cucumber salads

[darkoshi]

A family friend gave me some vegetables from his garden. Yellow squash, zucchini, okra, and several cucumbers. I'm on vacation this week and have been staying at Qiao's house, so planned to cook them here.

Qiao bought a bunch of kitchen stuff after moving in, including pots and pans, plates and glasses, and sundries. He hardly ever cooks though, so it doesn't get much use. He mostly goes out to eat, or brings home take-out. I've used his stove only once or twice so far, for boiling noodles. It's a gas stove, which still makes me nervous (gas stoves spit out flames! fire hazard! gas hazard!). But mainly because it's easier to cook at my house (where I have all my supplies) and to bring food over, or to heat food up in his microwave or his toaster oven.

Yesterday I realized I needed a cutting board. The two smallish ones that Qiao has are wood, and were sitting behind the sink for a long time and got black mildew marks on the bottom from it being wet back there. At home I have a glass cutting board, which seems more sanitary. Yesterday I bought him a glass one like mine. I also brought over my garlic crusher, mandolin, and oil and vinegar.

At the grocery store, I bought fresh chives and dill for making a cucumber salad. Generally I slice the cucumbers, and add salt and vinegar, and sometimes dried dill and pepper or a bit of sugar. It never tastes as good as when my mom makes it, nor as good as the wonderful cucumber salad I remember from German restaurants (which tasted different from my mom's). So I hoped that adding fresh herbs would help. I figure that chives are sort of similar to onions in flavor; I don't care to cut up onions for a salad, but I can do chives.

When I look up German cucumber salad recipes, they almost always include sour cream. The ones I remember were not cream-based. They were zesty, light, and refreshing. I could eat a whole plateful if only they'd serve that much. My mom sometimes scrapes onion juice into hers; I think that is part of what makes hers special; she also sometimes adds garlic. But I tried before, and mine still didn't get that special flavor I'm looking for.

I just realized, that Qiao doesn't have a cucumber peeler. Shucks. I could leave the skins on, or I could delay making the salad to some other day.

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Oven mitt! That's another thing that's missing over here.

A duller paring knife would be good too. It's hard to peel garlic with a sharp knife.

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Note to self: Do not put raw garlic in cucumber salad (or anything else) again. It causes way too much gas.

Comments

[marahmarie]

Garlic: cut the top off (the big, flat brown part). Roll the unpeeled clove between your fingers strenuously for a few seconds (depending on what time of year it is ymmv on this; the garlic with purplish skins will be harder to peel but the season for it is short and I think, might already be past).

Now take the clove and bend it gently for a few seconds in every direction (but not so hard it snaps). Now you should be able to peel the skin off without a problem.

The above is my take on the coffee can with lid or two mixing bowls tricks (you can look these up on YouTube; there's also a garlic shaker you can buy that does the same thing), in which you take the garlic, totally uncut/unpeeled, and put it either between two bowls (you use one bowl as a lid to cover the other) or in a can with a lid, and shake vigorously for a few seconds: voila, peeled garlic.

Truth is it's more of a PITA than they make it look on YouTube and I don't like vigorously shaking or rattling anything, nor all the noise it makes, so came up with the above method for myself. My way's a little messier (you might get some garlic juice on your fingers or you might not) and might take a little longer, but it makes me happier than all the other methods I've tried (store bought garlic shaker (not mine, it was in someone else's kitchen) included).

Cucumber salad: my mom was German, and also made this salad, and I can't quite duplicate it myself but it was fantastic, and I know what the basic ingredients are: cucumber, sliced up onion, water, vinegar and sugar. That's it. It was not written down so my problem is just guessing the proportions correctly (but I can't; just have to do it to taste, getting it as close as possible). She also made a kick-ass beet salad: a can of beets, chopped up onion, water, vinegar and sugar. The beet salad was nominally my favorite, but I love the coolness of a cucumber salad, too. I haven't made either in 2-3 years but want to make both again soon.

I wonder if Q. bought the kitchen stuff as an encouragement for *you* to do the cooking, LOL. Also hear you on the gas stove: owned/used several over the last 10-15 years (on an electric stove, currently; it sort of kicks ass) and they all terrify me. Pilot light leaks are a thing and are the worst, as the whole place will actually stink up of...gas.

I've been looking to move away from our glass cutting boards (they ruin your knives) but wood boards are prohibitively expensive (for us) and our knives are already ruined (though we do have all kinds of sharpeners and stones and can repair the non-serrated ones as needed; we just don't do it often enough considering the number the glass does on them) so I'm just toeing the line now. According to everything I see in the Great Google wood is naturally antibacterial, though I don't 100% believe anything but glass is, which is why we mostly have glass.

[darkoshi]

I may try that with the garlic next time. Though truth be told, peeling them is usually pretty easy, as long as I have my dull paring knife.

I don't think I'll be doing much more cooking at Q's house. He doesn't seem to care for the kind of food (vegan) I cook anymore. Even though he used to eat it, and seemed to enjoy it, when he lived at my place.

The last cucumber salad I made came closest to my mom's version. After reading your comment, I bought some small onions and shredded them into the salad. That was a few days after originally making the salad, after having poured most of the vinegar out of it, because it was too sour, and after having poured in some water as it was still too sour. Then I let it marinate a few days with the onion in, and then it tasted great. So from now on, I'll have to use onions, and use less vinegar.

I haven't ever had a beet salad. That sounds interesting.

I never thought about glass being bad for knives, or making them dull. But I'll still take glass over wood.

[marahmarie]

Yeah, glass (and bamboo) pretty much shreds them, but the smooth-edged ones can be re-sharpened, so it's the serrated ones (which I also find I have to use to cut certain foods) that are getting really dull (and those can't be fixed, so "get a new steak knife set" is on the list of someday items now, as well).

Beet salad is really good. And adding sugar (though I've minimized my own use of it so totally get it when anyone else does) does cut the sourness some.