When I was a child, we had a huge garden full of vegetables and fruits. We had grapes, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, a pear tree, a walnut tree, a plum tree, onions, carrots, watermelons, potatoes, gherkins and the list could go on.
During the summer month gherkins were fermented. This is a very weird thing in Western Europe, but we grew up on it. My grandma picked the gherkins, washed them thoroughly, topped and tailed them and stuffed a 5l jar with them as tight as possible. She put salt, a huge bunch of dill (also picked from the garden), some garlic, horseradish and sourdough bread on the top, covered it loosely and essentially let it rot under the warm sun for a few days. In professional terms we call this lactic fermentation.
Pork stew with fermented gherkins and fresh bread is comfort food to many with Eastern European heritage. It was usually eaten it in the garden, on the porch steps or in our case under the shade of the huge walnut tree.
Eating cold soups as a starter in Hungary during the warm month has been always popular but traditionally, they are made with fruits that give the soup a slight sweetness. This inspired me to create a version of cold cucumber soup by keeping the classic flavours - fermented gherkins but only delicately, dill and the freshness of raw cucumber.
This is what I have come up with: cold cucumber soup with cucumber sorbet and smoked haddock bonbons.
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