Lunch: Tip on Cooking Mushrooms, Recipe: Salad dressing

[pbj_sushi]

Lunchies:


That's a bean burger buried in baby spinach, sauteed mushrooms & onions, surrounded by stewed tomatoes. In case you can't tell. :) It looks a mess, but damn that was delicious.

I also had a salad, which I then realized I had made the dressing for. SO. MORE RECIPES because apparently I'm bored.

BUT FIRST, the tip on cooking mushrooms properly, straight from Dave's chef dad (who got it from Jacques Pepin):

How to Saute some Rockin' Mushrooms:



NOTE: NEVER rinse mushrooms in water to clean them. You're supposed to brush them off. I learned this like two weeks ago, LOL (after dumping them in a colander and washing them). Why? Because mushrooms are essentially little sponges, and when you cook them, they absorb the moisture from what you're cooking them in -- which is what you want them to do. If you rinse them in water, they turn into slimeballs and don't absorb that moisture: instead they send all that water back into the dish, which is typically NOT what you want them to do.

1. Heat a frying pan on HIGH heat. Super hot!! 
2. Put in a bunch of olive oil (maybe 1/4 cup for a cup of mushrooms). Get that nice and hot.
3. Place mushrooms in HOT pan and stir around. Let them cook for a short time - like 3-4 minutes.
4. Stab one and see if its tender (not mushy, TENDER). If it is, take it off and let it rest in the pan a few minutes. If not, give it another minute or two. The timing really depends on how chopped (or not) your mushrooms are.
5. ENJOY!!!

The trick is really to stick in a REALLY hot pan and cook it for a short amount of time -- get the smoky flavor in there and bring them to their properly meaty state. I thought I'd share.

Red Wine Vinaigrette

This is kind of a fancier version of my host mom in Spain's salad dressing. Hers was: splash of olive oil, splash of red wine vinegar, sea salt. That was delicious, but this is more fun. Recently, Dave's dad took a series of cooking seminars at Lake of Isles, the nice golf course near Foxwoods. He brought back a ton of recipes and new ideas, and the first class was "Salad dressings and emulsions". This recipe is a change-up on their balsamic vinegar dressing recipe, mostly because I really don't like balsamic vinegar...9 times out of 10...

• 1/2 cup red wine vinegar (or balsamic vinegar) 
• 1 1/2 cups olive oil
• 2 TBSP Dijon mustard
• 1 clove chopped garlic
• 1/2 TSP dried oregano
• 1/2 TBSP sugar
• Kosher salt and black pepper to taste

1. Whisk together vinegar, mustard, garlic, oregano and sugar in a mixing bowl. 
2. Once well mixed, whisk in the olive oil SLOWLY. (Drizzle it in - you're making an emulsion.)
3. Season with salt & pepper to taste.

This stuff tastes awesome. You can dip fresh veggies in it and stuff. However, this recipe makes a TON OF DRESSING. Feel free to cut down the amount by halves or something -- that's what I do. It's still plenty of dressing!!

The funny thing is...this recipe is so friggin' easy, every time the family makes a salad I find myself going about the task of making dressing for it. Like that's normal. Like we don't have 9 dressings in the fridge. But the plain fact is...it's so easy and so much better than anything bottled, I don't even THINK of bottled dressings anymore...

He has a recipe for a warm bacon dressing, too. That was awesome!! (Warm dressings are my favorite...) But it's not vegetarian...SO! That will be for another day...

Ooooh! Sunshine! This is random...it's supposed to be total crap in like 3 hours, but for now....SUNSHINE!!