With the weather tentatively turning for the better, I crave foods that are light and crisp. Something refreshing to cleanse the palate after months of heavy winter-made meals. This hesitant spring has me thinking about cucumbers, a vegetable that was a staple item in my mother’s garden. When I think of cucumbers, I think of my mother’s garden and that one scene from My Neighbor Totoro where Satsuki and Mei sit with Granny in the sun eating fresh cucumbers. I’ll eat them just about any way; fresh from the garden, in a salad, mixed with salt and lime, dipped in ranch, dipped in gochujang. Again, I like them prepared most ways, but when I think of dishes you can make with cucumbers I first recall two kinds of salad my mom would always make; Korean cucumbers and Italian cucumber and tomato salad.
My favorite between the two is Korean cucumbers, though the dish is actually called oi muchim (오이무침). Korean cucumber was the name we knew it by my whole childhood, my family and I not yet knowing how to pronounce it’s actual name. As I got older, I learned the recipe came from the cookbook Dok Suni by Jenny Kwak. Dok Suni is a book that’s been in my parents’ possession longer than I’ve been alive and its stained and wrinkled pages feel like an old friend. The dish is fairly simple, not taking longer than 30 minutes to put together. Mom just made a couple alterations, leaving out the gochugaru—a note which she scribbled onto the page. I loved eating those thinly sliced cucumbers over rice, the sauce of rice vinegar, brown sugar, crushed garlic, and sesame oil seeping into the grain. If done how my mom did it, the cucumbers would still have a slight crunch even after being salted. After rinsing the salted cucumbers in cold water, you’d mix all the ingredients together and it’d be ready to eat. Though I never much liked vinegary foods, I loved this cucumber salad.
While not a favorite of mine, the Italian cucumber and tomato salad wasn’t an uncommon appearance at the dinner table, especially in the warmer months of the year. This colorful salad was made from chopped cucumbers and tomatoes mixed together with thinly sliced red onion, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and salt and pepper. I was always on the fence about this dish; I liked the cucumbers and tomatoes, but hated that sour tang from the vinegar. When I was a kid, I’d try to eat it quick before the rest of my food so I could wash the vinegar down with the rest of my plate. It’s a favorite of Mom’s though. I have this vivid image of her making it each summer, especially when we could go into the backyard and pull fresh cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden. I can picture her hands cutting the cucumbers and tomatoes most clearly, tanned and covered in rings of silver and gold.
It strikes me as odd, how I so loved the Korean cucumbers but never much cared for the Italian cucumber and tomato salad despite them both having a type of vinegar as an ingredient. Perhaps the flavor of the balsamic was too strong when I was little or the sesame oil was strong enough to overpower the rice vinegar. Either way, both are remembered fondly and come to the forefront of my mind each year when the weather warms and the flowers bloom.
