Compressed cucumber

Cucumbers can be a bit like that friend that everyone knows who doesn't offend, little bit boring, always hanging around the salad bar.

I have been working on compressing things for a while now. To compress something you vacuum seal it to draw out the oxygen. That intensifies the flavour of whatever it is you are using in this case cucumber but we also use tomato petals.

                      I started working on this dish and it is going to be on the specials next week-

         Home cured duck ham, Hendricks compressed cucumber, summer fruit and nitro sorbet.

Whilst doing this dish I started thinking about how to incorporate cucumber in a hot dish. I have heard about butter poacher cucumber some say it tastes like banana (not sure about that one),but tried chargrilling it and it tasted fantastic. So I might bring that to the table on the next wild night.

I also had a moment of madness during all this and made sparkling tomatoes using CO2 but that needs a bit more work, it had mixed reviews from the staff, it's a hard one to get your head around.

Photography by Carla Grassy