Sainte-Maure de Touraine Salad with Apples and Pistachio Butter
Sainte-Maure was soft-spoken, more fragile. He reclined on the couch in his gray fur coat and murmured in his sleep about a salad. “Pistachios,” he whispered, his whiskers twitching, “apples, grapes.”
I darted into the kitchen and rummaged for my mandoline. A cheese so delicate requires a salad of thin shavings, I think. Using a mandoline, I shredded cucumbers and apples, a few green onions, and then I tossed these with greens and some lemon. Nothing more. Instead of adding pistachios on top, I climbed into the fridge to root out a jar of pistachio butter. The inspiration came from a salad I once ate that was served on a swirl of homemade pistachio butter—I love the memory of the fork tines catching on a little bit of that cream as I swept up each bite of salad.
Ingredients
- ½ green apple thinly sliced
- 1 celery stalk thinly sliced
- 1 green onion thinly sliced
- 2 handfuls of mixed greens
- half a lemon
- sea salt
- dill and mint for garnish
- handfuls of grapes
- 4 tablespoons pistachio butter see note
- Sainte-Maure de Touraine
Instructions
- Toss apple slices, celery, green onion, and greens in a bowl with lemon and sea salt. Mix with your hands. Serve on a plate you have prepared with a good shmear of pistachio butter. Sprinkle with fresh herbs and grapes, and top with a few sliced rounds of Sainte Maure de Touraine
Notes
You can buy prepared pistachio butter, which I used initially. Then I tried making my own using a recipe from Coffee and Quinoa. All you have to do is combine a cup of pistachios with honey in a food processor—add some coconut oil along the way to smooth things out. The results are delicious, but I didn’t achieve quite the same ultra creamy consistency I yearned for. Just sayin’.
Tenaya Darlington
Tenaya Darlington teaches food writing at Saint Joseph’s University. She blogs at www.madamefromageblog.com and co-hosts tours with Cheese Journeys. While writing this post, she nursed a gin martini and nibbled a hunk of Pecorino Ginepro.
Goat Cheeses of France
Goat Cheeses of France is the official US campaign for spreading the word on the over 3,000 goat cheese producers and about 60 dairy companies responsible for the exceptional quality, shapes, textures, and tastes of the Original Chèvre.
