Not today but a few days ago --
Had too many
Shintokiwa, Pickarow, and Littleleaf cucumbers that were getting older in the fridge - starting to lose color, blossom end wrinkling and getting soft ... But not moldy or anything. When they get this way, nobody wants to eat them fresh (and then they DO get moldy).
So I peeled and cut them into cubes and added to chopped
White Comet eggplants, diced
onions,
ripe Hanoi Market and green Yatsufusa peppers,
ginger slices, minced
garlic sauteed in roasted sesame oil. Once cukes were starting to get translucent, I added some excess juice from Japanese style cucumber and eggplant miso pickles and a blob of miso, lime juice, a bit of
my own chili powder then when they started to caramelize, deglazed with a glug of sake and some mirin.
Then I scraped and rinsed out the last bit of peanut butter (out of a jar I had been saving in the fridge for this purpose) with hot water and added this diluted peanut butter water to the pot. THEN I added skinned baked quarter of a salmon with bones and a bay leaf and a big
Kaffir lime leaf. Covered and let all that simmer a bit so the fish was falling off the bones. For additional color, flavor, and texture, I added
carrot greens and minced
minibell red pepper, and also a minced
myoga.
Hmmm... I *think* I remembered all of it.... (Oh, seasoned with sea salt and freshly ground black peppers)
This was served over/with brown rice/quinoa cooked with chickpeas and konbu, donburi-style. Very yum.
DH has a habit of asking me "what is it?" when I serve something, and I rarely have a ready answer.
...what would you call this? "stewed cucumber and salmon?"
...kitties got the cucumber peels (yes I know, but they love them) and salmon skin, and got to lick everything out of the pot after we were done and fishbones were removed.
..I saw them come up, but then lost sight of them when the sweet tater vines took off in the heat of the extended heat wave. 
...me and my bright ideas 
