When I'm building up a salad, for each strongly flavoured ingredient, I try to find something mild, cool and refreshing as a contrast. When I first made this blue cheese salad I included apple to balance the punchy piquancy of the Gorgonzola, but found it wasn't enough. So I went for grapes instead and the two worked as well as you could imagine. Mixed leaves work nicely here, especially lamb's lettuce, baby spinach or any of the smaller lettuces. I toyed with the idea of adding a handful of croutons, crisped in a nonstick pan with a little butter, but decided against it. That's the joy of a salad, I suppose. The possibilities really are endless. You can experiment to your heart's content.