Onion slices are versatile. In quick-cooking dishes, they stay distinct enough from the other ingredients that they don't permeate every bite as diced onions would. In longer-cooking dishes, they have enough surface area to turn soft and brown, but their natural shape and length keeps them intact.
To make contoured half-round slices, first cut the onion in half through the root.
Next, slice away the both ends of each half and pull away the onion's skin. Since the ends hold the slices together, cutting them off frees the slices to fall into individual pieces.
Starting on one side of the onion with the knife at an angle, make slices as thick or thin as you like.
Rotate the knife around the contour of the onion, bring it closer to perpendicular to the cutting board as you go.
A tea sandwich is a dainty sandwich that is a fixture of the English afternoon tea. Less a meal than your typical American sandwich, it's meant as a little snack to hold you over until dinner (or supper) later on.
A tea sandwich can be eaten in just a few bites. It is typically made with thin-sliced, white bread slathered with butter or mayonnaise and a scant amount of filling. Tea sandwich classics include cucumbers, watercress, radishes, cream cheese, egg salad or smoked salmon.
Looks are important when making tea sandwiches: bread crusts are trimmed and people like to get cute by cutting them into triangles or whimsical shapes with cookie cutters.
Recipe: Open-Faced Cucumber Tea Sandwiches (VeganYumYum)
Recipe: Salmon And Caviar Croque Monsieur With Watercress Salad (Washington Post)
Side by side, they might fool you: cucumbers and zucchinis share the same dark green skin, pale seedy flesh, and long cylindrical shape. To the touch, however, these near-twins are not the same: cucumbers are cold and waxy, while zucchinis are rough and dry.
The two vegetables also perform very differently when cooked. Cucumbers wilt but maintain a slight crunch when heated. Zucchinis soften, sweeten and brown on the stove top or in the oven. Eaten raw, cucumbers are juicy, cool and crisp. Raw zucchini is heartier, a little sweet and a little bitter. As a general rule, we prefer cucumbers raw and zucchini cooked. (There are many exceptions to this rule.)
While you can’t replace one with the other, zucchinis and cucumbers do complement one another. Slice two cucumbers, two zucchinis and one sweet onion, and soak them all in rice vinegar for at least an hour in the refrigerator. Serve as a cooling side dish alongside something spicy or layer a few slices on top of a burger or sandwich.
Recipe: Cucumber, Carrot And Radish Salad With Creamy Avocado Dressing (Cookthink)
Recipe: Couscous With Raisins, Zucchini and Feta (Cookthink)
Reference: How to seed a cucumber (Cookthink)
Reference: What is raita? (Cookthink)
