Refreshing Summer Cucumber Salad
Not very long ago, we visited White Gate Farm, where we caught the first glimpses of spring seedlings getting ready to provide this year’s harvest. Temperatures were still quite chilly and below normal for the Northeast, making everyone yearn for signs of spring to chase away the winter blues. As we shed our blanket of snow, Darryl and I made plans to visit his son, Adar, in Phoenix, Arizona for his birthday. We had a fantastic time and packed a lot of activities into the week — my first visit to the Grand Canyon, for example — truly awe-inspiring. Adar and I also managed to cook a couple of meals for everyone, and, as is quickly becoming tradition, we each made a cucumber salad. Adar made an Asian recipe, utterly delicious, and I made this refreshing German style cucumber salad that is a frequent year-round side dish in our house, as it was in my parents’ house growing up. It’s super-fast to make, and there are rarely ever any leftovers.
Yield: 4 servings
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 0 minutes
Total time: 15 minutes
Ingredients
1 European cucumber (these are the long skinny ones)
1 shallot
1 tablespoon fresh dill
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
salt and pepper to taste
How is this sustainable ?
Any salad is sustainable, especially with only fresh vegetables and home-made dressing. You can make it even more sustainable by using vegetables from your garden.
Instructions
- Wash and peel the cucumber (I prefer it peeled for this recipe, but you can certainly use it unpeeled). Slice cucumber extremely thin — I use a mandolin, but it can also be done by hand.
- Finely dice shallot (or use a small yellow onion).
- Wash and chop dill (in a pinch, you can use dried dill weed too).
- Mix olive oil, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, shallot and dill together in a bowl, then add cucumbers.
- The salad becomes even better if you let it sit for 30 minutes before serving.
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