It's raining cucumbers — and we love it
We're pickling them, smashing them, giving them away. What's your cucumber go-to?
We returned from a family trip to Detroit last weekend to find a dozen plump cucumbers in the garden, waiting to be picked, with more on the way. We scooped them up, and I put most of them into our fermentation crock with a saltwater brine, garlic cloves, mustard seeds, black peppercorns, and fennel tops from our garden. They’ll be pickles in about a week.
The rest we’ve been experimenting with in various fresh forms: a cucumber-avocado salad with fish sauce, sugar, and soy, and — always a winner — a smashed-cucumber salad with vinegar, sesame oil, and plenty of chile crisp. A smashing recipe for that one is below, and please tell me your favorite ways to eat cucumbers.
We’re still dealing with an encroaching bamboo situation, which I think we’re going to try to block off with some sort of barrier later this year. For now we’re trying our best to harvest around the shoots that (still!) keep sprouting up. The bamboo hasn’t stopped our Landreth beans from dangling bountifully or our golf ball-size carrots from coming in, but it has seemed to slow the growth of our broccoli, which is just starting to form crowns, and it’s choked off the bulbs of some of our fennel.
I also found myself in the garden with some Q-tips and a YouTube tutorial the other day, trying to hand-pollinate our squash blossoms. It seems, for whatever reason, the local pollinators aren’t doing their job of transferring pollen from the male squash flowers to the female ones. We have giant squash plants with beautiful yellow flowers — but no squash to speak of. So the Internet told me to play the role of bee or butterfly, swabbing the Q-tip around the male flowers and introducing their powdery yellow spores to the female blossoms. It was wild, let me tell you. It also hasn’t worked — yet. I’ll report back next time.
Though I haven’t taught him the art of hand-pollination yet, Jagger continues to find new things to forage outside the garden. He’s helped pick some gorgeous yellow oyster mushrooms that grow on a tree stump by our yard, and he loves pulling and eating these sweet-tart wineberries that grow wild along the side of our road.
Recipe: Smashed-Cucumber Salad
This is adapted from Julia Moskin’s excellent recipe in the NYT. I use her smashing method and dressing, but change the ending garnish to a liberal dose of chile crisp. My favorite of the moment is called S&B Crunchy Garlic with Chili Oil and is available at H Mart or on Amazon. It’s also easy and fun to make your own chile crisp; try this great recipe from Genevieve Ko in the NYT.
Serves 4
2 big cucumbers
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon chile crisp
cilantro and sesame seeds for garnish (optional)
Cut the rinsed and dried cucumbers crosswise into pieces about 4 inches long. Cut those pieces in half lengthwise. Place a few pieces of cucumber cut-side down on a cutting board, hold the blade of a chef’s knife flat on top of the cucumbers, and press down with your hand. You’ll feel the skin begin to crack and the flesh break. Cut the smashed cucumber into bite-size pieces and repeat with remaining cucumber segments.
Place the cucumber pieces in a strainer and toss with half a tablespoon each of the salt and sugar. Let drain for 20-30 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the dressing: Combine the remaining salt and sugar with the rice vinegar in a small bowl, stirring until dissolved. Add in the sesame oil and soy sauce.
Shake off cucumbers to remove any remaining liquid and transfer to a salad bowl. Add the dressing and the chile crisp, and toss to combine. Top with cilantro and sesame seeds if using, and serve immediately.
Bonus: a short video of Jagger attempting to water the garden but actually just watering himself. Thank you for reading — see you next time!