Market Life issue 45

Market Life

No. 45

The Borough Market magazine boroughmarket.org.uk

281003 772397

Food magazine of the year 2019

9

ISSN 2397-2815

Dee Woods on why food is more than a commodity Learning the art of butchery with Ginger Pig The long (and slightly smutty) history of alliums

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 1

19/07/2019 10:49

KRIS PIOTROWSKI

Snapshot Hot drinks and cool customers at Rabot 1745

2

Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 2

18/07/2019 17:32

Welcome to Market Life No. 45

BOROUGH MARKET OPENING HOURS Limited market Monday-Tuesday: 10am-5pm Full market Wednesday-Thursday: 10am-5pm Friday: 10am-6pm Saturday: 8am-5pm Borough Market 8 Southwark Street London SE1 1TL Underground London Bridge Train London Bridge Twitter @boroughmarket Instagram @boroughmarket facebook.com/boroughmarket To ensure that a weekly fix of articles, recipes and Borough Market event information lands in your email inbox, sign up to our newsletter: boroughmarket.org.uk/newsletter Market Life can be picked up free of charge from The Borough Market Store. It is also handed out at London Bridge and Liverpool Street stations on the first three Thursday mornings after its release. £3.80 where sold

3

pp9 Bream, tomato and sorrel crudo pp16-21 Gazpacho

Scallops in sherry butter sauce Pot-roasted loin of pork with fig and walnut stuffing Quick-pickled radish, samphire and parsley salad Octopus in red wine vinegar Raspberry drop pancakes pp30 Cucumber and gin sorbet

Any regular readers who happen to be particularly eagleeyed may notice that this new edition of Market Life looks a little different to the previous few. It has a new style of front cover, a few subtle visual tweaks and a couple of stellar new contributors (welcome, Sue Quinn and Kathy Slack). This is, of course, completely in keeping with Borough Market, where nothing ever stands still for very long.

You might expect that the oldest food market in the country, a place with 1,000 years of history, would be inclined to look backwards, but the simple fact is that this institution’s remarkable longevity comes from a never-ending willingness to grow and evolve. A new chapter is always just a few pages away—a fact illustrated by the current presence within the Market of construction workers whose exciting brief will become clear to our intrigued customers in the coming months. There are new openings—foremost among them the arrival on Bedale Street of Flor, one of the most highly anticipated restaurant launches of 2019—and new traders, all with fantastic products and great stories to tell. There are new innovations to combat food waste and plastic useage (you can read about our plastic-free cling film on pp5). And the list of chefs sharing their skills at the free, twice-weekly sessions of the Demo Kitchen grows apace—it is surely now the rival of any food festival or TV cookery show.

One thing that absolutely hasn’t changed is Market Life’s right to proudly display the words ‘food magazine of the year’ on the front cover. In 2018, we were all blown away by the decision of the highly respected Guild of Food Writers— whose membership includes pretty much everyone whose wise words about food you’ve ever read, anywhere—to grant us that particular accolade; we were even more surprised in June to win that same award for the second year in a row: testament to the skills of the many talented people who contribute to the publication, but also to the extraordinary depth and colour of the subject matter found within Borough Market—any true food writer’s dream. To add a further cherry to this thick clafoutis of humbling accolades, our features writer and deputy editor Clare Finney was named food writer of the year at the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink awards, where our regular columnist Thom Eagle also deservedly picked up a prize for best debut book. So, whatever else changes at Borough Market, one thing that clearly won’t be shifting any time soon is the quality of writing to be found within these pages.

Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 3

18/07/2019 17:32

NEWS & EVENTS

IN SEASON

Flor John Ogier and James Lowe, the duo behind Michelin-starred Shoreditch restaurant Lyle’s, have opened a new bakery, restaurant and wine bar at Borough Market. Described as Lyle’s’ “informal little sister”, Flor occupies a beautiful, historic three-floored building on Bedale Street, offering an inventive menu reflective of its position both within the Market and in this most cosmopolitan of cities.

In residence Every Thursday lunchtime in August, the Demo Kitchen will be hosting sessions devoted to some of the very specific skills involved in buying, preparing and cooking meat, fish and vegetables. Look out for details on the Borough Market website.

Borough Market Cookbook Club A new season of this highly popular club kicks off in September. Join up for free on the Borough Market website, then get your name into the ballot for tickets.

Cup of kindness Clare Finney’s new web series looks into the stories behind some of Borough Market’s most sustainably produced drinks.

On the sauce Angela Clutton’s latest online opus sees her exploring the wide and complex world of saucing.

Wet walnuts New season native nuts from East Sussex. Sweet and juicy, perfect for pickling or simply scattering over dishes.

Enjoya peppers Streaked yellow and red, these sweet and crunchy bell peppers are pleasing on both the eye and the tongue.

Young rainbow chard The beautiful, brightly coloured leaves of this baby brassica make great edible parcels for cheese or fish.

Kesar mango One of the most highly prized mango varietals, hailing from Gujarat, India, notable for its bright, sweet pulp.

4

On the cover This brick-red beauty is a carabinero, a large deep-sea prawn species, caught off the Iberian coast and sold at Furness Fish Markets. Best enjoyed simply salted and grilled, it will retain its spectacular colour even after cooking.

English marsh samphire Seasonal sea vegetable with a pleasing crunch and a saline, mineral taste. Eat raw or quickly cooked.

Courgette flowers Found either attached or alone at Borough’s greengrocers. Stuff with goat’s cheese, grill, and drizzle with honey.

FIVE BEE PRODUCTS

Honeycomb From Field and Flower Lavender honey Taste Croatia Propolis De Calabria Wax wrap The Borough Market Store Bee pollen Oliveology

1

Devon flower honeycomb The waxy, cratered ‘shelf’ in which the bees store their honey is an edible delight in itself: naturally chewy, but melts to a spreadable consistency when smeared messily on hot crumpets or croissants. This one comes filled with delicately lemony honey from South Molton, Devon, courtesy of the Wallace family, who make sure to leave the bees enough honeycomb to prevent them being bereft over winter.

Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 4

18/07/2019 17:32

Wet walnuts Food and Forest Young rainbow chard Ted’s Veg Enjoya peppers Chegworth Valley Black figs Elsey & Bent Salt marsh lamb Rhug Farm Skirt steak Wild Beef Etivaz Mons Cheesemongers

Lobster The king of crustaceans: sizzle on the grill and eat as fresh as can be, brushed with butter and drizzled with lemon.

Salt marsh lamb Grazing on the grasses of the Caernarfon coast in Wales imbues this sought-after meat with a unique flavour.

Black figs Large, plump and lusciously sweet Spanish fruits with smooth skin and chewy flesh. Pair with firm, sharp cheese.

Skirt steak Cut from the diaphragm muscles of Welsh black cattle, this juicy, highly flavoured steak is best cooked hard and fast, then left to rest.

Cowheart tomatoes Deeply ridged tomatoes with juicy, intensely flavoured flesh. Roast stuffed with mushrooms and breadcrumbs.

Sardines These small, oily fish are at the peak of their plumpness and abundance at the height of summer, perfectly timed for the barbecue.

Etivaz A hard summer cheese made with the raw milk of cows that graze the herb and wildflower-rich pastures of the Vaud Alps.

Propolis For bees, propolis is the glue that holds the hive together, quite literally. For humans, its natural antiseptic properties make it a useful cleanser, healer and moisturiser all in one.

De Calabria’s comes from organic agriculture farmers Doris and Pasquale, who use beekeeping as a way of naturally pollinating their fields.

Their honey and propolis are a happily sustainable bi-product.

