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This exceptionally quick and easy dish was a favourite of mine at the now demolished and much-missed Bamboo Bar, a small restaurant just outside the Sichuan University campus. The serving girls there, who lodged like sardines in the attic at the top of the old wooden building, used to mix up the seasonings behind the counter, taking spoonfuls of garnet-red chilli oil and dark soy sauce from the bowls in the glass cabinet beside them and tossing the cucumber in the piquant sauce. The combination of seasonings, known as "garlic paste flavour" (suan ni wei), is a Sichuanese classic, with its garlicky pungency and undercurrent of sweetness: the same sauce may be used to dress fresh broad beans, thinly sliced cooked pork (perhaps mixed with fine slivers of carrot and Asian radish), boiled pork dumplings or wontons, and many other ingredients. You may use sweet, aromatic soy sauce instead of light soy sauce if you have it in stock.
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