Crisp green leaf salad with NZ blue cheese dressing

To celebrate New Zealand Cheese Month, here is a way to dress up your average green salad.

Make the dressing ahead to allow its flavours to mingle, overnight is perfect. This dressing will keep for a few days as it makes enough to fill a medium-sized jar or make half the quantity for this amount of cos lettuce.

Serves 4

NZ blue cheese dressing

150g NZ blue cheese

125g creme fraiche

5 tablespoons full cream milk, plus more if needed to thin

3 tablespoons store-bought mayonnaise

Salad

2 heads cos lettuce, washed and dried

4 rashers bacon, cooked until crisp and cut into pieces

A small bunch of chives

Method

To make the dressing, crumble the blue cheese in your fingers into a bowl. Add the creme fraiche, milk and mayonnaise and season with salt.

Stir with a fork to combine, cover and keep in the fridge.

Cut the lettuce lengthways into 4 long pieces and arrange in a shallow plate. Spoon over enough dressing to moisten and crumble over the bacon. Snip over the chives. Put extra dressing in a small serving bowl as you will probably want more!

Serve salad and dressing and pass the black pepper grinder or sprinkle with a few Aleppo pepper flakes before serving.

Tips

• If the dressing is a little thick, thin it down with extra milk

• Try it as a blue cheese dressing on a beef burger

• We loved it with vegetable crudites too

www.cheeseloversnz.co.nz