Recipe: Warm Mushroom Salad

This dish can be made very simply with just the mushrooms and served with toast for breakfast. You can even serve it with ham and eggs, to make it a hearty start to the day.

The way I made it this time, I added nuts and cold meat to get more protein in the dish and it was a one dish meal for lunch.

The trick is to start with really fresh ingredients.

 Ingredients:
 200gms of oyster mushrooms (or any frilly variety)
a few cloves of galric (to taste)
1/2 tsp salted butter (mushrooms taste better with butter, but you can substitute it with olive oil)
dash of olive oil
salt to taste
freshly ground pepper to taste

Optional Ingredients:
A few nuts - I like pine nuts in my salads
50 gms cold meat / boiled chicken / boiled eggs
sprig of parsley
Few curls of Parmigiano Reggiano
dash of balsamic vinegar or fruit/malt vinegar
salad leaves to serve on - as a bed
Any herbs of your choice - rosemary, parsley, oregano


Preparation:
Wash the salad leaves if using and dry them in a salad spinner

This picture is purely to illustrate to my husband that I AM using the salad spinner I recently bought :)
Wipe the mushrooms if they need to be cleaned and roughly tear them up into bite sized pieces
Chop the garlic fine
Chop the cold meat into slices of medium breadth or the boiled meat / eggs into bite sized pieces.

Method:
Heat the pan.
If using nuts, dry roast them and keep aside.
Melt the butter in the hot pan and immediately add a splash of olive oil to prevent the milk solids in the butter from burning.
Crisp the herbs (if using) in this butter and keep aside.

Fry the garlic in the same butter.
When it loses its raw smell, add the mushrooms.
Saute very gently as the mushrooms will tend to disintegrate.
Add salt and freshly crushed pepper to taste.

Note:
Remember salted butter and cold meat have salts of their own, so adjust salt accordingly.

If you are serving this as a side, you can plate this as soon as the mushrooms are cooked.

If you want a more wholesome salad:
Keep the mushrooms aside.
Gently saute the cold meat/boiled chicken in the same pan.
When lightly warmed, gently mix in the mushrooms and the herbs and the nuts.
Serve on a bed of salad leaves.
Garnish with Parmigiano Regiano.
Splash on a little balsamic vinegar if you like a tarter taste.

Tip:
This is a relatively easy dish to serve to kids too.
Get them to make roll ups with the tossed salad into the salad leaves.