This dessert was inspired by a plate; I’ve heard of this happening with chefs and thought it was weird, until now. I had discovered an amazing, apparently well known to everyone else, ceramic store near me called Heath. Their plates are beautiful, I would buy out the whole store if I had the money. One plate in particular, a cobalt-blue glazed plate in various sizes, caught my eye. The small dessert plate was especially appealing to me and I knew I wanted to shoot it with some sort of dessert. I filed it away in the back of my mind.
I volunteered for a Taste of the Nation event to benefit No Kid Hungry this summer. One of the unexpected perks of volunteering was an hour-long break to roam around and taste food. With many of the top restaurants and chefs present from LA, I had a ton of taste bud-dazzling food that day. The one that stood out the most was a dessert from Cliff’s Edge restaurant, with poached peaches and salted burrata drizzled with olive oil. I totally went back for seconds and maybe thirds, I can’t remember. Then it clicked. Cobalt blue plate, dark yellow peaches and white burrata made the perfect color combination for a food image.
Burrata, a creamy version of mozzarella with an outer shell of pure mozzarella and a soft interior of mozzarella and cream, giving it a smooth buttery flavor, means ‘buttered’ in Italian. It is the perfect either/or for savory/sweet.
In this case, I decided to go a different way than the one I had at the Taste of the Nation event. Instead of poaching the peaches I decided to grill them, partly to bring out a darker peach color and partly because all the cool kids are grilling fruits these days. I also left the burrata alone, instead of salting it, because I wanted to drizzle it with honey rather than olive oil.
I have to admit, this was created with the image in mind first and taste coming in second. That being said, it’s pretty damn good.
