cheese curd salad with pepper jelly vinaigrette

a chez mary b original

this is my latest salad innovation. a restaurant in our neighborhood, the howe, serves cheese curds with pepper jelly, and it is by far the best dip for cheese curds. the sweetness and savoriness perfectly balances out the greesy curds. i had the idea to turn pepper jelly into a vinaigrette, and top a salad with curds. i used this ratio: 2.5 T pepper jelly + 2 T white wine vinegar + 2 T olive oil + 1 small clove of garlic, crushed. For the salad I used little gem lettuce and some other leftover lettuce, red peppers, carrots, red onion, cucumber, celery and green onion. The cheese curds are the frozen ones from Trader Joe’s, and they are so, so good. This was a very tasty dish, the healthiest version of cheese curds I’ve ever seen.