This delicious grilled or barbecue zucchini salad uses lots of zucchini and serves it with plump burrata cheese and a delicious dressing made with capers, garlic, vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. Bring the flavours of the Amalfi Coast to your home!
I love this zucchini salad so much because it is pretty much the perfect salad for entertaining. You can grill the zucchini a few days before and it also uses 5-6 zucchini if you've got a glut of them. It can also be assembled a couple of hours beforehand and it can just sit at room temperature with the flavours melding. The dressing is the perfect vehicle for bread too. Also laying out the burrata to come to room temperature on top of the zucchini is the best way to serve burrata rather than having a fridge cold burrata. There's a Sydney restaurant that is known for its burrata dish and when I asked them what they had done to it, they simply explained that they left it at room temperature and that made the cream inside more oozy. I could not stop eating this salad and I actually ate more of the salad than the pasta and pizza!
The zucchini salad dressing is simple and it is a mix of olive oil, garlic, sherry vinegar as well as capers for salty piquancy and balsamic glaze for sweetness. I use this dressing a lot when serving vegetables Italian style. Lemons also add a lightness to the creamy burrata. This is a side dish that goes with meat or seafood and loves a hot summer's day. I made it one afternoon when I opened the vegetable crisper and saw the 5 zucchini needing attention. Everything else was in the fridge. If you don't have burrata you can use mozzarella or crumbled feta too.
We have started eating outside a bit more nowadays (well now that the La Nina rain has stopped for the time being at least). The rain did quite a number on our backyard and Mr NQN has had a hard time with grass and plants drowning in water. He's doing the gardening but I am handling the furniture and decorating. We actually inherited this wooden table and chairs from the former owner. It was a very, very old setting that was really in bad shape and even before the rain started a friend sat down on a chair and almost fell through it as the seat cracked which was mortifying for us. I felt so terrible for my friend and so embarrassed about it that I told Mr NQN that I had to replace the outdoor setting as a matter of urgency. The problem was that I didn't like the look of a lot of outdoor settings.
Then I had an idea as I was scrolling through travel pics of Italy and saw a pic of those striped chairs that you get in Italy and Paris - you know those strips cafe chairs? I fell in love with them immediately and could not stop thinking about them (I mean who even am I now? LOL). I looked into them and some are made of rattan and bamboo. However rattan and bamboo wouldn't be any match for La Nina and her torrential rains. Queen Viv had a suggestion from her friend to get aluminium ones painted bamboo with synthetic weave which would last much longer than rattan. I made an order and they arrived the next day and they were absolutely gorgeous! Not only are they such a stunning blue and white colour, they are stackable, are UV stablisied to prevent fading and are commercial grade chairs with a 2 year guarantee. I paired them with a wooden look metal table from facebook marketplace (I'm a bit obsessed with marketplace) and we finally had our outdoor setting!
From the day that they arrived and it was sunny we ate outdoors every evening. It's our little corner inspired by the Amalfi Coast. Hopefully one day our lemon tree will bear lemons and hopefully one day we will get back to the Amalfi Coast. In the meantime this zucchini and burrata salad will do.
So tell me Dear Reader, what do you tend to do with zucchini? What style is your house?
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