Burrata is all I want for Christmas. Is it the festive red, white and green when served with tomatoes, red peppers and basil leaves, I wonder, but know very well that’s a seasonal coincidence. I just want it as my very special thing to eat.

Every year round about now I wonder what the most desirable taste is for me. Last year it didn’t work that way because of a house party with more traditionally festive fare but usually I hug my Christmases selfishly to myself. 

In 2019 I wanted and made rendang, something like denningvleis, desired because of the taste of tamarind. 

Before that it was just my own homemade, 100% almond marzipan and my favourite cheeses and fruit.

At that stage there’s nothing for it but to have my own. (Photo: Curds & Whey)

And before that it was the fluffy Venetian mantecato that you can never get in any satisfactory quantity there. It’s usually made with cod, whipping by wooden spoon the fibres of the fish with loads of olive oil and some garlic till it makes a light paté. I used semi-smoked snoek here and made a whole lot. 

I also remember the year of a prawn nasi goreng that I know had more to do with its tasty eggy ribbons draped over it than anything else. 

The idea is not that my Christmas fix needs to be luxurious, just what I really want to taste again. To accompany the food I have a pile of books I want to read, next to the chaise longue, ready for the wonderful day and a few more such days to follow.

This year it would be burrata. 

As I slice through the soft skin a slow wave of butteriness would emerge from the mozzarella balloon, spreading languorously across the plate, nudging a nest of jammily baked plum tomatoes and smoked red pepper flesh, a few bright green summer basil leaves. There’d be some coarsely ground black pepper, damn good olive oil and some roast-garlic-spread sourdough toast. I know. I’ve already had the trial run with a friend. For the wave part, the burrata needs to be super-fresh. 

In Puglia where it mainly is and was first made, they say that burrata starts to die the second after it is made. At any rate, it really is best to eat it on the day. And never after two days. It’s not a cheese to import.

We have burrata makers right here in Jozi, or on the outskirts. Cremalat produces it at its factory in Elandsfontein, a bit to the north. A recent online message about their burrata shows the desired cheesy bundle and the words: “Our artisanal (burrata) made the traditional Italian way.” Cremalat burrata is distinguished by the leek-green knot ties. 

In Italy, the ties that bind the knots are often strips of leek or asphodel leaves. They serve the purpose of keeping the knot firm but also of indicating the freshness of the burrata. When they’re fresh and green, of course the burrata is fresh too but when they dry out and become a little brown, the burrata is not what it used to be. 

Right inside Jozi’s urban area is Artisanal Cheese by Angus. Among the handsome hunks of cheese on his stand is virginal burrata. He gets his from the Cremalat factory.

“The demand for it has just gone sky-rocketing,” Angus Fraser says. And he’s selling lots of tubs at both his stands, one on the Parkview pavement over weekends and the other outside the Impala in Craighall. 

And there’s Curds & Whey in Fourways. They make such supremely good burrata that theirs is what’s sold by Super Sconto, the very specialist Italian grocery in Orange Grove and by the Cheese Gourmet shop in Linden that purveys South Africa’s top cheeses. The two owners certainly trained in all the right places like the Grootplaas Cheese Academy, Prue Leith’s Chef’s Academy, Puglia Cheese and then in Calabria in Italy, under the masters of the business. 

Supremely good burrata. (Photo: Curds & Whey)

The public can’t visit Curds & Whey Artisanal Foods because the individual handmaking of burrata is intense and can’t be interrupted. And there’s no sales room. But shops, and especially restaurants, order gleefully and ever increasingly.

“Demand has meant that we’ve increased our output and it’s no longer just from those places with the higher profiles that have doubled the amount of burrata they serve. It’s also from establishments from whom we’ve never previously had orders, who are putting real, handmade burrata on their menus now,” says chef-jacketed and sleekly booted Louise Dawood.

Italian burrata isn’t a very old cheese. It was first made exactly a century ago in the Puglia area, even further south from where mozzarella is traditionally made, which is in the Campania area. It was listed as a real name in the 30s but only registered in 2018 as an authentic cheese of origin. In the last few years, it’s become something of a phenomenon in restaurants around the world.

It came about, as do many good foods and dishes, as a way of economising and not wasting offcuts of mozzarella, the “rags” or straciatelle, in this case. They are mixed with lots of fresh cream and form the heart of the burrata matter, within the outer layers of what is created, turned and layered every day so that it finally wraps the core like silk in a beautiful and perfect round, tied up at one end. 

It shouldn’t be confused with another interesting older cheese with “butter” in the name and, in this particular case, in the cheese itself. Buttiri or burrini are from Calabria and here the cheese actually encloses an egg of real butter so that when you cut it, it looks a bit like a fried egg with the circle of yellow in a circle of white. I’d love to taste it.

I’ve heard eaters-out wonder aloud how restaurants can feature and charge for something they didn’t create themselves, like a special olive oil for dipping homemade breads or a bought cheese at the end of the meal. I see it as a bit like restaurants featuring special wines, which they had no hand (or foot) in either. It also seems plain that we the eaters benefit from the fact that we cannot source many of these special things nearly as well as a restaurant often can. Burrata would be a case in point. A restaurant can have it delivered as soon as it’s made and serve it that evening. We can’t easily do that.

What sparked the burrata renewal frenzy was one I had at James Diack’s Il Contadino in Parktown North as a starter. This is a farm-to-table restaurant and, though they do make cheeses on their farm, James said they’d bought in the burrata, force-marinated it in a vacuum, thereby keeping the burrata fresh but thoroughly infused with garlic and herbs. It was served with sundried tomato and pumpkin seed focaccia.

That’s what did it. I was burrata obsessed all over again. At that sort of stage there’s nothing for it but for me to have my own. 

There are lots of weird things people do with burrata, adding fruit puree to the core, whipping it into potatoes, deep frying it and, perhaps not too weirdly, having it on pizza or pasta. I’ve had it with smoked aubergine and that was a delight, with good olive oil. 

The nicest way is to eat burrata is simply as it is, with good bread and oil, but it goes well with accompaniments like radishes, tomatoes, leaves like dandelion or nasturtium, since rocket seems too much too often these days, with super-ripe summer tomatoes, with olives and with red and yellow peppers.

Louise of Curds & Whey shares my enthusiasm for the cheese even though she’s elbow-deep in it every day. “I loved eating it so much that that’s why we ended up learning to make burrata.”

There is one thing though. I can’t buy directly from Curds & Whey and they won’t be elbow deep in burrata on Christmas Day, anyway, the only day they shut. Cremalat is shut over that period. I really want my burrata made on the day I eat it next time. But it can’t be arranged or delivered as my Christmas present to me. Now what? DM/TGIFood

Curds & Whey Artisanal Foods (for businesses and restaurants only): 072 231 5565

Cremalat: 011 828 7838

Artisanal Cheese by Angus: 082 378 6632