Breaded Fried Cucumbers

- jim Young

This year we had an exceptionally good harvest of cucumbers. Normally we don't eat that many cucumbers so we started giving some away. We even considered putting a small table at the end of our laneway and offering them for sale. However it seems all our neighbours had a good cucumber harvest as well and there were no shortage of them for others to purchase.

It seemed that every time we visited our garden a new cucumber had sprouted up out of nowhere and was ready to be picked. We don't like to waste food but we don't consider feeding it to the wildlife as a waste. The problem is deer and squirrels are about the only animals that seem to like cucumbers.

We don't like to encourage the red squirrels that live on our property, however and the deer probably won't be around until the Mountain Ash Berries are a little more ripe.

My Shirley was already feeding me cucumber slices with dip for breakfast but our supply continued to grow. Finally I came up with this recipe to bread and fry cucumber slices as a nice treat.

Stuff Required:

• Vegetable oil
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 2 tbsp garlic powder
• 2 tbsp paprika
• Salt

Do This:

1. Beat the eggs in a small bowl and set aside.
2. Mix cornmeal, garlic powder and paprika in a medium bowl and set aside.
3. Wash cucumber and slice. Rinse slices in cold water to remove the bitterness.
4. Pour vegetable oil into a deep frying pan and heat to medium high.
5. While oil is heating, cover a large plate with paper towels.
6. Coat a cucumber slice in the dry mix, dip in the egg mix and coat again in the dry mix.
7. Place the cucumber slice into the hot oil.
8. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until the pan is filled and let breaded slices cook about 2 minutes per side.
9. Transfer cucumber slices to the paper towels on the plate to drain.
10. Sprinkle with salt.
11. Repeat steps 6 to 11 until all slices have been cooked.
12. 
    

Tips

Serve with Ranch Dressing, Horseradish Sauce, Salsa or other dip of your choice.