Greetings from the Emerald City! After a little hiatus, the Half Baked Cooking blog is back. We’ve relocated to Seattle and brought the blog with us. We’ve been exploring the city and seeing what the local foodies cook and eat. For our first cooking endeavor we decided to use cherries, since they are so big out here. Native to Washington are Rainier cherries. They are pinkish-yellow and are rare in most areas because they are so delicate and difficult to grow.
Anyway, we didn’t use Rainier cherries on this one. We went for the rich sweet taste of dark red cherries to complement the intensity of the bleu cheese.
This salad is really simple to make and has a visually appealing dark red color.
You’ll need:
Cherries (pitted)
Red onion, chopped
Pistachios
Baby Spinach
Bleu Cheese Crumbles
Balsamic Vinegar
Start off by heating up a pan and sauteeing the red onion for just a few minutes. In the meantime, start pitting the cherries. Cut a slit in each and spoon out the pit. Then stuff them each with bleu cheese and close them up as best as you can.
Shell the pistachios. Then start mixing up the dressing. We muddled a few cherries and mixed the juice with a splash of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
Assemble the salad by putting down a bed of spinach and topping with the onions, pistachios and stuffed cherries. Drizzle with the cherry balsamic dressing and top with cracked black pepper.
Happy to be back and blogging! Enjoy!
- Nicole and Lyle
