Cucumber and lamb's lettuce salad

#cuisines/asian #dishes/salad #dietary/gluten-free #dietary/vegetarian #scalable #active-time/30mins-or-less
Ottolenghi Simple
Servings: 4

Ingredients

Dressing

• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 small garlic clove, minced
• 3cm piece of ginger, finely grated (1 tbsp)
• rounded 1 tbsp plain yogurt
• flaked sea salt

Salad

• 5 baby cucumbers (500g)
• 1.5 cups / 30g lamb's lettuce
• 1/2 cup / 10g mint leaves
• 1/2 cup / 10g cilantro leaves
• 1 tsp nigella seeds

Instructions

1. For the dressing, whisk lemon juice, garlic, ginger, and yogurt with a rounded 1/4 tsp flaked salt and set aside.
2. Take each cucumber and quarter lengthwise. Then cut each long quarter diagonally into 1/2cm slices and place in a large bowl with the lamb's lettuce, mint, and cilantro. Gently mix the cucumber and leaves with the dressing and spread into a large shallow bowl. Sprinkle with the nigella seeds and serve.
   Notes: The dressing can be made 2 days in advance and kept in the fridge. Slice and refrigerate the cucumbers up to 6 hours in advance. Don't mix cucumbers and dressing until just before serving, because the salt will release water in the cucumbers and make the salad too watery. Can use regular cucumbers instead of baby, but should cut out water core before slicing.

Journal

• 2023-12-31: Made on NYE with Lamb and pistachio patties with sumac yogurt sauce and Carrot salad with yogurt and cinnamon. Used baby arugula instead of lamb's lettuce, and did not use nigella seeds. May have added a bit too much ginger to the dressing; the flavor was pretty aggressive. Still tasty, but would have been more at home with some Vietnamese-type cuisine instead of the Middle Eastern food we had it with.