The Hunt for Lemon Cucumbers

July 7th, 2009

I seem to have a knack for finding recipes with obscure ingredients. It’s completely unintentional, they seem to find me. I’ll find a nice braised fish recipe and boldly make my way to the store, only to find “cassia bark” on the ingredient list. Maybe I enjoy the challenge of the search. Making just one grocery store trip for a dish is far too easy! Whether the recipe is five or fifty-five ingredients long, I’m often stumped by something.

So I wasn’t surprised when I stumbled upon a great dish from 101Cookbooks (one of my favorite sites for healthy side dishes) which had just 8 ingredients, one of them being a peculiar thing called a “lemon cucumber.” When I first glanced at the dish I thought the lemon referred to the flavoring, but apparently it’s a whole other species of cucumber. It’s yellow and green and more globular than a regular cucumber. Looks like this:

The shape is close to a lemon but they’re supposedly sweeter than regular cucumbers. They are so cute!

Since I was at my parents’ house for July 4th weekend, I went to the Asian Market in Mt. Kisco. It packs far more exotic ingredients into its tiny space than the gargantuan A&P, so I figured I’d have the best odds of finding them there. They had fiddlehead ferns, heirloom tomatoes, and all kinds of other seasonal things but no lemon cucumbers. The woman at the counter had never heard of them. My Mom went on a hunt at the farmer’s market and none of the farmers had heard of these either. I tweeted about it, and had foodies far more adept than myself inquiring about these little guys.

I admitted defeat and settled on some regular green cucumbers and I don’t think the dish suffered too much. But I have to know, where do you find these? Has anybody seen, tasted or cooked with a lemon cuke?

Related Posts:
Cucumber, Tofu and Avocado Salad with Pine Nuts

Lemon Cucumbers, Discovered!

Glacier Lettuce and My Favorite Salad

Filed under | Comments (6)

6 Responses to “The Hunt for Lemon Cucumbers”

  1. Kim on July 7, 2009 6:40 pm

    Erica it is always possible you will have to grow your own. They are not very common. You best bet might be with a big green grocer who carries exotics. If you have such a beast in your area they might be able to find some for you. We have a chain locally (not directly in my town unfortunatlely) called Pete’s Fruitique that specializes in all sorts of fruits and veggies. Hopefully you have a similar store in your area.

  2. Suzee on July 7, 2009 6:52 pm

    Wow – surprise surprise – I have heard of these little babies. I don’t think that they taste all that different, but they do have a sort of lighter flavor – it would be easy to miss it I think if you combined it with other stronger flavors.
    Although I don’t have a garden here, you can get lemon cucumber plants easily from nurseries near where I’m from (seacoast of NH). Another cool ingrediant is a watermelon radish. A lighter flavor again, but simply gorgeous – a white outside, red inside with flecks of black inside. Check out these websites – lemon cucumber = http://www.burpee.com/product/code/53561A.do and watermelon radish = http://hirts-gardens.amazonwebstore.com/Watermelon-Radish-300-Seeds/M/B001KCTNDC.htm?traffic_src=froogle&utm_medium=organic&utm_source=froogle

    Watermelon radishes are related to daikon radishes.

    If you get a chance to taste either, jump on it :)

  3. Erika Strum on July 8, 2009 8:16 am

    Kim and Suzee– Thanks for the tips! There are a few other stores I could have checked but since so many of these knowledgeable folks had never even heard of these guys, I was beginning to think they were a figment of my imagination! I don’t think I’ve had watermelon radish either, so I’ll have to be on the lookout for it!

  4. emily on July 8, 2009 3:52 pm

    Did you try Mrs. Green’s (across from Ben & Jerry’s in Mt. Kisco)? I was too busy at the grill to fully appreciate this conversation on Saturday. Also, I don’t really like cucumber, so I wasn’t all that concerned. Everyone seemed to enjoy the dish with regular old cucumbers anyway.

  5. Kelly on July 22, 2009 4:19 pm

    I’ve had lemon cucumbers!! I agree, you will probably have to grow them yourself. The only time I have tried them is when my friend out here on LI gave me a whole box full (she had planted a whole backyard of these delicious little guys).

  6. Joan on August 29, 2009 5:34 am

    I have grown lemon cukes for the past 2 years, since I now own a home where I may do so. My stepfather has grown lemon cukes for many years, and introduced them to me. They are by far the best cucumbers I have ever tasted. They are very crunchy, have no bitter taste, because the skin isn’t bitter, compared to regular cukes. I eat them like apples, skin and all, or peel and slice them too. They are very easy to grow; I will never grow regular cukes when given the choice.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind

← | →