Starter with mozzarella, prosciutto ham, olives and sundried tomatoes with a bell pepper sauce

While this starter stars the classic flavour combinations it is truly a very good version of it. It not only makes a pretty picture, it is also a perfect not too heavy starter or large appetizer for any dinner where you want to show off, but are not a 100% confident in your cooking skills. It does require some effort to put together, but you can easily make all elements way ahead and then quickly plate before serving.

Since this is the first recipe I'm posting I'll quickly go over how I had this kind of thing in mind. I'll first give a quick overview of the ingredients and instructions, which you can use while cooking. And after those I'll give a very detailed version of the recipe that you might want to give a read over before you go shopping and start cooking. At the very end I'll put a quick explanation on how I plated this dish, but feel free to use your imagination in the presentation! In the extended version I'll give you more reasoning behind the ingredient choices and hints/common mistakes about the cooking itself. I'll also put alternatives there if you don't have any of the equipment mentioned in the short instructions. I'll try to be as exact as possible with quantities and cooking time, but there may be variations in this depending on how much you want to serve and how experienced/confident you are.

6 portions - 45 minutes prep + 10 minutes plating

Ingredients

- Quality (Buffel)mozzarella (c. 250 g / 8 oz)

- Black olives (c.20)

- Prosciutto / Dry-cured ham (thinly sliced)

- Sun-dried tomatoes (c. 20)

- Basil (fresh)

- 1 onion

- 1 Yellow bell pepper

- Balsamic cream

- Chives (fresh)

- Chicken stock (half a cup or so)

Short instructions

- Roast the both halves of the bell pepper in the oven until slightly charred and collapsed, let cool and peel.

- Try to cut out round pieces of mozzarella approx 4 cm / 1.5 inch in diameter and the same dimension in height and make a hole in the middle of each (with a apple core cutter for example).

- Chop olives very finely and season with salt and pepper. Chop up sun-dried tomatoes, keep separate. Finely chop most of your basil and chives (keep some leaves/sprigs for decoration) and mix with the tomatoes, add some pepper.

- Remove fat from ham and cut into 6 strips with a width of at least the height that you used for your mozzarella (approx 4 cm / 1.5 inch), so it can wrap around and perhaps slightly fold over.

- Put a thin layer of tomatoes/basil mixture on each strip of ham. Now roll the mozzarella in the ham, fill the hole with your cut up olives and put in the fridge to let become firm.

- Dice your onion and sauté/cook it in some olive oil until clear (don't let turn brown), add chopped up, peeled bell pepper, add your chicken stock and let boil until very soft. Blend your sauce well and add some salt, pepper and sugar. Let cool in the fridge.

Extended Recipe

Ingredients

- Mozzarella: Try to use a high quality mozzarella, preferably buffel. The olives and tomatoes are very strong flavours, and we don't want them to overpower the cheese as they would with a low quality mozzarella. Plus the texture of a good buffel-mozzarella is much nicer, very soft. I used Campana treccia buffel mozzarella, which is delicious, but it's the knotted kind, so it was very hard to cut in sufficiently large round pieces. Some of my cilinders were just pieces of leftover mozzarella kept together by the ham, which worked, but was a bit of a hassle. So you might want to buy a little more mozzarella so you can cut nice whole pieces out of it and just keep the cut-off's for something else.

- Black olives: I used preserved in olive oil ones, drain the oil, but a little can help keep the chopped up ones together
- Dry-cured ham / Prosciutto: Any will do usually, you know which one is tasty wherever you're from! (Examples: (spanish) Jamon Pata Negra/Iberico, (italian) Prosciutto di Parma, (belgian) Jambon d'Ardenne, ...)

- Sun-dried tomatoes: I once again used preserved in oil ones, drain them a bit before chopping. We don't want the whole thing to become too greasy.

- Balsamico-crème / Crèma di Balsamico / Balsamic syrup/cream: If you can't find this anywhere, use some regular balsamic vinegar instead, but use it sparingly, since it's much more sour.

- Basil, Chives (plants)

- 1 Onion, 1 yellow Bell pepper
- Salt, Pepper and Sugar: I have tasty sea-salt and black pepper in my grinder, but any will do.

Detailed Instructions

- Cut your bell pepper in two, remove stem, seeds and ribs (white parts). Put both halves with skin-side up on a baking tray with some non-stick paper or foil on it and brush skin with some olive oil. Put them in the oven for 30 min at 180°C or 350°F until slightly charred and collapsed. Take them out and let cool completely before peeling. Alternatively you can also grill them in a pan, skin-side down, for 20-30 min until you see the skin starting to detach.

- Cut cilinders out of the mozzarella, approx 4 cm (1.5 inch) in diameter and the same in height. If you have a cylindrical cutter / plating ring somewhere you can use that, alternatively you can just use a measurer and a knife, or do it by eye. Hole out a cilinder in the middle of each with a an apple core remover or just by eye as well (the olives mix will go there later). If some of your pieces are broken, that's fine, we can hold them together with the ham later.

- Remove (most) of the white fat from the ham and cut strips of approx 4 cm (1.5 inch) wide (same height as cheese from earlier step) or slightly larger. Mine were a bit larger and I folded them over a bit. If you want you can do a double layer of ham, especially if you have a big piece of mozzarella, so you have enough of that salty ham to complement the rest.

- Chop up your drained olives very finely and add some salt and pepper. Also chop up your sun-dried tomatoes, basil and chives together (keep some of the herbs separate as decoration later), add some pepper.

- Spread a thin layer of the tomato mix on the strips of ham, add the mozzarella and roll up. Fill the middle with the olives, with a small spoon or a piping bag if you want. Make sure to have some tomato and/or olive mixes left over to decorate. Put them in the fridge to firm up and start on your sauce.

- Peel the bell pepper and dice. Dice the onion and sauté/cook in some olive oil on a medium fire until clear (do not let brown). Add the diced bell pepper and cook together (do not let brown). Add half a cup of chicken stock (or some water with half a stock cube) and let boil until pepper and onion are completely soft and most of the stock has boiled away. Blend thoroughly and add some salt, pepper and approx. half a tablespoon of white sugar. Put in fridge to cool.

Plating

I plated my started on some lovely long rectangular black stone plates, 'cause I like the contrast. I started with a large tablespoon of the sauce about which I place about at the 1/4 mark. The sauce is pretty thick so it should't run. Then you place the rounded side of the spoon in this and drag it right until the 3/4 mark. The you place your (by now firm) cilinder in the half circle created at the right-side of this smear. Then I added two lines of sauce left and right of this by taking a small tablespoon full, holding it at an angle so it slowly started coming of the spoon and dragging it diagonally so an equal amount came of along the whole line. The you randomly put some piles of your leftover tomato and/or olive mix. Drizzle the whole with the balsamic cream, especially concentrated over and in your cilinder. Decorate the cilinder with some chive sprigs and a basil leaf (in retrospect I would have used a smaller leaf, but I'm still new to plating). In the end I added an extra tablespoon of sauce to each plate at the left side of the original smear, because I had leftover and wanted more sauce for all of them. I would recommend just adding two spoonfuls from the start maybe.

Source: Based on the recipe from Hap&Tap (Dutch), who got it from Spermalie (Hotel School in Bruges)