The Ultimate West Country No-Cook Summer Feast: From High-Brix Tomatoes to Artisan Charcuterie

What a summer… It’s no wonder that many of us have been eating outdoors as often as we can. Who wants to be in a stuffy, overheated kitchen when the temperatures are rising above 30 degrees?

Half the time in a heatwave, the word ‘cooking’ just doesn’t apply. Prepping a bit of salad is more the thing. There’s nothing better than a cooling bowl of tomato salad on an overly warm evening. That is not something I’d have actually bothered to write in a newspaper even a short time ago, because the flavour of the great majority of tomatoes grown and sold in this country was poor to zero.

Unless you grew your own, there just were none of the little red flavour bombs around even five years ago — or for most of my adult lifetime, indeed. Supermarket tomatoes became something of a joke — as did the phrase “Grown for flavour” when it began to be introduced to packs of industrialised greenhouse produce.

But now we must take our hats off to the growers who supply the big chains with tomatoes and other summer veg. Even in the cut-price stores this summer you’ve been able to buy punnets of named varieties, some of which aren’t at all bad. Those watery, thick-skinned red billiard balls of yesteryear are becoming a bad memory.

In just a few years, high-end growers — particularly those making the most of the often sunny (especially this year) Isle of Wight — have fundamentally transformed what we can buy on a standard food-shop.

Where once everything was bred purely for shelf-life and uniform shape, today’s top-tier varieties really are bred for flavour. Food writers and chefs have been taking notice, and for good reason.

The Science of Flavour: What is the Brix Rating?

The secret in all this is something called the Brix rating. In simple terms, Brix is a scale used to measure the natural sugar content in produce (one degree Brix equals one gram of sucrose per 100 grams of liquid). Standard mass-market round tomatoes often hover around a bland 3 or 4 on the scale. But the high-brix cultivars hitting the shelves this summer regularly hit 8, 9, or even higher.

It’s not just about raw sweetness, either — high sugar levels act as an amplifier for the natural acids and aromatic compounds, giving you that full-bodied, nostalgic tomato punch that used to be confined to Mediterranean holidays or to the produce coming out of a gardener’s own greenhouse at home.

The Best Summer Tomato Varieties to Look For

If you’re looking to build a summer platter without turning on the stove, these are the named varieties worth hunting down:

• Piccolo: Considered by some as the king of the supermarket cherry-vine varieties (found in M&S, Waitrose, and top-tier ranges). It boasts a high Brix score, thin skin, and an aromatic, intense sweetness.

• Pink Oishi: A pink-hued heritage beefsteak grown on the Isle of Wight. Sliced thick, it offers a silky texture with a rich, savoury umami depth rather than sharp acidity.

• Viola Cocktail: A traditional vine-ripened cocktail tomato that has been winning blind taste tests. It delivers that classic, punchy "old-fashioned" tomato scent and a perfect sweet-acid balance.

• Sugardrop & Santini: Small baby plums that pack a dense, concentrated punch. Santini is delightfully fleshy with few seeds, while Sugardrop is purely about crisp, intense sweetness.

• Coeur de Bœuf (Oxheart): The classic, heavily ribbed Italian beefsteak. It’s velvety, dense, and meaty, making it ideal to slice raw onto a platter with fine olive oil and flaky sea salt.

One important tip: Keep them out of the fridge — cold temperatures kill those delicate aromatic volatiles.

The Cucumber Revival: Say Goodbye to Watery Greens

Which brings us to the humble cucumber — a salad staple that, until recently, was about as exciting as a glass of tap water. To quote the good Dr. Samuel Johnson:

"A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing."

For years, British shoppers were stuck with standard European straight cucumbers — large, perfectly-formed, shrink-wrapped cylinders bred to be indestructible in transit, packed with soggy, watery seeds and encased in a bitter skin.

Now, though, the cucumber market is undergoing its own quiet revival, sometimes driven by a shift toward mini snacking varieties and soil-grown organic crops. If you’ve picked up an organic cucumber from Lidl lately, your tastebuds aren’t deceiving you — they really are a world away from the mass-produced greenhouse versions.

Three Reasons Behind a Better Cucumber

1. Flavour Over Tough Outer Armour: Don’t be fooled by a rugged, tough skin — often found on home-grown or organic ridge varieties. Beneath that thick outer hide lies dense, sweet, highly concentrated flesh that puts watery commercial greens to shame. Simply peel off the rough skin, and you are left with top-tier flavour.

2. Denser Flesh and Less Water: Better cultivars (like Persian or organic mini varieties) have tightly structured flesh with tiny seeds, meaning they retain their crisp crunch rather than turning slushy the moment they are cut.

3. Soil and Sunlight: Organic and soil-grown cucumbers grow at a slower, natural pace compared to hydroponic ones. This concentrates their natural mineral salts and green, cooling sweetness.

The Salting Trick: Whatever cucumber you use, cut or slice it, toss it with a generous pinch of sea salt, and let it sit in a colander over the sink for 20 minutes. As that pool of pale green, watery juice drains away, the texture transforms from flabby to brilliantly crisp, and the natural cucumber flavour becomes instantly concentrated and punchy.

Sweet Peppers: The Long, Sweet Revolution

If standard blocky bell peppers are the reliable workhorses of the veg drawer, the long, tapered pointed jobs are the stars of a raw summer feast.

