This Salad Will Make You Love Mushrooms

I had the most delicious mushroom salad the other day at a cafe. All the flavours work so well together and it's because mushrooms are so meaty, so they take on a lot of flavour. So the key ingredients here are of course the mushrooms, some bread and tomatoes and these get roasted in the oven for an intense flavour. So bread, you want to use sourdough that's a couple of days old. See how dry it is? The drier it is, the crispier it's going to be. So I'm just going to tear the bread into large chunks. We're making kind of like big croutons and this gets all roasted in the oven together because the bread is going to cook at the same time as the tomatoes and our Aussie mushrooms. So we'll just break that up. For the tomatoes, I'm using Roma tomatoes because I want them to be roughly the same size as the cup mushrooms. So we're going to cut them into quarters and you can see that these Roma tomatoes, they're not too juicy, so they'll hold their shape as they roast in the oven. So we'll just place them in and around the bread. Now for the mushrooms, this mushroom is called a cup mushroom. So it's just a little bit bigger than a button mushroom, but smaller than a flat mushroom. I've just given them a bit of a wipe with a brush, but you don't need to peel or wash your mushrooms at all. So these are perfect as is and again they go in and around everything. They will also shrink slightly as they roast in the oven. I really want to showcase how beautiful they are, so it'd be a shame to cut them all up. Okay, a good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil over everything. The bread is like a sponge, but so are the mushrooms. And I've got three cloves of garlic. I'm going to place them onto the tray. I'll use that later on for the dressing. Some dried oregano. And to really bring out the flavour of all these ingredients, a good crack of salt. All right, into the oven about 180 degrees and this is going to cook for about 20 to 25 minutes. Keep an eye on it. We want golden croutons and golden mushrooms. All right, while the mushrooms were cooking, I've just been frying off some pancetta. I just love pancetta with mushrooms and you can see how crispy it's become. Always start your pan cold and then bring up the heat. By doing that, all of this fat will render out of the pancetta, leaving you with crispy little lardons. If you want to substitute the pancetta, of course you could use bacon for this recipe. Just drain the excess fat and have a look at our roasted mushrooms. See how perfectly golden they are and the crispy bread. Everything has cooked perfectly. For a dressing, just a classic Dijon dressing for this. Some mustard along with some balsamic vinegar. We'll just whisk that together. I just want a hint of sweetness, so I'm adding some maple syrup and we're just going to emulsify that. So we just slowly add in that extra virgin olive oil and by doing this slowly, we're going to get a really thick, glossy, gorgeous vinaigrette just like this. Always season it quite generously. Some pepper and some salt. Another thing that I've just very quickly prepped is a French shallot. You could use some Spanish onion for this but I find shallot has a milder, less harsh flavor than the onion. It's quite sweet but to really just lower the pepperiness of it, I like to add some salt and just that simple gesture of salt and rubbing that together, they'll just soften. Now don't forget about these little garlic cloves. See how soft they've become after roasting in the oven. Look at that. Just squeeze that out. It's almost like little lollies. They're that sweet. So I will add them to our dressing. Squeeze that last one out. Fantastic. And just with my whisk, I'm just going to break that up slightly. Alright, time to assemble. Usually with a salad, I would mix everything with the dressing. This type of salad, we're going to do something a little different. I'm just going to layer the flavors. So a bed of baby spinach leaves. You could use mesclun or even rocket would be quite nice with this. Some of the shallots can go on now. And all of these little mushrooms. We want to leave them whole so really show off their beauty. And our quartered tomatoes. Our pancetta lardons. Just pop them in and around. Look at the colors of this. Very happy salad. Dressing next. We want that dressing to touch everything. Everything from the mushrooms to the lardons, the spinach. A final flourish of French shallot over the top. And that right there is a stunning salad that I had at a cafe. It was so good. I've redeveloped it, given it a bit of a jazzy feel to it. It is delicious. I think you're going to love it too.