pear, blue cheese and walnut salad with a maple

This post has become my most well read post on Drizzle and Dip, and I simply could not leave it out of my cookbook which was published last year. This image is the image from the book.

Here is the post as it was originally published:

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.

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.

Ingredients :
2 generous handfuls rocket (leaves of your choice)
2 pears, sliced
150g blue cheese, broken into chunks
50g crushed walnuts for sprinkling
dressing
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

Instructions :
Place the salad ingredients in a bowl or arrange on a platter.
Mix the vinaigrette dressing ingredients in a small jar and shake well before drizzling over the salad.
Notes

Its best to make the salad just before serving as the pears go brown very quickly