Wax wrap We all know the problem with single use plastic, but it’s not always easy to find alternatives.

You can dispense with clingfilm, sure, but then what to use?

Borough Market has teamed up with Bermondsey Street Bees to solve that problem. These wraps are made using 100 per cent cotton, infused with beeswax and natural oils—making them slightly sticky, washable, and safely compostable.

Bee pollen To make just one small globule of pollen, bees have to visit around 1,500 flowers—but they (and we) are rewarded for their hard work with an excellent source of protein. Oliveology’s pollen is collected by honeybees from the forests and flora of northern Greece, before being carefully dried until powdery in texture.

Melt it into cold milk, juice or smoothies, or simply scatter on yoghurt for texture.

2345 Lavender honey Croatia has both a rich history of honey production and an abundance of lavender—it made sense, then, to combine the two.

Acacia honey is infused with the scented purple blooms to create a light, floral honey that works perfectly either stirred into chamomile tea or paired with kozlar, a goat’s cheese soaked in olive skins, whose slight bitterness acts as the perfect foil for the sweetness of the honey.

5

Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 5

18/07/2019 17:32

IN PRAISE OF ST NECTAIRE FERMIER FROM UNE NORMANDE A LONDRES Words: Mark Riddaway Image: Polly Webster

I once interviewed a man whose job it was to drive blood and organs between hospitals for potentially life-saving transplants. The gravity of his cargo weighed heavily upon him as he weaved through the lunatic traffic of central London, seeking to balance the competing demands of speed and meticulous care. Driving back from France, I knew how he felt. It had been a familiar holiday story. We’d been staying in a house in the Auvergne region of France, and on the first morning had been to the food market in the nearest small town, where a cheesemaker had set up a table piled high with St Nectaire fermier cheese—a washed rind beauty made from the unpasteurised milk of the Salers cows that feed on the region’s rich, volcanic pastures. With the deep fungal funk of its grey-blue rind playing off the nutty silk of its centre, it tasted a bit like wild mushrooms in a creamy sauce, eaten in a cellar. Or, if we’re going to be properly Gallic about it, like an illicit tryst on a pile of hay in a hot, stuffy farm building. As a cheese, it was the perfect complement to bread, wine and languor. So, of course, I impulsively bought several more to take home.

The only problem was that we were driving back. It was the middle of a very hot summer, and we had given ourselves a leisurely few days to make it home. And time, soft cheese and a hot car make for a messy ménage à trois.

For three days, everything—our route, our timings, our personal 6

comfort—became subservient to the needs of the cheese. To my horror, the two hotels we’d booked had no fridges in the rooms. In one, much to the misery of both my partner and the planet, I made the air conditioning as cold as possible and we slept in our clothes. In the other, there was no air con at all, so I ran a cold bath, and, using whatever came to hand, created a waterproof floating raft on which the precious cargo could sit.

About a week after making it home and gorging myself silly in a rush to finish the cheese before it died, I stumbled upon loads of St Nectaire fermier at Borough Market, at least the equal of the stuff I’d bought in France, and considerably better for having at no stage spent three days in a hot car.

Yes, the vital organs made it to the hospital, but apparently the patient didn’t need them after all.

WHAT IT TAKES SOURCING TRUFFLES Mario Prati of Tartufaia on the ins and outs of sourcing and selling high quality truffles Interview: Clare Finney Are the truffles you source farmed or wild?

Both. Our Australian truffles are farmed—truffle farms in Australia are a relatively recent thing but have done remarkably well—as are most of the ones we get from Spain. That said, the very concept of truffle farms is a grey area, because they are so unreliable. The truffle, which grows underground around the roots of a tree, is a very weak fungus, so other fungi are prone to take over. You can’t use fungicides or pesticides to stop other fungi establishing themselves, as that would kill the truffles as well. This is good in that it keeps producers in check, but it does make it all very unpredictable: 60 per cent of truffle farms fail, and you can’t farm white truffles at all, so we are also reliant on the natural woodlands. Eighty per cent of the truffles we get from Italy are wild.

Which do you prefer?

When the wild truffles are good, they are better—but it is hard to have consistency, which is what chefs are after. Personally, I like the wild ones. The farms are sustainable in the sense that you are keeping a patch of woodland and irrigating it, but it is still a monoculture and that is not the

Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 6

18/07/2019 17:32

best way to go about faming.

If they are planting oak, they are planting all oak. If they are planting poplar, it is all poplar.

Moreover, they will have cleared natural woodland in order to do this. With wild truffles, you are making natural woodland work for you, just as it is. It’s fenced to prevent wild boars, but no trees or plants are removed.

Are pigs still used to hunt wild truffles?

There are a few people in France and Turkey who still work with pigs. Their sense of smell is seven times more developed than a dog, but you can’t train a pig not to eat the truffles. You have to keep them on a leash, and physically pull them back. Dogs can be trained not to eat the truffles they find. Of course, this makes trained dogs very expensive—up to 10 or 12 grand for a six-month-old puppy.

There’s an old joke in truffle areas that suppliers look after their dogs better than their wives.

How do you sniff out the best truffle suppliers?

In most food businesses, suppliers find you. When I first got into the truffle business it was the other way around—it was all about the connections.

It wasn’t a matter of money; you had to know the families and the people involved on a personal level. My first close supplier, with whom I started in 2006, was in his sixties. He’d supplied the same families for 40 years, and each one was entitled to a quota.

The only reason we were able to get in there was because one of his customers died and his sons weren’t interested in the truffle business, so their quota was up for grabs. My dad was a friend of this guy, so he was able to slip in there. In some areas this is still the case, particularly in France, but it’s been changing as more money has come into the industry and black truffle farms in Spain and Australia have proved so successful.

When I first got into the truffle business, finding suppliers was all about connections. It wasn’t a matter of money; you had to know the families and the people involved on a personal level.

In some areas this is still the case, particularly in France 7

Are truffles easier to source than they once were, then?

At a certain point money does start to talk. It is much easier, especially for us, as we’re established now and people know us. From now until the white truffle season starts in September, suppliers will be approaching us every week, but you have to be careful who you work with because 80 per cent of new suppliers go bust within a couple of months. People see it as an opportunity to make money quickly, then find they can’t manage supply and demand: they buy too much, and waste money, or they fail to meet the demands of their buyers. The hardest part of our job is keeping a supply chain at a certain standard, because our customers are used to a certain quality.

Having a good relationship with your suppliers is still so important: with perishable products, at those prices, there is a certain level of trust involved.

How do you judge the quality of truffles?

Sometimes there are worms in truffles. That’s a normal thing for a fungus, but in the hours between being boxed and being delivered that worm can travel from truffle to truffle—so you go from one damaged truffle to 10. In Australia, suppliers scan each truffle through a machine: it’s a 48-hour trip, so they need to be sure. Once they’re here, I look at the shape and the size— mainly the shape. The rounder the better—and the more expensive—as being round, a truffle takes longer to lose weight from evaporation than if it is bobbly and has a greater surface area. It’s hard to find round wild truffles because of the roots and stones around the trees.

How do you get truffles from Italy to Borough Market?

The suppliers go out at sunrise with their dogs. They get back by 10 or 11am, then go through the process of checking them and brushing most of the soil off, without getting them wet. We have someone in Italy who goes through, selecting the truffles before they are sent. They are shipped at 4pm and I get them here by 11am the next day.

They can’t sit in a warehouse because they’d lose weight, so the logistics are tricky. The black truffles are a bit more robust, but the white loses 10 per cent of its weight every 24 hours. It is highly stressful, especially for those guys who deal with large quantities of truffles—you can see it in their faces by the end of the season. They are people on the edge.

