A Fresh, Fast Mushroom Salad

No heat required

I trust that your holiday weekend is well underway and I apologize that I’m sending along this final recipe of 2023 later than expected. It’s crunch time writing my book, and then there’s been all the usual (delightful) interruptions that happen with the holidays.

Whipping a salad up for dinner earlier this week, I eyed a tub of button mushrooms in the fridge and remembered how much I used to enjoy putting sliced, raw button mushrooms on my salads growing up — like at the salad bar at Pizza Hut. I loved their clean, bright flavor and all the body they’d add.

Yet I hadn’t put a fresh mushroom in a salad in ages. It just seemed that it was either out of style or never in style in the first place. Regardless, I added them to my simple green salad that night, and so liked what the mushrooms did that I did it again every subsequent through the week.

It ultimately inspired today’s salad, which I’ve learned is a spin on a fairly classic one in Italy and France, featuring thinly sliced fresh mushrooms, shavings of a sharp dry cheese, plenty of perky fresh parsley, and a light vinaigrette. It’s so quick and foolproof, but I find it to be satisfying in an unfamiliar and unexpected way. The texture of the raw mushrooms are just as central to the salad as their flavor, and its rare to have them so prominent.

I enjoyed a big bowl of this for lunch today (mushrooms are a pretty good source of protein, you know!), but it’d be a perfect foil to something rich at dinner, as a topping for hummus or another bean purée, or to contribute to a big meal of salads and beautifully prepared vegetables (my favorite kind of meal).

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, and have some fun cooking projects in the pipeline! I’m taking next week off, but am already eager to share what we’ll be cooking up in the new year. —Lukas

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Fresh Mixed Mushroom Salad