Sometimes you just need blue cheese. As an adult, I concur and confirm that sometimes, you just NEED blue cheese – whether its in a tart, spread on bread, crumbled into a salad or over a slab of flatbread with rosemary and figs (there’s a recipe for that coming soon, by the way), or made into a dip for crackers and veggies – fact has it that sometimes, you just need this extraordinary ingredient in your life.
I admit that as a child I wasn’t too fond of blue cheese. I may actually have been afraid of it – what is this odd slab of cheese that had veins like me? Was it alive or dead? And for heavens sake, what was that smell?? And it wasn’t until much later in my adulthood (where I accidentally dipped a carrot stick into what I thought was garlic dip at the time) that I found that blue cheese was one of those rare creations who’s smell was not synonymous with the way it tasted. Blue cheese is extraordinary! My taste-buts fell in love with how oddly deceptive this cheese can be – kinda stinky but seriously delicious. Comforting yet zingy. Mild yet ferocious…. Long story short, It’s a cheese with character.
And it so happens that blue cheese is amazing with crackers and veggie sticks, in the form of this dip – I know that taste is not for everyone, but this dip gives those who aren’t fans the courage to taste it and fall in love with it. As my mother used to say, a little bit of this cheese goes a very long way, and that’s the case with this recipe. I’ve combined with labna and mayonnaise to tone down the intensity a notch, and a tad of garlic to spruce it up too. You wont regret this!
Ingredients:
½ cup full cream labna
½ cup crumbled blue cheese
¼ cup milk
¼ cup light mayonnaise
1 clove garlic, minced
Sprinkle of dried basil
Salt & pepper to taste
Juice of half a lemon (optional)
Method
Combine all ingredients into a large bowl, and mash with fork until fully incorporated.
Serve in a bowl alongside a veggie / cracker platter, and store in an airtight container in the fridge. It lives for a while!
Note: Its okay to have small chunks of blue cheese in the dip. For a smoother consistency, you can use a blender to bring everything together.