Disclosure notice: I was provided with free product by Castello cheese for the purpose of writing this post.  All opinions stated within are my own.

It’s really not a secret around here that I have a weakness for cheese.  Any kind of cheese.  Despite being lactose intolerant, I add it to everything.  It just makes stuff better.  And that’s what those little Lactaid pills are for anyway, right?

One of my closest, oldest friends, Donny Vegas, has his birthday two days before mine.  We’ve been having joint birthday parties since we were 18 (although we’ve been friends since we were 9!).  This year was a milestone birthday for both of us so his wife, Blondie, decided to host a li’l party for the two of us.  She’s a great hostess and the food at her parties is always fab-u-lous so it’s always something to look forward to.

One of her appetizers was a little blue cheese concoction served in endive cups.  Now some people find blue cheese a little strong for their palettes but I would not be one of those people.  I ate way more of those little endive cups than I care to admit.  I even snuck back inside during the outside events to grab myself a few more!

So when Castello cheese asked me if I’d like to try some of their Blue Cheese and write recipe post as well, I couldn’t wait and I knew exactly what I wanted to make… only I totally wanted to change it around at the same time!  And what’s better than a great appetizer recipe as we head into the holiday season?

I got to choose the variety of blue cheese I wanted to use from Castello’s lineup and I picked the Crumbled Blue Cheese, one of their strongest tasting varieties.

Blondie happily obliged me with the recipe she used from Fine Cooking and that’s what I used as my base.  I experimented with it a bit and wound up with a pretty tasty combo that included curry and bacon and a little extra apple than the original recipe called for.  I found with the added bacon the sweet quotient from the apple needed to be upped a bit.

I had lots left from my three test batches I made so I stuffed some into some fresh figs, which was very tasty and also makes a great appy.  But the surprise was when, as a lark, I mixed some in with some leftover stewed tomatoes and added it to warm pasta on a leftover mishmash night.  It was so delicious in a very unexpected way! Creamy, tangy and the apple and nuts worked really well giving it some texture.  So don’t be afraid to play with this one.  It would be great on crackers or as a dip too!

What better way to kick it off than to start experimenting with salads?

Salads are great because the possibilities are endless and you do not need to be able to cook to make something fabulous that also looks so pretty.  I often make them for lunch just by chopping up some veggies and greens and chucking them in a tupperware container.  Add some protein in the form of nuts, hard boiled eggs or leftover meat from the night before.  If you’re really hungry you can add a carb like the leftover roasted potatoes I used here, or a grain of some kind.  Sprinkle a little grated cheese for your dairy group, add an olive oil based homemade dressing and you have your healthy fat.  All in one bowl. Simplicity!

Usually, I’m very unglamourous… everything goes in the tupperware container, I pop the lid on, shake it all up and then eat it.  But last week I wanted to practice my salad styling and presentation.  Styling is always the hardest part of taking photos for me.  I don’t pay much attention to presentation when I cook, because frankly, it’s usually a pretty limited audience: me!  I just wanna eat it!  I also understand why there are food stylists and food photographers. Very different skill sets!

Styling a Salad For its Closeup

One thing I have noticed when photographing food is that, given a choice, styling specifically for a photograph is different than plating food for the people who are going to eat it.  So here’s a few things I learned while trying to improve my salad styling:

1. Choose your dishes carefully.  White is always a safe bet but can be kind of boring.  Don’t be afraid to experiment with other colours.  If your salad is a rainbow of ingredients you probably want to stick with a single solid colour dish, like this yellow bowl.  It’s bright and cheerful but doesn’t distract from the salad itself.  If your salad is monochromatic, don’t be afraid to use something with a pattern.
2. Layer your ingredients.  The greens are the hardest part – they can be a bit unruly (sometimes that’s good though!).  Use them to make a bed which you can layer the rest of your ingredient.  And whole leaves work much better than chopped or torn lettuce (but make it more difficult to eat later!)
3. Keep your ingredients to a minimum in order to showcase them for the photograph.  It’s really hard to see here but there was also cucumber and celery in this salad – but it’s kind of lost.
4. Keep it moist.  Try tossing the ingredients in a tiny bit of dressing before adding each one to the dish, or spritzing them afterwards with a very fine mist of water or dressing.  As you can see here, I drizzled on dressing before shooting but the meat looks a bit dry (it wasn’t!).  A little coating of dressing would’ve made it look fresh from cooking.

