The Hunger Struck - Confessions of a Food Fanatic.

Sometimes cucumbers just save the day. Last night I came home thoroughly exhausted, to the point where I couldn’t even fathom cooking because that would mean I would be standing for at least a half hour, which at that moment seemed next to impossible. Just the thought of it was sending shockwaves of rejection through my body, and as perplexing as it was, I was even too exhausted to think about it. This is quite unusual for me-the not wanting to cook part-even after the longest day in the world I still can’t wait to get into my kitchen.

I knew I had to grab something fast before I collapsed into an exhausted coma and I remembered the cucumber salad I had made the previous night. I’m not a big fan of day old salads, the vegetables never taste that great and take on too much of taste of the dressing. I’m talking about salads without greens of any kind, you know Greek salads or bean salads. But in my run down stupor this didn’t register very high on my priority list and I grabbed the bowl of left over cucumber salad and a piece of bread and collapsed on the couch, without fork or napkin, and started shoveling food into my mouth.

It must have been quite offensive to watch because even my dog who would usually stare at me licking his lips, recoiled and ran under the kitchen table at the sight of me. Amazingly this salad was even better the next day and I just couldn’t get enough of it into my mouth at once. The rice wine vinegar and mirin had totally soaked into the sliced cucumbers- it was cold, crisp and totally pickled. Almost like a jar of fridge pickles eaten 7 days too early: not yet as strong as a pickle should be yet so exceptionally good that you can’t stop eating them even knowing that you shouldn’t.

This recipe comes from the Rouxbe Online Video Cooking School website, which is one of my favorite food sites and since I first tried this salad about a year ago it has remained one of my favorite cucumber salads.

Cucumber Sunomono Salad – recipe from Rouxbe.com

6 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

2 tablespoons mirin

1 tablespoon of sugar

1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt

1/8 teaspoon dried chili flakes

4 cups Japanese cucumbers

Combine the rice wine vinegar, mirin, sugar, salt and chili flakes.

Thinly slice the cucumbers. If you have a Japanese mandolin this works best, if not slicing by hand is perfectly fine. It’s really important to get nice thin slices, this is half of what makes this salad so special because the cucumbers absorb the dressing so much easier this way.

Pour the dressing over the sliced cucumber, cover and refrigerate for at least an hour.