Radish and Cucumber Salad

This salad is not a discovery. Rather it is a re-discovery and re-appreciation of good old spring/summer basics. For me, radish, cucumbers, and such herbs as dill and spring onion are actually the symbols of spring. In Russia, these are the first fresh vegetables you harvest in your garden and the first you’ll be able to find on small street markets.

I’m aware that spring is long gone and that even the summer is almost finished. But to my defense radish is available year round in Germany, and besides, I can’t resist having this simple recipe on my blog and prolonging summer feeling.

I remember that when we were kids, our grandma was taking us to her summer garden (in Russian called “dacha”). We were not the biggest fans of it, as we found no fun in rummaging in soil under the scorching sun.

But there were positive things about the “dacha-exiles.” For us, constantly hungry kids, this was, first of all, the great food our grandma was cooking for us. I don’t know what was it, the fact that eating on the fresh air makes everything tasting better, or that our grandma was trying to bribe us, so that we come more often. Anyway, I have very good memories about dacha’s meals.

Radish and cucumber salad was every time there, coming straight from the garden. Maybe it was nothing special, but it has a very warm place in my heart. I liked it as a kid because it was fresh and crunchy and colorful. Today I love it for exactly same reasons, plus perhaps for the fact that it is healthy.

I cook it quite often and like every variation of it. This time, I simply added some feta cheese and made a yogurt-dill dressing (since I remembered of how my grandmother was dressing it with sour cream).