What an amazing box this week. The cucumbers are my favorites and in my box there were both pickling cucumbers and one beautiful English-type cucumber. The pickling cucumbers are quite ripe, so their seeds will be pretty large. Depending on how you feel about cucumber seeds, you may want to scoop them out like you would the seeds of a butternut squash. The English cucumber has tiny seeds that should never present an issue.
I’ll be making my favorite – cucumber sandwiches, which I find are best when I peel and slice the cucumbers and then marinate them just a while in rice wine vinegar. A slice of bread spread with seasoned cream cheese (fennel fronds, garlic, dill, basil, seasoned salt – your choice) and then layered with cucumber slices – I wait for those sandwiches the way some folks wait for the first tomato sandwich of the year.
Pickles are a great way to use a lot of cucumbers in a hurry, and pickles can be very easy or very complicated. The easiest pickles are kosher dills, which at their simplest are just cucumbers packed in a jar with a salt brine, garlic and fresh dill. You just need a quart jar, your washed cucumbers (whole or in quarters), some garlic cloves (also in the box), fresh dill and a brine of about 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt to a quart of water. Pack the jar with the cucumbers, garlic and dill, and cover them with brine. I like to put them immediately in the refrigerator, and in about 2 days they are like the half dills you get at a great Kosher deli. In a week or two they’ll be fully brined, and they will keep in the refrigerator all summer. It’s a great way to use up just a few cucumbers at a time. Be sure to do it while the cucumbers are freshest, though. And if you have some salt brine left over, just put it in a jar and keep it until you’re ready to put up another jar of pickles.