Insalata Cruda e Cotta (Raw and Cooked)

I'm working on stuff to write about from our honeymoon; lots to compact into meaningful posts, but I'm getting there. In the meantime, this is what we conjured up last night for a quick and cheap weeknight meal.

It's more of a guideline than a recipe, although the name of this salad is not of my own creation. You can go in all kinds of directions with the ingredients and make it like a Nicoise Salad or something more hefty with grains. Ours came to life because we had some grilled london broil left over from my birthday last Saturday, a whole filet of it actually. The thinking was we'd slice it up and eat it room temp in a salad.

We had some cherry tomatoes in the house as well as some crisp baby arugula, and so the idea was for a salad with some sliced steak on the side. But knowing that mushrooms often accompany steak in our families' households, we decided to saute some and mix them in with the raw ingredients. A couple of caramelized onions later and we had a satisfying weeknight meal.

I cooked the onions slowly by themselves, then let them cool while I got another pan smoking hot for the mushrooms. I just used a couple containers of big button mushrooms, with one container of oysters for extra butteriness and some differing texture. I let them sear in just a tiny bit of oil without moving the pan so they'd develop a nice brown color on one side. Keeping the heat up to its max I tossed only a couple of times to cook them as fast as possible until the liquid was gone and they were browning again.

From there they cooled for only 5-10 minutes and got mixed in with the onions. Nicole opted to cook her steak as well, or re-cook it I should say. I sliced it thin like a sushi chef on a hunk of toro and flash seared the pieces just to heat them through and brown them a little.

Nicole built her salad from there while I kept my meat cold. The mushrooms and onions weren't hot enough to welt the peppery arugula or make the tomatoes mushy, just tepid enough to maximize the sweetness of the onion. And the tomatoes lent a nice acidity, so much so that I just went for good olive oil and some salt and pepper to dress it.

Other ideas to add: roasted potatoes, beans, blanched green beans, corn, roasted beets, farro, raw or cooked fennel, chicken thighs, tuna, it goes on and on. I just got another idea for a salad. See?