Shishito & Oyster Mushroom Spoon Salad

plus a SUMMER PLAYLIST of good cooking music!

Oyster Mushroom, Shishito and Sesame Salad

There’s a theme. I would like to name this category “spoon salads.”  I define the spoon salad as a salad I can spoon over something else but can easily be doubled to be a stand alone dish. (Like the cherry tomato salad of last month.) This salad is particularly delicious over seared fish, grilled steak, or a half roasted eggplant. I served mine over slow cooked salmon. AND yet this small salad could be doubled in size and be a dish in itself (or a current favorite: a way to dress cold ramen/soba noodles.) You get my point, they’re versatile.

I originally had the oyster mushroom shishito combo at Good Good Culture Club in San Francisco. They choose to grill them and the sauce was more soy based.  I rarely want to start up a grill for something this small. Not that the idea doesn’t sound nice. But I need to grill A LOT to make it worth it.  So I decided to recreate this using stove top cookery. And not to toot my own horn, but I think the mushrooms have the possibility of getting extra crispy in a sauté pan than a grill. (We aren’t all highly trained yakitori cooks.)

I love the toasted nuttiness of sesame seeds, the tang from the preserved lemon and the depth from the fish sauce. It’s easy to come together and impressive in nature. The key is to really get the oyster mushrooms extra crispy meaning nicely browned to really bring out their flavor.

RECIPE:

4 oz oyster mushrooms

2 TAB olive oil

1 cup or 2 oz shishito peppers

1 clove garlic thinly sliced (goodfellas thin)

2 spring onions thinly sliced

1 tsp chopped preserved lemon (add 1 large lemon zested and a pinch more salt if you don’t have it)

1 ½ tsp toasted sesame seeds

1 juice of lemon

2 tsp honey

½ tsp fish sauce

1 TAB mint

1 TAB parsley

Kosher salt to season as you go

Break up oyster mushrooms gently, by tear them into large pieces, like you would plucking petals off a flower. Slice shishito peppers into rings (seeds are fine with me- but up to you).  I like to use a tomato/serrated small knife and draw back against the shishitos.

Heat up a large sauté pan. Add 2 TAB olive oil, heat over medium high heat. Add mushrooms in a dense one layer, (if it’s two layers, use two pans or do it twice.) Don’t move them for the first minute, to help ensure beautiful golden brown color. Then start to stir periodically over 5 minutes, decreasing or increasing your heat to ensure browning of the mushrooms. Once they are almost there, add salt to taste. Add thinly sliced garlic clove and shishitos and move everything around. The garlic and shishitos will take about a minute to cook. Once the garlic is starting to turn opaque moving towards golden remove all the contents of the pan into a small bowl.

In a separate small bowl, I’ll make the dressing. Combine the preserved lemon, honey, fish sauce and stir with a fork or mini whisk to break up the honey. Drizzle vinaigrette over the mushrooms and shishitos. As well as the herbs, green onion and sesame seed and lightly toss. Taste for salt and adjust. FIN.

Oh you made it to the end of the recipe! I wanted to include a sweet but short summer playlist I made. I love listening to music, especially records, while cooking at home and the summer isn’t OVER YET. I think this is the perfect length for this recipe (plus maybe roasting a salmon) and includes my summer favorites. (no need to shuffle - just hit play!) I hope y’all enjoy it!