Liang Ban - Mushroom Salad w/ Chiles

Alicia and I have been trying out some new recipes this month. This one we got from Saveur. It’s under 10 ingredients and most of the stuff we already had in our cabinets. Pretty easy too. 

A few things to know before making:

1. For those who don’t like super spicy food (like myself), I’d highly suggest cutting the chiles down to half that amount. This recipe is a respectable 5 star. It’ll melt your face off. I enjoyed it, Alicia had to stop a few times in-between bites. 
2. We did half shiitake mushroom and substituted the other half with a large portobello. Sorry, not going to blow $15 on mushrooms for something I’m making after work to feed myself. At that point you could have just bought dinner. We try as much as we can to ball on a budget here. 
3. You might consider buying a coffee grinder (specifically for spice grinding) to grind the chiles. I tried using our food processor. Didn’t fully do the trick, so i pulled out the bigger chunks and hand cut them. That was a bitch.
4. To make it a filling dinner, we put it on a bed of rice. Also got a small flank steak (because meat is the icing on a donut). Start the rice before you do anything else, and if you do steak leave it on the counter while you prep so it’ll be at room temp by the time you cook it. 

I know this sounds like a lot. But if you cook more often then not, most of this will become habit. The tools and spices you’ll have from previous cooking.