This is my entry for the monthly Waiter There’s Something in My… event. This month it is hosted by Andrew at Spittoon Extra and the theme is salad. He’s called for the salad to be seasonal if possible and for me in England that means a winter salad.

I eat a lot of salad at any time of year and I don’t generally follow too much of a recipe. The joy of a salad, as with a soup, is that I can use whatever is to hand. I recently made a fabulous salad with roast beetroot (following the Sophie Grigson method), clementine (small, sweet citrus fruit similar to mandarins), roast red pepper, pine nuts, lettuce, shallots and salad cress in a lemon and olive oil dressing. I have also been eating bufalo mozzarella with avocado, sweet green tomato, basil and a drizzle of olive oil on crisp bread, for lunch.

This week I bought some delectably creamy and sharp Devon Blue cheese from the deli and I wanted to base a salad around that. My mind leapt immediately to the ripe pears we had at home. My favourite variety is the conference pear, because it has the best flavour and it seems to stay in an optimal state - ripe but firm - for days, while other varieties seem to move from crunchy to slushy or brown too quickly.

What else would go with the blue cheese and the pears? Walnuts, of course, and the nice green lettuce with the wavy leaves in the fridge at home. Then, at the last minute, the addition of the roast parsnip and celeriac chips leftover from last night’s dinner. (I had  parboiled handcut wedges of parsnip and celeriac and then roasted them with vegetable oil, salt and pepper). The salad was lightly coated with dressing of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Balsamic vinegar is an attention seeker and should be used in moderation. Most people, restaurants included, use too much of it and end up overpowering the other ingredients. You need just a hint of it to add to the bouquet of flavours - I mixed equal parts of olive oil and balsamic vinegar in a jar and then used just two teaspoons of the mix for the salad. You need enough to coat the leaves, but if you end up with liquid at the bottom of the bowl, then you’ve used too much.

The salad was a wonderful mix of flavours and texture. The star ingredients were the blue cheese and the sweet, firm pear, which made a glorious combination. The walnuts, which I crumbled with my hands, were creamy and sweet, and the substance of the root vegetables was a nice counterpoint to the light, crunchy leaves.

The lettuce, parsnip and celeriac were organic from my weekly vegetable box. The pears were British grown from Waitrose, though not organic. The blue cheese is from Devon and bought from a small shop in my local area. The only imported ingredients were the olive oil and balsamic vinegar, both from Italy, though the olive oil was organic, and the walnuts, organically grown in India.

For more winter salad inspiration, I like the look of this beet salad on Sugar Plum.