How to Make Spring Greens in a Cucumber Vase

Alright, today a little Chef trick, Spring Lettuce in a Cucumber Vase.

Alright, let me show you this little trick. We’re going to fancify this up a little bit. You need an English cucumber. You can tell the English ones there, those hermetically sealed ones. And yes, I’m going to use my Japanese Mandolin vegetable slicer again. You got to get one of those.

Now, the first couple of slices, we’re not going to be able to use, so that’s going to be the perfect opportunity to get the perfect thickness. So did the first one on that. That was a little too thick, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to just—there’s a little screw on there, just adjust it, and then I was pretty much—after a couple that you didn’t see, I pretty much had the perfect width.

So what you want here, you want it sturdy enough to stand up but you want it thin enough where it sticks together. One other word of warning here, as you go to the center, that’s where the seeds are and it looks really cool because you can see the seeds, but it is—they’re not quite sturdy, the pieces are more flesh.

So anyway, what I’m going to do, I’m actually going to use two pieces because I like to look at the inside ones because of the seeds. So I’m going to use one to form my ring, and they really do stick together if you get the right thickness because they’re wet and they adhere to each other.

So we’re going put one like that, we’re going to take another piece and we’re going to wrap it around. We’re going to just stick it right together. Alright, and then once they stick together, it will stay in place, especially once you get the salad.

So now, what you’re going to do is you’re going to take your spring, your baby spring greens because of course, it is spring, at least at the time of filming. And you’re just going to make a nice arrangement. Now again, you can spend as much time as you want. I had to do the old food things, so this took me about 45 minutes. But you go in and you throw in your greens and that is very cool. And you got two choices here. You can dress the greens or you can leave them dry and just put the dressing around, which kind of looks nice in a plate. It’s up to you. Of course, some croutons would be nice, maybe some cherry tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes were not in season but when you have Photoshop, they’re always in season.

So that’s just I think a really interesting way to serve your little green salad. You can trick people in the cucumber. And another way I like to use it is a side garnish for a main course or an appetizer. And of course, I wouldn’t tease it like that. The demo is coming up here this week. We’re going to do a beautiful wild salmon cake and I serve that with a nice tarragon aioli, real aioli. I’ll show you how to make that.

So anyway, go to foodwishes.com for more info and enjoy!


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