wedge salad

with bleu cheese buttermilk dressing

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When I was a kid, and even into my early teen years, the word salad was narrowly defined.

Sure, there were those mayonaise based salads that you could serve with an ice cream scoop, like egg salad, tuna salad, and potato salad.

But if you were talking about salad salad, you were talking about iceberg lettuce that was chopped up and topped with cucumber, tomatoes, sometimes carrot strips, onion, often times celery, and occasionally olives if you wanted to get fancy. Variation came in the form of dressing. I believe there were about 5 kinds, and they all came in bottles.

I saw romaine lettuce in the store when I shopped with my mother, but we never bought it and I don’t think I ever ate it. Beyond that, I couldn’t imagine that there were any other types of lettuce on our planet.

The dining room at school sometimes served what they called “wedge salad” at dinner. It was a hunk of iceberg with a white dressing poured over it. It seemed kind of lame. Just iceberg, and it wasn’t even cut up! It didn’t seem Jewish. (neither did the school … ) I passed on the salad. It wasn’t distasteful, but it didn’t look the least bit interesting to me.

Then, suddenly, the world of salad exploded. There was butter lettuce, bib lettuce, red leaf lettuce, frisée, and others. There was spring mix. To my surprise, spinach was available raw, not just frozen, and you could eat it raw. Spinach was salad! Who knew?

With all of the exciting new options for salad, iceberg got pushed off and was pretty much forgotten. Once I had my own home (at an unusually young age) I was totally into “health food,” and I never bought it. Other greens were more interesting, had more nutrition.

Then, when I was a guest in someone’s home, I was served a wedge salad. You eat what you’re served in someone’s home. So I ate it. And I really enjoyed it. I’d forgotten how refreshing a bite of cool, crisp iceberg could be. It had a nice crunch, due to its high water content, and it was presented with a generous drizzle of homemade bleu cheese dressing.

While these days I still usually opt for dark, leafy greens, iceberg has won back a place of respect in my mind. And every now and again, especially when it’s hot out … we’re in Central Florida … it’s usually hot out … I get a hankering for wedge salad. The lettuce has to be very fresh and crisp, and the dressing has to be excellent.

By the way, it turns out that iceberg is actually high in vitamins A and K. It’s not a total nutritional washout. So grab yourself a head of iceberg and whip up this excellent buttermilk bleu cheese dressing. Enjoy it as is, or think of it as a canvas for all sorts of interesting embellishments.

There’s more than one way to do bleu cheese dressing. A simple vinaigrette with crumbled bleu cheese, especially over dark leafy greens, is elegant and lovely. When it comes to creamy dressings, they can have bleu cheese blended in, or be more like ranch with chunks of bleu cheese added in. I tend to do both—I blend some of the cheese in with the dressing and then crumble in more for texture. I also like to keep it relatively thin. Not watery, but flowing. It’s bleu cheese dressing, not bleu cheese dip.

This is the bleu cheese dressing that my brother and I developed for our restaurant. It was very popular, and still remains a family favorite.

There are a lot of different bleu cheeses out there and they all have their own texture and flavor profile. Gorgonzola is nice here, or if you want something creamy with less bite, try a gorgonzola dulce. Castello bleu is also good in this dressing. Try several types. If your store has a cheesemonger, ask to sample a few different ones.

If you’re not a fan of bleu cheese, don’t despair! Just leave it out. You’ll have a fabulous buttermilk dressing.

wedge salad with Bleu Cheese Buttermilk Dressing

Ingredients:

• 1 head of very fresh iceberg lettuce

• 2/3 cup buttermilk

• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

• 1 teaspoon herbs de Provence

• the white part of 2 – 3 big scallions, or more if they’re very skinny (save the green part for garnish)

• 1 clove garlic, pressed through a garlic press

• 1 ½ tsp honey

• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

• ½  cup extra-virgin olive oil

• 3 ounces bleu cheese of your choice

Method:

• Trim the core of the lettuce flush with the bottom of the globe. Cut the head in half vertically, along the core, then cut each one vertically again, in 2 or 3 pieces, depending upon the size of the head. You should get anywhere between 4 and 8 wedges. finely chop the scallion greens and set them aside.

• Combine the first 7 ingredients in a food processor—everything but the olive oil and the cheese—and process until smooth. For a cheesier tasting dressing, add about 1 ounce of the bleu cheese to the processor with the other ingredients.

• With the machine running, slowly pour in olive oil and let it run for 2 minutes to emulsify the dressing.

• Taste for seasoning and adjust as needed.

• Arrange one wedge of lettuce on each plate and drizzle it generously with the dressing, but don’t drown it. Crumble bleu cheese over the top and sprinkle with some scallion greens.

• Add your choice of embellishments, or serve simply as is, perhaps with a sprinkling

Ideas for embellishment—use as many as you like:

• diced tomatoes, or quartered cherry tomatoes

• diced avocado

• diced cucumber

• diced bell pepper

• diced red or Vidalia onion

• Ecuadorian style quick pickled onions*

• coarsely chopped nuts of any kind, or try spiced or glazed nuts

• chopped olives

• diced beets (pickled beets are nice)

• chopped hard boiled egg

• crispy mini croutons

• frizzled onions

*Very thinly slice a small red onion into half moons. Put them in a bowl and pour in boiling water to cover. Let them stand for 15 minutes. Drain the onions and dress them with the juice of two limes and a sprinkling of salt. You can also add a sprinkling of sugar if you’d like them to be sweet. Let them rest for about ½ hour before serving.