The intent all along was to develop a garnished green salad recipe featuring mushrooms as a primary ingredient. The hope was that by the end of the week I would have experimented with a number of mushroom pairings to have an adequate salad combination that would be worth consuming at least once a week.
It was working through Thursday afternoon and then it became “OBE” – overcome by events. However, all was not lost. I did mange to recover the thread by Saturday afternoon and turned in a passable combination that I can enjoy when the mood strikes. Nobody is going to be saying “YUM – that’s the best darn salad I’ve eaten!” but its tasty combination for me.
The Better Stuff
Thursday was about dropping the raw onion and leaving the bell pepper in bigger chunks so I could find them. Also the marjoram had to go – just didn’t add anything to raw veggies. The larger slices of the bell pepper really helped – they didn’t become lost in the salad. Ditching the onion eliminated the bitterness and I never missed the marjoram.
By Friday, however, I couldn’t stare another salad in the face. As fate had it I worked from home that day and opted for a black bean and corn quesadilla – which also got the remainder of the mushrooms. Very tasty!
Saturday I returned to the salad and mixed up a concoction with no mushrooms or bell peppers but with scallions, tomatoes, avocado, carrots, croutons, some fresh squeezed lime juice, Romain and balsamic dressing. Oh and some Parmesan cheese on the top. Don’t think most of that will be in a pairing book any time soon.
In the Rearview
The mission behind the madness was to do some experimentation with building a recipe and salads provided a nice free association vehicle. What I really learned, partly by doing and partly by observation and reflection is that I already do a fair amount of recipe development every time I cook. I substitute ingredients when I don’t have exactly what’s called for, I remove things I don’t care for and add things that I do. And despite the tools at my disposal for finding pairings of things that go well together, I’ll trust my intuition more to some degree – after all it’s telling me what I like.
