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I’m crunching away on a cucumber salad as I write this.
Until recently, I hadn’t considered the watery veg a foundational ingredient. An add-in to a leafy salad or a snack served with hummus, sure. But cucumbers have rarely, if ever, taken a starring role in a main course.
As I sliced an entire cuke with a mandoline and hunted the kitchen for suitable toppings — tuna, green onions, chili crisp, mayo and sesame seeds — I realized I had been influenced.
How do you jazz up your cucumbers? (Kimberley Kielley / The Brandon Sun files)
Specifically, I had been influenced by Logan Moffitt (@logansfewd), a 23-year-old content creator from Ottawa who has been dubbed the “Cucumber Guy” thanks to his series of viral cucumber salad recipes.
(There’s been speculation that Moffit’s popularity has boosted cucumber sales globally, which made me think of one of my favourite Portlandia sketches starring Steve Buschemi as a beleaguered celery salesman. Enjoy.)
If your social media algorithm hasn’t been feeding you the latest internet cooking trend, here’s the gist: Moffit, in all his baby-faced, bleach-blonde glory, starts each video by mandolining a whole English cucumber into a plastic deli container, topping it with various marinades and fixins and digging into the concoction with chopsticks. Sometimes he’s filming in his kitchen, other times he’s mixing a salad while treading water in a lake.
It’s all very cute and unserious. And that’s precisely what I love about many of these viral home cooking trends. There are no hard and fast recipes. There are no rules. Users are served inspiration and a general framework, but are otherwise encouraged to venture into their kitchen and play with their food.
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This is how I cook at home. This is how many of my friends cook at home. Unless I’m trying out an entirely new dish or re-visiting a complicated meal, I rarely follow a recipe. I recognize cooking without directions can be a daunting task, but, in my experience, the quickest path to confidence — in technique and taste — comes from experimentation.
So thanks, Cucumber Guy, for reminding us that there are infinite ways to eat an entire cucumber and that cooking need not be complicated or serious to be enjoyable.
*Speaking of experimentation, we’re trying something new with this month’s Free Press Book Club meeting! Join myself and the authors of mmm…Manitoba on Tuesday, Aug. 27 for a conversation about local food history. We’ll also be shaking up a thematic cocktail together, find the recipe below.
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