A terrific autumn meal to make at home in a matter of minutes
With pears at the height of their season here in Michigan, I take every opportunity to enjoy them as often as I can. This little Roquefort salad is a wonderful, quick-to-make combination of sweet and savory.
You’ll want a pear per person to make the salad. Cut them into ¼-inch thick slices. Saute the slices—with a pinch of sea salt—in olive oil at medium heat, stirring regularly to get a small bit of browning. Add a teaspoonful or so of good lightly sweet vinegar (I love the Banyuls vinegar we have at the Deli). Add a good bit of freshly ground black pepper—try the Five-Star Blend that our friends at Épices de Cru up in Montreal have made for us. I prefer the pepper for this salad to be ground on the coarser side to add texture to the salad. When the pears are soft and brown around the edges, turn off the heat.
On each plate, put a generous bed of fresh arugula. Spoon the pears on top. Add chopped Piquillo pepper (or other roasted red peppers) and toasted walnuts. Crumble some room-temperature Roquefort over top. Add salt and pepper if you need it, and a ribbon of good olive oil.
I got to thinking about the salad in part because we have some wonderful Roquefort in at the Deli right now from the small quality-focused French firm of Gabriel Coulet. Guillaume Coulet began to age cheese in the Roquefort caves all the way back in 1872. (At the time, there were 70 firms in the district making Roquefort—today Coulet is one of only seven left!) Twenty years later, Guillaume’s son Gabriel took over the company and the firm took his name, which it carries to this day with the fifth generation.
We buy the Coulet Roquefort through the marvelous maturers at Fromage Mons. Laure Dubouloz, longtime friend and export manager at Mons, shares,
When the cheeses arrive to us, we place them back in our own aging caves at a warmer temperature—between 8 and 10 degrees Celsius. This allows the Roquefort to ‘relax;’ we call this step the détente. The cheese releases excess moisture, allowing it to gain a denser, creamier texture and also concentrate the flavors. All of Coulet’s wheels of Roquefort are lower in salt, hand-turned, and hand-wrapped to protect the delicacy of the cheese. Thanks to more extensive “needling,” the veins in the Coulet Roquefort are remarkable—mostly a pale, almost jade-like green, with bits of darker green, almost blue-black in places.
You really can taste the difference this dedication to artisan detail makes. The flavor is nutty, big, and bold (but not overpowering) with a lovely hint of butterscotch; the finish is substantial, long, and lingering. I think it’s the perfect counterpoint for the soft, creamy sweetness of the sautéed pears and the spicy, green flavor of the arugula. The walnuts and black pepper bring a straight-ahead savoriness to balance out the richness of the fruit and the cheese. All in all, it’s one awesome autumn salad!
