Cube a cucumber (half-inch cubes or so). (Or slice it if you like.) Place in a resealable bag and add chili vinegar, plain white vinegar, and tarragon vinegar if you've got it. (The ideal amount of chili vinegar will just give it a pleasant after-burn, not make it hot in the mouth; for a model, consider the perfect heat in Tillamook Pepper Jack cheese, and if you figure out how much chili vinegar exactly this entails, let me know.) Total vinegar: Around one cup. Add a couple tablespoons of sugar (white or brown, it's fine). Generously add Five Spice Powder (half a teaspoon or more?) and, if you've got them, extra fennel and/or coriander seeds (crush lightly with the back of a spoon first). Seal the bag, seal it inside another one, moosh the whole of it around so everything gets coated, and let sit under refrigeration for 24 hours. Slightly drain the cucumber chunks and serve alongside heavy foods, especially high-fat, high-protein foods, as a contrasting palate-freshener.

Obviously, this is not a well-specified recipe. I've thrown it together a few times and am still figuring out the details. What I love is the contrasts: The crispness and mildness of the cucumbers with the fluidity and intensity of the sauce; the sweet and the pungent; the gentle cooling of the fennel with the heat of the chili vinegar—it's like everything that's great about traditional sweet-and-sour cucumbers, generalized to several other dimensions. I'll post more about the proportions as I discover it.