L.V. ANDERSON Slate
The cucumber's greatest strength is also its Achilles' heel. The cucumber, as you might have noticed, is watery — really watery. On the plus side, this makes it refreshing and cooling, the perfect co*cktail garnish or crudité for a late-summer happy hour on the patio. The downside is that chopped or sliced cucumbers are the culinary equivalent of perilously taut water balloons, threatening to make everything in their vicinity soggy and miserable.
Don't let their delicate flavor and translucent flesh fool you: Cucumbers require a firm hand if you're planning to combine them with any other ingredients. First, unless you can find seedless cucumbers, you must eviscerate them. Cucumber seeds, slimy, springy and evasive, will ruin the texture of any salad, soup or dip.
Then, you must salt them to draw out as much liquid as possible. If you skip this step, a puddle of near-flavorless liquid will form quickly at the bottom of your salad bowl; your dip or soup will separate like curdled mayonnaise. Not a pleasant dining experience. Happily, salting cucumbers requires only 20 minutes or so and virtually no effort: You just put them in a colander or strainer, toss them with a big pinch of salt or two — the exact quantity doesn't matter, since most of the salt will flow away with the liquid — and let osmosis do its thing.
Once properly chastened in this way and then patted dry, cucumbers will behave themselves for hours. The best thing to do with them at this point is to combine them with something creamy and tart to liven up their tranquil blandness. Tzatziki, the Greek condiment combining cucumbers and yogurt with lemon juice, garlic and dill, is the ideal invigorating summer cucumber dish. It also serves quite nicely as a dip, salad or side dish, or as part of a mezze-inspired meal.
Apart from salting your cucumbers, you must pay attention to a couple of details to make your tzatziki as thick and flavorful as possible: Use whole-milk Greek yogurt, and if any thin liquid has separated from the yogurt, pour it off before using it. If you are unable to find Greek yogurt — which seems awfully unlikely, since Greek-inspired labels seem to have taken over every dairy case in the land much the way HAIM has taken over every single music blog, but just in case — buy regular plain yogurt and strain it in a few layers of cheesecloth to thicken it up.
TZATZIKI
1 pound cucumbers, peeled ifdesired, seeded and roughlychopped
Salt
2 cups whole-milk Greekyogurt
Juice of 3 lemons
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
5 garlic cloves, minced
Black pepper
Put the chopped cucumbersin a large colander and tosswith a large pinch of salt. Putthe colander in the sink andlet the cucumbers sit for 20minutes, then gently pat drywith a paper towel.
Put the cucumbers, yogurt,lemon juice, dill, olive oil andgarlic in a large bowl; seasonwith salt and pepper. Stir tocombine, then taste and adjustthe seasoning. Serve immediately,or cover and refrigeratefor a few hours before serving.
Time: 30 to 40 minutes, partiallyunattended
Servings: 4 to 6
