Cucumber salad.

Cucumber is a salad vegetable that is often just slices and added to all the other salad greens. Apart from the cucumber sandwich I can think of a really out standing cucumber related dishes. But here is a salad that is a little different and looks very striking. I think that it is a little Thai in its influence and flavour.

You will need
1 large cucumber
1 large carrot
1 small mango
1 small bunch of fresh basil
1 tbsp sesame seed oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar
Pinch of soft brown sugar
½ tsp sweet chilli sauce
Dash of lime juice

First to do the salad you need a vegetable peeler. The reason for this is that you use the peeler to make the strips. Just run it down the length of the cucumber so that you get a long thin strip of cucumber. It looks a bit like thin cook pasta strips.

So for your salad take your cucumber and top and tail it. Then peal it, the skin can be very bitter and not to pleasant. Then cut it length ways and scrape out the seeds with a spoon. The seed hold all the water and that will make the salad very wet.

Now you have done that run the peeler down the length of the cucumber to make the long strips. Once you have done that then peal the carrot and do the same with that. So what you should have is a bowl of wafer thin vegetable strips.

Now to take your mango, you do not want on that is to ripe. If it is over ripe then you have difficulty in dicing it. Run your knife down the side of the mango and then cut a crisscross in the flesh. Press on the skin and you will see the mango al ready to be cut of in to cubes. Then add them to the bowl with the cucumber and the carrot.

In a small cup or dish add the seamy oil, soy sauce, sugar, lime juice, rice vinegar and the sweet chilli sauce. Mix them together till the sugar has dissolved in to the liquids. Then add this dressing to the salad.

Now place it in a fridge or on the side to allow all the flavours to combine and just before you serve it rip some basil leaves in to the salad and you are good to go.

This is a very light and slightly spiced salad. Excellent at a barbeque or just on its own.