Good morning! Yes, morning. It's five in the morning right now and I'm wide awake. Well, my 9-month-old woke me up at four today and now she's in the carrier, already dream-feeding. I've been hoping to get back to blogging officially after I've completely finished reinstalling my site, but with a baby who's awake for longer hours and crawling everywhere and grasping on everything to help her stand (even swiveling chairs!), it was an extra big shot for me. So I decided I should write new blogs and recipes while I fix the old ones. For that matter, I decided to post new blogs every 10th, 20th and 30th day of the month, hopefully with cooking videos too (please subscribe to my YouTube channel!). This will be the start of my regular blog posting challenge. So for my first post, I chose this very quick and easy to make salad that my husband absolutely loves: Knocked Cucumber Salad (or if you prefer, my husband and I call it "Kon Kon Kyuuri"). It's a standardized recipe and has never failed me since.
I'm sure this salad dressing will go well with any fresh vegetable salad-- lettuce, paprika, cucumber, carrot, broccoli/radish/alfalfa sprouts... even tofu! I just have never tried it with other vegetables for I prefer fresh ingredients that we can consume in one meal because I usually don't like eating left-over salad. However, this salad is best left for a few hours to overnight for the dressing to sip into the cucumbers a bit. And that makes it a good salad for putting in your lunch box. Well, this is the only salad my husband likes to be put in his bento. Regarding the ratio of the cucumbers to the dressing: cucumbers in Japan are almost identical (slender cucumbers with about 2cm maximum diameter), so I usually don't weigh them, but instead I just buy two random pieces of cucumbers and it matches the dressing perfectly. If I put three cucumbers, the dressing tends to get too watery and bland (at least for my husband).
So let's now go to the recipe! Watch the Knocked Cucumber Salad video I uploaded on YouTube or simply read the short recipe below. Happy salad-making!
Ingredients
Cucumber, 2 pcs (223 g)
Ginger, 10 g (cut into very thin strips or grated)
Kombu powder, 1 tsp
Salt, a little
Sesame oil, 1 tbsp
Soy sauce, 1 tbsp
Mirin, 1.5 tbsp
Sushi vinegar, 1.5 tbsp
Procedure
Break each cucumber into 4 or 5 pieces then put it inside a clean and relatively durable plastic bag.
Put all the other ingredients in the durable plastic bag with broken cucumbers.
Remove the air in the plastic bag the best you can then knock the cucumber with the bottom of a glass jar or a mug. When smashing the cucumber, be careful not to spill the dressing if the plastic breaks, so better prepare a bowl beside you where you can transfer your cucumber salad if that happens.
It’s best if you let the cucumber sip a bit more of the dressing before serving it (for about an hour to overnight), but it also tastes fine if served immediately.