Roquefort salad

I’m in the butcher’s with D from work, stocking up after a weekend away. At the cheese counter my eye wanders from my usual Cambozola to a rather inviting looking half round of Roquefort, and before I know it there is a slab sitting on the scales looking ripe and pungent.

On my walk home from the office I muse upon one of my favourite food memories. About seven years ago, I was in Paris having a miserable time trying to understand a relationship that was breaking down there and then, in what is supposed to be the world’s most romantic city. After a morning earful of venom, reciprocated with vicious sarcasm, I struck out on my own to wander around a gloriously sunny Paris. At Beaulieu I stopped at a cheap bistro for lunch - a Roquefort salad and large carafe of rose wine. The meal had a rustic simplicity and beauty, and I found that I could suddenly articulate what was slowly occurring to me that morning walking around Paris – that everything was just beginning, not ending. The vino might have helped a bit as well.

I had a go at recreating that salad. Got somewhere near, but it has been seven years:

Roquefort Salad:

Ingredients (zen as usual – the quantities below will feed a hungry bloke):
100g of Roquefort cheese
A handful of walnut halves, bashed up.
A small shallot
A few handfuls of watercress
Mustard (you can get away with French mustard here, but colmans will do the job as well)
White wine vinegar
Extra virgin olive oil
Butter
A small pear (conference seem to be good at the moment)
Some cherry tomatoes, halved.
Black pepper (you don’t need salt as the cheese is pretty salty)

Toast the nuts in the oven to bring out some of the sweetness, and set aside.

Slice the pear in eighths and sauté gently in the butter for five minutes or so until they are colouring slighty.

While the pears are cooking, roughly chop the watercress and toss in a bowl with about 80g of broken up Roquefort (save the remaining 20g to have on crackers after the pub one night) and the cherry tomato halves.

To make a dressing, press the small shallot through a garlic crusher, and mix with a healthy slosh of olive oil and vinegar. Mix in about half a teaspoon of mustard and a grinding of black pepper.

Remove the pears from the pan and drain quickly on kitchen paper. Toss while still hot with the watercress salad, nuts and the dressing so that the cheese is melting slightly.

If you’re entertaining you might want to tidy things up a bit by layering the ingredients on the plate, and thinning out the dressing a bit so that it can be more successfully ‘drizzled’ on the plate. Either way - serve with copious amounts of wine.