Specifically, the Ramiro or Palermo peppers (often sold as "Sweet Pointed" or "Extra Sweet" in M&S, Waitrose, and Tesco Finest). Grown to mature fully on the vine, they carry virtually no bitterness and have a thinner skin than standard bell peppers. Their natural sugars peak in mid-to-late summer, giving them a crisp, juicy bite that is almost fruit-like in its sweetness.

The No-Cook Trick: Don’t bother chopping them into neat rings. Tear them open by hand, pull out the core, and snap them into jagged, rustic shards. Dip them straight into good olive oil mixed with sea salt, or scoop up soft, creamy goat’s cheese.

Radishes: Bringing Back the Pepper

Radishes suffered the same fate as old-school supermarket tomatoes for years — bred to look like perfect little red marbles, but tasting mostly of water. Fortunately, the revival of heritage varieties has brought back the fiery pepperiness that makes a radish so refreshing on a hot day.

• French Breakfast: Long and oblong with a white tip, these are mild, crunchy, and delightfully peppery without blowing your head off.

• Heritage Mixed Radishes: (Widely available in M&S and Waitrose in summer). Cut these open and you get stunning pink, purple, and white starbursts. They have a denser texture and a sharp, mustardy bite that cuts through rich food brilliantly.

The Classic French Preparation: I also slice and salt the cheaper ones and after a few hours under a sprinkle of the white stuff they do lose a lot of liquid and gain in flavour. You can also enjoy them the Middle European way — trim the roots, wash them well (leaving a nub of the green stem for a handle), and serve them whole alongside a slab of heavily salted, good-quality unpasteurised butter and a pile of crusty bread. Smear the radish into the cold, rich butter and eat alongside a cold top-quality German or Czech lager for one of the simplest and greatest no-cook treats available in summer.

Assembling a World-Class West Country Summer Platter

When you aren't cooking, the charcuterie and cheese often need to carry the whole show. Forget mass-market imports — the West Country and its immediate neighbours are producing world-beating cured meats and unpasteurised cheeses that belong on any proper summer platter:

Farmhouse & Unpasteurised Cheeses

• Somerset: Traditional clothbound raw-milk cheddars like Keen’s, Montgomery’s, or Westcombe. They offer a deep, savoury, broth-like umami bite and a crumbly structure that pairs effortlessly with sweet Ramiro peppers and ripe Piccolo tomatoes.

• Devon: The iconic Sharpham soft cheese (from near Totnes), rich and buttery, or Quicke’s clothbound cheddar from the rich pastures of Devon’s Creedy Valley bringing a grassy, nut-like depth.

• Cornwall: A wedge of nettle-wrapped Cornish Yarg or creamy Helford Blue, providing a sharp, buttery kick to sit alongside sliced tomatoes.

• Herefordshire: Dorstone from Neal’s Yard Creamery — a turret-shaped, ash-rolled goat’s cheese with a light, mousse-like texture and a bright, citrusy acidity that cuts through rich food brilliantly.

• Gloucestershire: A genuine single-estate Double Gloucester or a tangy, ash-coated Cerney Ash goat’s cheese from the Cotswolds.

Regional Artisan Charcuterie

• Dorset: Capreolus Fine Foods (based in West Dorset). Their award-winning air-dried Dorset Coppa and Dorset Guanciale carry sweet, marbled fat that melts on the tongue.

• Devon: Good Game Charcuterie in Topsham, using local free-range pigs and game to produce traditional, salt-cured salami, coppa, and bresaola without artificial preservatives.

• Somerset: Somerset Charcuterie, blending traditional Italian and Spanish curing techniques with local flavours like West Country cider, mustard, and wild garlic.

• Cornwall: Duchy Charcuterie (Redruth), producing extraordinary air-dried hams, spicy chorizo, and black-pudding salamis.

The Essential Pantry Elevators

• Caperberries: Served whole with their stems attached, these firm, seed-filled berries offer a satisfying, vinegary pop. They slice clean through the rich fats of cured pork and raw-milk cheddar, instantly clearing the palate.

• Salted Anchovies & Olives: A few Spanish or Italian salt-cured anchovies in extra virgin olive oil laid over a slice of Pink Oishi tomato, accompanied by a scattering of plump, brine-cured olives.

Toss a crusty loaf of local sourdough on the board, pour a small bowl of good olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt, and you have a regional, no-cook feast fit for the hottest afternoon of the summer.

The "At a Glance" Summer Salad Guide

• What is the Brix rating in tomatoes?

  Brix measures the natural sugar content in produce. Standard supermarket tomatoes usually score a bland 3 or 4, whereas high-Brix varieties (like Piccolo or Pink Oishi) hit 8 or 9, amplifying natural aromatics and sweet-acid balance.

• Should you keep fresh tomatoes in the fridge?

  No. Cold temperatures destroy the delicate volatile aromatic compounds that give tomatoes their rich, nostalgic flavour. Keep them at room temperature on the counter.

• How do you make cucumbers less watery and more crisp?

  Slice your cucumber, toss generously with sea salt, and let it sit in a colander over the sink for 20 minutes. Draining off that excess pale juice concentrates the natural flavour and leaves the texture brilliantly crisp.

• What are the best West Country cheeses for a no-cook summer board?

  Clothbound raw-milk cheddars (Keen’s, Montgomery’s, Westcombe), buttery Sharpham soft cheese, nettle-wrapped Cornish Yarg, and citrusy ash-coated goat’s cheese like Cotswold Cerney Ash or Herefordshire Dorstone.