Make this cool, refreshing and summery salad to go with your meals. The crisp texture and wavy shape of wood ear mushrooms compliment a flavourful dressing.

Time: 2/5
Takes half an hour, makes a lot of salad.

Effort: 2/5
BOTH knife work and stirring, are you trying to work me to death here?

Cool as a cucumber

Summer is in full swing, and I’m doing my best to expand my salad repertoire. I didn’t grow up eating raw vegetables, so salad greens feel strange to me. However, cucumber is one of the few vegetables that I do feel comfortable eating raw, and that’s in no small part due to the presence of recipes like the smashed cucumber salad in the Chinese culinary world. Which is great, because cucumbers are so refreshing in the summer heat!

This cucumber salad is similar, except I also include wood ear mushrooms. These are a type of fungus that is usually sold dried, and when rehydrated they expand by a lot. They turn into large billowy crispy-yet-chewy clouds, which give them a lot of surface area and texture for not many calories (which may interest those of you who are dieting).

Whether or not you’re looking to reduce your calorie intake, the copious surface area and multiple nooks and crannies of wood ear mushrooms mean that they take on a lot of flavour when you toss them in a salad dressing.

Before I continue on with the recipe, I must confess to making a very silly mistake – I started off trying to make a smashed cucumber salad. I found out the hard way that you’re supposed to smash the cucumber before, not after, you cut them into segments or chunks!

I always thought that the smashing follows the cutting. I cut my cucumber into segments, laid them against the cutting board and whacked them with my cleaver. To my surprise, all I managed to achieve was to split the segment down the middle instead of creating cracks and crevices like I hoped I would. It took me several days of puzzlement and going back to rewatch recipe videos to find out that I should be smashing the cucumbers while they were still whole.

Perhaps someone who knows physics or engineering can enlighten me in the comments, but here is what I think happened: Because I laid half-moon segments of cucumber cut-side-down on the board and smashed them from above, the force went through the part with the seeds where there’s less structural integrity. If I left the cucumbers whole, the force of the cleaver doesn’t have a clear path of least resistance and instead has to compress the whole circular cross section to reach the board.

But that’s enough nerding out. Onwards to the recipe!

Dramatis Personae

Cucumbers

Cucumbers have a lot of water, which we don’t necessarily want as it would dilute the taste of the dressing especially as it sits for more than a couple of hours in the sauce.

Fortunately, the same osmotic processes that dilute the dressing can be used to our advantage. I begin this recipe by salting the cucumbers and letting them drain. The salt pulls water out of the cucumber, so that more of the dressing goes towards flavouring the cucumber solids rather than the cucumber juice.

Wood ear mushrooms

Called 木耳 in Chinese (mook yee / mu er; quite literally Wood Ear). Also known as Judas’ Ear, or Jew’s ear. Sold dried, and if kept dry these stay good for a long time in your pantry so don’t worry about buying more than you need.

What you do need to worry about is the dirt. A lot of dust and dirt can hide in the nooks and crannies, which only open up after the wood ears have a chance to rehydrate (which takes less than half an hour). So, be prepared to give each wood ear a good rub in fresh water after they plump up, then cut them down into bite sized pieces.

Aromatics

Garlic and dried chilis: to taste, minced finely. These get a quick sizzle in hot oil to wake up their flavour, but not so much that they lose their raw pungency. Fresh chilis work well too. In fact, mine were fresh a month ago but I just don’t use them too often and they dried up on their own. They keep surprisingly long in the pantry!

Dressing

Salt and sugar: in roughly equal proportion, but the exact amount depends on your taste.

Light soy sauce: A generous splash per portion. Even though there’s salt in this recipe, soy sauce has its own distinct taste and gives additional depth to the dressing.

Vinegar: Chinese black vinegar would give a deeper, more complex flavour. But plain old rice vinegar works great too, and is a more versatile ingredient. If you want to try your hand at cooking Asian but don’t want to go all in yet, get rice vinegar!

Cilantro: Stems and leaves, it’s all good. Give them a wash and chop them up. You want these to stay green and fresh, so don’t let them get any heat. Add them during the end, after everything has cooled down.

Sesame oil: adds a nice aromatic touch. Like the cilantro, you don’t want it to lose its pungency by coming in contact with heat. Save it towards the end, and add it a bit at a time – it can get overpowering quick.

Lao Gan Ma: you may have heard of this condiment before (thanks John Cena!). Memes aside, it’s an excellent chili crisp. Whether or not it’s GOAT tier is debatable, but there’s no denying that it’s a pretty solid contender.

Back when I was in college, the Chinese students would get dozens of these shipped over from home. A friend of mine gave me a try, and I was hooked! It’s a great shortcut ingredient for adding to recipes, since it packs plenty of flavour into one package. You get chili oil, crispy chili flakes, garlic and spices, and of course plenty of MSG.

Keep some around to elevate your stir fries, noodles and any savoury meal. Not all Lao Gan Ma is made equal though – in my opinion, the beef one is the best but that’s hard to find. The chicken one is a close second, and that’s what I have today.

Executive summary

1. Soak the wood ear mushrooms in fresh water, so they can rehydrate while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
2. Cut the cucumbers into bite sized pieces, and mix with salt and sugar.
3. Give the wood ear a good rub and rinse. Cut or tear into bite sized pieces. Blanch in salted water
4. Sizzle garlic and chili in oil. Once sizzling stops, add in dressing ingredients.
5. Add cucumber, wood ear and cilantro. Mix to combine and adjust seasonings to taste.
6. Chill overnight, and serve cold.

Play by Play

Last things first. The wood ear mushrooms take time to rehydrate, so soak them in some fresh water before you start anything else.

This is why you should do as I say, and not as I do. In the spirit of full disclosure, here is what happened to my smashed segments – a fault line running down the middle.

As I cut the cucumber into chunks, I transferred them into the biggest wok I had. I tossed them with some salt and sugar, and let them sit while I prepped the other ingredients.

Time to go back to the wood ears – am I confusing you too much by bouncing here and there? Anyway, the wood ears have opened up a lot and now you have to give each piece a good rub in water to get all the grit off. You can see how much dirt was left in the bowl.

While I cleaned the wood ear mushrooms, I was bringing salted water to a boil. Blanch the wood ear for a couple minutes, then drain well.

A view of the cutting board while the wood ear are blanching. I have the aromatics washed, prepped and ready to go. Reserve the cilantro though, I don’t want them to get any heat so they stay nice and bright and herbaceous.

The pan is already hot from blanching the wood ear, so we might as well use it to bloom our aromatics. My burner is off – there’s enough residual heat left to warm up the oil enough to sizzle the garlic slightly, which is what I want. Once the sizzling ends, add the rest of the dressing ingredients and mix to combine.

Now that the dressing is ready, I transferred the cucumber into the other pan. Check out how much water we pulled out of the cucumber! This water would otherwise have seeped out as the cucumber sat in the dressing, diluting all the delicious flavour we worked so hard to create.

Cilantro in, mix mix mix. Taste and adjust for seasoning. I ended adding more salt and vinegar to get it tasting the way I want it to. This recipe is one of those home cooking situations with loose tolerances, so it’s real low pressure and a pleasure to make!

Dinner is served! Cucumber salad, tomato and egg stir fry, chilled and shredded poached chicken and a soup made with the chicken poaching liquid. A cool and refreshing dinner for a hot and humid evening.

Salad for days! Packed in single serving containers to take to work for lunch.

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