Recipe: Cucumber stuffed with green pea pate
This delightful summer dish uses all of the wonderful ingredients available in summer gardens. It makes a fantastic alternative snack to keep in your fridge for those times when you want something savoury to munch on. You can also make the pea pate on its own, and serve with crunchy vegetable sticks or seed crackers. The pate is a vibrant green, which will brighten up any picnic or lunch. Here’s to those lazy summer lunches!
Recipe: Cucumber stuffed with green pea pate
Serves: 4
Calories: 316 total, 79 per serving
Ingredients
2 cucumbers, cut into chunks (8cm long)
For the pate
1 cup of garden peas (fresh or frozen)
Large handful of fresh mint, roughly chopped,
2 small cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
3 tbsp lemon juice
½ cup cooked white beans
Optional: toasted sliced almonds, for garnish
Method
1. To make the pate, boil the peas in a large pan for 2 minutes until they are lightly cooked (so that the peas still have a little bite to them). Drain the peas using a colander (keeping the cooking water to one side) and then rinse the peas in cold water until they are cold to the touch.
2. Place the peas into a food processor or blender, along with the mint, garlic, lemon juice and white beans. Blend until you get a soft creamy filling. Add some of the pea cooking water to top up the mixture until you reach your desired consistency. It´s nice to keep it a little firm so that a fork can stand up in it, if you are using it to stuff the cucumber.
3. Meanwhile, take the cucumber pieces and hollow out the middle, leaving a thick enough edge and at the bottom so that you can place some of the pea pate into the hollow. Discard the middle of the cucumber. (If this sounds too fiddly, cut the cucumber into thick slices, either across the diameter or lengthways – like in the photo – and pretend that the cucumber slices are pieces of bread, with the pea pate as the filling).
4. Decorate with a mint leaf on the top and maybe a sprinkle of toasted sliced almonds. Store in the fridge until ready to eat.
Enjoy our plant-based food at La Crisalida.
About the author
- Lisa is one of the founders of La Crisalida Retreats. She is an Epidemiologist, therapeutic hatha and yin yoga teacher and also teaches mindfulness meditation. Lisa has studied NLP and hypnosis, as well as nutrition (she designs the menus).
