Squid and Cucumber Salad

There is always Chinese salad/Liang-ban in my dinner table in summertime. Something hot, something cool, and soup, are always my best choice of meal combination. In this recipe, you could replace squid with octopus or cuttlefish. It can be kept in fridge for 2 to 3 days.

Ingredients –
Cucumber, 1, about 300g;
Squid, medium size, 1, about 300g;
Garlic, 2cloves;
Chinese aged vinegar, 2tbsp, balsamic is good also;
Light soy sauce, 2tbsp;
Syrup, 2tbsp;
Chili flakes, 1tsp, if you don’t like it any spicy, use paprika;
Toasted sesame seeds, 1tsbp;
Chinese cooking wine, half cup, or ginger, 20g.

How to do –
1. Buy cleaned squid or you could ask your fishmonger for help. But accually it’s quite easy to clean. Pull apart the head and the innards should slip out of the body easily; cut off the innards, the eyes and beak with a scissor; pull the thin, clear cuttlebone from the body. In short, all those bony parts of a squid are inedible, remove them all. Wash in water thoroughly;
2. Put in plenty of water in a pot, put in some ginger or Chinese cooking wine, bring to boil, put in the squid, lid on, bring to boil again, then turn off the heat but let it sit in the pot with lid on for 5 more minutes. Then remove from the pot, cool to room temperature. Slice into rings;

3. Cucumber washed, roughly peeled, roll-cut into eatable size chunks;

4. Put the cucumber and squid in a food container, crush in 2 cloves of garlic and other seasoning ingredients, lid locked, shake well. It can be served right away but I would suggest in fridge for half or 1 hour, let the cucumber and squid absorbed the sauce. Sprinkle a pinch of sesame seeds on top when serving.