It’s hard to get excited about a vegetable made of 96 per cent water. Who on Earth could have strong views on the cucumber? Placid, imperturbable. The Keir Starmer of the vegetable world: sensible enough, but not exactly the life of the party. A bit, well, wet.
Yet the humble cucumber has its day. Flakes of Maldon salt and cracks of fresh black pepper will turn it into a fine thing. Thin slices dressed thus on well-buttered, crust-less triangulars of white bread make it something of an English icon.
Cucumbers require almost no preparation. When buying them, ensure they are firm, not squishy, and as straight as you can find to aid your chopping. They don’t require peeling – the slightly chewy dark green skin is a welcome contrasting texture to the juicy white interior. You can, however, peel alternate strips lengthways for an attractive chequerboard look; or, for another handsome finish, score the skin lengthways with the prongs of a fork before slicing.
We eat cucumbers all year round, but in summertime they are seen in a new light: proud and self-assured; a vegetable deserving of its place on the plate, no longer the mere salad filler of darker months. Cut into inch-thick slices and simply cured in some salt, sugar, vinegar and dill, it makes a handsome accompaniment to poached salmon. Chopped small or grated and combined with Greek yoghurt, garlic, mint and lemon juice, it transforms into a cooling tzatziki for a barbecue. Add some coriander, grated ginger and a little garam masala and you have an Indian raita, as Mark Sargeant shows.
Cucumbers are the most hydrating of vegetables. As Jane Grigson noted in her unsurpassable Vegetable Book, the cucumbers of Ur-Nammu, the Mesopotamian king, refreshed him so well that he built a temple to the gods to save the garden in which they grew from destruction. And the Children of Israel, two years in the desert, sighed with longing for the cucumbers of Egypt. The vegetable’s hydrating, cooling qualities are exploited to the full in a cold soup such as Russian okroschka or Spanish gazpacho. You can create a Turkish soup by making cacik, a cucumber and yoghurt dip, and loosening it with more thin yoghurt. Or try the Sybil Kapoor recipe for cucumber soup flavoured with dill.
Don’t be fooled into thinking they are all the same. English (or hothouse) cucumbers are those we all know and are usually about a foot long, but you will find the smaller, sweeter Persian cucumbers at an ethnic store. This variety has almost no seeds, making for a crunchier cucumber; quartered lengthways, it becomes a superior crudité. Brine to make home-made gherkins to accompany cold meat, or roll slender, translucent slices around feta spiked with red chilli for an easy starter or canapé, as shown here.
Cucumbers feel at home in Japanese cuisine. It was the Japanese, after all, who first cultivated the minor miracle that is the Burpless cucumber – the horticultural innovation that allowed us to eat a previously indigestible food somewhat less encumbered. The subtle flavours in sushi and poké allow the cucumber to shine, while the veg loves nothing more than a bath of rice vinegar, sugar, soy and sesame to make a light pickle, as in this recipe for sunomono. The Lebanese, too, know how to cook with cucumbers, using them as much for their texture as their flavour in fattoush. To pair with a curry, make a ‘kachumber’ salad – a messy jumble of cucumber, tomato and onion (the name refers to giving someone a good beating up) – or try this smashed cucumber salad with lemon and celery salt. (In both cases, bashing up the cucumbers increases the veg’s ability to absorb the flavouring.)
But if cooking in the stifling summer heat is beyond you, use your cucumbers in a cocktail such as a margarita, with Pimm’s or in a G&T – nothing shows off the cucumber’s delicate perfumed flavour better than Hendrick’s. Alternatively, simply slice your cucumber into perfect rounds, lie on your back, pop them on your eyes and remember a time when putting on a face mask was something to look forward to.
August 20, 2020 at 12:34AM
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Kitchen-garden diary: in praise of the cucumber - Yahoo Lifestyle UK
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