And because it’s essentially a very simple dish—the components add up to more than the sum of their parts—it must be made with the finest quality ingredients possible.

“There’s nowhere for poor ingredients to hide,” James adds.

In Arabica’s dazzling version, Levantine tradition meets a touch of cheffy innovation with the addition of saffron yoghurt, mint salad, toasted walnuts, a pinch of Aleppo chilli and a trickle of pomegranate molasses. No surprise, then, that baba ganoush is one of the most popular—and beautiful— dishes on Arabica’s extensive menu.

A DISH DISSECTED BABA GANOUSH Sue Quinn breaks down the making of a Levantine classic

Baba ganoush is a precious jewel of Levantine, Turkish and north African cuisines.

It is often served as part of a mezze spread or favoured to break the fast during Ramadan, when Muslims refrain from eating during daylight hours.

Some people call it a dip, others a salad or a side, but however it’s described, this rich and smoky dish is among the most flavourful morsels ever to have been scooped onto flatbread.

Aubergine, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil make up the quartet of basic ingredients, but the melody of baba ganoush varies widely, depending on where it’s made, and by whom.

Sometimes it will thrum with sweet and warming spices; sometimes it comes dotted with other elements, according to the season and the region.

Baba ganoush is more about personal taste than strict adherence to a recipe, as long as the components sing together as one delicious whole.

But its defining feature is always the burnt aubergine.

“The aubergine must almost be incinerated on the outside, because baba ganoush is all about the way the smoke penetrates the flesh,” says James Walters, founder of Borough Market’s Arabica restaurant.

Components Aubergine Aubergine is blackened over an open flame to deliver deep smoky notes to the butter-soft flesh within.

This is scraped away from the skin—including all the charred bits, as this is where the essential smoky flavour resides—and mashed, then left to drain to remove any bitter juices.

Garlic Garlic is essential, whether added with a light hand or an assertive thwack.

Lemon juice Lemon juice provides a spritely counterpoint to the smoky richness of the aubergine, but it’s important that this acidity is perfectly balanced with all the other flavours.

T ahini Tahini is controversial. Some argue the dish is just not baba ganoush without the addition of sesame paste. Others insist the genuine article contains no tahini at all; if it does, it’s just an aubergine salad. If you’re making the dish at home, as with the garlic, the choice is yours.

Herbs Herbs add freshness and an extra flavour dimension. Parsley and mint are common additions, finely chopped and stirred into the aubergine or scattered over the top. Dill is known to grace baba ganoush, too.

Olive oil Olive oil can be mixed into the aubergine to make a smooth puree, but might not be needed if tahini is used. Sometimes it’s drizzled halo-like around the edge of the serving plate.

P omegranate Pomegranate seeds often crown the top, providing vibrant colour and juicy pops of tartness.

Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 7

18/07/2019 17:32

DRESS TO IMPRESS Ed Smith on the Market ingredients that with minimum effort and maximum effect can embellish a finished dish. This time: extra virgin olive oil Image: Regula Ysewijn

“Finish with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil”, like “season with salt and pepper”, is one of those throwaway lines we see at the end of a recipe so often that we barely take it in. And while the instruction is a clear one, it also horrifically undersells this vital action: good extra virgin olive oil is not an optional seasoning; it’s a crucial ingredient that can have a disproportionately positive effect on a dish. Oh, and more often than not you need a ‘glug’, not a ‘drizzle’.

By my count there are around 40 different pure, cold-pressed extra virgin olive oils available at Borough Market (not including the flavoured ones). There are bottles and tins from Greece, oils from Umbria, from Calabria, from the north and south of Spain and from Croatia, too.

Some are blended, some are unfiltered, some come from a single variety of olives, some are extracted from olives from just one small orchard. All of them really taste of something. Here is an incredible natural ingredient that can add depth, structure, aroma and spice to your food.

But what is that taste? It’s actually quite hard to usefully express the character and flavour of extra virgin olive oil. There are plenty of adjectives bandied around: ‘assertive’, ‘rounded’, ‘fruity’, ‘spicy’, ‘olivey’. Do those help? By my reckoning, the quality of an oil comes back to two core characteristics— ‘peppery’ and ‘grassy’—and, specifically, when those notes hit and for how long they persist.

The peppery hit of an extra virgin olive oil can be really quite aggressive and sometimes fairly astringent, depending on the olive variety but also when those olives were harvested; early, less ripe olives produce more peppery oils. It’s all down to levels of oleocanthal, a compound that’s responsible for the burn, but also olive oil’s famed anti-inflammatories and antioxidants. These qualities 8

will fade in the bottle over time, and also through exposure to warmth and sunlight—a good reason to use your oil liberally.

As well as having that astringency, olives picked and pressed early in the harvest are greener in colour and their oil is fresher and grassier in flavour than those that ripen on the tree. This is because those qualities are largely due to the levels of chlorophyl in the olives when the oil is extracted, and chlorophyl content decreases as olives get riper.

You can imagine, I’m sure, the myriad factors involved in all of this. However, it is relevant to

note that all extra virgin olive oil comes from the first pressing of a fruit, and the temperature of the oil through that process must not exceed 27C. To do so would mean it couldn’t be called ‘cold-pressed’.

The higher the temperature, the more flavour and character is removed. I highly recommend trying Oliveology’s oils extracted at 17C, 18C and 22C to taste this for yourself.

So how and when to use it?

Well: on cooked meats and fish, on risottos and pasta, on soups, soft cheese and charcuterie, too.

Oh, and also on vegetables, green ones in particular, particularly

if they’ve been grilled, charred or barbecued; though boiled, steamed and raw enjoy a slick of oil as well.

You know this already, I think. Did you also know about adding extra virgin olive oil and a few flakes of salt to a morning bowl of Greek yoghurt with seeds or granola? Try it. Also, over good vanilla or chocolate ice cream, not to mention bitter chocolate tarts and mousses...

The point I want to make is that it’s really worth (a) finding an extra virgin olive oil that you enjoy, and then (b) using it with abandon. If ever you wonder whether that steak or pork chop

Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 8

18/07/2019 17:32

Bream, tomato and sorrel crudo Serves 4-6 as a starter

This is a quick, light, summery dish that begins with freshly caught fish; if not bream, then sea bass or scallops. There’s acidity and fruitiness from the tomato, but the key quality that both binds and completes it comes from the olive oil.

Choose a fresh, grassy one with a peppery kick, ideally from ‘early harvest’ olives.

— 1 ripe beef tomato (300-400g) — 100ml extra virgin olive oil — 1 small-medium sea bream, filleted, skinned and boned — 10 sorrel leaves, cut into 4cm pieces — Slice the tomato in two. Cut one half into small, irregular chunks.

Grate the other into a sieve over a bowl, pressing the gratings and juices through. Add a pinch of flaky sea salt and set aside.

— Ensure the fish is fridge cold.

Cut into thin slices on an angle, then immediately arrange these and the tomato chunks on one platter or six plates.

— Spoon the tomato juice over the fish, just ensuring each piece receives a few drops.

Then liberally glug the olive oil onto the plates. It should form puddles around the fish. Add a few flakes of salt and scatter the sorrel over the top. If you’re not sure whether you’ve used enough olive oil, add more.

— Serve immediately with bread.

Extra virgin olive oil Brindisa De Calabria Gastronomica Oliveology Taste Croatia The Olive Oil Co

or piece of cod or mound of vegetables might benefit from some oil, the answer is: “Of course, what are you waiting for?”

Yes, some oils feel expensive, but even when poured liberally they go a long way. Celebrate the flavour and viscosity of an extra virgin olive oil puddle. It’ll bring the dish together and make it better, too.

