pear, blue cheese and walnut salad with a maple syrup vinaigrette

pear, blue cheese and walnut salad with a maple syrup vinaigrette

I would like to take this opportunity to honour the person that invented this salad, whoever you may be, because it is just perfect in its simplicity. I tried to google the origin of it, but was swamped with hundreds of recipes.

I had the pears, the walnuts and a lump of beautiful blue cheese and wanted to make something a bit different based on the fact that this is not new, and has been somewhat overdone, but it really is difficult to alter a dish that is already a symphony of flavour with lovely textural, crunchy bits.

beautiful crunchy texture in amongst salty and sweet

I decided to try a quick tortilla pizza bianco using these ingredients to see how that would work. And work, it most certainly did.

But I was in the mood for the ‘classic’ salad. So being in a ‘maple syrup’ frame of mind recently, and having thrown it over my oats with apple and pear  the other day, I made up a vinaigrette dressing with it to give the salad the sweetness I felt it needed.

Make the salad up using any nice lettuce leaves that you prefer.  I think rocket (arugula) works wonderfully here as this adds a nice peppery dimension to the sweet and salty. Slices of fresh pear, chunks of blue cheese and a sprinkling of raw walnuts and there you have it.  I find it best to make this salad just before serving, as pears go brown very quickly.

What you will need for the vinaigrette:

• 60ml olive oil (4 Tbs)
• 30 ml red wine vinegar (2 Tbs)
• 20ml maple syrup (1 Tbs and 1 tsp)
• 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
• salt

Place all of the above ingredients in a small jar and shake, then drizzle over the salad.

a classic

it definitely has a bit of the X factor

Tagged as: blue cheese, maple syrup vinaigrette, pear, rocket, walnut