Have I ever mentioned that I sometimes prefer cookbooks with no photos? You see, the Missus doesn't give cookbooks with little or no photos the time of day. But when She gets Her mitts on cookbooks with great photos, She'll get fixated on one, or more of the recipes, and request, nay demand that I attempt to make what was requested. Most of the time I'm able to pull off a reasonable facsimile of the dish…. but nothing sends chills down my spine when I see Her grabbing one of Thomas Keller's cookbooks. Lucky for me; this time around it was Ad Hoc at Home
The Missus has a strange affinity for Blue Cheese Dressing and Wedge Salads, so when She saw the photo of the iceberg lettuce slices….. it was all blue cheese dressing and iceberg lettuce salad all of the time. This time I didn't just jump up and run to the market grabbing the closest head of lettuce, which made the Missus kinda wonder why……. perhaps She envisioned that we'd fanned the flames of our love of food a bit too hard and it had gone out. But that wasn't really the reason, which I'll detail a bit later. About a week later, on a Sunday, when I grilled up a mess of veggies for the Missus to eat on sandwiches for the upcoming week, I made my dressing (actually the night before) and the Missus had Her salad.
You see the reason that the Missus didn't get instant salad was that I had something brewing up in the deep and mildly warm recesses of the mmm-yoso household. Looking over the Blue Cheese Dressing recipe in Ad Hoc, I noticed something that I thought would really make this dressing…… creme fraiche. So while the Missus was stewing, the creme fraiche was, well, fermenting.
The recipe for the dressing is pretty much the same as what's in the book. I omitted the flat leaf parsley, and adjusted the flavor for our taste. I could have made my own aioli, but decided on not messing with eggs right now. In his book, Thomas Keller uses his Buttermilk Dressing as the base for the Blue Cheese Dressing. We both loved the hint of mint in the dressing, it really worked well.
Blue Cheese Buttermilk Dressing
1 cup Best Foods mayonnaise
1/3 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup creme fraiche
1/2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
1-2 tsp minced chives
1 tsp minced mint leaves
6 oz decent quality blue cheese (please, no prepackaged crumbles ok?)
– Put the mayo in a bowl and whisk in the buttermilk and creme fraiche.
– Add the rest of the ingredients except the blue cheese and mix well.
– Taste and adjust flavors.
– Crumble the blue cheese. It might be kind of sticky and messy, but that's ok.
– Stir in the blue cheese and whisk together. You can use the whisk to break down the Blue Cheese.
I'd say allow for the flavors to meld overnight. If the dressing is too thick, you can add in buttermilk to thin it out.
As for the salad……..
You'll notice those tomatoes don't look very pretty……. during my grilling session I cut two tomatoes into about 1 1/2 inch slices, rubbed them with garlic olive oil, seasoned with salt and oregano and grilled them up. Thomas Keller uses oven roasted tomatoes, but this was during the time when it pretty warm around here, and I just didn't feel like using the oven.
The missus prefers her bacon crisp, so I deviated from Thomas Keller's technique of rendering the fat off of the lardons without making the bacon too crisp.
Instead I used thick cut bacon from Seisel's.
The bread was interesting. I'd bought the usual double loaf of the routine roasted garlic La Brea Bakery loaves with the intent of making croutons, and using the rest for the Missus's sandwiches. Unfortunately, the Missus was adamant about NOT wanting croutons, or pretty much any bread near, or around Her salad. So to "fix Her wagon", I rubbed roasted garlic olive oil on some slices of bread and toasted them. When the slices were toasted, I drizzled Truffle Oil on them……. and of course the Missus couldn't resist that! Who could? Slices of avocado finished the salad, and we finished all the dressing in three days…….
And the veggies I roasted on the grill didn't last too long either…….
And in case you're feeling bad for me having to eat all this salad… don't.
Looks almost like fairly well marbled beef, doesn't it? When buying the bacon I had thoughts of making some thick cut pork chops with a spicy hoisin glaze…… when I saw these beautiful looking Eden Farms Berkshire (Kurobuta) Loin Chops, which made all the "other white meat" around them look positively pale and weak. These were delicious… and no, I didn't ruin them with any glaze; I just seasoned with sea salt and fresh cracked pepper, and after giving them some nice color, I threw some soaked oak chips on the coals and covered the chops up for the last seven or so minutes……. man, these were good!