Bacon dressing is an age-old invention. I used to make this dish when I was twenty-odd: red beans from a tin, chopped lettuce, sunflower seeds and bacon diced and fried up to render fat. Adding vinegar or lemon, salt and pepper to the fat would create great dressing. Tipped into the salad – pretty damn good.
My friends and I would get together, have lots of bread with this salad, drink even more copious amounts of beer and think proudly we were adults – actually having FOOD at our parties, not just booze, booze, and some more booze. Those were the days.
I thought that this recipe (if you can give such a lofty moniker to such a simple dish) vaguely related to my salad days. It’s super good; you just have to get really fatty streaky bacon, otherwise no dressing to speak of. And the method is a bit like starting off to make a sauce, what with the flour and all, and then at the last second changing your mind and making a dressing.
To be honest, anything with blue cheese crumbled onto it has to be good, that’s the inherent quality of the stuff. Use Stilton or any blue cheese that can be crumbled – possibly not Gorgonzola or anything too soft.