Dining and Cooking
Smashed cucumber & fennel salad #fennel #dates #salad #summer #sidedish #dinner #everydayisfeastday
In Salads

Smashed cucumber & fennel salad #fennel #dates #salad #summer #sidedish #dinner #everydayisfeastday



a nice refreshing summer side dish

Hey, this cucumber and fennel salad is one of my favorite summertime sides, and you don’t need a mandolin. For our bulb of fennel, we’re going to take off these tops, and we’ll just shave off this bottom section. Then, we can stand this up on the cut side. Cut this bulb of fennel in half. Then, lay this half on this cut side. And you’re going to do your best to thin slice it. For this salad, I like to leave the core intact. So, I get these fan shapes of fennel, but you can remove the core and you’ll get individual layers. Right into our bowl, we’re going to remove some of these fennel fronds. They’re like herbs that taste like fennel. We can use them just like herbs. Just pinch them together and give them a rough chop. Thin slice some chive. Then, we’re going to take two English cucumbers. Cut off each end. Peel both cucumbers. Split each cucumber in half. Use a spoon to remove the seeds. Then using a paper towel or a clean kitchen towel, wrap your cucumbers up and sort of put a little weight on them. You’ll feel them bruise a little bit. This is going to start to leak out their water and it changes their texture. You almost get like a meteor cucumber. Then you can hold all four halves together and just go through make bite-sized pieces like this. Or if you’re looking for something a little bit different, you can put your cucumber on the cutting board and cut it on a bias about the same thickness. You get something like this as opposed to something like this. into our bowl. Then I have about 10 to 12 dates that I have removed the pits, but just in the act of removing the pits, I have torn them in half. Then just take a few. You can run a knife through these. You can mince these, but I find buying dates with the pits in them and having to remove them myself leaves the dates nice and gummy and soft. Dates in. And let’s add some fresh parsley. You can add whatever kind of herbs you want to this. This can be basil, oregano, whatever you like. Then I have about half a cup of toasted walnuts. You can chop them if you want, but I find that sometimes if I just take handfuls, give them a squeeze, it sort of does the rough chopping on its own. But if you buy raw walnuts, you want to toast them in a 350°ree oven for about 7 to 8 minutes or until they just start turn to golden brown around the edges. A decent pinch of kosher salt, the juice from one lemon, 2 to 3 tablespoons of olive oil. You can eat this right away or cover it and stick it in the fridge for a little bit. And follow me if you already have the grill preheating.

41 Comments

  10. @freddygriner4061

    i made some really great chicken last night on the grill i really like seeing these videos its like going to a class room you know thank you cheff @everydayisafastday

  26. @jeannecastellano7181

    I've never seen dates in a salad😮! The rest of the salad is similar to other fennel salads I've made. I love dates, so I should try it sometime.

  30. @torrosbas

    I saw someone say they froze their cucumbers to get a similar effect to smashing, without risk of smashing the cucumbers. Neat hack

  38. @McNasty43

    A key takeaway here is the importance of keeping your knives sharp, and practicing your knife skills, which reduces the need for a mandolin. A whetstone isn't entirely practical for the average home cook, so I recommend one of those rolling sharpeners like Horl. It gets you about 85% of the way to a proper stone sharpen, but keeps a MUCH more consistent bevel for a novice. Or, find a knife sharpening service near you, especially if you have several knives that you use consistently. If you need a knife recommendation, I just bought a Mercer Culinary nakiri (Japanese style vegetable knife). I like Mercer because they're inexpensive, but well built and hold an edge for a while. They are a bit thicker than higher end knives, so sharpening them does take a little longer