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Cucumber Boat Salad

February 20, 2017 By appu 2 Comments

Chilled Cucumber Boat Salad

The Daughter made another demand — I’m so pleased she has got into cooking! The chef in me feels fulfilled and the mom and me feel happy! 😛

I make this salad very often at home. It needs to be served really really chilled, so it is a good idea to make it a wee bit in advance.

It’s a messy salad though! Be prepared for a white moustache and a few drips down your chin! But it’s worth the dishevelled look you will sport while eating it.

Look for crisp cucumbers with a clean green interior. I always cut off the side of the cucumber and taste it before using it. Sometimes cucumbers can be very very bitter, and even one bitter cucumber in a salad of 20 cucumbers can spoil the entire dish. Taste it and throw it away if its bitter. (You can always chuck it in the compost pile of course!)

The yoghurt should be thick, so hang it for an hour or so if you want. There is zero neatness in this salad, so there really isn’t any right or wrong way to fill it. Slice the spring onions really thin and small. Garlic can be upped as per your taste. To my mind, too much garlic takes away the sweetness of the yoghurt and the original taste of the cucumber.

I add a little of chilli flakes, but you can always add some herbs too – parsley, thyme, oregano. Don’t use very strong herbs. Again – it takes away the original flavours.

The boats can get very wobbly, as the base is rounded. You can slice off a small part of the cucumber from the bottom to make a little steadier base. But – mostly, it will wobble and fall a little to the side, but if the yoghurt is not too drippy things should not slide out and drip into the plate.

I’m attaching a quick video for you.

I hope you enjoy this salad. Do write in.

As always – Cheers! and Happy Times!

http://therecipelarder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/cucumber-boat-salad_CLIPCHAMP_480p.mp4

Cucumber Boat Salad
Print Recipe
Crips. filling, gooey, and crunchy. Great as a cocktail snack, as well as a salad. Don't let the fancy look deter you from making this perfectly easy and hearty salad.
  • CourseSalad
  • CuisineFusion
Servings
4 peopl
Servings
4 peopl
Cucumber Boat Salad
Print Recipe
Crips. filling, gooey, and crunchy. Great as a cocktail snack, as well as a salad. Don't let the fancy look deter you from making this perfectly easy and hearty salad.
  • CourseSalad
  • CuisineFusion
Servings
4 peopl
Servings
4 peopl
Ingredients
  • 2 large cucumbers peeled and slit lengthwise
  • 1/2 cup hung curd or greek yoghurt
  • 1 green oinion finely chopped with greens
  • 1 tspn salt
  • 1 tbspn garlic coarsely pounded
  • 1 tspn Black Pepper
  • 1 tspn chilli flakes
  • 1 tspn herbs optional.
  • 50 grams alfa alfa sprouts soaked in cold water
Servings: peopl
Instructions
  1. Peel and slit the cucumbers lengthwise.
  2. De seed the inner core using a spoon (see video) Chill in refrigerator till you need to fill it.
  3. Chop the green onions finely. Use all the whites and some of the greens
  4. Soak the alfa alfa in iced water, so that it untangles and the sprouts open up. Drain before using.
  5. In a clean bowl, mix the hung curd or greek yoghurt with all the other ingredients.
  6. Taking a small spoon, fill the cores of the cucumbers with the filling. A little will drip out. You can either leave it, or wipe it with a clean paper towel.
  7. Heap the sprouts on the yoghurt mix.
  8. This salad can be filled in advance, or just before eating. Either way, the filled boat, or the filling and cored cucumber should be in the refrigerator till served.
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Filed Under: Brunch, Cocktail Parties, Dinner, Lunch Tagged With: Alfa Alfa Sprouts, Chilled Salad, Chilli flakes, crisp, cucumbers, Foodie, Greek Yoghurt, Hung Curd, salad, Serve Chilled, Stufed

Hasselback Potatoes.

April 5, 2016 By appu 5 Comments

June 2015, my entire family went for a holiday to Grindelwald – Switzerland. Age group – 3 years to 65 years. You can well imagine the pandemonium!!

Luckily the apartment we had hired had huge cooking utensils, a kick-ass oven and some other fantastic gadgets.My sister woke up early, every morning, to cook breakfast for all of us. We would all get out of bed, and sleepy-eyed make our way to the kitchen, heap our plates with whatever dish she had prepared, fill up our tea mugs, and sit outside eating our breakfast and inhale the scenic beauty of sublime Switzerland.

One day the elder of the kids decided to cook us parents and their grandparents a luncheon. They had new potatoes in their repertoire of ingredients, and though we were told to stay out of it, I mildly suggested that they make Hasselback Potatoes.

Soon pots and pans were banging in the kitchen amongst loud voices, instructions and trembling music.

I need to go off track here. (The history behind my fascination for Hasselback Potatoes!)

We had been kindly invited to a party by a friend, who has a lethal ethnic background, and leanings from Germany in his extremely artful cooking skills. He had made these potatoes. Even the worst carnivore in our group, attacked these Hasselback Potatoes, as they came out, hot and crisp from the oven, the aroma of rosemary and cooking potatoes with garlic, filling the room.

