I received so many comments after my gi-normous salad post not long ago that I decided to share my own take on this one-bowl wonder.
What I actually put underneath the potatoes varies, but here, I tore up some bits from a rotisserie chicken that I picked up at the Sunday market in Versailles, along with a handful of haricots verts and a few cherry tomatoes…and Xavier (!) made the potatoes (here, about a pound of red-skinned taters, tossed with some olive oil, a chopped onion, couple of garlic cloves, some herbes de Provence, sea salt and pepper cooked on high, about 300 C on the top and bottom heat setting for 30 mins or so) while I walked Rose down to Arc de Triomphe and back for her usual evening jaunt around the ‘hood.
I also bought some Roquefort at the cheese stand, and I thought that I’d try to make the dressing that was a childhood favorite – another one of my mom’s specialties. Living in Denton, Texas, where the local Piggly Wiggly stocked nothing more exotic than Velveeta, she’d buy Roquefort on trips to the city, which in this case was Dallas; cosmopolitan enough, at least, to have interesting cheese.
Mom took two of her favorite dressings and combined them to create this slightly sweet, tangy dressing loaded with Roquefort crumbles – the perfect foil to my version of Le Relais Gascon salad. It would work equally well, on a spinach salad with bacon, or with any other flavor combination that holds up well to the strong cheese flavor. Toasted hazelnuts would have been nice, too, now that I think about it.
I put all of the ingredients for the first dressing in my Cuisinart, then added everything but the oil in the second one. Then I just turned it on, let everything combine, and slowly added the oil.
Her original recipe called for vegetable oil, because back then, they didn’t have grapeseed oil, which is what I used instead.
This makes tons of dressing – it’ll keep well in the fridge for a few days.
Use as much Roquefort as you’d like, and be sure to fold this in, very gently, at the end. I used about ¾ cup.
French dressing
½ cup sugar
1 ½ teaspoon paprika
1 ½ teaspoon sea salt
pepper to taste
1 tsp dry mustard (or Maille)
½ cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup grapeseed oil
Blackstone dressing
(from the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago)
½ cup fresh lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, pressed
2 tablespoons half and half or cream
1 cup grapeseed oil
Roquefort crumbles
Once it’s all mixed up, taste the dressing and add cracked black pepper if it needs it. Also, if it’s too sweet, just add a splash or two of cider vinegar until the flavors balance.
