Pickled Cucumber Salad & Creamy Beans​

For some reason, recently, the social media algorithm gods decided I need fancy spiral-cut cucumber salad in my life. I was intrigued - I mean, small cucumbers cut into spirals have got to taste better than your standard sliced cucumber, right?! How can they not?! And living in Abu Dhabi, Persian cucumbers are standard fare and very cheap. So, I entertained my curiosity and made a version of the salad I found online. I wasn't sold. The flavor was a bit unidimensional - very cucumber and not much complexity. And then there was all this leftover juice from the dressing and leaky cucumbers because, unlike some people on the internet, I was not going to be eating a whole bowl of this in one sitting. One Instagram post I had been subjected to said that the cucumber tasted better the next day, and another person said they had used the leftover juices to make a stir-fry. This got me to thinking that this fancy cucumber could be the centerpiece of a full meal. This is that meal.
Yield: 3 servings
Macros (per serving full meal): 430 calories | 23g protein | 32g fat | 9.5g net carbs
Macros (per serving salad with cucumber): 205 calories | 5.5g protein | 16g fat | 6.5g net carbs ✎
Macros (per serving cucumber only): 115 calories | 2.5g protein | 9.5g fat | 4.5g net carbs ✎
​Prep: 30 minutes (plus overnight for cucumber to marinate) | Cook (bean component): 15 mins
Storage: refrigerated for up to 3 days.
Ingredients (Cucumber Component):
  • 300g Persian or English cucumber, sliced or spiral cut (about 3 to 5 Persian or 1 medium English)
  • 2 tablespoons (30ml) tamari, soy sauce, or aminos
  • 2 tablespoons (30ml) unseasoned rice wine vinegar or neutral-flavored vinegar of choice
  • 2 tablespoons (30ml) toasted sesame oil or neutral-flavored oil of choice​
  • 1 tablespoon (13g) granulated allulose or equivalent in keto-friendly sweetener of choice ​✎
  • 1 teaspoon (6g) white or chickpea miso paste (optional)
  • 1 medium (15g) green onion, sliced (about ¼ cup)
  • 2 cloves (6g) garlic, crushed (equals 1 teaspoon)
  • ½ teaspoon (3g) grated ginger
  • ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional or to taste) ✎​
Directions (Cucumber Component):
  1. Slice your cucumber(s). If you'd like to try the fancy looking spiral cut for Persian cucumbers, it's actually quite a lot easier than I expected. Place the cucumber lengthwise between 2 chopsticks (ones you don't mind nicking), then slice on a diagonal. The chopsticks prevent you from slicing all the way through. Flip the cucumber and slice again (still between the chopsticks), but this time not on a diagonal. Viola! ✎
  2. In a bowl or storage container that will fit your cucumber(s), whisk together the remaining ingredients (i.e. the marinade).
  3. Add the cucumber to the dressing and toss or mix to combine. Cover and refrigerate overnight or while at work to "pickle". If possible, mix or shake gently every now and then to make sure all cucumbers are marinating.
Ingredients (Salad):
  • 3 cups (90g) baby or torn lettuce(s)
  • ½ medium (68g) avocado, chopped or sliced
  • ½ medium (30g) carrot, shredded
  • ¼ medium (30g) red bell pepper, thinly sliced
  • 1½ tablespoons (23ml) cucumber marinade
  • 1½ tablespoons (15g) hemp hearts
  • 1½ teaspoons (5g) sesame seeds​
Directions (Salad):
  1. Remove the cucumber(s) from the marinade. Set aside. Don't discard the marinade.
  2. Put the lettuce in a medium-sized mixing bowl or salad bowl and drizzle with roughly 1½ tablespoons (23ml) of the marinade. Toss to dress all leaves.
  3. Sprinkle the dressed leaves with the hemp hearts and sesame seeds. Toss to spread the seeds throughout.
  4. ​Divide the salad between 3 salad bowls and top each with a third of the pickled cucumber.
Ingredients (Beans):
  • 1½ cups (258g) cooked soybeans
  • ½ cup (120g) full-fat canned coconut milk
  • 1 tablespoon (5g) nutritional yeast flakes
  • the remaining ​cucumber marinade (about ½ cup [120ml])
Directions (Beans):
  1. Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer on medium heat. Cover with a well-fitted lid and simmer on low heat for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally and adjust heat as necessary.
  2. Divide equally between 3 small bowls, about ½ cup (125g) per bowl.
  3. Enjoy hot. Optionally, serve the meal sprinkled with additional sesame seeds and green onion, and with a lime wedge.
Soy-Free (Carb Booster): replace the soybeans with a 15-ounce (425g) can of drained and rinsed cannellini beans (about 1½ cups [269g]).
Macros (per serving full meal): 405 calories | 16g protein | 24g fat | 24g net carbs
✎ Notes:
  • The macros for the salad with cucumber and the cucumber only includes the full amount of marinade. What you do with the leftover marinade is then up to you. It could dress some additional salad, season a stir-fry, marinate some tofu, or be added to a soup broth.
  • The sweetener can be omitted if this doesn't appeal to you. If you prefer to use a low-bulk sweetener like liquid stevia or monk fruit, that is also an option here. 1 tablespoon is equal to 3 teaspoons, so you'd likely need about 15 drops.
  • The cucumber is spicy. If you don't like spicy food, reduce or omit the red pepper flakes. I like spicy food, so I actually added a sliced Thai chili to my marinade, which isn't in the ingredients I've given here.
  • If my brief instructions for spiral cutting a cucumber don't suffice, there are various demonstrations online.
  • Many online recipes for a similar cucumber salad have you salting, resting, and rinsing the cucumber in order to draw out some of the cucumber's water before using it. I have not included this step because I am leaving the cucumber to marinate overnight and using the juices anyway. If you're making just the cucumber component of this meal, you may wish to salt, rest, and rinse your cucumbers. Note that some people find the results of doing this overly salty. 
  • Macros for this recipes are calculated with American national nutritional data (i.e. NCCDB & USDA entries in Cronometer) for all ingredients apart from hemp hearts (Manitoba Harvest), coconut milk (Aroy-D), and nutritional yeast flakes (blend of Bob's Redmill and Foods Alive unfortified).
  • Macro numbers are rounded. Numbers equal to or greater than 10g are rounded to the nearest whole number (e.g. 10g, 11g, 12g, etc.) and numbers below 10g are rounded to the nearest 0.5g (0.5g, 1g, 1.5g ... 9g, 9.5g). Any numbers below 0.5g are given as is (e.g. 0.1g, 0.2g, etc.). Calories are rounded to the nearest multiple of 5.