Rainbow tomato salad with pickled cucumber.

My tomatoes are almost the only thing I have managed to keep alive in the garden this summer. I planted them late, and the fruit has just begun ripening in the last week. But I was determined to use what I had for the Glyndebourne picnic.

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I had lots of Sungolds, a few Indigo Blue Berries (which I like to think of as a tomato which has passed through red with anger and is now purple with rage), and a single plum. Enough for perhaps two people, but for seven I supplemented with a box of heritage tomatoes. Although less tasty (and obviously far more expensive) than the tomatoes from the garden, there were some pretty pale green ones that could easily be mistaken for grapes. I am resolved to look these up next year to grow myself.

I like to have at least one pickle at a meal and in the last few years have come to appreciate chilli, in moderation. Recently I have been making a lot of spicy pickled tomatoes. However with my own tomatoes this be a waste: drenched in vinegar, the sun-grown sugars of garden tomatoes would be lost.

I decided to do a variation: tomato salad with a spicy cucumber pickle. I wanted to make the pickle sweet, which would hopefully emphasise rather than overwhelm the natural sweetness and acidity of the tomatoes. Even pickled, the cucumber would also provide some crunch to the overall meal.

The pickle

I made this three days before the picnic, to give the cucumber plenty of time to soak up the flavours. I bought baby cucumbers and chopped them into small pieces, about 2-3 mm deep. With full-sized cucumbers I would have removed the seeds. I sliced up a bulb's worth of garlic into pieces around the same size. (I put garlic in all my pickles. Pickled garlic is always delicious.) I put all this into a container with a tight-fitting lid. Pickling liquid is not something you want to spill inside your fridge.

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I made pickling liquid by heating up cider vinegar - chosen to complement the cider I would be using to cook the ham - with a splash of water, quite a lot of sugar and chilli flakes. You can be pretty generous with chilli in a pickle, as capsaicin, the source of that burning sensation, is actually alkaline, and is therefore tempered by the acidity of the vinegar. This leaves the flavour of chilli, without the numbing heat.

I was about to pour the liquid over the cucumber when I tasted it and realised - the horror - that I had forgotten to add salt.

Then I added too much salt.

Rather than throwing it out and starting again, I diluted the salt with more vinegar and water, and continued adding sugar until it was really quite sweet. Finally I poured the simmering liquid over the cucumber and garlic, gave it a quick stir and sealed the lid. Nothing else would be required until the day of the picnic.

The tomatoes

There are many advantages to growing your own tomatoes: flavour, economy, variety. But perhaps the best thing is that sometimes you get really tiny, but perfectly ripe, tomatoes. I call these tomatinis.

I halved the tomatoes and dressed them with extra virgin rapeseed oil. I use this quite often: it's ideal when you don't want to introduce the flavour of extra virgin olive oil but do want that unctuous silkiness.

I drained the pickles and noticed the bright green of the cucumber had dulled in the acidity of the vinegar. They tasted good though: sweet and sour; with just enough warmth coming through from the chillis.

I poured the pickles over the tomatoes, stirred them through and tasted. The droplets of pickle juice cut through the oil in the same way as lemon juice or balsamic vinegar. The salt dissolved into it was enough that I did not think any more was needed.

The overall combination was pleasant: the crunch of cucumber and garlic contrasting nicely with the soft tomatoes, while the flavours melded together. Sweet, salt, sour and spice. What more could you want in a pickle?