Smoked Cheese and Pear Salad with Honey Soy Dressing

This is an altered version of an extremely tasty dressing I learned from a cooking class a few years ago. The dressing takes only a few seconds to make but makes for a really interesting flavour. The dressing itself can go with any number of things, but flavour combo of all the ingredients in the full salad is really the peak for it.

Dressing can be made ahead and keeps reasonably well in the fridge.

Dressing

Yield: Enough Dressing for 4-6 People as a side salad.

Ingredients

• 1/2 Cup Liquid Honey (Amber preferred)
• 1/4 Cup White Vinegar (IMO anything but white overdoes the flavour)
• 1/2 Cup Canola Oil
• 4-8 Cloves of Minced Garlic
• 1 TBSP of Minced Ginger
• 1 1/2 TBSP Dry Mustard
• Fresh Black Pepper
• Sprinkle of Kosher or Sea Salt

Method

• This is a complicated one...

• Place all the ingredients in a Sealer Jar.

• And shake the hell out of it.

Salad Prep

This is of course highly variable as you make your own. In my opinion this goes well with almost any mix of greens, but I happen to really like this particular combo.

Ingredients

• Field Greens (I buy a pre mixed bag of organic things like Romaine, Arugula, Chard, Kale, Spinach and others)
• 4 Fresh Ripe Pears (Your choice, I prefer red for this)
• 1 Medium Red Onions
• 1 small piece of smoked gruyere (or other similiar cheese)

Method

• Core and Peel your pears (keep them wet until serving so they don't brown and look gross, add a sprinkle of lemon to the water.)

• Slice into thin wedges

• Slice red onion into thin decorative rings

• Toss Dressing with salad.

• Mound salad on plate or bowl, arrange pear slices artistically.

• Add full rings of red onion then shave cheese with a potato peeler over the salad.

• Enjoy!

(Note, I forgot to take a money shot on the day of and was out of red onion the next day when I took this)