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Herbed rice and cucumber salad with wild garlic

To make a bowl of rice more interesting and nutritious, add cucumbers and fresh herbs.

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The Garden of Eating
Herbs and rice combine for a light and refreshing salad.

Sometimes I want my rice to be a little more interesting and nutritious. So I make this simple, refreshing salad.

As with almost all of my favorite recipes, it's flexible – you can choose different herbs, leave the scallions or wild garlic out, add more of it, whatever you feel like.
 
 Start by cooking the rice. I used an organic basmati from Thailand as it's apparently got some of the lowest arsenic levels around but you can use any rice you like. Unfortunately, brown rice, which is far more nutritious than white rice, tends to have higher arsenic levels.

Then wash, dry and chop the herbs of your choice. For this batch, I used a mix of cilantro, dill and wild garlic I'd just harvested from our yard. Chop up half a large cucumber. I usually peel mine unless it's coming from the garden in which case, I leave the skin on.

Toss it all together with some olive oil, salt, and pepper and you're ready to eat. This salad goes really nicely with grilled veggies, meat or fish.

Herbed Rice and Cucumber Salad
Serves 4-6 as a side
 
1-1/2 cups rice

1/2 fresh cucumber, washed, peeled and cut into a medium sized dice

A big handful of fresh herbs of your choice – cilantro, parsley, dill, etc., washed, dried and coarsely chopped

2-3 fresh scallions or wild garlic, cleaned and chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
 
1. Wash and drain the rice and cook according to the directions on the package or for whatever kind you wish to use.
 
2. While the rice is cooking, prep the herbs, cucumber, and scallions or wild garlic.
 
3. When the rice is finished, add 1 tablespoon of olive oil, fluff it with a fork, dump it out into whatever bowl you plan to serve the salad in and let it cool off a bit.
 
4. Once the rice has cooled, add the herbs, cucumber, scallions or wild garlic, final tablespoon of olive oil and season with sea salt and black pepper to taste. Toss it gently to ensure that everything gets evenly distributed and serve.

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