Cucumber.
The cool, crunchy summer salad vegetable with so much more potential than supermarkets would have us believe. Plus, my favourite Smashed Cucumber Salad.
Welcome to ingredient, where once a month I take a deep dive into some of my favourite seasonal and store cupboard ingredients. This month I’m focusing on cucumber: the crisp, juicy, green salad vegetable where supermarket buying culture means we’ve barely even scratched the surface of discovering the potential within.
And, at the bottom of this post you’ll find my go-to Smashed Cucumber Salad, plus a handy little recipe / method for pickling sushi ginger yourself at home.
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Before I forget (because I do keep forgetting to tell you this!) a little bit of housekeeping: last month Substack turned on publication referrals which I thought seemed like a fun way of rewarding those of you who are kind and generous enough to tell your friends about ingredient. As of, well, whenever I turned it on last month if you visit the ‘Leaderboard’ tab at the top of the page you’ll find a unique link as well as social sharing buttons for when you want to tell a friend about this publication. Not only is there a fun leaderboard showing who has referred the most readers this way (#kudos) but if you refer 3 friends you’ll automatically unlock a months free paid subscription, 5 referrals will get you 3 months, and 25 will get you a whole 6 months! I love that even though this is an entirely reader supported publication (I did experiment with affiliate links but I was just not feeling it), I can reward those of you who help it grow!
Whilst supermarket cucumbers are tasty all year round, there is nothing like biting into a peeled baton of the first cucumber from my parents greenhouse every summer. It needs no adornment; if you’ve ever eaten a home grown cucumber, you’ll realise that in the before times, you had no idea what a cucumber really tasted like.
Sweet, juicy, refreshing, and with a more nuanced, satisfying crunch than the supermarket version the perfect cucumber grown with care does not really need anything doing to it, but as I hope I’ve also proven of local cherries this week in my Macknade food hall residency recipe for Cherry & Chocolate Eton Mess just because something is perfect by itself, it does not mean it can’t be elevated with the careful application of a few other rather good things to eat.
Cucumber is most often considered a salad vegetable (though there is a cucumber curry recipe in the Hoppers restaurant cookbook I can 11/10 recommend - and yes, I also do know like a tomato, a cucumber is actually a fruit, but we treat it like a vegetable so I’m going to continue thinking of it as such thank you very much) and I’m not here to tell you that this consideration is wrong. A cucumber salad is my favourite expression of the humble cucumber, in whatever form that takes, but obviously, I won’t say no to the cooling, refreshing tone slices add muddled into a cocktail, or forming the heatwave-beating base of a good chilled soup.
The big difference between home grown cumbers - which vary in size from the long batons we’re used to grabbing with a shrink wrap coating and which our American cousins call an ‘English cucumber’ - is the sheer variety. Supermarkets would have us think you can just grow one (okay, or two, the mini Persian ones are starting to appear in some of the more upmarket chains), when in fact their variety is frankly overwhelming to the uninitiated.
This excellent Instagram post from online (as well as offline in their London stores) grocers Natoora perfectly illustrates why we ignore so much of the cucumbers potential. With each different variety we’ve never tried comes a different texture, different flavour; hell, I can even tell since moving house my father has switched the variety he grows because now not only are they much smaller, but they have a sweeter, more concentrated flavour without the hint of (sometimes not unpleasant) bitterness that used to pervade the cucumbers that were left on the plant too long.
I know this ties in with how depressed I’ve been feeling recently every time I step into a supermarket or do an online food order (too much sup-par produce on offer and too much meat already arriving past it’s best compared to all of the great independents and online suppliers I also shop at) but it makes me really sad to think people who don’t have the luxury to shop around - be it financial, locational or simply through being time poor - are being dictated to a very narrow view of what a cucumber is.
I love practically any cucumber so I do buy them all year round, but at the moment I can’t face any but the ones from my parents greenhouse. There is that much of a difference.
I know I bang on about walled garden kitchen Water Lane a fair bit when I’m talking about all things delicious and seasonal, but it was the cucumbers I remember the most from my first visit and the dish I’ve cemented in my mind as a must order every summer it has appeared since: just look at this simple plate of cucumbers. At the time in my review I enthused:
Lemon crystal variety, the round fruits were doused in a soft, herby chervil cream before being accented with tiny bursts of East Sussex shrimp sweetness. You had sweetness, freshness, creaminess and a wonderful medley of textures – and that is just from the cucumbers – honestly, this is one of the simplest, cleverest, most exciting dishes I’ve had in ages.
It was simple, smart, yet magical. And I don’t think - okay, scrap that, I know - you could not have achieved that with a supermarket cucumber
Whilst we will get onto other July-appropriate uses for the humble cucumber later in the month (though if you’re looking for ideas now can I point you towards my recipes for Cucumber and Elderflower Gimlets, Cold Cucumber Soup with Greek Yogurt, Cucumber and Mint Lemonade, Cucumber Jalapeño Margaritas, as well as a genius method for Cucumber Kimchee) because it is my all time favourite thing to make with a cucumber, I’m going to finish up here by talking about cucumber salad.
