Perfect salad with cider

recipe 20th sept

published 20 September 2007

Cider is not only in season, it's in fashion. Gaymers now has four Orchard Reserve ciders, including Stonesbrook from Dabinett, and Harry Masters Jersey apples, a dry, sparkling cider. There's Newton's Vale, medium and made of four English cider apples, and Stewley, again medium and good with roasts and casseroles or Cheddar cheese. Cider is exceptionally good with autumn foods. Why not try the salad of apples and plums with young leaves, Exmoor blue cheese and walnut dressing devised by Michelin-starred Richard Guest, chef at the Castle Hotel, Taunton, Somerset?

2 Edward plums or 3 Victoria plums

1 Pixford, Scrumptious or Cox's Pippin apple

10 walnuts, blanched and lightly toasted

2tbs walnut oil

Exmoor blue cheese

Handful washed young salad leaves

Sherry vinegar, sea salt, black pepper

Optional watercress

Cut plums and apples into thin wedges, sprinkle them with crumbled walnuts, walnut oil, vinegar and seasoning. Toss them and arrange them on plates. Crumble Exmoor cheese over dish and add a few sprigs of watercress.

Visit the Choose British website.

Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by HRH The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.