A lovely cucumber recipe. To tackle the flood from the garden.

Anyone lucky enough to have a garden is also lucky enough to grow their own fruit and vegetables. Cucumber plants, for example, are relatively easy to look after. They need something to climb on and sufficient water. Then they reward us with pretty yellow flowers and plenty of cucumbers – sometimes too many. They are most popular in salads, pickled or fermented. However, cucumbers can also be grilled or cooked.

August 2026

Let me start with a little confession: the gherkins in the picture are highly poisonous; they are what are known squirting cucumber. So please use different ones and make sure you survive this dish. However, as I find these prickly little gherkins so pretty, they’re allowed to stay. Edible gherkins belong to the cucurbit family and – just like tomatoes – are botanically speaking berries.

Cucumber salad, pickled gherkins, Asian-style marinated gherkins, Greek salad, tzatziki, cold cucumber soup… at some point you run out of ideas for what to do with all the cucumbers from the garden. As long as you keep powdery mildew under control (by removing affected leaves), you can harvest them almost every day. It’s a bit like: ‘Goodness me, another one!’ Before you go delighting the neighbours at night by throwing cucumbers over the fence, here’s a delicious dish from my childhood:

Cucumber sauce! It’s served either with boiled beef, grilled meat or simply with boiled potatoes. So, following on from the tomato recipe, here’s a cucumber recipe.

CUCUMBER SAUCE
Ingredients for 4 portions

2 large cucumbers
1/2 bunch of dill
1 onion
50 g butter
2 tsp flour
150 ml vegetable or beef broth
4 tbsp sour cream
a dash of vinegar
salt, a pinch of ground caraway

Preparation
- Peel the cucumbers and cut them in half lengthways. Remove the seeds with a small spoon. Coarsely grate the cucumbers (you can also cut them into half-slices, but I prefer them grated)
- Finely dice the onion
- Chop the dill
- Gently fry the onions in butter over a low heat until translucent (do not brown)
- Add the flour and toast briefly, stirring vigorously (do not brown)
- Pour in a small portion of the soup and stir quickly to prevent lumps from forming. As soon as the roux thickens, add a little more stock until the sauce is creamy but not too thick. As a general rule, add rather less soup, as the gherkins release water whilst steaming.
- Stir in the gherkins, steam over a low heat for 5 minutes and taste. The gherkins should still have a little bite to them.
- Stir in the sour cream – do not boil any further!
- Mix in the dill and season to taste with salt, caraway and vinegar.

Enjoy your meal!

By the way, cucumbers are also brilliant on the barbecue:
simply cut them lengthways into 1 cm-wide strips, place them on the barbecue, season with salt, drizzle with olive oil, and serve whilst they’re still crisp