There’s no real recipe for this dish.  It was lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, celery, chopped leftover roasted potatoes, Italian sausage and cranberries, topped by the sesame Thai dressing I happened to have in the fridge.  And then all tossed together (in a tupperware container) and eaten!

I took the photos over a week ago and I can’t remember much about them except that it was mid-day at my kitchen table.  I know I didn’t use a tripod and I did use a reflector held up by my fruit bowl.  The light looks like it was diffused but I know I didn’t use a diffusor so I’m wondering if it was an overcast day so the light wasn’t too direct.  I need to write this stuff down!

Until next time!

So, having said that, the three here represent the best of the 47 I took.

Ingredients for pomegranate and persimmon salad

The flip side of that is… the salad turned out scrummy-umptious.

I’ve been lusting after the Williams-Sonoma Cooking For Friends cookbook.  The photos in it are so divine.  But, I only had money to splurge on one cookbook last week and after having my two choices pulled out on the floor in the bookstore and comparing, I picked the one with the more mainstream ingredients (more on the one I chose in another post).

But while I was sitting cross-legged on the floor of Chapters comparing my books (am I the only person over the age of eight who does this in bookstores?), I came across the Endive and Persimmon Salad.  Seeing as I had the very first two persimmons I have ever bought sitting in my fridge without a clue what to do with them, I made a mental note.

Persimmons, chives and pomegranate seeds

Sure enough, when I got home a quick google found me the salad recipe on the Williams-Sonoma site.  Follow the link and you can check out the original recipe.

What follows here is the Melissa-ized version.  And I will tell you why.

1. I went to the grocery store to buy endive and couldn’t find it (mistake number 1, I went to the grocery store and not the farmer’s market).  I found something that I thought might be endive but it had no sign and there was no produce boy around who knew what the item in question was sooo… I bought romaine hearts instead.  Because I like them.
2. Champagne Vinegar.  Right.  No.  We will settle for white wine vinegar thank you very much.  I notice they sell it on their site for $18 a bottle.  But no matter, my grocery store has a pretty great selection of the unusual but they didn’t have champagne vinegar.
3. I wanted to make this a meal salad so I added chicken.

The finished product - and yes, there is, in fact, chicken hiding in there.

So, without further ado:  the Melissa version of the Endive Salad with Persimmons or as I like to call it:

Persimmon & Pomegranate Salad with Chicken

1 box or bag of fresh Romaine hearts
seeds from 1 large pomegranate
2 ripe Fuyu persimmons
1/2 lb of feta, crumbled
1/2 tsp plus 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil
3/4 cup of toasted pistachio nuts coarsely chopped
2 tbsp of snipped chives (reserve blossoms for garnish if you feel fancy!)
grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp white wine vinegar
sea salt and freshly ground pepper to season
3-4 chicken breasts, sliced into thin strips – like for stir frying

Trim the ends off of the Romaine leaves if you don’t like them (I do so I keep them) and put them in a large bowl.

Slice the persimmons as thin as you can – use a mandoline if you have one.

Combine the cheese with the 1/2 tsp olive oil.  Add the cheese/oil mixture, pistachios, persimmons slices, pomegranate seeds and chives to the Romaine leaves.

In a small bowl combine remaining 1/2 cup of olive oil with lemon juice, lemon zest, wine vinegar with a whisk.  Once well combined season with salt and pepper.

Drizzle the oil over the salad and toss.  Add extra seasoning if needed.

I don’t like my salad drenched in dressing so I only used half the dressing for the salad and I cooked my chicken with the remaining half instead of cooking oil, which gave it a nice lemony tang.

Top the salad off with the warm chicken and serve.  You should have enough for four.

Now go eat.