Kyuri to kani no shoga-amazu-ae / Japanese cucumber and crab in ginger-flavored sweetened vinegar

Wonderfully light and pleasant on a hot day. This is a different take on an old standby, cucumber sunomono (rice vinegar dressing dish), and takes advantage of softly salty and sweet Dungeness crab in season. It's very easy to make -- just remember to let it sit for a while after mixing everything, as this has a quick pickling effect on cucumber and prevents the dish from tasting bland.

1/2 of recipe:
46 calories; 5.1 g protein; 0.4 g fat; 5.8 g carbohydrate; 4.9 g net carbs; 113 mg sodium; 15 mg cholesterol; 0.9 g fiber


<Ingredients>

1 kyuri Japanese cucumber (155 g in photo)
Small handful Dungeness crabmeat (50 g in photo)
Generous pinch salt (not in photo)

For shoga-amazu ginger-flavored sweetened vinegar
1 tbsp + 1 tsp rice vinegar
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tbsp sugar
1 knob ginger

<Directions>
1.

Thinly slice cucumber, and place in a prep bowl.
Sprinkle generous pinch salt, gently mix, and let sit for 10 minutes.

2.

Meanwhile, prepare shoga-amazu.
Grate ginger.

Add sugar to rice vinegar, and mix to dissolve.

Add lemon juice.

Juice in ginger, and mix. Set aside.

3.

Squeeze out excess water from cucumber, and place in another (or rinsed) bowl.

Put crabmeat, and pour shoga-amazu.

Gently mix, and let sit for 10+ minutes. 

<Notes>

• Fresh kyuri cucumber has sharp spines on the surface. Carefully rub them off while washing cucumber. Fresh cucumber is normally rolled with a generous amount of salt against the cutting board to remove spines, but this is skipped above, as it would leave some sodium on cucumber.
  
• This is great with spot shrimp early in the season (photo at right).
• The above sodium figure is based on the assumption that 40% of salt sprinkled is absorbed by cucumber. Above, I used 0.5 g salt, thus 0.2 g (0.1 g salt or approx. 40 mg sodium per serving) goes into the cucumber.