Cucumber & Tomato Side Salad

My favorite side salad for a long time has been Noodles' cucumber tomato side salad. I love to get a small dish of Noodles and the salad for a meal. I have always wished you could get this salad as part of the "Trio", but the don't allow it. Since my garden is producing a TON of tomatoes and LOTS of cucumbers, this seemed like a no brainer. A few weeks ago I asked Hx if she had tried it and if she had any thoughts of what was made from. May sound silly - cucumber & tomatoes, right? Right and wrong. It's cucumber, tomatoes and red onions, but then they put a vinegar based dressing on it and sprinkle with sesame seeds and a seasoning. The vinegar was the mystery though. It wasn't red wine, it wasn't just rice  hx suggested champagne, but I couldn't find that. (I also didn't look hard).

Faced with a mountain of cucumbers I decided it was time. I opened the red wine vinegar and knew it wasn't right. The dressing was definitely a "brownish" - not red. I had the rice vinegar (I have about 4 or 5 different vinegars at any given time) and decided to get wild and crazy and mix it! It worked. I think it's pretty darn close. I decided to add just a dash of kosher salt and not add any seasoning when done - if I had to guess I would go with a paprika mix with salt. I don't really need the salt though.

So my basic receipe for this is as follows :

1 cut cucumber (halved or quartered and peeled)
4 roma tomatoes (halved or quartered)
1/2 medium red onion
a little over 1/3 cup rice vinegar
enough red wine vinegar to fill it up to 1/2 cup
1 tbs sugar (I used organic cane)

Mix the vinegars and sugar together. Pour over the veggies just prior to serving.

Southern Salad

I tend to favor salads with heft, but not necessarily in the form of meat. I prefer pasta, rice, potato and bean salads. This bean salad suddenly shows up at our table at least twice a year, signaling the onset of spring or summer. It's cool and crisp, spicy and sharp. The heft appears as black-eyed peas, which I cannot usually locate on the canned shelves, (only dried, unless I'm in a health-food store).

This Black-Eyed Pea Salad recipe is from Sunset magazine. There are bountiful similar black-eyed pea salad recipes out there, but I like this one's coolness of the tomato and cucumber, and the addition of cilantro and serrano.

I always make it with one large modification: reduce the onion by one-half or more. Be sure to follow the instructions and rinse the onion to deaden the sharpness. It calls for lemon juice, but I prefer lime. Welcome Spring!