food to glow

Poor old cucumber. Not a serious contender nutritionally (all that water you see), an afterthought for the salad bowl, grudgingly eaten as batons and dipped into no-fat dip as a dieter’s punishment. In other words, a bit low on the food totem pole.

But it has been getting a bit more love recently. Not big love, like freekeh, or dirty burgers or courgetti. But big enough if you are a cucumber. You may have even been indulging in a bit of cucumber appreciation yourself if you are a water drinker like I am, and trying to keep it interesting. Hm, now there’s an adjective usually never associated with cucumbers. 

Any cafe or restaurant, or dining table of note has to have some kind of herbage floating in the water jug. Mostly fresh mint, even lemon verbena, but often the tell-tale pale green disks or wafer-thin strips catch your eye, and often smack into your teeth if you aren’t paying close attention. I never really thought of cucumber as adding very much except for texture until I first tried it infused in water. I was surprised how much freshness it added. Which is all the more surprising seeing as Scottish water is naturally very refreshing. Especially if you fall into it off a paddle board…

And I wondered how it would be sautéed. Would altering its most redeeming feature – firm, crisp texture – to something slippery and pasta-like be at all a good thing? Let’s just say that I was picking the slips of fried cucumber from the pan and into my mouth before it could make it into the salad. I had to go buy another cucumber. Seriously. One by one I plucked them from the pan, dragged them through a little puddle of lemon juice and straight into my mouth. 

So it is unsurprising to me that my family, especially Andrew, really loved this warm, filling salad.

The smoky, chewy texture of the freekeh and the earthy, rich Beluga lentils remind me of pebble beaches, with the cucumber the frondy seaweed that laps the shore. I’m not sure what the pomegranates remind me of but they interject a sweet-sharp freshness that I think is needed. Try a little extra lemon or some pomegranate molasses/syrup if you don’t have fresh pomegranate.

I’ve since found out that sautéed cucumber is a French thing. Batons (the dreaded batons) are fried in butter with onion, a little sugar and perhaps some rosemary or other Provencal herb, then mixed with sour cream. This sounds a rich, but gratifyingly simple and elegant way to treat an under-rated vegetable. Perhaps my own peasant-style recipe could marry this chic French one, give or take a pomegranate.

Have you ever eaten sautéed cucumber? Love it, loathe it, or indifferent to it?