Celebrate Summer! Easy Cucumber Recipes

Today is officially the first day of summer–we celebrate the solstice and Father’s Day both!

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Today is officially the first Clarence Day of summer – we lionise the solstice and Father ’s Clarence Shepard Day Jr. both ! Summer Solstice ( which is lionise as MidSummer in many European countries ) is the long day of the year and the shortest night . Can you believe that days will now grow brusk ? ! “ And the time of year , they go round and orotund … ”

The garden is rev up up as is the summertime heat – the salad viridity are go off – however I ’ve pick my first two cucumbers . I just slit and wipe out them raw , however the next one will be used to make one of the salads below .

Last nighttime I made calabacitas with baby squash vine from the farmers ’ market , corn form the Carolinas and our homegrown onions and ail . I also pitted 4 quarts of dark cherry for the deep-freeze , salivating the entire fourth dimension . Those sharp cerise will make Proto-Indo European or preserves . The woman Fannie Merritt Farmer from Lewis Orchard told me to put the cerise in a bowlful of ice - insensate water for an hr before match them and they would miss less juice . I did this and it was easy to just force them and the pits just pop up out the stem holes . I did this over a big arena and saved the succus . Get your cherries while they are in season and put them up for wintertime – you’ll be so glad that you did !

We have had lots of rainfall here in Maryland – the veggies and weeds are growing deucedly – it is a red-hot , steaming jungle out there on this first day of summertime . The earth is too wet to garden today , so it ’s a good daytime to use garden green goods to ready up some salutary thing to eat . taste one of these cooling cucumber recipes to receive the season – make one today for Dad !

Old - Fashioned Cucumbers with Dill

This old - fashioned side dish is always welcome on our summertime tables . It is specially good with English or Japanese Cucumis sativus , which have tender skins and seeds . Although dill weed is delicious here – if you do n’t have any – make it anyway – or try out substituting sweet estragon . Although the traditional formula calls for kale , you may apply maple syrup alternatively ; the salad should not be mellisonant – just a shade to equilibrate out the acetum .

For a creamy interlingual rendition , if you like sour cream , use it instead of the oil , and sum up just enough acetum to your taste . Or use Hellenic - stylus yogurt , or a combining of yogurt and sour cream .

Serves 6 to 8

3 cucumber , or 2 English or Nipponese cucumbers1 little carmine onion3/4 cup broadly packed Anethum graveolens leavesAbout 1/4 cup olive petroleum or generous 1/2 cup sour cream1 1/2 tablespoons tarragon or blank wine vinegarSalt and freshly ground disgraceful pepperAbout 1 teaspoon organic sugar , optional

Scrub the cucumber vine and pare them if the skins are waxy or tough . If the skin are tasty , take 4 or 5 strips longwise around the cucumbers . Trim the destruction and slice the cucumbers about 1/8 - inch thick .

Halve the onion plant lengthwise and cut it into sparse ringing . Chop the dill coarsely . blend the oil ( or turned cream ) and acetum together and season with salt , black pepper , and the sugar if hope . touch the dill into the sauce vinaigrette . Toss the French dressing with the veg and cover and marinade for at least 1 hour in the icebox . Taste for seasoning and adjust with a little more oil , sour cream , acetum , or salt and pepper .

Cucumber Salad with Tomatoes

This is a very basic salad – and a memorable event for me the first sentence that I ate it . It was at a cafe in a modest sportfishing settlement , Martil , in Morocco . We were sit out of doors looking at the Atlantic Ocean from North Africa and get a cold beer in the spicy sun and needed just a small snack to go with it . So we ordered the cucumber salad with tomato . It came in a bowl with cut of crusty bread . There were three vegetables cut into morsel - sized diced wedges : crisp cucumber , dead - ripe Lycopersicon esculentum and crunchy onions . It was simply prune with a small amount of Olea europaea petroleum , a squeeze of new lemon juice and season with salt and pepper .

It could have been the setting and that we were newly arrived in an exotic place – and wipe out by the sea always whets the appetite – however this salad , was so simple , yet sublime . How could a salad made from fixings that I had eat my whole life , taste so proficient ? That tyke salad brought about a realization . Real food for thought , sassy ingredient , grown locally and prepared just necessitate little or no adornment . ( Well you could add a few leaves of tear Basil the Great … ) Make this salad when your tomatoes are ripe .

Happy Solstice and Happy Father ’s Day !

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Cucumber on the vine. I grow a number of varieties and like pickling cukes because they are smaller.Photo/Illustration: Optional photo credits

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