Monday, July 5, 2010

Cuke madness

The smell of cucumber always reminds me summer - probably because everyone who gardens ends up with a surplus. After a few weeks of salads and pawning them off on the neighbors, you start searching for exciting new recipes, like cucumber popsicles and my mom's spicy Thai pickles, inspired by a lovely relish served at one of our favorite restaurants.



Ellen's Thai pickle
1/2 c. rice wine vinegar
1/4 boiling water
1tsp. salt
1/2 c. finely chopped red onion
3 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. dried red chile flakes
4 medium-sized cucumbers, sliced thin
Dash garlic powder

Mix the chile flakes, sugar, garlic powder and salt with the hot water and add to vinegar. Pour over cucumbers and onions and refrigerate overnight. Enjoy!

P.s. Mom's been talking about starting a recipe blog. I think it'd be great, don't you?

- Posted from my iPhone


9 comments:

Lydia said...

too bad you can't ship produce...I have an empty fridge.

Ken said...

Gonna have to try this one sometime. I like cold-pack pickles. I wanted to try it with pepperoncini, but I had little luck growing robustini peppers from seed.

Andy said...

Mmm ... smoked salmon pate on crackers with a cucumber dill dip *sigh* ...

On a Wing and a Whim said...

You can never go wrong with recipe blogs.

Myself, I love making tsatziki out of cucumbers, garlic, greek yogurt, and a little fresh dill. Mmm.

Your recipe looks great, too - I think I'll file that under "things to try when I get home!"

Jay G said...

"MomFallacy's Mouth-Watering Menu"

I like it...

Mike W. said...

I'll skip this one (hate cucumber) but yes, tell momma Fallacy to start a recipe blog!

Glenn B said...

Cucumbers go great in German Potato Salad - a Bavarian recipe to be exact. Basically just boiled potatos skinned and sliced, with thinly sliced cucumbers, thinly sliced and cut up onions (if you like em otherwise do without), all doused with a liberal (sorry to any conversatives out there reading this) amount of vinegar and oil. Virgin olive oil and white and apple cider vinegars go great all together. Salt and pepper to taste. Oh yeah, the wife sometimes adds fresh parsley.

I have also used Paul Newman's Olive Oil & Vinegar dressing for this - it was a pretty good substitute for a homemade dressing in a pinch.

As for an over abumdance of cucumbers - not in my garden. I rarely get them to grow well. I do often get an over abundance of tomatoes and hot peppers, lst year we had a lot of butternut squash too.

All the best,
Glenn B

Scott said...

I do something pretty similar but I use a finely diced habenaro (discard the seeds because otherwise it can get to be too much about the pepper) instead of dried flakes and a couple cloves of garlic instead of the powder.

Eck! said...

cukes converted. Tests show...

WE HAVE A WINNER.

Great, fast.

Need more cukes. I suspect it may be a
winner with the other green bats from the garden.

Thanks!

Eck!