This tomato cucumber salad came home with me in a plastic deli container, smelling faintly of diesel and lime. I had eaten it on the back deck of a wooden fishing boat tied up in Bandar Abbas, on the Persian Gulf, two summers ago. The fisherman who made it was called Reza, and he was very serious about the size of the cubes.
Reza, His Knife, and a Boat Called Mahi
Reza was somewhere in his fifties, a friend of a friend of a friend, the kind of contact you collect when you used to book trips for a living and you cannot stop collecting them even after you stop. He had crooked glasses and forearms the colour of strong tea. His boat was called Mahi, which just means fish, and he laughed at me for being impressed by that.
I had asked, on the phone, if I could come out with him for a morning. He said yes if I brought the bread. So I did. We motored maybe twenty minutes from the harbour, cut the engine, and bobbed.
He pulled out a paring knife with a green plastic handle. Then a bag of tomatoes, a bundle of small cucumbers, half a red onion already wrapped in newspaper, and a battered tin of dried mint. No cutting board. He diced everything on the lid of an ice chest while we drifted.
Why the Cubes Have to Be Tiny
This is the part Reza was unmovable about. The tomatoes and cucumbers had to be the same size, and that size had to be small. No bigger than the tip of your little finger, he said, holding up his own as proof. He called it salad shirazi, the salad of Shiraz, even though we were nowhere near Shiraz.
I learned later, back home reading at my wooden table while the morning light came through, that he was right about the name. The dish was born in Shiraz, in southern Iran, and the whole architecture of it depends on the dice. Tiny cubes mean the tomato juice, the cucumber water, the lime, and the olive oil pool into their own dressing. You do not whisk anything. You let the vegetables make the sauce.
I also learned that the dish is not as old as people assume. Tomatoes only reached Persia in the late 19th century, during the Qajar era, after working their way east from the Americas through the Ottoman world. So this salad, which feels eternal when you eat it on the deck of an old boat, is barely older than the boat itself.
What I Used
- 3 medium ripe firm tomatoes, Roma or vine, about a pound
- 4 Persian cucumbers, skin on, or 2 Kirby
- Half a red onion, finely diced and soaked in cold water
- 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice, from about 2 limes
- 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon dried mint, crumbled between your fingers
- 2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
- Three-quarter teaspoon fine sea salt
- A quarter teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
Getting It Home to My Kitchen
Persian cucumbers are easy here. I get mine at the Iranian market on Westwood Boulevard, where they come stacked in small green pyramids and the man at the till always asks me what I am making. When I told him salad shirazi the first time, he nodded once, like I had passed something.
The dried mint is the part most people get wrong. Reza was clear. Not fresh mint. Dried. He kept his in a Nescafé tin lined with paper, and the smell when he cracked it open was almost smoky. Dried mint is a hallmark of the southern Iranian table, and the flavour it gives is nothing like fresh mint. Earthier. Older. Slightly bitter in a way that makes the lime taste sharper.
I almost skipped the onion soak the first time I made it at home. I am glad I did not. Ten minutes in cold water takes the raw bite out without softening the crunch, and it makes the salad feel less like a snack and more like a thing.
Inside the Bowl
Here is what is actually happening when you finally put it together. The salt hits the tomatoes and starts pulling water from their cells almost immediately. Within fifteen minutes the cubes will start to slump and the bowl will go soupy. Before that, though, there is a window. The juice that comes out meets the lime, the olive oil floats and slicks the cubes, and the dried mint, crushed between your fingers, releases oils that bloom on contact with the acid.
You are not really mixing. You are folding. Lifting from the bottom of the bowl with a wooden spoon so the dressing pulled up coats whatever was on top. The cucumbers, skin on, stay crisp because their cell walls are tougher than the tomato. That contrast, soft sweet tomato against snappy cucumber, is the whole point.
Do it minutes before you sit down. Not an hour. Not even half. Minutes.
How I Eat It in Los Angeles
I serve it the way Reza did, in a shallow bowl with the pooled juice spooned over each portion, alongside whatever rice I have going. Usually a pot of saffron-scented basmati. Sometimes ground lamb koobideh if I have made it to the butcher, sometimes just yogurt and warm lavash if I have not.
I have a friend who insists on adding feta. She is wrong, but she is also my friend, so I let her. The Greek shopska salad does that, with grated white cheese on top. The Persian one does not. Neither does the Turkish çoban salatası or the Israeli one. Different countries, different acids, different add-ins, but the spine is the same. Tomato, cucumber, onion, salt, something sharp.
The first time I made it back here I overdressed it. Too much oil, not enough lime, and I had used a metal bowl, which Reza warned me about and I forgot. The lime juice went dull against the metal almost on contact. Now I use my one ceramic bowl with the chipped rim, and I taste before I add the second pour of lime.
Still in Touch
Reza and I exchange WhatsApp voice notes maybe four times a year. He sends me photos of the catch. I send him photos of my version of his salad. He always replies with the same thing, that the cubes look uneven and I am cutting too slowly. He is probably right.
I make this most weeks in summer, when the tomatoes at the Hollywood farmers market on Sunday morning are heavy and split-prone and almost too ripe. It tastes like that boat. It tastes like a friendship I did not expect to keep.
Tomato Cucumber Salad
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Place the diced red onion in a small bowl and cover it with cold water. Let it sit for 10 minutes while you prepare the rest of the vegetables. This soak softens the raw bite without losing the crunch.
- Cut each tomato in half through the equator and gently squeeze out the seeds and excess juice over the sink. Dice the tomato flesh into uniform 1/4-inch cubes. Aim for pieces no larger than the tip of your little finger.
- Trim the ends from the cucumbers but leave the skin on. Dice them into 1/4-inch cubes the same size as the tomatoes. Even sizing is what makes this salad authentic, so take your time.
- Drain the soaked onion well, pressing it gently in a paper towel to remove excess water.
- Add the tomatoes, cucumbers, and onion to a medium glass or ceramic bowl. Do not use metal, which can react with the acid in the lime juice and dull the flavor.
- Crumble the dried mint between your fingers directly over the bowl to release its oils, then add the chopped parsley.
- Pour the fresh lime juice and olive oil over the vegetables. Sprinkle in the sea salt and black pepper.
- Fold the salad together gently with a wooden spoon, lifting from the bottom rather than stirring vigorously. You want the vegetables coated, not crushed.
- Taste and adjust with more salt or lime juice if needed. The salad should taste bright and slightly tart with just enough salt to wake everything up.
- Serve immediately in a shallow bowl, spooning some of the pooled juices over each portion. Do not let it sit longer than 10 minutes before serving or the tomatoes will weep and the cucumbers will lose their snap.