Sunomomo. Typically prepared with Japanese cucumber, but it works fine with other types too. Recipe:

• 4 cucumbers or so
• ½ Tbsp salt
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 2 Tbsp water
• 3 Tbsp rice vinegar or white wine vinegar
• 1 tsp roasted sesame seeds

1. Slice the cucumbers, really thin. It’s fine to use a knife, but do it preferably with a mandolino.
2. Sprinkle salt over the slices. Make sure that it’s spread evenly. Wait 15min or so. Drain the water.
3. In the meantime mix the sugar, water, and vinegar. Add it to the cucumber and sprinkle the sesame seeds. Let it chill a bit and serve.

Some people also add soy sauce, or MSG.

I personally like them on sandwiches or wraps. They add a nice texture and they taste good. I’ll often replace pickles with them, since they are the same thing, just one is pickled.

My daughter loves to cut cucumbers (Persian/English ones with limited seeds and a pretty solid core) into little serving vessels.

She gets a 5cm/2inch diameter cuke, chops it into 4cm/1.5inch cylinders, uses a melon baller to scoop out most of the middle - making a kind of cucumber-based cup, then she fills it up with whatever she’s fashioned out of available ingredients.

She’s done guacamole, egg salad, some kind of bizarre ham and soy sauce and carrot thing, a Philadelphia-cream-cheese-based mix, leftover fried-rice. Basically, whatever you can ram into a cucumber goes!

If you want a fun way to plate different taste sensations it’s an attractive presentation option! It also serves to “revitalise” leftovers, providing an alternative serving platform to keep finicky-eaters engaged. It also also means you don’t need a knife/fork and maybe not even another plate apart from the serving one, so saves you some washing up 🙂

En Guete!

Pickle em!

So jealous of the amount of Raita you could be eating right now.

I would try to make biryani as my raita delivery vehicle.