Strawberry Cucumber Salad

One of my earliest recipes on this blog was for a salad with strawberries and cucumbers. This take is a little lighter and simpler; a side salad rather than a meal in itself. Still, although I have omitted a great deal of cheese and replaced it with a sprinkling of toasted pumpkin seeds, I was surprised to take a look back and see how similar my thought about strawberry-cucumber salad are still, eleven years later. Some things are classics for a reason, I guess.

We are picking massive quantities of strawberries at the moment, as well as haskaps. We came home from 2 days away to discover that we got 7 millimetres of rain while we were gone, and it went a long way towards reviving the garden and gave the fruit a final push into ripeness. I expect to be very busy over the weekend dealing with it all. 

4 servings
20 minutes prep time

Make the Dressing:
1 tablespoon honey
the juice of 1/2 a lemon
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon Aleppo pepper
freshly ground black pepper to taste
3 tablespoon olive or sunflower oil

Whisk or mix the above ingredients in a small bowl or jam jar.

Make the Salad:
3 to 4 small greenhouse cucumbers
6 medium-large leaves of lettuce
1 cup sliced strawberries
2 to 4 tablespoons toasted and salted pumpkin seeds

Wash the cucumbers and cut them into very thin slices; I used a vegetable peeler and was happy with how that turned out. Salt them and put them in a strainer. Let them drain as you prepare the other ingredients.

Wash and dry the lettuce, and arrange it in a salad bowl. I cut off the top thirds and arranged them around the edge of the bowl, then chopped the remainder into bite-sized pieces and spread them over the bottom of the bowl. It did make the salad a little easier to eat.

Wash and drain the strawberries. Hull them and slice them.

Rinse the cucumbers and pat them dry with a towel. Strew them in layers over the lettuce with the strawberries and pumpkin seeds. Drizzle with the dressing. 





Last year at this time it was Blogaversary week. Guess that means the blog is now eleven years old!

Posted in: Ontario Food