Warm, Smokey, Blue Cheese Salad

Eating a blue cheese salad with a knife and fork is exciting; you feel both barbaric and refined all at once. This is one of my new favourites as I've fallen in love with my new wood BBQ.

Ingredients:
For Dressing:
1/4 c Olive oil
1 lemon, squeezed
salt and cracked pepper to taste
1 Tbs grainy mustard
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp anchovy paste

For the Croutons:
1/2 of a baguette, chopped into 1cm cubes
2 cloves of garlic
4 Tbs Olive oil

A head of Romaine lettuce, cut in 1/4 length-wise and washed, then spun dry
4 slices of double smoked bacon, fried crispy
1/2 cup size chunk of a good blue cheese like Tiger Blue(Poplar Grove Cheeses, BC)

Serves 4 as appetizer portion
Recipe:
Make dressing; combine all ingredients into a small jar and shake vigorously.
Make croutons: grate garlic, put in bowl with olive oil, toss in bread cubes, spread on a baking tray and bake till crispy 5-10 min (400F oven).

Oil & then heat up your Grill or BBQ(BBQ will always taste better) to high(450 F approx). Put the romaine on the grill cut side down, grill 1 min then turn to grill the other cut side.

Remove from BBQ, plate, drizzle dressing over the lettuce, crumble the bacon and blue cheese over it, add cracked pepper and croutons and serve warm right away.

Wine pairing would be a lovely Chardonnay; something full and fruity to stand up to the big flavour of the blue cheese. I had an amazing Noble Ridge Chardonnay, BC, 2007, it went perfectly.