Can I Use An Alternative To HP Sauce For The Blue Cheese Dressing?

Our answer

Nigella's Universally Useful Blue Cheese Dressing (from KITCHEN) is a piquant mixture of blue cheese and buttermilk that can be used as a dip, salad dressing, topping for baked potatoes or to go with leftover cold roasted meats.

The dressing includes a dash of HP brown sauce or A1 Steak Sauce. These sauces have a base of dried fruits and tomato, which gives a slightly chutney-like quality that goes well with blue cheese. If you don't have any to hand you can certainly omit the sauce from the dressing. The ingredients also include a teaspoonful of apple cider vinegar, as the acid in the vinegar helps to cut through the richness of the blue cheese, and we would prefer not omit this, particularly if there is no brown sauce in the dressing. However, if you don't have apple cider vinegar then you could use a good white wine vinegar or even fresh lemon juice. If you are not sure about the extra acid then you could add half a teaspoon first and then taste the dressing and add more to suit your own palate.