Day 3 – Japanese Cucumber Pickles
I lied, we’re not going to the Mediterranean, at least not yet. Yesterday I was faced with a bit of a challenge – half an hour to cook something completely new to me, between dropping a relative at the airport and heading out to the Melbourne International Animation Festival. I could either fail on day 3 of the challenge or bang out something quick and easy.
The answer? Pickles! I love all things pickled, and unless you’re pickling something quite substantial, like onions, the setup phase can be quite short. I’d had my eye on this recipe for a pickled Cucumber and Nashi Pear Salad over on Just Bento and I had a continental cucumber in the fridge – problem solvered!
As usual, I made a couple of modifications (I hate to follow recipes exactly). I’m following a low carb diet, so I switched the sugar for Stevia, a herb-based sweetener. I also left out the Nashi pear, partly to reduce the carbs and partly because I didn’t have any or any time to get any. I could probably have subbed in something savoury like radish if I hadn’t pickled all my radishes earlier in the week. I also halved the recipe, as I only had one cucumber.
This post will go live on Day 4, as the pickles need to sit in the fridge at least an hour but preferably overnight to let the flavours develop.
After a night in the fridge:
After a night in the fridge, these pickles are amazing! They’ve developed a really strong sweet and tangy flavour, with just the right amount of chilli burn. Technically these should last a week in the fridge, but they’ll be lucky to last a couple of days, with me around. This is one recipe that will definitely be going into the regular rotation.
