Cool as a Cucumber

My garden is about to produce a big crop of cucumbers, and I want to put them to good use. After all, cucumbers are among the human race’s oldest cultivated vegetables – technically, a fruit. The Oxford Companion of Food says we’ve been cultivating cukes for some 4,000 years. Cucumbers were probably first grown in Asia – possibly India – then gradually spread around the world. Columbus brought them to Haiti in 1494. Today, about 100 different varieties exist around the world.

To find different ways to consume the garden bounty beyond pickles and cucumbers sliced in vinegar, I looked up recipes from other food traditions around the world. I wanted to find recipes beyond the more common Greek tzatziki, Indian raita, or Turkish cacik. Before you continue reading, how about fixing yourself a nice cucumber spritzer to get in the mood? I found this recipe for a cool summer drink: a long ribbon peeled from a fresh cucumber, placed in an ice-filled tumbler with white wine and seltzer, and garnished with fresh mint.

When thinking about cooking with cucumbers, it pays to remember that cucumbers are typically more than 90 percent water. That can cause problems for some recipes. A good solution is to cover your sliced cucumbers with salt, placing them in a colander for half an hour to drain some of that water, and pressing out the water before proceeding. Another idea borrowed from Tibet involves smacking a peeled cucumber with a rolling pin or similar tool until it falls apart. This allows the resulting fruit to better absorb your spices and dressing.

Hot tips from Asia

Here are a few ideas I came up with. In India, you’ll find a curry made with chopped coconut, cucumbers, onion, fennel, chili powder, and curry powder. A Thai approach is to sauté shrimp, mix in chopped cucumber and Thai red curry, and serve over rice. You could also try a Chinese concoction: fried chopped cucumber and minced pork in ginger-flavored oil, marinated in soy sauce and wine, and topped with chopped scallion.

As for salads, these cuisines use ingredients that might be unexpected for us Westerners. In Korea, kimchi, considered “salad,” can include cucumber in place of the traditional cabbage. A Vietnamese recipe uses beef cooked in a tamarind sauce, placed on a mixture of cucumber, carrots, and Vietnamese spices, and serving topped with chopped peanuts and bird’s-eye chilies. This salad from Nepal uses chopped pears and cucumbers topped with crushed, toasted cumin seeds, tossed with a dressing of mayonnaise and yogurt and a touch of mustard and chili powder.

Cool ideas for soup

Of course, there are any number of cucumber soups, but here’s one from Iran that uses pistachio. This recipe comes from a family living in a small village near the Afghan border. They use wild pistachios, but the recipe has been adjusted to incorporate the regular pistachios that you would find in the supermarket.

My conclusion is that your cukes don’t have to end up in the same old salad or pickle jar. We can have some fun with those summer fruits. How about you? Do you have some other way to take advantage of this seasonal bounty?

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