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| Thai Cucumber Salad |
I loved making this dish because I was able to really utilize the freshest ingredients available to me in Michigan at the moment. The fresh pickling cucumbers (Cucumus sativus) were bought at the farmer's market down the street from my house, and the beautiful golden cherry tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) and spicy fresh chilies (Capsicum frutescens) were picked literally moments before consumption from my very own urban garden.
It is interesting to note that chills are native to the Americas but have since spread through much of Asia post-Portuguese-exploration. Imagining Chinese, Korean, Indian, Thai, Malaysian cuisine without this wonderful little fruit boggles the mind, really helping to solidify how connected we are to all cultures in this world. Wikipedia lists 5 species of chili peppers, which begs the question whether these things are species simply because they don't overlap in space or if domestication has somehow sped divergence in a way that prevents mating. Since agricultural crops are so widely traded and cultivated geographic isolation would seem an unlikely driver for reproductive isolation, but how else might we explain speciation?
Which leads to my next point about a second, very spicy ingredient in my recipe. The biggest adaptation I made to this dish was to include roasted peanuts that were infused by the smell and taste of Sichuan Peppercorns (Zanthoxylum simulans). These small peppercorn like things are botanically speaking, the outside fruit layer or pericarp of the Chinese Prickly-Ash tree. They belong to the family Rutaceae, also known as the citrus family--very distantly related to Solanaceous peppers though they are both classified "spicy". The sichuan peppercorn has an amazing property that numbs your mouth, giving the "ma" in "ma-la" of spicy sichuan food, which according to Wikipedia is caused by the confusion of over stimulated neurons. The sensation is very strange-- and very addictive. In Japan, there is a ramen shop where you can specify your level of "ma" from your level of "la" spice in your noodles made from the combination of increasing the amount of sichuan peppercorn powder and regular chili pepper powder.
But in addition to its incredibly interesting physical properties, the sichuan peppercorn also has an interesting ecological history in the spread of a devastating disease of citrus trees in the U.S., called citrus canker. The peppercorns were blamed for carrying bacteria that caused great damage to citrus production in the U.S. and were banned from import much to the chagrin of avid Chinese chefs in 2002. Nowadays, the peppercorns are heat-treated before import in order to kill the bacteria and prevent the spread of citrus canker. It is really interesting to think of how much globalization of food markets has contributed to the spread of invasive species, yet then again I remain conflicted between that and the need for cultural preservation and also my qualms against what I sometimes consider an uproar against the unassuming invasive species, which never intended on conquering new worlds, but just happened to be brought there by those who did (the worse invasive species is after all in my humble opinion, H. sapiens). End of rant, here's the recipe (its rough, so make it your own!)!
Recipe
3 fresh cucumbers (pickling), sliced thin.
3 tablespoons of crushed peanuts, roasted in a pan with a tablespoon of sichuan peppercorns
5 cherry tomatoes
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 thinly sliced, fresh chili pepper (you choose which one depending on your spice tolerance)
1 pinch of sugar
1 pinch large grained sea salt
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Add ingredients together in a bowl, lightly crush tomatoes and mix!
