Fresh Greens Salad With Pistachios and Blue Cheese Vinaigrette

On the way home from a recent visit to Napa, we decided to pop into a great little bistro for lunch. It is a venerable Napa Valley institution serving up some of the freshest, tastiest fare in the Valley for decades. They grow their own greens right on the premises and the food is always of-the-moment–delicious and imaginative. There are daily specials and a few items that are perennials, including a salad made of greens, spiced pistachios, blue cheese crumbles and an absolutely decadent dressing that involves blue cheese, mayonnaise, buttermilk…and the list goes on.

I licked my plate clean. It was simple, elegant and yet decadent all at the same time.

I have the restaurant’s cookbook, and it’s quite good, although most of the recipes I’ve tried from it are a bit more ambitious than I usually want to tackle on an average Tuesday night, if you know what I mean.

In it, I found what I believe is the dressing for this salad. It has a lot of ingredients. Since the salad ingredients are pretty straightforward, I decided that I wanted to try to re-create it, but in a format suitable for weeknight dining in a home kitchen setting.

I think I hit it out of the park 🙂 A key ingredient to my version of this salad is my basic vinaigrette as a base for the dressing.

Print Recipe

Fresh Greens Salad With Pistachios and Blue Cheese Vinaigrette

Author: keriawilliams

Ingredients

Servings

• 3-4 cups assorted greens (preferably fresh and preferably of different textures--for example: endive, butter and romaine. But really, any three will do.)
• ¹⁄₂ cup pistachio nuts (toasted with a little olive or pecan oil and spiced with a piquant spice blend, such as chili or southwest seasoning. If you don't have pistachios, pecans would be delicious as well, or really, almost any nuts you have on hand.)
• ¹⁄₂ cup basic vinaigrette
• 1 tbsp mayonnaise
• 1 tbsp soft blue cheese
• 1-2 tbsp blue cheese crumbles (this is optional, but if you're a blue cheese fan, this will elevate the salad a good bit)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to about 300*. In a small bowl, toss the nuts with a little oil--just enough to lightly coat the nuts. You're looking to get enough oil on them to make sure the seasoning has something to stick to. Sprinkle with a piquant seasoning--chili or southwestern seasoning will do, but really, whatever you like will work fine. Toss the nuts to coat them and turn them onto a cookie sheet. Place in the oven and toast for a few minutes until they're fragrant and a turning a little tan. Remove from oven, set aside and them cool until you're ready to serve the salad.

1. For the dressing, combine the vinaigrette, mayonnaise and blue cheese in a small bowl. Using a fork, mash the blue cheese into a paste and then whisk the ingredients to combine--it'll be a little lumpy, but that's ok. Cover with a little cling wrap and set aside in your fridge until you're ready to serve up the salad.

   

1. Just before you're ready to serve, combine the lettuces--here I have used endive, butter and romaine and top with the cooled nuts. Add the dressing, toss and serve immediately. Sprinkle with more blue cheese crumbles if desired.