Pear and Blue Cheese Salad with Homemade Apricot Dressing

~Amanda~

I absolutely love salads and I eat them at least 5 days a week. I typically bring them for lunches to work topped with lots of veggies, chicken, and olive oil and balsamic as my dressing or I’ll serve them as sides to dinners. I generally stick to using similar ingredients and my same olive oil and balsamic dressing because it’s so simple, easy, very healthy, and tastes so incredible. However, there are some nights when I get the urge to kick it up a notch, and this is one of the salads I make when I am craving something much more rich and decadent. It’s a salad that both Jackie and I have been making for so many years and I cannot remember where the original recipe came from, but it is divine. The combination of pears and blue cheese topped with a homemade apricot vinaigrette dressing is seriously to die for… all the ingredients go together so perfectly and are a flavor explosion in your mouth. Try making this just once, and I guarantee you’ll be hooked!

There is nothing quite like homemade salad dressing. It’s just so fresh and delicious and you can make it exactly how you want, plus there are no extra un-natural ingredients or preservatives in them like you may find in some store-bought ones so that makes it even better. And although it may sound a little daunting to make your own dressing, it’s really not at all, it’s actually super simple to do and takes just a few minutes. To make this apricot dressing you only need a few ingredients; a shallot, apricot fruit spread, white wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Shallots are such a great ingredient to use in salad dressings; they are smaller than onions with a golden pink/plum skin and they are kind of like a combination of an onion and garlic, but with a more subtle and delicate flavor that is perfect for this dressing. The apricot fruit spread is really what makes this whole salad though. When combined with the shallot and vinegar it creates the perfect dressing that’s sweet and savory and tangy and it accentuates the pears and blue cheese perfectly. I’m clearly obsessed with it.

The salad part of this salad is very simple. All you have to do is get some delicious greens… you can use arugula, mixed greens, kale, or whatever you prefer. This salad’s for you, so make it with ingredients you love most! Next, thinly slice some pears and place them on the salad. And now add the blue cheese crumbles! I know blue cheese isn’t for everyone, but I love it and it’s the perfect addition to this salad due to its rich, sharp, and salty (and stinky!) flavor profile and you can use any variety of blue cheese that you find at your grocery store (I like Roquefort or Gorgonzola). Once you have your salad assembled, drizzle it with your apricot dressing and enjoy. I find that it goes great as a side to a main course of meat (grilled chicken, steak, or burgers), but if I’m making something that it really doesn’t go with at all, I just make the salads ahead of time and serve them as an appetizer instead! Enjoy!