Burrata with crushed blackberries, castelfranco, fennel seeds and thyme

Late November and December sees the first of the bitter leaves emerge, with all kinds of multi-coloured radicchio, kale, chard and chicory now firmly on the menu. For me, learning to love these winter vegetables has been a struggle I’ve only recently overcome. Despite appearing beautifully sculpted and painfully photogenic, this produce requires a bit of work and balance to tease out the true delights. Eaten in a raw, undressed form they can be a trifle unpleasant. In the past I would often rustle up a chicory-heavy salad with very little else, and then sit dumbstruck as to why others considered it edible. But experience eventually taught me that tempering is the name of the game. Toss kale in an anchovy and garlic heavy Caesar dressing and it is suddenly no longer the yellowing bag of greens waiting patiently at the back of the fridge. Grill half a radicchio until singed and crispy and a hidden sweetness is released. Bake chard piled high with parmesan and be prepared to fight for the last spoonful. It felt like a new world had been opened, and now I actively look forward to the season coming around. 

 
This week I’ve been rather short of time during my days off, and with daylight hours at an absolute premium at this time of year it’s been a challenge to get anything on film. In the past I have been devastated when hours of cooking time have gone to waste due to a dimly lit room and unusable photography. These days I plan my testing days more effectively, and this recipe was more of an assembly of ingredients rather than a labour at the stove.
 
The winter leaf of choice for this dish is castelfranco, a beautifully marked and delicate type of radicchio. Sitting toward the lower end of the face-squirmingly bitter scale, left raw it provided the perfect balance with the rich, creamy burrata and the sweetness of the blackberries. In East London I’m luckily surrounded by a number of brilliant greengrocers, but I realise that castelfranco may be an elusive beast to get hold of. In which case, regular purple radicchio, rocket or even spinach would work as a handy substitute.
 
Serves 2
 
Ingredients:
 
2 balls of burrata 
A few large leaves of castelfranco radicchio, washed and roughly torn 
1 punnet of blackberries 
1 tsp of fennel seeds 
3-4 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves picked 
1 lemon, zest only


Bring a frying pan to a medium-high heat. When hot, scatter in the fennel seeds and toast for a minute or two, then pour into a bowl. Drizzle in 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil along with a good pinch of salt and pepper, the lemon zest, fresh thyme leaves and the blackberries. Use a spoon or fork to lightly crush the blackberries and toss everything together. Set aside for 15 minutes. 

 
Break the burrata into rough pieces and arrange onto each plate with the torn castelfranco leaves. Spoon over the blackberries and flavoured oil, making sure all of the cheese and leaves receive a bit of dressing.

Burrata

Last week I drove down to Brighton on a whistle-stop trip to see my parents. I’ve reached a point in my life where visiting mum and dad is no longer a needy, adolescent excursion to get my laundry done and excavate every scrap of decent cheese out of the fridge. These days I bring my own shampoo and toothpaste, and I adore the hours spent sitting around the worn marble kitchen table of my childhood, chatting away about mum’s recent paintings or the current state of the allotment (always “a total mess”, which is a total lie). Somehow the time is slower and the air that bit fresher just an hour south of The Smoke, almost a mini-holiday with the doors to the garden flung open and the squarks from resident seagulls a gentle background. 

 
My parents have always been wonderful hosts, and on all of these fleeting visits I get spoilt rotten. Upon arrival dad will brandish a perfectly-forked, golden cottage pie. You can bet the house that mum will have made crumble or cake. As I sit there stuffed like a pig, mum will plonk coffee and more wine on the table and remind me that “there’s cheese in the fridge”. Recently I have decided to reverse this trend and cook them lunch instead. Although always simple and quick to prepare, it’s lovely to now be the one making the fuss. Living in London also provides me with an almost endless larder of interesting and seasonal ingredients that are near impossible to source elsewhere. Over Easter we feasted on seared scallops with Sicilian lemons and castelfranco radicchio, followed by fall-apart mutton tossed through pici that we had rolled by hand that morning.  

Last week I upped my lunch game. Spring was on the turn and with it emerged a glut of glorious new ingredients. The first asparagus started peeping through the earth, and a large box in my car boot contained a pair of lively, new season native lobsters. To start lunch though, I wanted something stripped-back and easy, that could be plonked down with minimal effort. Burrata has become somewhat of a darling in the modern London restaurant scene, and thankfully through such popularity it is reasonably easy to source these glorious, cream-filled globes. Yet I knew that my parents would never have tried it before, and after years of fridge-raiding, it felt apt to finally provide the cheese.  

Over the last few weeks, Gwyneth Paltrow has taken a bit of a bashing in the food media for including a recipe for fried eggs in a recent cookbook. But in much the same way, to serve my burrata I did little more than scoop the soft cheese from their little baskets and popped them straight onto a plate. Although often served with pickles or vegetables, I drew inspiration from the newly-opened Padella restaurant, where it is served simply with a glug of good oil and some seasoning. And that, along with a few slices of good sourdough, was all that was needed.