I’m pretty sure that every single food culture that grows cucumbers has their own take on a cucumber salad, though through the years I’ve usually leaned East with Korean Cucumber Salads (inspired by the aforementioned kimchee), Spicy Chinese Cucumber Salads, and last year I even whipped up a Cucumber Raita Salad Plate (which is simply just the flavours of a cucumber raita re-assembled into a salad, which I adore, but which did get mocked by my school friends and their partners when I served it alongside a medley of curries on Bonfire Night, and I still have no idea why?)
Often when we’re having anything of an Asian persuasion and I have a cucumber on hand for another quick side dish for the table I’ll peel it and toss it with White Masu’s Black Bean Rayu (so much better and more complex than the chilli crisp everyone else is obsessed with) helped along with just a splash of rice wine vinegar for added brightness.
I do know why I often lean this way when it comes to cucumber salads, and it is because of my favourite cucumber salad which I fell for so hard made in abundant summers with my parents cucumbers I now make it without a recipe; I had to write down what I was doing to share it below below as I’ve not used measurements for years.
It started life - for me at least - in Diana Henry’s excellent book (though, which of Diana Henry’s cookbooks are not excellent?) A Change Of Appetite accompanying a Japanese Ginger and Garlic Chicken recipe made with togarashi (Japanese 7 spice) which is excellent barbecued on pg 63 which in turn she cites as being inspired by a recipe in Japanese Farm Food by Nancy Singleton Hachisu. Yes, it was just another smashed cucumber salad (which I make without the raw garlic smashed into it for everyday eating) but the magic comes from the ribbons of pickled sushi ginger shredded and folded through, a frankly genius addition made all that better by the fact Nigella Lawson’s Simply Nigella had long since taught me how to make the ginger from scratch.
My version below is just a simple expression of what in my mind makes this refreshing, punchy yet still delicate salad great: seasonal cucumbers (the very best you can find and afford, and all that), addictive homemade pickled ginger, and good salt.
It is also excellent alongside grilled mackerel, by the way.
Brainstorming my cookbook collection earlier this week on the subject of all things cucumber I also discovered that dedicated tourist of Japan Nigel Slater in the dog days of July in the year of writing his second Kitchen Diaries volume already knew of this magical combination, bringing it to life in a Tuna, Pickled Ginger and Cucumber Salad (pg 295):
Pickled Ginger, the sort you get in your pack of sushi but juicier, is one of my favourite ingredients. It is not a particularly easy ingredient to introduce into recipes, but it does lend itself quite easily to inclusion in a salad. Anyone who eats sushi regularly will know how good it is with cucumber, a hit of hot and cold in one pinch of the chopsticks. Add a few other sushi-friendly ingredients - carrots, lime and tuna - and you have a neat little salad. Startling but also strangely familiar.
Smashed Cucumber with Pickled Ginger
Serves: 1-2, Preparation time: 20 minutes, plus overnight pickling time, Cooking time: 5 minutes
I’ve reproduced my method for making Nigella’s pickled ginger here so you might have your own jar. Yes my main recommendation is to serve it in this salad, or else on the side of ordered in sushi in place of the often slightly artificial tasting side sachet, but I’d be remiss in not telling you how excellent it also is piled onto avocado toast with sliced radishes, black sesame seeds and a squeeze of fresh lime.
My ginger is slightly pink at the moment as I was chopping beetroot at the same time so I dropped a little piece into the jar. This does nothing for the flavour so don’t go cutting into a beet just for the effect, but it is rather pretty none the less.
For the Pickled Ginger
large piece of fresh ginger
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
2 tbsp water
Japanese rice wine vinegar1
25g white sugar
For the Smashed Cucumber Salad
200g peeled cucumber
1/4 tsp flaky sea salt
15g sushi ginger
To make the pickled ginger: Using a vegetable peeler, peel the ginger then create ginger ribbons, enough to fill a small jam jar; not the ones in hotels you get with jam in, but not quite a supermarket sized one either. Toss the ginger ribbons with the salt, and set aside.
Combine the water, 2 tbsp of vinegar, and the sugar in a small saucepan over a medium heat. Warm until the sugar has dissolved.
Squeeze any excess liquid out of the salted ginger and pack it into the jar. Pour over the pickling liquid, and top up with more vinegar so that everything is submerged. Leave to pickle in the fridge at least overnight before using.
To make the Smashed Cucumber Salad: roughly cut the cucumber into large chunks and transfer them to a zip-lock bag with the salt. Knock out the air, seal, and gently smash the cucumber with a rolling pin; you still want some good chunks, but for none of the straight edged pieces to be recognisable as what they one were.
Transfer to a serving bowl and fold through the pickled ginger before serving.
Japanese rice wine vinegar is seasoned, whereas Chinese versions are not, though you can find both in most supermarkets. Japanese is preferable here, but Chinese, or even Korean brands will work.
Rachel, YUM! Definitely on my summer “to make” list. Also, cucumber sandwiches with cream cheese.
Such an original recipe! Can’t wait to try! 🥒