Cooking Cucumbers
So, hi.
I could regale you with the horror story entitled “my latest dental extraction,” but I’ve been gone for weeks. That says it all, right?
For comic relief, it rained for ten minutes on Friday night. Northern California’s entire rainy season was compressed into those ten minutes. Trees, they fell. Power, it went off.
The two of us did not go to Cancun.
After twelve increasingly chilly hours, the lights (and heat) were restored, and I found myself cooking cukes.
The Chinese are not fond of raw vegetables, a preference I share. One more reason to adore Chinese food. As if I needed one.
If you’ve never tasted cooked cuke, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. The cooked cucumber loses its indigestibility, becoming delicate, light, and a lovely jade green in the bargain.
I bring you two recipes, as I’ve been gone so long.
Here we go. Recipe one, courtesy of the late, much-missed Barbara Tropp, is steamed cucumber. Make only as much as you’ll consume, as this doesn’t like hanging around.
Steamed Cucumber
Slightly adapted from Barbara Tropp’s The Modern Art Of Chinese Cooking
Preparation/cooking time: less than fifteen minutes total
Yield: as much as you wish; see notes
You will need a steamer to make this dish. See notes for rigging up makeshift steamers, below.
1 very fresh English or other cucumber
a small amount smoked ham, minced (optional, see notes for amounts)
Slice the cucumber into slices of about 1/2 inch/12 mm each. Take care to slice each piece of an equal size, otherwise the slices may cook unevenly.
Bring the steamer water to a boil. While it heats, arrange the cucumbers in overlapping pattern on a heatproof dish or bowl. Place the minced ham over the cucumbers, if using. This need not be perfect.
Once the water is boiling, carefully place the plate atop the rack, place lid on steamer, and steam for 8 minutes.
When the 8 minutes is up, remove lid AWAY FROM YOU. Do not give yourself a steam burn.
Allow cucumbers to cool before eating them right there in the kitchen. For a dish with two ingredients, this is amazingly delicious.
Notes: steamed cucumber does not keep, so don’t make more than you plan to eat right away. If you aren’t sure about servings, keep the water in the steamer warm; these cucumbers are so easy to prepare you can always make more. You’ll probably have to.
It’s hard to give amounts of ham, as I don’t know how much cucumber you’re making. I sliced six slices of cucumber (I made this midday, for blogging purposes), and used one teaspoon of ham. It was plenty.
I make a steamer by placing a rack in a wok bought at a secondhand store. (which is going out of business! Argh!) You can use a lidded pot, too. If you don’t have a rack, an empty can with the ends removed works, as does wadded tinfoil. Author Carolyn Phillips taught me the coin trick: toss pennies into the steamer water. When the water boils, the pennies rattle. This not only allows you to time cooking, it tells you if water levels are getting low.
The second recipe comes from Fuchsia Dunlop. This recipe calls for peeling and de-seeding the cucumber, then giving it a light salting, which allows some of the water to drain. Then you heat a wok with oil and a few aromatics, tip in the cucumber for a bare few moments, and that’s that.
Yes, those are my ring-splinted fingers. No, I had no idea they were in the picture until just this minute.
The result may be consumed immediately or allowed to sit for a few hours. Like the preceding dish, this is a simple affair, yet deceptively delicious, if rather more spicy. Living as I do with a fire-averse diner, I leave the dried chilis out of the wok, adding them to my plate at the table.
Stir-Fried Cucumber with Sichuan Peppercorns
Lightly adapted from a recipe by Fuchsia Dunlop
Preparation time: about ten minutes
Serving size: side dish for two to four people as part of a Chinese meal
Please read notes before cooking
One English cucumber, peeled and seeded
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1/4 teaspoon Sichuan peppercorns, or more, to taste
1-2 seeded, broken dried hot red chili peppers, to taste, optional
1 teaspoon sesame oil
Peel the cucumber. Halve it, then seed it. I use a pointed spoon for this. Slice the peeled, seeded halves into even half-moon shapes.
Place the cucumber slices in a colander and shake the salt over them. Massage lightly with your clean hands and leave to drain, 20-30 minutes.
When the time is up, rinse the salt off with cool water and pat dry cucumbers dry with a clean dishtowel or paper towels.
In a wok or wide frying pan, heat the peanut oil to just under smoking. Add the Sichuan peppercorns and hot chili peppers, if using. Stir-fry for 30 seconds. Turn heat down if spices begin to burn.
Add cucumber slices and stir, cooking for no more than two minutes or so–you really aren’t looking to deeply stir-fry so much as turn the cucumbers in the oil.
Tip the cucumbers into a dish and add the sesame oil. Either serve immediately or leave to mellow at room temperature for several hours. Eat within one day.
Notes:
I seed cucumbers with the tip of a spoon and salt them with fine sea salt, but use whatever salt is handy.
Sichuan peppercorns vary in strength–if they’re stale, and they can in be, in the US–their effects are muted. Taste before using, and season accordingly.
The original recipe calls for adding seeded dried hot peppers to the wok. Please do if you and your diners are game.
Both of these recipes are easily made vegetarian, may be served to those dealing with Celiac disease, and work as well with Western meals as they do with Chinese. What more do you need to know?
