Cucumber
A store cupboard salad kicking goals, unexpected glow ups, and a recipe for Maeun Oh Eeh Muchim 매운오이무침 (Korean spicy cucumber) from Sohn-mat by Monica Lee and Tien Nguyen
I didn’t expect to be penning a love letter to cucumber, or more a letter saying hey buddy, I know tomato gets all the props but believe in yourself, you are loved. But here I am, recently sated by two Lebanese cucumbers, a handful of garden bits and bobs, and some store cupboard magic. More on that in a moment.
This quick lunch dish made me think that in the past I’d think of the cucumber in an adjacent bracket to Brussels sprouts or cauliflower. An ingredient from youth that never excited me. As a character in an 80s film it would be the quirky friend that offered light relief, solid advice, but never the love interest. Not in the league of cauli or sprouts for the hideousness that could be inflicted by a particularly bad cook, a saving grace.
I’d always eat it raw, as thirty years ago it would never have occurred to me that it could be cooked, or that it could be the main ingredient as with O Tama Carey’s cucumber curry from her book, Lanka Food.
Growing up we ate what some call English or continental cucumbers. Just cucumber to us. Long, straight and almost always sold in a plastic sheath (safety first kids, always use protection). That single use plastic, still used, is exactly the reason I now buy them as a last resort, favouring the Lebanese variety sold unwrapped.
When I think back, cucumber had only a few uses at home. Sandwiches, in the main. Not the solely cucumber number with the crusts cut off. A bit too middle class to be honest. In a working class house of the 80s and 90s you were more likely to get a layer of cucumber in a tuna mayo, but even that strikes me as middle class for the time.
A salad sandwich, with salad cream not mayo, definitely; as a critical layer in a fish paste sandwich (something I strangely hanker after) on white bread; or atop Ryvita with cottage cheese. There were pickled gherkins (a particular addiction) but for me they tend to fall into another category or space in my mind.
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