As ever, the best thing to do is to use Borough Market’s setting to your advantage: walk a few steps to taste oils from around the world, ask questions, taste again and settle on one. Then splash it, pour it, glug it. Before returning to try, buy and use more.

9

INSIDER KNOWLEDGE Ten pearls of wisdom from Shuk of Ted’s Veg

5. When the sun is out, everyone here is really happy—customers and traders.

You get lots of smiles and people are more generous with their time, they ask more questions. In winter people are more rushed, as they just want to get home! But it’s so nice to walk around the Market when the weather is nice.

6. I think working at Borough Market has made me love food even more than I did.

I am not shy about trying new things any more—in fact, I love being a tester for different stallholders. Recently Noel Fitzjohn from Fitz Fine Foods made a violet syrup and asked me to try it. It was scrumptious.

1. I have always worked in food. My last job before this was as operations manager in a bakery. The hours were horrible and I was always on call, so I left and tried to launch my own business making cakes and preserves.

I’ve known Kath and Ted, the owners of Ted’s Veg, for more than 20 years. I’d had stalls at various farmers’ markets and we often found ourselves next to each other. I mentioned to Kath that I needed a part time job and she asked me to work with them. That was four years ago. I love it here. The hours are flexible, I can do as many shifts as I want and I get to hang out all day with some real foodies. I just love spending my time chatting about food.

2. I’m not much of a fruit person, usually, but summer fruits I love. We do them so well here: greengages, gooseberries.

Gooseberry fool is the easiest thing on earth to make and it’s so tasty! I love it when the strawberries are in, they’re just so easy to snack on. I never eat them unless they’re in season, and then it’s like being a child when you finally get that special treat.

7. There are things at the Market I’ve never heard of before, but being here gives me the chance to really play around and experiment with food. If we have a new product on the stall I will always go home and try it.

8. I can’t stand bananas. They are one of the few things that I really don’t like.

I think because, being from Asia, my mother had a very poor grasp of English cooking.

She made a dish once, I think it was something a friend had recommended, of potatoes, bananas and salad cream, and it was absolutely disgusting. I can’t eat salad cream either, now.

9. Kids are always daring each other to eat a scotch bonnet. It’s one of the most common questions we get from them: “How hot is it?”

Then they’ll stand outside the stall egging each other on.

10. I constantly get asked why we don’t grow our own bananas and avocadoes.

Constantly. I tend to just point outside and say, “Have you seen the weather?”

On a miserable day, that usually works.

3. I’ve made loads of friends through working at the Market. We have two types of regulars: the ones who come every Saturday morning to do their weekly shop—they always go for the home-grown stuff and get excited when new seasonal produce comes in— and the local ones, who come daily and buy what they need.

They’re the ones I know best.

I know their names, I know their children—I’ve seen them grow up, some of them. It’s difficult at first to make that transition from customer to someone you have dinner with, but once you get chatting, maybe go for a coffee, you find you’ve loads more in common than you think.

4. I make all the chutneys and marmalades you see on the stall. It started because we had surplus produce that wasn’t good enough to give to charity, which we do with most of our excess through Plan Zheroes, but I didn’t want to throw it away.

Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 9

18/07/2019 17:32

THE FAMILY STONE

with a sharp goat’s curd, sourdough croutons and prosciutto and strewn with anise herbs like chervil or tarragon. At a late-summer supperclub a few years ago, I served a version of this with Cornish pork belly that had been slow braised in whey and then crisped up under a hot grill. There’s something magical about crispy pork crackling eaten with yielding peachy flesh.

Rosie Birkett on the joyful memories sparked by the arrival of peaches, apricots and plums, and the dishes—both sweet and savoury— they inspire

Image: Regula Ysewijn

A bag of ripe peaches heralds the summer. It summons flashbacks to moments suspended in time like peaches preserved in syrup: soporific garden lunches with bowls of peaches and cream; a lone, slightly squashed orb wrapped in kitchen roll at the bottom of my schoolbag—a sweet, longed-for, reviving joy after an ascetic hour of dreaded double maths.

I can be on the Walthamstow marshes, surrounded by nettles, fox poo and teenagers playing football and feel like I’m in the south of France if I’m biting into a perfectly plump peach—its honeyed juices dribbling shamelessly down my chin. There’s something outrageously, almost illicitly good about a fleshy mouthful of peach that’s been left to get warmto-bursting in the sunshine, and if I’m hauling our meals to the park to escape our stifling London apartment in high summer, these make for a blissful dessert, just as they are.

Along with sublimely fragranced white peaches from France and Italy, flat peaches are a favourite. Slightly less fuzzy than their rounder siblings, their headily perfumed, pale flesh has an extra sweet flavour with a whiff of almond. Originally grown in China— where the peach originated—from a mutation of the common peach, they have become popular across Europe in the last few decades , but make sure you look out for the organic, Spanishgrown versions rather than the sad, plastic-wrapped imports from further afield. One of my favourite ways to use them is baking them into a light, almondy upside-down cake with cherries and basil. The soft fruit keeps the cake moist, sort of self-saucing it, while the basil lends a fragrant edge and the flaked almonds an irresistible crunch. With the addition of a luscious spoonful of clotted cream or creme fraiche (Neal’s Yard Dairy, I’m looking

at you), it’s everything I want in a cake.

Almonds and peaches are a happy combination much-loved by the Italians, particularly in the classic dish of ‘pesche ripiene’, or stuffed peaches. The version from my battered, browned copy of Elizabeth David’s Italian Food has been a staple at our kitchen table for years. It calls for six yellow peaches, three ounces of crushed macaroons (in the 1950s, this meant amaretti biscuits), one egg yolk, two tablespoons of sugar and an ounce of butter. You cut the peaches in half, scoop out the stones and mix a little of the pulp with the other ingredients, then stuff it back into the peach, baking them in a buttered dish for around half an hour. I’ve made several versions over the years, replacing the amaretti with flaked almonds or the egg yolk with more butter, and (sorry Elizabeth) adding a splash of sweet white wine, prosecco or rosé to proceedings when the mood’s taken me.

I was writing my new cookbook, The Joyful Home Cook, in the height of summer last year, so peaches make a starring turn, and not just in the dessert section. If you’ve not tried before, have a go at pickling peaches.

When left to bathe in a sweet solution of good quality white wine vinegar, sugar, fennel seeds and peppercorns (or whichever aromatics you might fancy), they take on an incredible complexity and depth of flavour, and a balanced acidity that makes a wonderful accompaniment for fatty, grilled, meaty things like pork chops or great hunks of hard, nutty cheese such as comte or manchego. The skins will wrinkle with time but don’t worry about that—you can just peel them off.

In a similar vein, peaches are marvellous in substantial salads. I love them paired with the peppery, slightly citrussy flavour of celery leaves, tossed

Stone fruits Chegworth Valley Elsey & Bent Jock Stark Paul Wheeler Fresh Supplies Ted’s Veg Turnips

Apricots, with their smooth, deep golden skins blushing hot pink, are another wonder of the warmer months.

If the flesh is mealy and the flavour one-note, they can underwhelm—but even these can be rescued with a gentle roasting in the oven or caramelising in the pan, or by poaching in a wine-based syrup. I like to poach whole apricots in sweetened rosé with lemon zest and fresh lavender—the floral, herbaceous notes of the purple flowers add a pleasing complexity, and the poaching concentrates the flavour. I use these in all manner of desserts: baked into tarts, or eaten with whipped cream cut with a little natural yoghurt and topped with crushed shortbread and chopped nuts.

