Cucumber Peanut Salad

In addition to the Sharpie pens, the half-full mug of tea, the snapshots, the magazines, the letters to be mailed, and the stamps to go on those letters, I have two new cookbooks on my desk. Two books to really dive into. I've mentioned this before, but a number of us have been choosing cookbooks to focus on, and we've just chosen these to be next. So, if you happen to have Nigel Slater's Tender V. 1 and/or Sanjeev Kapoor's How to Cook Indian, please feel free to join us. These are the picks for the next two months, which should give you enough time to buy them or check them out from the library if you like. We did Breakfast, Lunch, Tea: The Many Little Meals of Rose Bakery last, and Moro East and The Essential New York Times Cookbook before that. Today's Cucumber Peanut Salad was my first foray into Sanjeev's book and it doesn't disappoint - chopped cucumbers, spices, toasted peanuts, coconut, and green chiles come together in a refreshing but surprisingly substantial salad.

Tender V.1 is by Nigel Slater, and is one of the most beautiful cookbooks I've purchased. At its most simple and basic it is about one man cooking from his ! garden. But, as anyone who has spent much time with a Nigel Slater book knows, the simplest ideas, or ingredients, or cooking techniques often develop into something completely captivating. And his recipes deliver. So, this pick was a no-brainer. How to Cook Indian was a bit of a wild card choice. After my book signing in Berkeley, I was invited by the shop to choose any book I liked. I tucked the massive orange Indian volume under my arm, went home, and spent hours the next morning tagging recipes - so many! And today's salad was one of them.

I took some liberties with this based on personal preference, and readily available ingredients. That's just how I roll when it comes to cooking Indian these days. I don't always have all the ingredients on hand, but I try not to let that deter me. Instead of trying to get thing perfectly "authentic" or as written, I wing it a bit, based on what I think will taste good within the general framework of a recipe. So, for this salad - I didn't have fresh coconut, but I did have big, dried coconut flakes. I knew I could toast them, and they'd be great. So I went with it. I like to leave some of the peel on my cucumbers - so that is what you see here. That sort of thing. I forgot to grind the peanuts - the sky did not fall.

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