Cucumber Salad, and About My Heritage

Thursday, September 06, 2007

As promised, here’s the cucumber wakame salad that I make every summer. The recipe is on a slip of paper that I had transcribed from talking to my mom, many years ago.

Ingredients:
1 long cucumber (preferably one with minimal seeds. I used the cucumber I got from my CSA)
4 T rice vinegar
4 T soy sauce
1/4 t salt
1 1/2 T sugar
a handful of dried wakame (found in Asian groceries, or health-food stores)

Directions:
Soak the wakame in a bowl of cold water. The seaweed will expand-- be sparing with the amount you put in.
In another bowl, combine the vinegar, soy sauce, salt, and sugar until blended.
Peel, de-seed (if necessary), and thinly slice cucumber. Add to the vinegar mixture.
Drain and squeeze wakame and add to the cucumber. Lightly toss, and refrigerate for about 30 minutes. Serve cold.

**********
I am a second-generation Japanese-American. My parents and I came to the States when I was very little. My mom often cooked washoku (Japanese food) for meals, and I learned a lot of her recipes by watching her cook. There are some things I can cook that almost taste like my mom’s, and there are some things that I just can’t quite make the way she does.

One thing about cooking Japanese, or really any Asian cuisine, is that many dishes call for ingredients that just aren’t readily available here, let alone locally produced. There was a time when my grandmother used to send us care packages of seaweed, tea, and other foodstuffs because they were difficult to find here. Nowadays, more interest and awareness of Asian culture makes it easier to get many of these items at a neighborhood grocery store. However, I haven’t heard of or seen items like wakame, like Asian short-grain rice, being locally harvested. And to be honest, I would be loath to give up things like these for the sake of being a pure locavore.

As it says in my description on the About page of this site, I do enjoy many cuisines from all over the world. I am often creative in the kitchen, mixing and matching tastes. When it comes to the food that my mom made, my comfort food, I choose to use local items when I can, and the ingredients of my culture’s cuisine when needed.