Cucumber Salad With Borage Flowers

July 25, 2009 · 5 comments

in all recipes, appetizers, fast and healthy, gluten-free, raw foods, salads, vegan, vegetarian

borage1

After I prepared the zucchini for the raw vegetable sesame noodles, I wanted to play with my spiral slicer some more! So I made a simple cucumber salad with borage flowers.

Borage is a plant I grow in my herb spiral, as well as mixed in with my vegetable plantings. It is said to be a useful companion plant for tomatoes and cucumbers. I love looking at and eating the gorgeous blue flowers; the leaves are edible, as well.

It’s been a great year for cucumbers in my garden because of all the rain we’ve had. For this salad, which fed just one person (me!), I picked a beautiful cucumber and easily created a pretty ribbon out of it with the spiralizer tool.

spiralizedcuke

If you don’t have a garden, choose the nicest medium-large cucumber that you can find (and if you’d like to make a bigger salad, you’ll need more cucumbers). If your cucumber(s) is/are not organic, go ahead and peel it/them.

In addition to the cucumber(s), you will need:

coarse sea salt
rice vinegar
toasted sesame oil–optional
borage flowers (if you don’t have these, you can garnish with another edible flower or use chopped fresh herbs or toasted sesame seeds instead)

Among its many medicinal uses, borage has a reputation of helping with skin complaints, hormonal imbalance, and anxiety/depression.

borage2

Because cucumber contains so much water, you will want to drain the spiraled cucumber after you slice it. Use a colander over the sink and/or pat it dry with a kitchen towel. And once your cucumber ribbon is not so wet, you can I cut into it a bit to make the salad easier to eat.

spiralcukes2

To compile the salad, place your cucumber in a small bowl or on a plate. Sprinkle with a little coarse sea salt (not too much, or you’ll end up with a lot of liquid pooling under your salad) and drizzle with rice vinegar and a bit of toasted sesame oil, if desired. Garnish with your borage flowers. Serves 1.

cucumberboragesalad

WHB3-1This is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, an event managed by Haalo from Cook Almost Anything. Haalo is also this week’s host!

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{ 3 trackbacks }

Twitted by brownthumbgirl
July 26, 2009 at 12:41 am
Weekend Herb Blogging #193 Recap | kuchnia.wpblog.pl
July 27, 2009 at 12:08 am
Twitted by Ganga108
July 30, 2009 at 3:25 am

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Cindy Hiday July 25, 2009 at 10:12 pm

I’ve never seen cucumber look so lovely! Thanks!

2 Twitted by brownthumbgirl July 26, 2009 at 7:03 am

[...] This post was Twitted by brownthumbgirl [...]
Oops…forgot to say great post! Looking forward to your next one.

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