Very good apricots have a unique sharpness that makes them ideal for patisserie. Paired with sweet, vivid green pistachio frangipane, they really sing. I’ve made various ensembles, from blondies to more classical tarts with flaky, buttery pastry. My absolute favourite, though, is to bake them into a biscuity, hazelnut pastry tart shell with a sharp, muscovado-laced buttermilk filling that retains an irresistible wobble once baked, dressing the fruit with tangy, silky custard upon slicing.

Growing up in Kent, plums were the fruit that defined the late summers of my childhood. I still remember my unexpected delight at biting into the dusky reddish-purple skin of my dad’s home grown plums to find something juicy, sweet and sharp—better than anything I could have bought from the school tuck shop (and that’s saying something, for I was its best customer, loading up on Wham bars and pink shrimps daily—it’s a miracle I’ve still got teeth). In recent years, I’ve become partial to greengages, enjoying their fresh, tangy flesh in dairy-rich desserts and salads with peppery leaves, or in my favourite breakfast compote, made with whole almonds or cobnuts, ideal on hot buttered crumpets or mounds of good yoghurt.

Small wild plums, similar to mirabelles, grow copiously on the marshes where I live. I’ve roasted pork on top of them so that its juices mingle with their blistered skins. I’ve even had a go at salt-fermenting some, inspired by the Japanese delicacy of umeboshi. The resulting shrivelled, concentrated, wonderfully sour fruits were a revelation, so I served them in a dashi-like broth at my residency at Carousel in Marylebone, which I had the unplanned audacity to dish up to some real life Japanese people, visiting from Tokyo. Thankfully, they approved of my approximation— or else were just too polite to let on.

10 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 10

18/07/2019 17:32

11 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 11

18/07/2019 17:32

THE BIGGEST GLOBAL ISSUE IS ACCESS TO FOOD. WE PRODUCE ENOUGH FOOD FOR EVERYONE IN THE WORLD

AND THEN THROW HALF OF IT AWAY

Dee Woods talks to Market Life about the need for a fairer food system, the hidden hunger that blights London, and why acting to change things is much more important than talking Interview: Ellie Costigan Portrait: Orlando Gili

12 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 12

18/07/2019 17:32

13 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 13

18/07/2019 17:32

D

Deidre Woods, known to all as Dee, co-founded the Granville Community Kitchen cooperative in Kilburn as a hub for serving her local community: from growing veg in the community garden, to teaching cookery skills, to laying on big, healthy, sociable dinners for those who need them most—a role that led to her being named BBC Food and Farming Cook of the Year in 2016. If that weren’t enough, Dee also sits on the London Food Board and Food Ethics Council, is a visiting research associate at Coventry University, and was named an ambassador for Slow Food in 2016. When I ask how she possibly manages to fit it all in, a broad grin spreads across her face. “I was told by a friend recently that I need to give something up. I said, ‘Okay, you’re right.’ So, I’ve decided to give up housework.”

Sounds like a good compromise to me.

Has food always been a big part of your life?

I was born in London, but moved to live in Trinidad as a child. My earliest memory of living in London is my parents having lots of parties, bringing the Caribbean community together and cooking traditional foods.

Then, in Trinidad, I was amazed by the variety of foods—I remember my dad taking us around the island and showing us all the different fruits and nuts and vegetables. I still have my first cookbook from when I was about seven. I use it during cookery classes with children.

For me food is more than nutrients: it’s social, it’s cultural, it’s spiritual, it is all these many amazing things.

It connects us to the earth and the cycle of life and death.

What sparked the Granville Community Kitchen?

My background is in youth and community work, but the impetus for me starting the Granville Community Kitchen was my own experience with household food insecurity, but also recognising it within our community and with other families and people. I recognised that a food bank isn’t the answer; that coming together and sharing our skills and our knowledge would be much better. We teach cookery to children, young people, all ages. We also volunteer in schools. We teach growing— from seed, to plate, to composting, all organically.

I think it’s crucial. We have a generation of people who are disconnected from where their food comes from and I think understanding what goes into your food makes you value it more. Which is important, especially as we have so much household waste in the UK. The main feature of the centre is our Friday night community meal. We partner with another charity: they generally cook but I sometimes cook with them.

We just have this big community dinner where everyone comes together. The last couple of years we have been taking surplus food from local stores and using it for cooking and cookery classes. The excess we redistribute.

We now have three sites, but it should be four soon, as we

keep getting approached by different community groups and organisations who are looking to start a garden.

How important do you think these sorts of local initiatives are in terms of addressing issues within the wider food system?

For us it’s about modelling an alternative: alternative exchange, distribution, and even thinking about food differently. Our next phase is to develop a community farm, a local market and a micro-bakery. But we’ve gone about it very, very slowly. It’s taken work to get to this stage—rather than just doing it when it’s not something people want, we’ve been very clear that this is participatory, this is for the community. It isn’t a charity. It’s people-centred, people led.

Often, stigma is a big issue. A lot of these voucher schemes, for example—people don’t want to have to show up to a shop or a market and have to present them, because it says, “I’m poor”. With the mini market that we’re hoping to set up, we do want to take on vouchers but in a way that is more dignified. There’s the wellbeing benefits as well. We attract people from all around, many with mental health and social needs. A lot of people say: “I don’t need the food, I don’t need to come here, but I am lonely and I look forward to this on a Friday night.” It is enriching for a lot of people; it is a lifeline for a lot of people—just to feel a part of something and belong to a community.

There’s a lot of talk about the need for a more ‘fair and inclusive’ food system. What would that look like to you?

I’m on the London Food Board, and when we were drawing up the last food strategy, a few of us were intent on that being a big part of it, which is why there were so many focus groups and events. We’re hoping to have some sort of forum where people can keep feeding into food policy—at that local level, but also in terms of local authorities developing their own food policies. It’s important to have proper input from everyone.

We are the country that sparked the global food system as it is—occupying land, taking resources, using mainly black and brown bodies so that people here could have everything they wanted on the table. It was a class thing, it was a racial thing, it was a colonial measure.

And here in the UK we’re not even really beginning to have those conversations. It’s about agency: people should be equipped to have agency within a system, and right now, the majority of people are disempowered.

But food is a great connecting tool, across class, ethnicity and culture. You can have amazing conversations because of it—the community kitchen started just from conversations over food and coffee and tea. We need to be involving everybody in those conversations.

Do food markets have a role to play in creating a more equitable food system?

If you look at pre-fifties Britain, what did we have? Local shops. We had markets. We’ve lost the high street to the big supermarkets and chains. Farmers’ markets are now

14 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 14

18/07/2019 17:32

It looks like that crisis might be occurring, if national politics are anything to go by.

What changes would you like to see?

One, a national food policy—which is in the works.

Hopefully that will involve consulting ordinary people, through citizens’ assemblies. Second, someone responsible for food—there is no one solely responsible for food in this country. We need a minister for food. Third, the right to food needs to be enshrined in legislation—the right to good food and nutrition, and culturally appropriate food. We’ve signed up to all these things at UN level, but we’re increasingly in violation of them. So many people in this country are going hungry.

Why do you think that is?

Part of the issue is, our food system is dominated by megacorporations. It’s about money and profit, not people.

For example, we now have big companies who patent seeds and control them so that you cannot replicate them. You have to buy their seeds, buy their chemicals.

Seed sovereignty is the crux of any food system: if the farmers can’t control the seeds, which they had done for millennia, they can’t control the food system. All this power is concentrated among a small group of people who are profiting and who are not changing anything.

They’re greenwashing. They say, “Oh, we’re all for corporate social responsibility,” but at the end of the day they are still making mega profit, while there are farmers supplying them who work for less than a pound a day.

