Garden Salad with Blue Cheese

How we make it.

*serves 2 to 4*

5 ounces spring mix
1 bunch radishes, sliced
¼ cup red onion, finely diced
½ cup English cucumber, sliced
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Blue cheese dressing, to taste (recipe below)

Combine lettuces and vegetables in your favorite salad bowl, dust with cracked black pepper and toss with desired amount of blue cheese dressing. Serve cold.

Blue Cheese Dressing

4 ounces Stilton blue cheese
4 ounces sour cream
4 ounces mayonnaise
Juice of half a lemon
Splash of milk
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

If using a food processor, combine all ingredients and pulse to desired chunkiness. If by hand, chunk blue cheese with a knife. Add to a medium bowl with mayonnaise, sour cream, lemon and milk, whisking to combine to desired chunkiness. Finish with black pepper, to taste. Store in the refrigerator for up to a week and dip everything in it like I do.

Why we make it.

Every spring I need the crunch of radish around late April. Usually in my salads there's a pork product, let's be honest. A toasted nut. A chunk of cheese.  But in this spring garden salad I truly go Peter Rabbit. Vegetal purity doused in my favorite simple homemade blue cheese dressing. It's supposed to be crunchy, fresh, a little spicy and worthy of a watercolor. Not a shred of cheddar in sight. I was planning to make this for you this week from the usual grocery fare when from the heavens came an impromptu bit of Benjamin Bunnying in my favorite farmer's garden at Camp Hi Ho. We interrupt our school's annual mother/son day programming for a jaunt to the back pasture to cut wild asparagus. A stroll through the side garden to clip sun soaked arugula and pull a bevvy of radishes rising from their earthen rows. I accept. And I'll make a salad out of it. When the generosity of the gardeners around you fills a dirty bucket with tender lettuce, you thank God you make weekly blue cheese and you head on home to use it on something spectacular. That's why I made it.