Crisp, crunchy and cool, this salad offers complexity with little effort. Creamy Roasted Garlic and Miso Dressing provided savory notes of umami and mellow sweetness.<\/p>\n
To avoid watering down the salad, we drained the sliced cucumbers on paper towels for a few minutes. Generous handfuls of fresh mint and basil brought layers of herbal flavour. Crunchy chopped peanuts played off the nuttiness of the dressing beautifully and offered great textural contrast.<\/p>\n
Spicy Thai chilies brought all the flavours into focus and ensured that the rich dressing didn’t make the salad feel too heavy. Be sure to slice the cucumbers 1\/8 to 3\/16 inch thick. This salad is best served within 1 hour of being dressed.<\/p>\n
CUCUMBER SALAD WITH CREAMY ROASTED GARLIC DRESSING (OR A MISO ONE)<\/p>\n
Servings: 4-6<\/p>\n
Start to finish: 25 minutes<\/p>\n
4 cucumbers, peeled, halved lengthwise, seeded, and sliced very thin<\/p>\n
3\/4 cup of Creamy Roasted Garlic and Miso Dressing (recipe follows)<\/p>\n
2 Thai chilies, stemmed, seeded, and minced<\/p>\n
1\/4 cup chopped fresh mint<\/p>\n
1\/4 cup chopped fresh basil<\/p>\n
Salt<\/p>\n
1\/4 cup unsalted dry-roasted peanuts, chopped coarse (optional)<\/p>\n
Spread cucumber slices evenly over paper towel-lined baking sheet and let drain for 15 minutes.<\/p>\n
Gently toss cucumbers with dressing, chilies, mint, and basil in large bowl until evenly coated. Let salad sit for 5 minutes, then toss again. Season with salt to taste. Sprinkle with peanuts, if using, and serve immediately.<\/p>\n
Creamy Roasted Garlic Dressing:<\/p>\n
Makes about 1 cup<\/p>\n
Start to finish: 1 hour, 25 minutes<\/p>\n
Pair this dressing with sturdy greens. You will need about 2 tablespoons of dressing per 2 cups of greens.<\/p>\n
3 large garlic heads (3 ounces each), outer papery skins removed and top third of head cut off and discarded<\/p>\n
1\/4 cup white wine vinegar<\/p>\n
3 tablespoons water<\/p>\n
2 teaspoons honey<\/p>\n
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard<\/p>\n
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme<\/p>\n
Salt and pepper<\/p>\n
1\/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil<\/p>\n
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 F. Wrap garlic in aluminum foil and roast until golden brown and very tender, 1 to 1 1\/4 hours. Remove garlic from oven and carefully open foil packets. When garlic is cool enough to handle, squeeze cloves from skins (you should have about 6 tablespoons); discard skins.<\/p>\n
Process garlic, vinegar, water, honey, mustard, thyme, 1\/4 teaspoon salt, and 1\/4 teaspoon pepper in blender until smooth, about 45 seconds, scraping down sides of blender jar as needed. With blender running, slowly add oil until incorporated, about 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper to taste. (Dressing can be refrigerated for up to 1 week; whisk to recombine before using.)<\/p>\n
Creamy Roasted Garlic and Miso Dressing:<\/p>\n
Omit thyme and pepper. Substitute rice vinegar for white wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon white miso for mustard, and vegetable oil for olive oil.<\/p>\n
\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n
Nutrition information per serving with the garlic dressing: 165 calories; 96 calories from fat; 11 g fat (1 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 0 mg cholesterol; 454 mg sodium; 14 g carbohydrate; 4 g fiber; 5 g sugar; 4 g protein.<\/p>\n
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Crisp, crunchy and cool, this salad offers complexity with little effort. Creamy Roasted Garlic and Miso Dressing provided savory notes …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":123206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-food","mauthors-americas-test-kitchen","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}