5
Dec
2009
Stir Fried Sour Cucumber Slices
Sour Cucumber Slices - Cu Liu
Introduction:
Recently, I have fallen love with cucumber recipes because they fall into the following categories:
a. Easy to cook. Actually, they don’t need to be cooked for long at all because they can be eaten raw like fruits. Sometimes, all we need to do is to scald them in hot water briefly.
b. Beautiful. You will find that cucumbers are really good-looking after cutting into slices without peeling them. Green is decorating around the white (crystal) meat. They look particularly beautiful when they are scalded briefly.
Ingredients:
Cucumbers: 300 g (or two medium sized ones)
Seasonings:
White sugar: 6 g
Vinegar: 8 g
Coarsely chopped scallions: 4 g
Ginger shreds: 4 g
Salt: 4 g
Vegetable oil: 1 tablespoon
Dried red chili peppers: 5
Sichuan peppercorns: 5
Soy sauce: 1 teaspoon
Starch: 1 teaspoon
Preparation Work:
1. Get the seasonings ready;
2. Wash the tender cucumbers clean, cut them into slices that are around 3 mm thick, put them onto a plate and mix them with salt, then reserve them for 5 minutes (or reserve them until you start cooking), and squeeze the cucumber slices to release the salty water;
Cooking Steps:
1. Put the wok on high heat or full flame;
2. Pour the vegetable oil into the wok when it gets dried because of the heat;
3. Drop the dried chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns in and go to the next step when they become very red in color; (This process is very short. So I recommend that the interval before the next step should not be longer than seconds.)
4. Turn to low heat or low flame, and fish the peppercorns and the red chili peppers out;
5. Turn back to high heat or full flame again, and drop the cucumber slices into the wok;
6. Add other seasonings (mixing them together in advance is highly recommended) in immediately after Step 5;
7. It can be dished out after stirring a little.
Cooking Tips:
As mentioned earlier, don’t cook too long. Otherwise, the cucumber slices will be over-softened and dark in color.
