As cool as cucumber

Food is studded with “aha” moments — the point at which you suddenly uncover the simple tweak that transforms a dish from good to extraordinary; or that one step that saves you time in prepping an ingredient; or — and this, for me, is the most rewarding of all — when you suddenly rediscover possibilities in some common food item that you had always taken for granted.

Recently, I experienced just such a revelation with the humble cucumber. Now, while some vegetables get labelled boring because traditionally there are only a few ways of using them (and it takes the creative genius of someone like the Israeli-British chef Yotam Ottolenghi to achieve what he has with Brussels sprouts), the cucumber suffers from its own ubiquity. Its versatility, subtle flavour and easy availability have resulted in chronic underestimation. Its low-key impact on taste buds makes it the perfect thing to add when you need to insert crunch or body to a dish without overpowering other ingredients. It’s a convenient raft for gourmet items such as smoked salmon or caviar — serving a purpose, yet posing no threat to the divas of the dish. It’s food-on-the-go on grimy train journeys where the vendor expertly peels and slices it on the spot, sprinkles it generously with salt and chilli powder and hands it over on a piece of newspaper. Yet, it’s equally at home on delicate china, sandwiched between wafer-thin slices of buttered white bread, part of the most proper English tea.

Cucumber soup is almost everyone’s first experiment with cold soup — fail-safe and ridiculously simple, it’s something you cut your teeth on before moving to more interesting, exciting chilled soups like vichyssoise, gazpacho, and ajoblanco .

The cucumber’s fate, it appears, is to always be the bridesmaid and never the bride. And this despite its well-established reputation as a superfood packed with essential vitamin B, with stress-relieving qualities (apparently a cucumber a day helps keep angst away), and chock-full of the two things we need most to keep our digestion ticking: water and fibre.

But now I, for one, am on a culinary crusade to give the cucumber the kudos it deserves.

****

My cucumber moment occurred at a meal in the home of friends who belong to the Sheherwali community — a number of Jain families who, on the invitation of the Nawab of Murshidabad some 300 years ago, settled on the banks of the Bhagirathi. The settlers thrived, their wealth and community burgeoned. They were far from insular, and interacted with the local Bengali communities and the extended royal household of the Nawab, both professionally and socially. An innate appreciation of the finer things of life, combined with wealth, enabled them to acquire a taste for the exquisite refinement that characterised the lifestyle of Murshidabad’s aristocracy. Presented with Bengal’s year-round abundance of vegetables and fruit, they swiftly introduced these into their kitchen, modifying traditional Rajasthani recipes in the process, and also adopting Bengali and Nawabi spices and cooking methods, as long as no Jain dietary rules were broken.

Sheherwali cooking is both tantalisingly familiar yet novel, because of the unique combination of ingredients and spices. My lunch was no exception, but the stars were two dishes heroing the cucumber. Before lunch, a silver platter of flat round kachoris with perfectly frilled edge was served. These had the crisp moreish-ness of the Bengali phuluri or kochuri , but the filling — combined with hung curd and gently scented with asafoetida, cumin and cinnamon — was unmistakably cucumber.

Later, when we sat down to lunch served on gleaming knasha (bell metal) flatware — it was a typical Sheherwali feast enchanting one’s palate with a starburst of intriguing flavours. And a standout dish was the kheera ka khatta meetha (sweet-and-tangy cucumber stir-fry), a ridiculously simple preparation of sliced cucumber given just a quick sauté in a cumin-red chilli-asafoetida-turmeric sizzle, with aamchoor (dried mango powder) sprinkled over before serving. The cucumbers elegantly held their own, and the aromatics remained an embellishment that did not erase their crunch or character.

These two dishes made me recalibrate my opinion of the cucumber and set me on a quest to give Cucumis sativus its due. A conversation with family friend Rakhi Dasgupta, who runs the iconic Bengali restaurant Kewpie’s, also proved illuminating. Dasgupta is an authority both on Bangla food and the culinary practices of south-east Asia — a region she has travelled extensively in.

