Makes 10 servings (serving a crowd?)
-
2½ pounds cucumbers
1 red onion
1 teaspoon celery seeds
¼ cup cider vinegar
¼ cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Special equipment
- a channel knife to wow them with the presentation
Method
- If you went ahead a splurged an entire sawbuck on the channel knife, score your cukes with long strips; else peel them in alternating rows or entirely. Slice into ¼" rounds into a large mixing bowl. Thinly slice the onion and toss.
Mix the celery seeds, oil and vinegar, and seasoning in a separate bowl and toss onto the salad. Let the flavors mingle at least 30 minutes before serving.
Notes
- Some of the standard textbooks (Holden and Shugart) say you could double this recipe and feed fifty, serving ⅓ cup of salad to each. If you tried that at home, the family’d toss you out of the kitchen and promote the scullery maid to Head Cook. But by multiplying the quantities by 2.5, we have fed 40 (admittedly abstemious) people quite well.↩
The same textbooks lean toward a sweet-and-sour dressing for cucumbers by mixing in as much as a ¼ cup white sugar.
Suggestions
- Sometimes we toss in some dried ginger, sometimes some diced fresh ginger. How much, we’ve never measured.
