Hunan cucumber

Cooked cucumber is, in my experience, a rarity in all cuisines.  I can only think of two dishes with cooked cucumber.  The first is a Goan cucumber curry that my landlady in Berkeley cooked for me.  The second is this Hunan dish, which I first had at a Hunan restaurant in Beijing.  The English menu said that it was seasoned with an herb called perilla, which I'd never heard of.  Later, I learned that in Japan this herb is called shiso--quite familiar to sushi enthusiasts.  Given the uniqueness of the dish, I was excited when I found a recipe for it in Fuchsia Dunlop's Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook.