Marinated Mushroom and tomato salad

Marinated Mushroom and tomato Salad

2/3 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons Mazzetti balsamic vinegar of Modena (4 leaf class)
2 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce
300 grams button mushrooms, quartered
250grams cherry tomatoes, quartered
6 spring onions, very thinly sliced
Salt and ground black pepper to taste

1 Combine oil, balsamic vinegar, sweet chilli sauce in a screw top jar. Shake well. Place mushrooms in large bowl. Pour 2/3 marinade over mushrooms and stir well. Cover and set aside to marinate for 30 minutes.

2. Add cherry tomatoes, spring onions, and remaining marinade to mushroom mixture. Toss gently to combine. Season with salt and pepper and serve. Serves four.


The most unusual salad we have made. Salads are mostly leafy, light and delicate, as a contrast to the main course. This is the opposite: dark, heavy, intense….meaning smaller helpings, and an interesting decision about what to serve with it. Generally there will be another more conventional salad unless the main is very light. Very simple to make. One of the few salads which are still good the next day as leftovers.

The original of this recipe as we found it ( years ago..where?) specified red wine vinegar, but we liked it much more with the intense taste of the balsamic vinegar. The original also added one bunch of chopped rocket leaves, and 1/3 cup chopped parsley. We now leave these out as they obscure the simple shapes of the small tomatoes and mushrooms and don’t do much for the taste.

The Mazzetti Balsamic vinegar of Modena (250ml) is from Woolworths and is an absolute bargain at $5.85. Make sure you get the one with four vine leaves (ie four stars) on the top left hand corner of the label. Choice magazine did some taste tests a year or two ago on balsamic vinegars and Mazetti four leaf was better than others five times the price!

The mushrooms must be small button mushrooms, so they are similar in size to the cherry tomatoes, making the salad attractive in regard to the uniform shape and size of its ingredients.

this awesome recipe is from a very generous colleague at work..thank you Martin!!!! (he's right about the vinegar by the way!! it's incredible!)