Cucumber & Radish Salad

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I had a cool, Thai-style cucumber and radish salad with my baked chicken the other night, so I thought I'd post the recipe for the salad, too. It's fairly quick and easy to put together, requires no cooking, and is a light, summery salad that is a nice change from traditional lettuce salads. Also, it's kind of pretty! :)

I honestly can't remember where I found the recipe for this, so I apologize for not crediting the source here; if I ever do figure it out, I'll be sure to edit this post with that information.

Cucumber and Radish Salad
Ingredients
1 cup thinly sliced radish
1/2 cup finely chopped orange or red bell pepper
2 cucumbers (English cucumbers work best, as they have more "meat" and less seed/goo), thinly sliced
1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
      Dressing
4 tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tsp finely grated lemon rind
salt & pepper to taste (I use about 1/2 tsp kosher salt and just over 1/4 tsp ground pepper)

After slicing/chopping vegetables, toss them together in a dish. In a separate bowl, combine dressing ingredients and whisk with a fork. Pour dressing over vegetables, and gently toss or turn vegetables until they are all coated in the dressing. Set aside or in the fridge for at least 10 minutes, then toss vegetables in dressing again before serving.

I forgot to pick up some parsley, so just imagine it in there. ;)

A few notes on this salad:
1) using a mandolin slicer makes slicing the cucumbers/radishes much safer and quicker and gives you thinner slices than with a knife.
2) this dish is best served on the same day you make it. It's okay the next day, but tends to be a little sweeter (I think because the salt draws out the natural sugars in the cucumber and radish). Also, the pink skin on the radishes will bleed out and dye the dressing and parts of the cucumber pink by the next day. It's still good, but just looks a little odd...so if you want to make this a day ahead but don't want it to be pink, I suggest peeling the radishes.
3) I'm not completely sure how to calculate the nutritional value of this dish, since the dressing mostly ends up in the bottom of the dish, so I'm not going to provide that information here. For my purposes on my calorie tracking program, I just input the cucumbers/radish I ate (measured by the cup), and then guesstimated that I had about 1/2 tsp of olive oil, but your guess is as good as mine (vinegar and lemon juice have minimal calories and are considered "freebies" by my maintenance plan, so I didn't try to add those in).