The best blue cheese recipes to cheer you up on Blue Monday

While there’s a certain appeal to wallowing in unhappiness with your significant other, complaining about the things you both hate while dreaming up plans of starting new careers, giving it all up to go travelling or just refusing to get out of bed, it’s even more fun to share something tasty. Blue cheese tarts are pretty simple to make and allow you to combine the salty, creamy, tangy flavour with all sorts of fruits and vegetables. Adam Gray opts for earthy beetroot and sweet figs, while Adam Byatt includes pear – the perfect bedfellow for blue cheese – and wedges of butternut squash.

Seeing as blue cheese has been around for thousands of years, it’s no surprise that it’s a key element in some seriously iconic dishes. The Waldorf salad, originally created in the late 1800s at New York’s Waldorf Hotel, simply combines apple, celery, grape and walnut in a mayonnaise sauce, but many versions these days also come with crumbled blue cheese. Graham Campbell takes things a step further by dehydrating his grapes, caramelising his walnuts, pickling his celery and creating a smooth blue cheese cream. If that sounds a little bit much for your currently fragile state of mind to handle, then Sally Abé’s Broccoli and Stilton soup is quick, simple and delicious.

One of the best cures for the January blues is comfort food, and it doesn’t get much more comforting than burger and chips. Matthew Tomkinson ups the ante by whisking up a quick Stilton rarebit, which after a quick blast under the grill until bubbling, turns a run-of-the-mill burger into something found in only the finest of gastropubs. Pub grub not your thing? Not to worry – Theo Randall takes beautiful guinea fowl and serves it Italian-style, stuffed with Gorgonzola on a bed of cavolo nero and chestnuts.