And still, people can’t even afford the cheap processed food these corporations are producing—some can’t afford anything at all, by the time they’ve paid rent and everything else. Food is now a commodity, something to be bought and sold. Whereas if we value food for what it is—something that gives us life, as something that’s part of this universe and this earth, something we are connected to—then we will think differently.

Food is a great connecting tool, across class, ethnicity and culture. You can have amazing conversations because of it.We need to be involving everybody in those conversations

something that are seen as elite—until I bring people to Borough Market and show them otherwise; that they’re something anyone can shop at. It is about recreating some of those things that happened in the past. Markets are also important for knowing where your food comes from. When I come to Borough, even if it’s produced elsewhere in the world, I am able to find out where that food is coming from. I avoid supermarkets like the plague—there is a superstore five minutes from me, but I would rather trek. Markets are also about building your local economy. That’s one of the things we had in our vision for the community kitchen—that we would equip people with skills so that either they can start their own small micro food business or go elsewhere and work.

What is the biggest food-related challenge we are facing as a city?

There’s a lot of hidden hunger. At the kitchen we’re getting a lot more asylum seekers and homeless people. These are people who are often totally unrecorded and who cannot even afford basic human rights: they have no food, no access to medical services, no housing, no work. That’s not right. I think the biggest global issue today is access to food. It’s shameful that we produce enough food for everyone in the world and then throw half of it away.

We need shorter food chains—not necessarily more local food, but more localised. I think people get confused with the terminology: localised means you’re still connected to the global and in that way we’re more inclusive, particularly when you have a diverse city such as London. It means you can still bring in food from elsewhere, but you’re doing it in a way that’s fair to whoever produced that food. Most people don’t even think about the consequences of their choices. Even the rise in veganism has caused some major impacts on other parts of the world.

We’re in the middle of a climate crisis. We need to think, what are we growing, going forward? What are we eating going forward? We drastically need to change what we eat, and it might take a crisis to change it.

Do you think it’s possible to address these overlapping issues with a national food policy?

Food is very difficult and complicated because it’s a planning issue, it’s a transport issue, a health issue, an environmental issue, you name it. And it is the most important aspect of our lives. Without food, we can’t do anything. That’s why we need an integrated food policy: we can’t have environment talking here and public health talking there, and they’re at odds with each other.

People need to be talking to each other and that’s why we need a separate ministry for food and somebody responsible for overseeing all of that.

One of the things I don’t like is this dissection and hierarchy of poverty: there’s period poverty, there’s child poverty, food poverty, all these various poverties.

No. It’s just poverty. The only way to get around that is to ensure people are paid proper living wages, end zero-hour contracts, and put a proper welfare system in place so that those who cannot be part of the work world and who need that support have it. Elderly people and disabled people and children and the most vulnerable in society are being targeted by austerity policies—come on!

You often describe yourself as a food ‘actionist’ rather than activist. What do you mean by that?

Even as a child I was always questioning things. A lot of people talk and they’re on frontlines and they’re doing various things, but they’re not actually effecting any change. For me, that is important. That’s why I got involved in food policy, because that’s where we make change. Lately, I have become involved in research and writing, which is quite hard as a non-academic. But if we’re talking about shifting power and more equity, then we need to hear different voices and value different types of knowledge, and not just academic knowledge and voices. I feel like I need to start making a stand because there are certain things that really aren’t being discussed: race and gender are the main ones. We need research and analysis around those things. How are we going to change anything when we don’t know who is being affected?

My eighties feminist self has re-awakened!

15 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 15

18/07/2019 17:32

SHARP PRACTICES Angela Clutton, author of The Vinegar Cupboard, takes us on a tour of the myriad uses of vinegar Images: Kim Lightbody

The question asked most often of me since my book The Vinegar Cupboard came out has been: “Why did you write about vinegar?” It is a question that is also its own answer, because asking it shows just how underestimated vinegar remains as a transformative ingredient.

That is no blithe over-statement from a writer excited about their book. Ask any professional cook about how important acidity is in cooking and they will readily and enthusiastically say: “Incredibly important, of course.” But, unfortunately, it is not yet ‘of course’ to most home cooks.

It is like some pro-cooking secret whose cover I am determined to blow.

We wouldn’t ever think of cooking without salt, and we shouldn’t think of cooking without acidity. It is really that simple. Sometimes a squeeze of lemon is fine, for sure, but vinegars are by far the most exciting way we have of bringing the acid— not least because each different style brings its own flavour potential. It’s just a case of knowing which to use for what.

There are the vinegar-based pickles (and quick pickles), dressings and sauces that we are probably most familiar with. From there, think about using it as a marinade to tenderise meat, to ‘cook’ fish, and to balance the sweetness of fruits. In roasting, it is invaluable. By dousing meats, vegetables or fruits in vinegar before roasting, the vinegar melds deeply with the other flavours, fully

harmonising and doing its absolute best to bring it all together.

Vinegar works its magic in baking, where its acidity does a technical job of making the lightest sponges, the fluffiest pancakes and perfect meringues every time. It can even be used to make cordial ‘shrubs’—or just add a splash to a gin and tonic and I promise your G&T life will be transformed.

The recipes I am sharing here showcase just some of the wonderful ways of cooking with vinegar. They show too some of the different types of vinegar you might find at the Market. With wine vinegars such as those at Brindisa that run the gamut from lightly zesty moscatel vinegar, to fruitily rich cabernet sauvignon vinegar. Sherry vinegar will always be my desert island vinegar. Or head to Fitz Fine Foods and you will wonder at the range of fruit and infused vinegars.

Vinegar is quite simply one of the most useful store cupboard ingredients a cook can have. And while, despite the title of the book, I honestly don’t expect everyone to have a vinegar cupboard, I’d like to get more of us pondering a vinegar shelf at the very least...

16 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 16

18/07/2019 17:32

Scallops in sherry butter sauce

17 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 17

18/07/2019 17:32

Clockwise: quick-pickled radish, samphire and parsley salad; Angela Clutton; raspberry drop pancakes;gazpacho; pot-roasted loin of pork with fig and walnut stuffing

18 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 18

18/07/2019 17:32

Gazpacho Serves 4–6

Scallops in sherry butter sauce Serves 4

The best gazpachos have several characteristics in common: they are made with seasonal tomatoes that are packed with flavour, they are served super-cold, and they use a really good sherry vinegar (such as the Valdespino at Brindisa), which helps draw the flavour from the tomatoes, cucumber and pepper. Serve with the sherry vinegar bottle on the table too, so that people can add that all-important finishing touch of flavour and balance. I like my gazpacho quite thick, so that is how this comes—thin it down with water, if you prefer. There is no need to skin the tomatoes as they will be blended and strained before serving.

In this recipe, the buttery sauce and fatty scallops are gorgeously tempered by the sharpness of the sherry vinegar and its sweet, rich notes. A few barely dressed rocket leaves are all else that is needed.

— 1kg very ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped — 1 cucumber, peeled and chopped — 1 green pepper, deseeded and chopped — 80g slightly stale white or brown bread, torn into pieces — 3 cloves of garlic, chopped — 3 tbsp sherry vinegar, plus extra to taste — 125ml extra virgin olive oil For the garnish (optional): — Chopped hard-boiled egg — Chopped spring onion — Chopped cucumber — Chopped mint — Croutons — Sherry vinegar — Place the tomatoes in a large bowl with the cucumber, green pepper, bread pieces, garlic, sherry vinegar and half of the oil.

Add a good pinch of salt, mix to combine, cover and chill for 2 hours.

