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OxfordPress.com

Great blue cheese dressing easily made at home

No salad is simpler for the home cook than wedges of crisp iceberg lettuce with blue cheese dressing spooned over the top.

Making a good blue cheese dressing is very easy. The challenge is to buy a good blue cheese dressing

To assess the available dressings, we assembled eight creamy blue dressings from several supermarkets and rounded up 10 blue cheese lovers to evaluate the commercial products.

What we were looking for was a well-balanced, creamy dressing with visible chunks of good quality blue cheese.

There simply was no consensus — except that eight of the 10 rated Emeril's New Recipe Blue Cheese Dressing unacceptable.

Others garnered grudging points, which was not a surprise when you read the ingredient lists: All but one start out with canola oil on the ingredient list, which also includes corn syrup, artificial flavors, apple juice and preservatives. Blue cheese appears down the list, in the third or fourth slot.

And the vaunted Pine Club Bleu Cheese Dressing had to be disqualified. Once opened, it was obvious the refrigerated dressing had been improperly stored at the supermarket.

That sent me to my recipe box and the recipe I first printed in my It's Simple column in the old Journal Herald.

It is is utter simplicity. Just four ingredients, plus salt and pepper — and my secret ingredient: Tabasco, which you don't taste, but a little elevates the overall flavor.

The only caveat is this: Buy good blue cheese, not packaged crumbles. Some people prefer Roquefort, but even at the better cheese shops in town it is dicey to pick up a chunk of Roquefort. It is often over the hill, as are many imported bleu cheeses (for the record it is bleu cheese over there and blue cheese here.) My choice is U.S.-made Maytag blue, always reliable.

BLUE CHEESE DRESSING

Makes 1 1/2 cups

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup sour cream

2 tablespoons white wine, or white wine vinegar or freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground pepper, at least 1/8 teaspoon

1/4 teaspoon Tabasco

1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese *

Combine the mayonnaise, sour cream and wine (or vinegar or lemon juice) in a small bowl. Blend with a fork and mix in salt, pepper and Tabasco. Stir in the blue cheese.

Cover and refrigerate for 4 hours, so flavors meld.

* It is easiest to crumble blue cheese while it is cold.

For glorious excess, serve with additional crumbled blue cheese to sprinkle on top.