Cucumber
Used in 6 recipes on RecipeWiki.
Cucumber is mostly water held in crisp, pale flesh, with a cool, faintly sweet and green flavour and a thin skin that can carry a slight bitterness. This page covers the long salad cucumber and the small, knobbly ridge cucumbers preferred for pickling, which stay crunchier. Cooks use it raw for freshness: smashed with the flat of a knife so the dressing clings in Smashed Cucumber Salad, or diced into Okroshka, the cold Russian summer soup. For pickling, choose small, firm fruit and use them within a day or two of buying. Salting slices for twenty minutes draws out water and keeps a salad from going soggy.
Most often cooked with
Garlic
Spring onion
Bay leaf
Bell pepper
Dill
Parsley
TomatoRecipes with cucumber
Gazpacho
A chilled Andalusian soup of raw tomatoes, cucumber and pepper blended with bread and olive oil, which is what turns it creamy rather than watery.
Soups
Spanish
Tomatoes
Greek Salad
Ripe tomatoes salted until they release their juice, with cucumber, pepper, onion, stoned olives and a whole slab of feta, dressed with oil and oregano and no lettuce.
30 minutes
Cheese
No-cook
Herbed Farro Salad
Farro boiled loose in salted water like pasta, dressed while it is still hot, then packed with three soft herbs.
Italian
Side dishes
Vegan
Okroshka
A cold soup of raw vegetables, ham and egg poured with sour kvass at the table, so nothing in the bowl goes soft.
Potatoes
Russian
Quick Salted Cucumbers
Small cucumbers held a day or two in a dill and garlic brine, salted right through but still raw and crunchy.
Smashed Cucumber Salad
Cucumbers smashed rather than sliced so the torn faces grip a soy, vinegar and sesame dressing instead of shedding it.
Chinese