— Transfer to a blender and blend it all together, adding the rest of the olive oil. Season and strain into a bowl through a fine sieve, pushing with a spoon to get as much through as you can. Taste for seasoning— remember that chilling dulls the seasoning slightly—and take a look at the resulting soup. If it is too thick for your liking, thin it down with some water.

— Chill until needed, then serve in small bowls or cups with a drizzle of sherry vinegar on top and your choice of garnishes, arranged on the table for each person to help themselves to.

Alternative Rather than sherry vinegar, try finishing with a good balsamic, tomato balsamic, maple vinegar or cucumber vinegar

— 16 shelled scallops — 140g butter — 75ml sherry vinegar — Pat dry and season the scallops. Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a large frying pan, then sit the scallops in it. Turn them after 2 mins, when they should have taken on a gentle brown colour. Give them another 1 min, then add half the butter. Let it melt and, as it does, use it to baste the scallops; you will need to gently tilt the pan.

— The butter will quickly turn a nutty brown, and at this point pour over 50ml vinegar. Cook for another 30 secs, then lift the scallops out.

Turn up the heat, add the remaining butter and vinegar and allow to bubble, stirring all the time, to reduce to a lovely sauce. Pour over the scallops and serve with a grinding of pepper over the top.

Alternative In place of the sherry vinegar, try a traditional English malt vinegar

Pot-roasted loin of pork with fig and walnut stuffing Serves 6

This is a very special pork joint, with crackling worthy of a celebration in itself. The loin’s rich fig and walnut stuffing is helpfully cut through with the vinegar—try De Calabria’s lovely honey vinegar. The stuffing is packed inside the joint before you tie it up, but don’t worry if any oozes out in the cooking—it will just nestle in among the bed of fennel and onions (tossed in vinegar to draw out maximum flavour) that the joint is pot-roasted on.

— ½ leek, trimmed and finely chopped — 180g fresh figs, finely chopped — 1½ tbsp finely chopped lemongrass — 40g walnuts, finely chopped — ½ tsp ground cinnamon — Grated zest of 1 orange — 125ml cider vinegar or honey vinegar — 20g dried breadcrumbs (not panko) — 2kg boneless loin of pork (ask the butcher to cut the loin under its eye to create a flap for the stuffing) — 1 large bulb of fennel, roughly chopped — 2 onions, roughly chopped — 3 garlic cloves, crushed — Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a frying pan and cook the leek until softened. Turn off the heat and stir in the figs, lemongrass, walnuts, cinnamon, orange zest, 75ml vinegar and the breadcrumbs. Season it well.

— Open the loin out, skin-side down, and stuff the opening with the fig mix. Don’t pack too much in–you want to be able to close it tight when you tie it.

— Cut off at least six times the length of the joint in kitchen string. Pass the string under the joint at one end, bring round to the seam of the stuffing and tie a knot, leaving one short end of string (around 7-8cm) and a very long end. Pull the long end 2cm to the side of the knot, hold in place with your finger, pass the string under the joint then bring up to where your finger is and pass the long end under the string you are holding down to form a knot. Keep going along the joint to tie it together.

— Once you get to the end, turn the joint over, run the string along the centre of the tied joint and tie with the short end you left at the beginning. You should—hopefully—have a tightly tied-up loin.

— Heat the oven to 150C. Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a large casserole dish suitable for oven and hob. Sit the pork loin fat-side down in the oil and leave for a few minutes to brown. Turn it over and sear the underside, then remove and set aside. Add the fennel, onion and garlic to the hot fat and allow to just start to soften but not colour. Pour over the remaining vinegar, season, stir round, then sit the joint on top, fat-side up. Cover with a lid and put into the oven for 2 hours.

— After 2 hours, increase the oven heat to 200C. Remove the lid and sprinkle salt flakes over the would-be crackling. Let it finish in the high heat for 30 mins, then remove from the oven. Set aside to rest for 10 mins, then lift the joint out and carve. The fennel and onion mix on the bottom of the pan (there won’t be much, but it is delicious) can be spooned into a bowl for serving.

— If the joint is difficult to carve through with the crackling, you could cut the string, lift the crackling off and serve it on the side for people to help themselves to—then carve.

19 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 19

18/07/2019 17:32

Quick-pickled radish, samphire and parsley salad Serves 3–4

Every time I make this salad, I take a moment to reflect on its beauty—pretty as a picture, with all its pinks and greens. The radishes are quick-pickled in a mix of light vinegar (such as Brindisa’s moscatel, or Fitz Fine Foods’ champagne), sugar and water, which is heated until the sugar dissolves.

This gives a light pickling to the radishes, which need just an hour in the liquid before the samphire and parsley are added. Don’t add samphire and parsley too soon before serving, however, or they’ll lose some of their vibrancy. I sometimes use sea purslane instead of samphire and both are pretty salty, which is why there is no need for any additional salt in the recipe. The samphire here is raw—if you prefer, steam it lightly for 2 mins and refresh in cold water before following the recipe. The pickling liquor can be mixed with sparkling water for a delicious, prettily pink drink.

— 180g breakfast radishes — 100ml champagne vinegar or moscatel vinegar — 2 tbsp caster sugar — 2 broad strips of orange zest — 2 sprigs of dill — A handful of samphire (approx 90g) — 3 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley — Top and tail the radishes, slice them thinly and put into a bowl. Put the vinegar into a pan with the sugar and 50ml water. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the sugar has dissolved.

— Pour the hot liquid over the radishes. They should be just covered, but if they’re not add more vinegar and water in a 2:1 ratio.

Add the orange zest and dill to the bowl.

Stir, then cover and leave for 1 hour at room temperature to cool and for the flavours to meld together.

— Remove the orange strips and the dill. Strain away the liquid (or keep it—see introduction), then toss the radishes with the samphire and chopped parsley in a large bowl and serve.

Alternative Japanese rice vinegar is excellent for all quick pickling

Octopus in red wine vinegar Serves 3–4

Raspberry drop pancakes Makes 16

This recipe is based on a classic Greek octopus salad. Tender, meaty octopus is nestled upon salad leaves to serve as part of a mezze feast, or with saffron-roasted potatoes and mayonnaise. ‘Tender’ isn’t necessarily a given when serving octopus, but here the multiple steps—and the vinegar—help no end. The initial blanching in hot water tenderises the meat, then poaching the octopus in the vinegar’s acidity breaks down any toughness, and the job is completed by marinating the cooked octopus in more vinegar before serving.

My favourite pancakes are the stacks of slightly risen crempog, which are a Welsh tradition. If you aren’t familiar, think of American pancakes and you are on the right lines—but these are distinctly smaller and lighter. Mighty tempting for an indulgent breakfast, afternoon tea or dessert with some cream or yoghurt on the side. Buttermilk is the traditional ingredient for these because of its acidity, which reacts with the bicarbonate of soda to give a characteristic bubble and rise. Here, that is replicated with a mix of milk and infused vinegar (try Fitz Fine Foods for a selection of options). The quick cooking in the hot griddle or frying pan gets the raspberries going just enough to release their flavour, without them losing their shape. Their sweetness marries gorgeously with the gentle acidity of the pseudo-buttermilk.

— 1kg octopus (cleaned by the fishmonger so it is ready for cooking) — 100ml vermouth — 150ml white wine vinegar — Juice of ½ orange — 2 bay leaves — 100ml olive oil — 100ml red wine vinegar — ½ tsp dried oregano — 1 clove of garlic, crushed — 3 handfuls of salad leaves of your choice — Blanch the octopus to tenderise it: bring a large pan of water to the boil, lower the octopus into it for 1 min, then lift out and refresh in cold water. Repeat three times, with fresh water each time. You will see the tentacles curl up with each immersion in the hot water, then relax in the cold. Clean the pan thoroughly if you want to use it for the rest of the recipe, as there may be scum on the sides.

