Castello® Blue cheese salad with spinach, walnuts, and blackberries

Romaine salad is a leaf-shaped head lettuce perfect for salad. A romaine salad is a salad made with romaine lettuce and other ingredients that you like. You can use nuts, apples, pears, and different kinds of cheese depending on whether you like a savoury, tangy salad, or a mild, almost creamy salad. Check our recipe for a romaine blue cheese salad with spinach.

Romaine lettuce is a leaf shaped lettuce, which may require a bit more skill to cut than other non-leafy types. Start by slicing it in half lengthwise, then cut the core from both halves in a triangle or angled shape. Now, cut it lengthwise so you get 1-2 cm wide pieces. Cut those the other way so you get smaller pieces in a bite-friendly size. Your lettuce is now ready to be tossed with other ingredients to make your romaine salad. You can also chop up the pieces of romaine lettuce if you want a finer salad, but the texture is delicious with bite sized pieces.

Baby spinach, or young spinach, is perfect for salads. The younger leaves are mild and slightly sweet when raw, which goes well with other more robust and crunchy lettuce types such as romaine lettuce and rocket or cabbage such as Bok choy or Chinese cabbage.

Spinach is delicious in almost any salad, so you can use it whenever you feel like it. For example, make a spinach salad with blue cheese crumbles and walnuts, or slices of apple, cranberries, and an apple cider vinaigrette. You can also make a salad with spinach, blackberries, crispy bacon, or sweet melon.

You can serve a creamy, scrumptious pasta dish, grilled meat, or a crispy garlic bread with melted cheese with your spinach salad. Everything savoury will be delicious to serve with a salad with spinach.

There is no reason you should not eat raw spinach. It is high in oxalates, but not in a dangerous amount. However, you can reduce the number of oxalates by steaming, blanching, or boiling your spinach. Raw spinach is good for you, though. It is low in calories and has folate, fibres, and vitamins A, C, and K.

The best way to use blue cheese in a salad is to crumble it. Blue cheese salad is delicious with its tangy flavour from the blue cheese and all the other sweeter and milder flavours from the salad ingredients. When you crumble the blue cheese, it will be the perfect small size for getting the right amount of tangy flavour without overshadowing the other ingredients.

If you make a blue cheese salad with spinach, you can use almost any salad dressing if it does not have a stronger flavour than the blue cheese. For example, you can make a fresh white or red vinaigrette, a honey mustard dressing, or, as we do in this recipe, sprinkle some balsamic vinegar on top of the blue cheese salad.