For much of my life, I thought I didn’t like cucumbers. I liked sour pickles and Sichuan-style smashed cucumbers, but in most other settings – especially bad renditions of Greek salad – cucumbers struck me as watery, slippery filler, the honeydew of the savoury salad world (I stand by my dislike of honeydew). Why would you dunk a cucumber spear in dip when you could choose a carrot? Or a radish? Why?
But now I know the truth, which is that the cucumber is one of nature’s great coolants, a foil for both hot weather and chilli heat. The best dishes that use it foreground its juicy crunch. And a heap of cucumbers, lightly dressed or quickly pickled, is a fast, single-subject salad that works with many meals (it helps if you use Persian or English cucumbers, which are thinner-skinned and don’t have the big goopy seeds you find in standard garden cucumbers).
