BREAK DOWN VEGGIES, BUILD FLAVOR

Smashing, salting allows produce to better soak up salad’s punchy, citrus-soy dressing

Eating vegetables raw fits not only our healthyeating mindsets but also the produce available. Radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, celery, lettuces: Take a bite from your market bag, and if they’re ripe, they’re pretty good. Snappy-sweet. Crunchy-crisp. And we didn’t have to do anything to get there.

But there are ways to help these vegetables taste more like themselves. Don’t worry, they’re easy moves — lazy, even. To start, those crisp vegetables like salt. Most of the vegetables mentioned above are more than 90 percent water. You know what doesn’t taste like anything? Water. Since they’re not being cooked, the vegetables’ f lavors need a little help to concentrate, and salt will do just that.

In the case of vegetables that easily expel excess moisture, such as tomatoes and cucumbers, salt them in a colander placed in a bowl: Their moisture will leave and a pure vegetable essence will remain. For the others, you can toss the sliced vegetables with a sprinkle of salt right on your cutting board. While they don’t have water to leach out, they’ll now be nicely seasoned, ready to make your salad more f lavorful. And in the case of vegetables with tough skin, such as cucumbers or green beans, the salt will even soften their outsides, leaving them glossy and smooth.

Many late-season vegetables, however, are crisp to the point of being stiff. Cutting them will leave clean sides that don’t allow the dressing to penetrate — and instead it will slip off the slices. We can break those rigid cell walls by whacking at them.

Smashing vegetables is nothing new, but it’s so fun that it remains thrilling every time you do it. Smashed cucumbers are a mainstay in many Asian cuisines. With a few whacks of a cleaver, skillet, rolling pin or some other heavy device, the cucumber is broken up into irregular pieces. Some spots stay firm, while others give and soften. In those irregular crags, dressing can nestle. In Sichuan cooking, for instance, smashed cucumbers are seasoned with vinegar, garlic, and sometimes chiles or Sichuan peppercorns, and are served as a cooling side. What was once a slick cucumber becomes a rubble of various shapes, textures and flavors — all you had to do was smash and salt it.

The technique is not just for cucumbers, though. Many firm vegetables can take it. A smashed roasted potato or beet has a lot more character than a cut one — ready for, say, a green sauce, mustard vinaigrette or garlicky yogurt. Same with raw radishes and string beans, as in the recipe here. Once broken up into bite-size rags and seasoned, the string beans are no longer squeaky. Instead, their texture is reminiscent of a snow pea — crisp but giving — and their f lavor is fresh and pronounced, not at all dulled by heat. The radishes? They open up like dinosaur eggs, ready to absorb dressing.

Here, a light sauce reminiscent of ponzu is made with soy sauce, citrus and a little rice vinegar. As the vegetables sit in the dressing, they start to lightly pickle and, yes, get more tender still. You could eat the salad with your fingers from the bowl, or turn it into a meal with cooked grains, a soft egg and nori. Switch up the dressing and accompaniments with whatever sounds good or needs using up. Chances are that smashing your vegetables will feel really good and you’ll want to do it more than once.