Cucumber Salad

Hey guys,

I know that I've been a bad food blogger and haven't posted in a while, but as you know, I was in Montreal. After I got back, school started and I didn't have the time or energy to write a full post. I know, I was lazy.

Anyway, a few weeks back my girlfriend and I went to the Brooklyn Grange farmer's market, which is near our apartment. They own a rooftop farm in Long Island City and sell their produce in the building they're on top of twice a week. They were really nice and suggested that we try one of their cucumbers, but it didn't look like a cuke. It was all white, which was weird. Was it an albino cucumber?

Apparently not, they told me that it is called a lemon cucumber and has a citrus flavor. Well, they lied. It doesn't really, but the peel is really bitter. Anyway, it sparked an idea: I wanted to make cucumber salad similar to the way my mom makes it.

Start by taking your (possibly peeled) cucumber and slice it. Then put it in a fine mesh strainer over a bowl and sprinkle some salt over them. Toss it around to get the salt everywhere. about a teaspoon and a half per cucumber should be good.

The idea here is that we're drawing the liquid out of the slices so that we can replace it with more flavorful liquid.  I let the cukes sit for about 45 minutes, I think two innings of a baseball game.

In the mean time, you want to slice a little bit of onion thinly.

You don't need that much, probably a quarter of a large onion. Red onion would be really beautiful here, but I didn't have any. After we put all the acid in the cucumber/onion combination the onions will start to pickle.

So, put everything in a small bowl and sprinkle about a tablespoon of sugar on the whole thing. You can certainly add less, but I don't think that I would add more. Then squeeze a lemon on to the whole thing, toss, cover, and let sit in the fridge for an hour.

The whole thing is really easy to make, and you can certainly adjust the measurements to your taste. I think I ended up adding just a little bit more salt and sugar. After all that waiting though, the pickled onion and cucumber taste delicious together.

Hope you enjoy.

Oh yeah, before you close the window, I'm also excited about some new things in my kitchen. The first is what my friend Michele described as an "Ina Garten" style sugar container. I mean, Ina would certainly like it, and it was on sale a Target. You can't go wrong.

We also got a larger one for flour, and they look really nice on the counter.

The second thing is my fledgling herb garden. I just had some tiny sprouts of basil and chive when I left for Montreal, but they really took off after I left. Apparently my girlfriend has a green thumb (it's a surprise to her too). Now, I'm getting ready to transplant some of the basil and the parsley actually took!

Project Chicken Leftovers I: Curried Chicken Salad a la Ruth

I can't take credit for this recipe. The final (delicious) results are were a combined effort or my girlfriend Alison and our friend Ruth. I had very little to do with this, except the part where I tore apart a whole chicken. It's not as therapeutic as you think it would be, it's mostly just gross.

Chicken salad is a great idea for leftovers, but it can be so boring. Alison and I remembered this one salad that we had once. It was a curried broccoli salad, made by Ruth. We decided that this would be wonderful, so we gave it a shot.

The recipe is simple enough. Take about a cup of shredded chicken, a third cup of broccoli, blanched but still crisp and three slices of bacon which you've cooked very crisp and chopped: combine them in a bowl. Then add a dressing you make of mayonnaise, sour cream (about half and half on those), some sugar, curry powder, and pepper. The salt in this recipe will come from the bacon, but you can add some at the end if you're not sure.

Mix together the dressing and other ingredients, making sure that you coat everything and then throw in a handful of golden raisins (or regular if that's all you have) and a handful of chopped almonds (for the crunch). That's it. Mix it up and let it sit in the fridge overnight and you will have a great sandwich for lunch the next day.

It's even better after two nights in the fridge.

Nom Nom Nom.