Peach, Burrata, and Macadamia Nut Salad

No Cooking Required!

Well, folks, I was all set to post a new cake recipe I made a week ago, but there’s just no way I could recommend turning on your ovens right now while a whole lot of us are living through this latest heat dome. Food that requires no cooking of any kind is more like it, right? The cake can wait.

While you can always fall back on a caprese salad (nothing at all wrong with that), here’s a recipe that I made with the ingredients I happened to have on hand. The day before I bought fresh peaches, a tub of burrata, and a bag of macadamia nuts from Costco. I was so happy with the quality of the peaches I decided to use them in this salad. I often use whatever fruit is in season in my salads all year round because it brings a zing and excitement to savory salads that you can’t get from any other ingredient. 

I sliced up the peaches, placed them on a platter, and sprinkled them with some salt, before squeezing on the juice from half a lemon.

I don’t know if anyone has been buying the seedless lemons that are now widely available, but I find them to be so handy. Not having to be concerned with seeds simply makes life easier. Sometimes, it’s the little things my friends.

I’ve got pots of mint and lemon verbena growing away outside right now, so I snipped a couple of each of them, but you can use whatever fresh herbs you’ve got handy. Fresh basil, tarragon, and parsley come to mind. Any of these would be great.

I think macadamia nuts are kind of in a class of their own, when it comes to all the different varieties of nuts I use in my cooking. Because they are high in fat they have a richness that is missing from other nuts. Their flavor is buttery and very slightly sweet to me, so I thought they’d be perfect in this salad. By the way, I store them in my freezer, as I do all my nuts. 

I’m not kidding when I say this salad comes together in minutes. Add the balls of burrata to the platter of peaches, drizzle on a little honey, some good olive oil, and plenty of black pepper. By the way, this is the time to bring out your best olive oil. I wouldn’t want to use one that is too bitter or peppery. A richly flavored, but smooth and  mellow olive oil is what you want here. 

Toss on the macadamia nuts and the leaves of the fresh herbs. All done!! Think about what all you have going on here: The sweet/tart freshness of the peaches, creamy dairy of the burrata, bright green flavors of herbs, nutty richness of the macadamias, and lemon juice, honey, and olive oil bring everything together when mixed with the cream that oozes out of the burrata.

You’ve got options as to what to serve with it. Me? I would usually have opted for crusty bread to take advantage of those incredible juices. But not this time. Seeing as how I’d also bought a rotisserie chicken from Costco the day before, I had the whole breast left over, so I sliced it up and served it chilled with the salad. Sooooo good! Yeah, I know this may sound like an advertisement for Costco, but it is not. You could just as easily pick up these ingredients wherever you shop locally. I just wanted to be transparent about where I purchased my ingredients.

You could serve the salad as a side for whatever you’ve thrown on the grill, eat it with good bread as a light meal, or you could add cold shrimp, etc. You get the drift. It’s very compatible with multiple proteins. So, there you have it. An easy, delicious, and  no-cook recipe for this summer that has definitely started off with a bang. If early temperatures are a sign of things to come, we’ll need all the no-cook recipes we can get our hands on. Hope you enjoy this one!