Hasselback Potatoes

They were tender in the centre, crisp and mildly charred on the first bite. The flavour of rosemary just tickled the senses, instead of overpowering the entire dish. Every piece that touched our tongue, evoked some sort of long forgotten memory. Later, when all of us spoke about the potatoes, we all realised we had some sort of childhood memory revived, yet none of us had ever tasted it before. To date, we still talk about his potatoes, when we meet up.

_MG_8867

Hasselback Potatoes

Going back to the elder babies – they made a mean dish. The melee of dishes also had a kick ass pasta, fresh salad with honey vinaigrette dressing and salsa with garlic bread.

kids who coked for us. Tanay, Kanupriya, Namrata, Kanak.

salad by kids

pasta

hasselback potatoe in bowl

Hasselback Potatoes
Print Recipe
Soft and tender on the inside, charred and crisp on the outside. Tiring and messy, but Oh! so worth it.
  • CourseSides
  • CuisineFusion
Servings Prep Time
6 people 45 min
Cook Time Passive Time
1 hour 45 min
Servings Prep Time
6 people 45 min
Cook Time Passive Time
1 hour 45 min
Hasselback Potatoes
Print Recipe
Soft and tender on the inside, charred and crisp on the outside. Tiring and messy, but Oh! so worth it.
  • CourseSides
  • CuisineFusion
Servings Prep Time
6 people 45 min
Cook Time Passive Time
1 hour 45 min
Servings Prep Time
6 people 45 min
Cook Time Passive Time
1 hour 45 min
Ingredients
  • 500 gm new potatoes
  • 175 ml olive oil
  • 100 gm garlic finely chopped
  • 7 - 10 sprigs fresh rosemary
  • 1/4 C parsley finely chopped
  • 1 Tbspn salt
  • 2 Tbspn pepper
  • chilli flakes
Equipment and other requirements
  • oven preheated at 175 Deg C
  • bake dish Large enough to accommodate the potatoes side by side.
  • aluminium foil sized to cover the bake dish completely.
Servings: people
Instructions
Prepping the potatoes.
  1. If the potatoes are medium sized, slice them into half horizontally. If they are small start the prepping right away.
  2. Wash potatoes in running water. Start slicing from one end. Slice all the way in, but not enough to slice so deep that it separates from the potatoe.
    Wash potatoes in running water. Start slicing from one end. Slice all the way in, but not enough to slice so deep that it separates from the potatoe.
  3. Take each potato in the hand and fan out the slices a bit. Be careful to not break them. Having said that, if a few pieces do come out of the potato they can be also added to the main dish.
Olive Oil Mix
  1. Mix the salt, pepper, garlic, chilli flakes, and parsley into the olive oil. Taste for salt. Optionally you can also add 1/3 rd of the parmesan into this mixture. I do it sometimes. Other times I add it directly in the later step.
Final Dish
  1. Now take each potato and scoop them into the dish with the oil. Try and scoop up as much of the garlic and parsley as you can. Manually fan the slices and fill them with a some of the olive oil mixture. Push in a few pieces of garlic here and there into some slices.
  2. When all the potatoes are scooped and filled with the olive oil mixture, set them side by side on the baked dish. Pour all the left over oil on the potatoes in the dish. Pick up the rosemary sprigs and place them on the potatoes. More than one potato can share a sprig of rosemary. If need be cut the sprigs into half or three pieces, but do not chop fine.
    When all the potatoes are scooped and filled with the olive oil mixture, set them side by side on the baked dish. Pour all the left over oil on the potatoes in the dish. 
Pick up the rosemary sprigs and place them on the potatoes. More than one potato can share a sprig of rosemary. If need be cut the sprigs into half or three pieces, but do not chop fine.
  3. This step should take approximately 1 hour. Each oven has its own tantrums. Please keep a watch on the potatoes. After approximately 45 min to an hour, lift the foil and check the potatoes with a fork. The prongs should sink in easily.
  4. Lift the foil. Crank up the oven to 250Deg C.
  5. Take the dish out and sprinkle all (or the left over) parmesan cheese over the potatoes. Set it back in the oven.
  6. When the potatoes start curling and wrinkling, and look a bit charred at the edges, you can take them out of the oven. At this point if you desire crisper potatoes, bake them for a little longer, but do keep an eye on them. They can go from mildly charred to burnt in a matter of minutes.
  7. Scoop out all the potatoes in a serving dish. Drip all the oil from the bake dish over the potatoes. Replace the fallen (and now toasted) rosemary leaves on the potato.
  8. Serve hot.
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On behalf of the group that went to Switzerland, we hope you enjoy these Hasselback Potatoes.

Here is the link to the travel blog I have written for Switzerland.

Filed Under: Sides Tagged With: Cooked, crisp, fingerlickinggood, Hasselback potatoes, oilve oil, oven, parmesan cheese, Parsley, rosemary, Sidedish

Meet the Author

For the 21 years and some months that I have been alive, there has been this crazy, eccentric, always-charged-up woman with a full-time job of being a mother to 6 (2 children, 4 dogs).

In her spare time she blasts music on her DJ console, reads like a maniac, downloads shows (because God forbid she runs out of something to watch), runs an entire household, and to top it all off, manages a very successful catering business which makes the most delicious food in the entire world. Once you have her food, everything else will taste like stale socks.

This is what you call "Maa ke haath ka khana".

- Kanak

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