HungryForever

CUCUMBER, MUSTARD AND DILL

This goes very well with such things as cured salmon, mackerel and smoked cod’s roe, or is very happily eaten by itself.

Servings

Ingredients

3teaspoon cucumberspeeled, sliced in half lengthwise and seeds removed (ais the ideal cucumber gutter)
2tsp coarse sea saltMaldon salt is ideal
MUSTARD DRESSING
1tsp white sugar
2tsp white wine vinegar
1tbsp ½Dijon mustard
extra virgin olive oil
black pepper
a small bunch of dillpicked from the stems

Instructions

I am normally a great believer in slicing things straight across, but the peeled and seeded cucumber is an exception; ⅜-inch slices cut at an angle will give strange wonderful shapes (hopefully).
Place the cucumber in a colander, add the sea salt, and stir it into the cucumber pieces gently with your hands (what we are doing is drawing moisture out of the cucumber, to achieve a crunch with a giving resistance, so one must be careful not to add too much salt because having to rinse the cucumber later will detract from the process). Leave the salted cucumber for 1 hour and in the meantime make the mustard dressing.
Dissolve the sugar (this should not be a sweet dressing, its presence should be subliminal) in the vinegar in a bowl, then spoon in the mustard. Mix thoroughly. Then, gently, mixing all the while, add the olive oil, maintaining an emulsified dressing. Season with black pepper.
Now roughly chop your dill. Shake the excess salty water off the cucumber, and tip the cucumber pieces out onto a clean tea towel. Pat dry. Put the cucumber into a bowl, add the dressing and dill, mix, and serve.