The recipe I am sharing today is one which I have been eyeballing for a long time. Its fresh and exciting, yet uses very simple ingredients.
We are in the process of down-sizing. (Which is taking ever so long to do.) as a part of that process, I am going through all my books, trying to decide which to keep and which not to keep. One Good Dish, by david tanis, is one of the books I have been trying to make up my mind about. Although I had lots of pages marked with slips of paper as recipes I wanted to try, I really had not tried any.
This is one of the recipes I had marked as wanting to try. I just never seemed to have all the ingredients in the house at the same time . . .
The main ingredient are these small sweet cucumbers. I get mine at Costco. I kept forgetting to pick them up when I went. Finally I remembered. I love these cucumbers. You can peel or not as you wish. For this recipe I peeled.
Once you have them peeled, you will want to cut them lengthwise into halves or quarters as you wish. A really good knife set makes short work of this. I like to use these lovely knives from the MyKtchn Premium Black Ceramic Kitchen Knife Set.
They're lovely and sharp, and not really heavy. I've been using them for a while now and have been really impressed with their performance.
Once you have the cucumbers peeled and quartered, you just toss them in a bowl along with some salt and pepper to season, and shaved garlic. I use the vegetable peeled from the above set of knives to shave it. Or you could try cutting it really thin with a sharp knife.
The fact is you do want it very thin. It adds some sharpness and of course flavour, but since it is used raw, you really don't want big chunks of garlic. Thin works best.
It will pickle a bit in the vinegar and lime juice . . .
The recipe uses white wine vinegar. I confess I only had Rice Wine Vinegar and so that is what I used and it worked fine. I thought them quite tasty.
It also makes use of some fresh herbs. Tender earthy thyme leaves and chopped fresh dill.
Don't be tempted to over-do the herbs. They should each only give a subtle flavor. Thyme can be very over-powering. Dill not so much . . . if you are not fond of dill, you can use fresh flat leaf parsley or tarragon. I love tarragon.
Finally the use of red pepper flakes gives a bit of heat to the dish. If you don't like things too hot or spicy, you might want to cut back on these. Altogether however, these flavours all work very well together and you end up with one very tasty dish indeed!
Yield: 4 - 6Author: Marie Rayner
Dilled Cucumber Spears
Proof positive that tasty needn't be complicated, difficult or take a long time to execute. These are quite simply delicious.ingredients:
- 1 1/2 pounds small cucumbers (Kirby's or Persians)
- fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
- 3 cloves garlic, peeled and shaved
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1/2 tsp fresh thyme leaves
- 2 TBS white wine vinegar
- 1 TBS chopped dill, tarragon or parsley
- the juice of 1 lime
instructions:
- Peel the cucumbers. Quarter them, lengthwise. Put them into a bowl and season generously with the salt and black pepper. Add the garlic, red pepper flakes, thyme and vinegar. Toss together well. Leave to marinate for at least one hour. Add the chopped dill and lime juice just prior to serving, tossing again.
- These will keep in the refrigerator for a couple days, but not much longer if you want them really crisp.
I still haven't made up my mind if I am going to keep this book or not. I have a few more recipes flagged, but unless I think it is a book I will refer to often, I think it is destined for the charity bin. We will see. The jury is still out. Happy Tuesday!
