Recipes with cucumber

A cucumber is more than nine tenths water, and everything done to it in the kitchen follows from that. It cannot be seasoned like other vegetables: the salt you add draws out its water, the water dilutes the dressing, and a salad that looked perfect when sliced is a puddle twenty minutes later. The flesh has almost no flavour of its own; it supplies texture, a cold crunch, and carries whatever is put around it.

Kitchens divide between those that accept the water and those that fight it. Russian okroshka and Danish smørrebrød accept it: in the first, raw cucumber sits in a cold sour broth where its juice bothers nobody; in the second, it arrives in thin slices laid on the bread at the last moment, before it can soak through. Japanese sunomono and kappamaki do the opposite — salt it, press it, squeeze it dry, and what remains drinks the vinegar instead of watering it down. Israeli salad and shirazi salad take a third route: cut very small, dress at the table, eat straight away.

The move worth learning, whatever the dish: salt the slices, leave them to drain in a colander for a quarter of an hour, then press them between your hands before dressing. Taste before adding more salt — some of the first lot stays in the flesh.