It’s the salad for July evenings when you have guests at 8 PM and absolutely don’t want to spend time in the kitchen. One cucumber, a punnet of cherry tomatoes, one red onion. Twenty-five minutes, of which fifteen you’re doing something else.
Ingredients :
- English cucumber — This is the one with thin skin and few seeds. No need to peel it — the skin adds color and crunch. Avoid standard cucumber if you can: it contains more water and larger seeds that make the salad go soggy quickly.
- Cherry or grape tomatoes — Grape tomatoes (elongated, firm) hold up better than round cherry tomatoes that roll around the bowl. Off-season, they are often too pale and bland — in that case, an extra pinch of sugar in the vinaigrette saves it.
- Red onion — More pungent than yellow, but that’s intentional. Its burgundy-purple color provides a nice visual contrast against the red of the tomatoes and the green of the cucumber. If the raw taste is too aggressive for you or your guests, ten minutes in cold water softens it without killing it.
- Fresh basil — Must be fresh. Dried basil in this type of salad is pointless. Tear it by hand — never with a knife. The blade burns the fibers and the edges turn black in two minutes.