The cucumber, she pointed out, features prominently in Thai, Vietnamese, and Korean cuisines. She even introduced me to the Korean nogak namul , a flavour-popping dish of cucumber pieces flash-fried with chopped garlic and green onions. Traditionally, the dish would use perilla oil, a popular Korean cooking medium that has the faint scent of fennel. But one can use any white oil, and then sprinkle roasted fennel seeds or saunf over the cucumber before serving. In the Korean countryside, the dish is a way to make good use of overgrown cucumbers.

Thailand’s green papaya salad may be one of its most successful exports, having conquered taste buds across the globe, but for Thais their cucumber salad — tossed with roasted peanuts, red chilli and cilantro — is equally popular and as tasty as the som tam .

Dasgupta also reminds me that cucumbers come in various sizes — from the long snake-like ones that we would eat in the Kalimpong hills, to the tiny gherkins that she pickles in brine and black mustard seeds. A quick consultation of Indian food guru KT Achaya’s A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food confirms that cucumber is indigenous to India, being one of the vegetables mentioned in earliest written records.

****

My deep-delving the culinary possibilities with the cucumber unlocked food memories I had long forgotten. I was reminded of meals at a Sri Lankan-American friend’s home in New York during graduate school days. Of course, it was the string hoppers and fiery seafood curries that occupied centre stage but there would always be interesting vegetable side-dishes including, on a couple of occasions, a tasty cucumber in coconut milk curry. This made an impression on me; that the cucumber was being treated as a serious vegetable struck me as odd.

Checking well-known Australia-based Sri Lankan restaurateur and chef Peter Kuruvita’s website, I find my memory serves me well. Sri Lankan cuisine has a lovely white cucumber curry. I tried it out and the dish has all the taste and comfort-food qualities of the vegetable ‘ishtus’ of southern cooking.

In fact, cucumbers are ruling my kitchen just now as I experiment with this wonderful vegetable — deep-fried in tempura batter, quick pickled, stir-fried, and curried. And with the summer months stretching ahead, here’s one vegetable that won’t wilt, and offers endless ways to beat the heat. A true hero of the kitchen trenches.

Pickled cucumber egg roll

(Serves four as a snack)

Ingredients

2 large cucumbers

1/3 cup rice wine vinegar

1/2 cup mirin

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon sea salt

2-3 red chillies sliced fine, seeds removed

A couple of star anise

A small stick of cinnamon

A couple of bay leaves

1/4 cup water

6 eggs

Good quality soya sauce

Method

1. Peel a cucumber and, working from top to bottom, shave long ribbons till you reach the seeded centre (you’ll need to keep turning the cucumber so that you finish one face and reach the seeded section, and then move to the next). Do the same with the other cucumber. You should have a pile of translucent white cucumber ribbons. Discard the seeded sections.

2. In a small saucepan, place the remaining ingredients, except for the eggs and soya sauce, and put on low heat. Let it bubble gently till the liquid has reduced. Allow it to cool a bit, discard the star anise, bay leaves and cinnamon, and taste. Adjust salt and sugar to your liking — it should be a lovely sweet-tangy taste, fragrant with the aromatics that have cooked in it, and warm with chilli heat. Pour over the cucumber ribbons. Keep aside to steep.

3. Beat the eggs and soya sauce. Heat a large frying pan, brush with oil, then pour the egg mixture to cover the surface. Put on low heat, cover the pan, and allow the egg to set. Take off heat and, using a large spatula, gently ease out the flat omelette on to a big, round working board. Take ribbons out of the pickling liquid and place them along the length of the omelette. Roll up the omelette as securely as possible. Then, using a serrated knife, cut the roll into spring roll-size portions, securing each with a toothpick. Serve with chopped cilantro and crushed peanuts (optional) on top.

Arundhati Ray is a food writer based in Kolkata

COMMENT NOW