The New York Times recently published a hit receipt for Smashed Cucumber Salad. Kenji at Serious Eats nods at the phenomena created while explaining that it's not new, but a very Sichuan specialty providing a wonderful, cooling foil to the heat of Sichuan dishes. His recipe and the NYT's are different: but the point is that the seasoning can be anything you want it to be. The important part is the smashing technique itself.
When sliced, cucumbers have a closed surface. When bruised, the cucumbers have lots of openings that absorb the dressing/marinade differently. As Kenji notes, some will be super crisp and other parts will be a near rubble. The bruised and salted cucumbers turn very transluscent, too. The result is very attractive.
Btw, Kenji smashed the whole cucumber and then slices it, That produces more cuts than I like. More rustic and therefore even more loyal to the technique's goal IMO are cucumbers cut in half, smashed from the skin side (he uses a cleaver, I use a no-handle rolling pin), and then hand-torn into segments. I salt and let them drip in a colander for an hour or three to extrude water and concentrate the flavor, then press to squeeze out excess moisture and dress with sesame oil, salt, white vinegar and loads of garlic. Kenji suggests black vinegar but I don't care for the stain, and the NYT adds soy sauce to theirs which adds a nice warm tawny look and salty-Asian flavor.
Anyway, I'm doing a bowl for tonight's Fourth soiree. If you haven't tried smashed cucumbers yet, you need to!
Here's a link to Kenji's article and recipe:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015 ... ecipe.html