quick pickled cucumbers

Sometime ago, while browsing the vegetable section at a local grocery for ideas, I found some salad cucumbers that looked so fresh and crisp. Aside from adding them to our usual Greek and other green salads, I thought of making pickles with them using just a few ingredients. For the dressing, just combine apple cider and rice vinegar together to make about 1/2 cup. Add some white sugar, salt and pepper to taste and mix well. Pour over the sliced cucumbers. Refrigerate to blend the flavors. At serving time, garnish with sliced green onions. For a spicier vesion, sprinkle thinly sliced red Thai chilis on top.

The pickled cucumbers in a very light, sweet and sour vinegar dressing were just the perfect side for our pan fried pork chops dinner that night. Back in Manila, this was always my personal favorite to have with fried whole fish. There's a particular fish, sold in local markets, called "hasa-hasa" which, when fried until the skin is very crispy, worked so well with these pickled cucumbers. I miss that fish :-)

Shown above, the salad cucumbers were smaller than regular cucumbers. They were bright green, very fresh and crisp. I like to use  this Thai vegetable gadget, which can also be used to shred carrots and other vegetables, to score the cucumber peel lengthwise, creating a nice scalloped design when sliced. This gadget is available in most Asian stores.