This Cucumber Cottage Cheese Salad came home with me from a street food tour in Kraków, of all places. Eight stops in one afternoon. I had built the day around pierogi and oscypek and the promise of cold vodka by stop seven, and the bowl that actually lodged itself in my brain was the quiet one at stop six.
Our guide Marta walked our group of six into a tiny milk bar tucked behind Plac Nowy in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter. The owner, a woman in her sixties with flour still on her wrist, set down small bowls of twaróg folded with cucumber, dill, and a little raw onion. I almost waved it off. I had been promised pickle soup and pyzy two stops earlier. I am glad I did not.
Stop Six on a Kraków Street Food Tour
Marta is one of those guides who refuses to oversell anything. She plates a thing and watches your face. She had spent the first five stops walking us through the louder, festive end of Polish food, the stuff Americans expect, and then she dropped this small cold bowl in front of us and stepped back without explaining a word.
It tasted like a summer afternoon at someone else’s house. Cold. Bright with dill. The curd cheese was twaróg, slightly sharper and drier than what we get in the States, and the cucumber had been salted just enough to keep its bite without going limp on the plate.
I asked Marta for a recipe. She laughed at me, properly. There is no recipe for this in Poland, she said. Everyone makes it. You taste as you go.
Why a Polish Bowl Reminded Me of an American Diner
On the flight home I kept thinking about it. And then I remembered something a little embarrassing. There is an American version of this exact idea, and it lived on diner counters across the Midwest for most of the twentieth century. I had just never paid it any attention.
Cottage cheese hit its odd American peak in the early 1970s, when the average person here ate around five pounds of it a year. It was sold as the official diet food. A scoop of cottage cheese with sliced cucumber, a hamburger patty, sliced tomato, and one canned peach half on the side was the canonical mid-century diner diet plate.
The American version uses small-curd cottage cheese in place of twaróg. The dill stays. The cucumber stays. Same idea, different sleeve.
It is not Polish mizeria either, by the way, since mizeria leans on sour cream and skips the cheese entirely.
What I Used
- One large English cucumber, unpeeled, diced into quarter-inch pieces
- Three quarters of a teaspoon of kosher salt for drawing water out of the cucumber, plus a small pinch at the end
- Two cups of full-fat small-curd cottage cheese, the colder the better
- Two tablespoons of full-fat sour cream
- Three tablespoons of fresh dill, finely chopped, plus a few sprigs to finish
- Three tablespoons of scallion, sliced thin, white and light green parts only
- A quarter teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper, plus another grind on top
Cooking the Cucumber Cottage Cheese Salad in My LA Kitchen
I make this on Wednesday evenings most weeks, when it is too hot to actually cook and there are farmers’ market cucumbers going soft in the crisper. The Armenian deli a few blocks from my apartment carries a small-curd full-fat cottage cheese that is always somehow colder than the supermarket version. That is the one I reach for. The dill comes from the bunch I keep wrapped in a damp paper towel near the back of the fridge.
Step one is the only step that really matters. Salt the diced cucumber and let it sit in a colander over the sink for fifteen minutes. Then gather it in a clean kitchen towel and squeeze it dry. If you skip this you will be eating soup within an hour. I know because I tried it the first summer I came back, in a hurry, with a glass of wine already open and the windows cracked for the breeze.
After that it is just folding. Cottage cheese in a medium bowl, two tablespoons of sour cream stirred in to loosen everything, then the squeezed cucumber, the dill, the scallion. A few gentle strokes with my one good rubber spatula so the curds stay intact. Black pepper at the end. A pinch of salt only if it needs it, since the cucumber already carried some.
I had Joni Mitchell’s Blue on the speaker the second time I made it and now that is what I always play when this is going together. Probably a coincidence. Probably not. I keep a small plate of saltines and good butter on the counter while I wait for the salad to chill in the fridge, which is silly, but it makes the whole thing feel like an event instead of a side dish.
A Few Notes, and What Not to Change
Low-fat cottage cheese ruins this. I have tested it more times than I should admit because every time I forget, then remember. The fat is what keeps the salad creamy instead of weepy. Same goes for the sour cream. Full-fat or nothing.
If you want the full mid-century moment, serve a scoop on a leaf of butter lettuce with sliced tomato on the side, not folded in. Rye toast on the plate works beautifully. Saltines too. The salad does not need much around it.
It is best the day it is made. Day-two leftovers release liquid overnight, but a quick stir and another small pinch of salt brings them back. Cold from the fridge at midnight, eaten standing up by the open refrigerator door, is honestly the way I love it most.
I still think about Marta and that milk bar behind Plac Nowy every time I make this. I doubt she knows that her stop six found its way into my kitchen halfway across the world. The salad is here either way, and it is hers as much as it is mine.
Cucumber Cottage Cheese Salad
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Dice the English cucumber into 1/4 inch pieces and toss in a colander with 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt. Set the colander over a bowl or in the sink and let drain for 15 minutes.
- Gather the drained cucumber in a clean kitchen towel and gently squeeze to remove excess moisture. The cucumber should feel crisp and dry, not wet.
- In a medium mixing bowl, combine 2 cups small-curd full-fat cottage cheese with 2 tablespoons sour cream. Stir gently with a rubber spatula until smooth.
- Add the drained cucumber, 3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill, and 3 tablespoons sliced scallions to the bowl. Fold everything together with a few gentle strokes so the curds stay intact.
- Season with 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper and a small pinch of kosher salt. Taste and adjust, keeping in mind the cucumber already carried some salt.
- Cover the bowl and chill in the refrigerator for at least 10 minutes to let the flavors meld.
- Spoon the salad into bowls or onto a lettuce leaf, top with a few extra dill sprigs, finish with one more grind of black pepper, and serve cold.