Korean Sauce Pineapple Cucumber Salad

This is a rhapsody to my previous Korean Spicy Cucumber salad recipe with the addition of pineapple chunks and my new found Korean SsamJang sauce. I love preparing this salad and refrigerate it before I head out to buy my Hainanese Chicken Rice meals 😋

SsamJang sauce is made by blending Deonjang and Gochujang
together to form a sweet, savory and spicy Korean condiment
This sauce can be found in Korean food store.

Serving: 3 to 4 persons

Ingredients

130g kyuri/Japanese cucumber, cut into thin slices
3g low sodium fine salt

90g honey pineapple chunks, squeeze dry

Sauce

20g Korean Ssamjang sauce
10g raw sugar
juice from one green lime
7g spring onion, finely cut
5g garlic, finely chopped
2 tsp roasted sesame seeds
1/2 tsp sesame oil

Directions

1. Cut Japanese cucumber into thin slices.

2. Cut honey pineapple into thin chunks and squeeze out about 30 to 40% of the juice.
 Keep the pineapple juice. I'll share with you how I make use of the pineapple juice at the end of the recipe 😊

3. Finely cut the spring onion and garlic. Set aside.

4. Add about 3g of low sodium fine salt to the cucumber slices.

Rub the salt onto all the cucumber slices. Cover and stand for about 15 minutes to drain the excess cucumber juice out.

Drain away the cucumber juice, and squeeze the cucumber slices to get rid of excess juice trapped.

5. Mix all the sauce ingredients together into a smooth paste.

6. Mix the sauce with the cucumber slices and pineapple chunks in a big bowl.

7. Transfer the salad to a glass container. Seal with double sheets of cling wrap.

Keep the container in an inverted air-tight container.
The garlic and spring onion in the salad have a pungent smell that will linger in the fridge and affect other food kept in the fridge. I found out by storing the salad in an inverted air-tight container, it cut down or slow down the "smell contamination" process. If you store the salad in an upright air-tight container, you'll find the fridge smell like garlic and spring onion after one hour.😉

Refrigerate for about one hour.

8. Serve it cold 😋

Yummy pineapple juice for the cook 😄

Add a little honey and an ice cube to about 30ml of pineapple juice collected earlier. Wait for about 5 minutes for the ice to melt. This is a small treat just for the cook - too little to share 😜