Happy Friday! I am very excited to announce a new project/feature on my blog: Cook the Book Fridays!
Ever since French Fridays with Dorie ended, us former Doristas have missed cooking together each week. There had been some discussion about starting a new book together, and finally Katie of ProfWhoCooks took the plunge and got us started. Thanks Katie! Our first book is My Paris Kitchen by David Lebovitz. Since we are just getting started, this is a great time to join in if you are interested. Check out the “official” site for the recipe schedule and rules: Cook the Book Fridays. The more the merrier!
Our debut recipe is a simple salad called Winter Salad. A thick dressing is made from crumbled Roquefort cheese, Greek yogurt, chives, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Toss it with sliced Belgian endive, and top with a few more chives.
I haven’t eaten Belgian endive very often, and when I tasted a bit of it I was a little unsure of a whole salad made from it. But the dressing did wonders for the flavor and I really enjoyed the salad. My husband thought the salad was “too blue cheesey” and he likes blue cheese, so I would say this salad is for blue cheese lovers only.
The one issue I had with the salad is that the dressing was very thick, making it difficult to toss with the Belgian endive. I’m wondering if others ran into the same problem.
You can find the recipe for Winter Salad on page 98 of My Paris Kitchen. I encourage you to buy the book!
From Scratch 
I have the book! Think I will join you all!
You should join us – it’s a lot of fun!
I will! 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
We would love you to join us, Natascha, and Karen can lead the way for you. It’s fine. We’re nice gals and this cookbook is fabulous.
Thank you so much! It is a great book and it will be great going through it with you. Thanks again! 😙
I too found the dressing very thick but I thinned it with more lemon juice
Yes – I thought it was too thick as well (even with more lemon juice) – I’ll be using regular plain yoghurt from now on but I will make this again – so good!
I’m so happy to be cooking with you again, Karen! I found the dressing super thick too. The moisture from the endive seemed to lighten it up a little bit, but if I made it again, I’d add something to thin it out more. Tasty though.
Hi Karen! Its nice getting the gang together, isn’t it? This dressing WAS blue cheesey and for blue cheese lovers only! We don’t eat a lot of endive either. Its expensive here in Oklahoma City and usually, not very fresh. I thinned my dressing out with buttermilk and it helped.
Yes, Karen, it’s wonderful to be cooking together again and I am glad to be able to catch up with you. Right after I made this dressing, it was fine, creamy and poured well. After a night in the fridge, yes, it was thick and not pourable but I just added some yogurt and lemon juice, let it reach room temperature and it was fine. I LOVE blue cheese so this dressing suited me. I think Guyla’s idea of adding buttermilk is a great idea.
I found the dressing a bit too thick also…I thinned it with a bit more lemon juice and water. It was still thick! Next time I will do what Guyla did, and use buttermilk. Great idea! I could not find any endive that was acceptable, so I went with another winter green. All and all a very good salad! I added pears and pecans to mine.
So nice to be cooking with you again, Karen! Happy friday!
Hope you decide to cook along Natascha…we have a great group of ladies!
Yeahhhh! FFs are back! The salad was a good start!
Karen!! Thank YOU for joining in! It’s been so much fun reading everyone’s entries for this week…I can’t even explain it. As for the salad–yes, I found the dressing too thick. It seemed to lighten up when mixed with the endive, and thankfully that green can handle being knocked around a bit. 🙂 I also sort of agree with your husband (and I love blue cheese) so that’s why I made it with the options.
I’m so glad we have a new way to cook together! I had to thin my dressing out a bit – next time, I’ll use regular yogurt. I enjoyed this salad a lot and am inspired by all the variations I’ve seen so far.
Karen, isn’t this fun? I thought the salad was quite good. I don’t “do” bitter, so I subbed romaine, but thought it was quite tasty, particularly with apple as a counterpoint. I do think that the endive would have been pretty good in retrospect!
So happy to be cooking with you!
Karen, so nice to see so many of the FF crew back again 🙂 I missed everyone (TWD just isn’t the same!).
I really loved the dressing and will have to keep it in mind.
This is going to be fun blogging with all the Doristas again. Your salad
looks great, can’t wait to make it.