Yoko Inagaki exudes enough energy to power a small town outside of Kyoto or perhaps a fleet of electric cars. With her right arm raised, clutching a large wooden rolling pin, with large round glasses, long bangs, and a wide smile, she whacks a long, thin cucumber while preparing “addictive cucumber salad.” When asked what she was thinking during this preparation, she said, “I’m thinking of someone I really don’t like!” A very non-Japanese sentiment to express out in the open but a large part of Yoko’s infectious charm.

Yoko left her business career after 12 years and jumped with both feet into the culinary arts, founding her own cooking school and gaining her official tour guide license. Like most Osaka apartments, Yoko’s kitchen is small but efficient and I spent a half day getting personal cooking lessons.

Before the cooking, however, our tour of Osaka included the famous takoyaki (crisp octopus balls) and okonomiyaki (savory pancakes squiggled with Kewpie mayonnaise) plus we tasted grilled unagi (eel), palmsized, scorched scallops on the half shell, squid smashed flat into giant crackers, glutinous, pastel mochi and an intensely colored and flavored matcha soft serve. We also learned that today’s farmed fugu (pufferfish) generally do not develop the toxins of the wild fish (oddly enough, a bit of a disappointment).

Back at Yoko’s kitchen, the salad features hunks of cucumber dressed lightly with a garlic, sesame oil and sesame seed dressing. It’s cooling and crisp, satisfyingly rich from the sesame, yet finishes clean. Yoko whacks the cucumbers with a rolling pin to roughen up the surface in order to better absorb a dressing. Otherwise, dressings will sheet off the slick surface.

The addictiveness of the salad is in part due to a secret ingredient: “Chinese seasoning,” (chuka dashi), a common flavoring in Japan that’s mostly chicken-flavored MSG. While you can find chuka dashi seasoning at specialty stores, we found basic chicken bouillon worked equally well— just crumble and dissolve a small portion of a bouillon cube into the dressing. (Here at Milk Street, we have no problem with either MSG or bouillon cubes.)

Yoko left the cucumber to sit in the dressing for a bit before serving but we salted and sugared the whacked cucumbers and weighted them to expel additional moisture before dressing. A small change, but this helped concentrate the flavors of the dressing.

Matthew Card

Matthew Card is Milk Street’s Creative Director for Recipes and Products, resident coffee geek, knife collector and equipment junkie. He has 25-plus years of professional cooking, recipe development, food writing and teaching under his belt. When he’s not in the Milk Street kitchen or on the road hunting for new recipes and ideas, Matthew lives with his family in Canberra, Australia, where he does his best to dodge kangaroos on his mountain bike and is learning to love Vegemite.