Chinese Salad I : Lianban Cucumber

Chinese has many recipes for lianban or salad. There are many sauces for different kind of food: vegetable, noodle, cooked meat or chicken, nuts etc. One can mix them all together to create your own favorite dishes. (Imagine that it contains all the stuffs you like with your favorite sauce!)

Different people have different tastes although as a human being, we all share a fundamental similar taste. The differences can be subtle(?) or huge. (such as some like spicy and heavy tastes while others like light and sweet).

Here I introduce one simple Chinese Lianban or Salad:

Material:
One Cucumber

Sauce:
Soy sauce: one spoon
Sesame Oil: half spoon
Rice Vinegar: one spoon
Garlic: one or two pieces
Salt: 1/4 spoon
Hot pepper sauce (optional): a few drops or many many drops!
Sugar(optional): a wee bit

Experiment: (Food Alchemy Experiment 1)

Wash the cucumber and peel out the skin(optional). Cut it into thin stick or square. (whatever shape you like. Thin is the key word). Add the chopped garlic and salt. Mixed well and put aside for 15 minutes.

--Tip: to get the best taste, cut the top of the cucumber (about 3cm from the top), press the two pieces together and circle the top piece about one minute until the bubble white cream no longer pops out. wash away the bubble white cream--

Take a small bow, add in Soy sauce and sesame oil together and microwave 20 seconds. Add vinegar. (or hot pepper sauce/sugar). Mix well together.

Add the sauce into the salted cucumber. Mix well. And enjoy! :)
(Shape it into a beautiful dish for your eyes and your guest eyes too! Now we have: For your taste and for your eyes, what esle more can we ask?!)

This Chinese salad is quite common in the restaurants as an open(?) dish before the main dishes. It helps to stimulate the stomach while keeping the waiting period delicious. :D

If you add in cooked noodle, it becomes a simple yet delicious meal(for those who like cool meal, put it into fridge and let it cool sometimes)! If you put in cooked spaghetti, it is now becoming a Chinese-Italian Spaghetti! I bet you haven't tried it yet!

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My elemental school was beside a food market. While at the class break, me and my friends loved to crawl through a hole in the wall to the food market. We walked around to find a suitable cucumber seller. After much negociated, we normal can buy one cucumber for one cent or two. (we are good negociators. Negociation in local market is part of the deal) Then we ate it with salt and hot peper sauce. It was like: take a bite into the cucumber, lick a wee bit salt and hot pepper sauce from the palm. Repeated until the cucumber was gone. Satisfied as free birds, we hurry craw back to class.)
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