As many vegetarians no doubt are aware, Portobello mushrooms are delicious grilled.
Of all the plant-based options I know of, there is not a single one that can hold its own against meats at a barbecue like the Portobello.
It has a succulent chewy texture, a wild-woodsy flavor, and–unlike any meat–it keeps delivering juicy pleasure with every bite. It also feels like it’s actually good for you, like it’s providing nature’s medicinal goodness, which in fact it is. Mushrooms are a good source of potassium, niacin, riboflavin and selenium, for starters. They have anti-estrogenic qualities, which helps prevent breast and prostate cancer. So compared with the slabs of red meat on the grill that get the paleo-people drooling, a Portobello mushroom steak is a life-saver (in more ways than one).
I just finished developing a set of recipes for a “Vegetarian Southwest Barbecue” article that will appear in a 2012 issue of Delicious Living Magazine, and I think the “Grilled Portobello Salad with Cashew-Poblano Crema” is my favorite of them all. It began as a simple grilled mushroom with a cashew-based creamy sauce blended with roasted poblano pepper, which was awfully good when I made it the first time. But on the advice of my editor, I later converted it to a warm salad, which was a good call. (As an aside, I have to say that at least half of good writing is trusting one’s editor.)
In the final version, I increased the amount of roasted poblano chiles in the “crema” to give it a more robust flavor, and mixed some of it with lime juice to make the salad dressing. The rest I piped across the mushrooms as a topping. The greens will be baby arugula in the article, but I didn’t have any on hand, so I used some of our home-grown baby red Swiss chard for the test. Home run, if you ask me–or ask my wife; she loved it too.
You want the recipe? Keep an eye out for the July 2012 issue of Delicious Living–free at your local natural foods store!
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