through the richness of the cheese but doesn’t steal the attention away from it.

Of course, the classic way of serving burrata is with halved cherry tomatoes and a generous drizzle of good quality olive oil. Beautiful, simple and utterly delicious.

Tomatoes work perfectly with burrata, they’re fresh, slightly sweet and really balance out the creaminess of the cheese. Cherry tomatoes are most commonly used, but all types of tomatoes seem to work really well with burrata. (The best burrata I’ve ever had was in Rome, where it was served with semi-sundried tomatoes, which were so amazing I could have eaten them by the spoonful) However, although classic and according to me, timeless, a lot of restaurants have tried to ‘change things up a little’ and have veered away from the traditional burrata-tomato combination. Sometimes this can be a bit of a hit and miss….

Recently, burrata has become extremely readily available to buy and can be found in most specialized supermarkets/delicatessens. A few days ago, I wandered into Whole Foods in Kensington and couldn’t stop myself from picking some up. I decided to do, what I think, is the perfect alternative to the burrata-tomato combo.

Cheese and fruit is the ultimate combination. A sweet/salty match, so good, that only God himself must have paired together. Seriously, is there anything better? Among the greatest of the ingenious cheese/fruit combos lies the amazing mozzarella and fig. So simple, delicious and yet somehow forgotten. So why not take this perfect combo and replace mozzarella with it’s sexy aunt – Burrata?

Normally just a good burrata paired with some lovely sweet figs and olive oil would be perfect. However, unfortunately the only figs I could get weren’t nearly ripe enough and therefore didn’t add the slight sweetness the burrata needed.

Instead, I decided to make a nice honey balsamic dressing to bring the dish together. Just 1tbsp good quality balsamic vinegar, 3tbsp olive oil and under 1tsp of runny honey all mixed together until emulsified and drizzled over the burrata and figs. Yummy!

The slightly sweet vinaigrette cut perfectly through the richness of the cheese and I loved the little crunchy seeds in the figs against the creamy texture of the burrata. A lovely combo. Next time, I think I might try roasting the figs in the honey and balsamic vinegar so that they take on the flavor and become slightly chewy…. Mmmm.