a salad a week: warm mushroom
One of my favorite ways to make and eat a salad is to mix warm and cold ingredients.
This one is simple enough: slice up some mushrooms (I used crimini mushrooms, which is basically a fancy name for “mini portobellos”), saute them with butter or extra virgin olive oil, some balsamic vinegar, and a wee bit of salt and crushed black pepper to taste.
Feeling mischievous? Consider adding a splash of red wine, which I did here. I honestly don’t know if mushrooms are supposed to be sauteed in red wine, but I have this twisted theory that you can cook virtually anything in wine and there happened to be a half-finished bottle of it conveniently left over from the previous night’s dinner on hand… so I did it anyway.
It tasted divine, if you’re wondering.
Where’s the dressing? After the mushrooms are sauteed in balsamic vinegar and oil or butter, they’re so flavorful that I don’t even feel like this salad needs dressing. However, if you feel differently, I suggest a simple, light EVOO + balsamic vinegar dressing.
I piled the browned mushrooms on a bed of lettuce and added feta cheese for a nice pop of flavor. I’ll bet freshly shredded parmesan, diced red onions, and/or diced tomatoes would go well with this salad, too.
Advice from Julie & Julia: Because yeah, I take culinary advice from Hollywood. In the film, an excerpt from one of Ms. Child’s letters reads something like this:
“[In Meryl Streep’s best Julia Child imitation] Don’t crowd the mushrooms; otherwise they won’t brown!”
Now you know. Be mindful of the mushrooms—they need their space.
Haven’t we all used that line at least once in our lives?