— Put the vermouth, white wine vinegar, orange juice and bay leaves into a large pan. Bring to a simmer, then add the octopus. Cover and gently cook for 45 mins–1 hour. It is ready when tender to the prick of a fork.

— Remove the octopus from the poaching liquid, retaining 50ml liquid and discarding the rest. If you would like to give your octopus a bit of ‘charred’ colour, then quickly put it under the grill, or return it to the now-empty pan it cooked in for 30 secs each side.

Afterwards, charred or not, cut the tentacles off and put them in a bowl.

— Mix together the olive oil, red wine vinegar, oregano, garlic and the reserved 50ml poaching liquid. Season and pour this over the octopus tentacles—they should be just about submerged. Cover and chill for 6 hours or overnight, turning occasionally.

— When you are ready to serve, remove the octopus from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature. Arrange the salad leaves on a serving plate, then lift the octopus pieces out of the marinade and arrange on top of the leaves. Drizzle over 3 tbsp or so of the marinade and serve.

— 200ml whole milk — 1 tbsp herb- or flower-infused vinegar — 25g butter, plus extra for cooking and serving — 180g plain flour — 1 egg, beaten — ¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda — 90g raspberries — Honey, golden syrup or maple syrup, for drizzling — Stir together the milk and vinegar in a bowl or jug and set aside. Melt the butter and leave to cool.

— Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl, then use a hand whisk to mix in the melted butter and the milk and vinegar mixture until you have a smooth batter. Whisk in the egg. The batter can be made to this point 2 hours before using.

— Just before you’re ready to start cooking, whisk in the bicarbonate of soda then gently fold through 70g raspberries, keeping the rest for serving.

— Grease a frying pan or griddle with a small knob of butter and heat it until good and hot. Make each pancake by dropping 1 tbsp batter into the pan. I would make 4-5 pancakes at a time. Allow to cook for 2 mins until bubbly and puffed up and the underside is golden brown. Flip them over and repeat on the other side. Keep the pancakes warm while you finish the rest (adding more butter to the pan as necessary), building up stacks of pancakes as you go with a little butter, a few raspberries and a drizzle of honey or syrup between each layer.

Alternative The white wine vinegar used for poaching can be any kind of basic vinegar but for the marinade, go for an interesting, bright—but not too heavy—red wine vinegar such as the cabernet-sauvignon at Brindisa

20 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 20

18/07/2019 17:32

Octopus in red wine vinegar Scallops Shellseekers Fish & Game Samphire Turnips Pork loin Northfield Farm Walnuts Food & Forest Whole milk Hook & Son

21 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 21

18/07/2019 17:32

CLOSE TO THE BONE At a time when most of the meat we consume comes cut, tied and neatly packaged, the ancient art of the butcher is one that is increasingly practiced out of sight and out of mind. Market Life pays a visit to a Ginger Pig butchery class to watch up close some real masters of the craft Words: Clare Finney Images: Orlando Gili

22 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 22

18/07/2019 17:32

23 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 23

18/07/2019 17:32

G

George Donnelly smiles at the question. “What do I think about when I’m butchering?” he repeats, raising an eyebrow.

“Food. Food, food, food. I think being passionate about food goes hand in hand with being a butcher.”

Written down, that seems blindingly obvious—but for one brief moment I am faintly surprised. The transition from a frolicking spring lamb through to a lamb shank on a butcher’s stand is one that for most people has become somewhat shrouded in mystery—even for those (worryingly few) of us who accept that the latter requires the former. If you hang around Ginger Pig long enough you will eventually become familiar with the visceral effect of a carcass being broken down, but the neat, rosemary-scattered beauty of the finished display still makes it all too easy to disassociate the craft of dismemberment from the food that we eat.

This, I find out over the course of the next few days of speaking to George and his colleague Sal at the stand and undertaking one of the Ginger Pig’s classes, is a travesty.

Butchery isn’t just an ancient, skilled and necessary craft: it is breathtaking. Their surgical knowledge of anatomy, the speed and agility of their knifework, the neatness of their cuts and their colourful butcher’s knots, all makes for an extraordinary spectacle—and if you don’t believe me, check out George’s Instagram following.

“Butchers got a bad reputation in the past because many of them were no good at all— but butchery these days is really an artform.”

The future is bright for butchery—at least for butchery as George now knows it: artisanal, high quality, “slightly more expensive, but you get love and care and quality with it”.

Where once butchery was the preserve of a hardened old guard, now young men and women are showing an increasing interest in the profession, and in trying it at home.

Hence Ginger Pig’s new Borough Market school, the latest development in a relationship with the Market that has grown and evolved over two decades. The school’s hands-on lessons in meat and butchery are a monument to craft, education and flavour. After a dazzling demonstration from one of the butchers, who will break down either a beef or a lamb carcass in front

of you, you’ll be treated to a feast with your classmates and prepare your own meat to take home. Needless to say, the connection between farm, filleting and food is present throughout the session, with tips on cooking and storing served up alongside detailed knowledge as to the breed of the animal, and where it originated.

Upon arrival at our lamb class on an unseasonably cold Saturday afternoon, my classmates and I are presented with 15 cuts, neatly laid out on the table, and asked to identify them. I get as far as ‘heart’ and ‘mince’ before I let the rest of the group— a remarkable spread of gender, age and profession, who all seem better versed in lamb anatomy than I am—take the reins.

The class is led by Sal, an Australian butcher who did his three-year butchery apprenticeship down under, then cut his teeth here in Borough Market, where he learned from butchers from all over the world. “I finished my apprenticeship at 20 and thought I knew everything there was to know.

Then I came to Borough Market and learned a completely different way of breaking down an animal.” His colleagues—French, Slovakian, English, South and North American—all have different styles and approaches. “The English style is very much square cuts. The French style is peeling each individual muscle out. The Australian style is a hybrid of the two.”

One thing Australia does very, very well, of course, is lamb. “I sold a lot of lamb in Australia. At Easter time at the Market, when we sell 60 or 70 lamb legs over one weekend, I am the one they send into the fridge because I am so much faster at breaking down the hindquarters.” This Sal does by hanging the back end of the lamb on a hook and using his body weight and strength to pull the leg down as he is cutting it along the inside of the pelvis. “It’s the Aussie way of doing it— it is so much less finicky than doing it on the block.” Sheer strength comes into butchery less than you’d think. “Years ago, we would have been breaking down hindquarters or even forequarters of beef and that’s tough, but these days it’s broken down more before it’s delivered,” George reassured me prior to my class. “Deboning a dry-aged side of beef is tough as rock—but anyway, you’re on the lamb class.” Knife skills and—above all—a detailed knowledge of anatomy are far more valuable to a butcher than brute force.

to tail. Sal has suggestions for everything, from the sweetbreads—organ meat from the throat or stomach—to lesser-known leg cuts, which he describes in beef terms: topside, silverside, chateaubriand. “In Australia we sell a lot of cut-up lamb and I like doing this to show you guys,” he explains. In Britain we take a fairly simple approach to a lamb leg—roasted, mint sauce—but cut up for stews and tagines, these pieces are perfect.

As for the heart, “butterfly it all open, slicing against the grain of the muscle, then you can stir fry it and have it in a salad or sandwich or whatever—and they cost 50p each,” he points out. Only the ‘paddy whack’—a strong, elastic band-like ligament which holds the animal’s head up—is thrown, after much discussion about the nursery rhyme. “You’d have to do a lot to make that edible,” Sal says, Ginger Pig butchers Sal and Zdenko (opposite)

I have none of the above. I watch in awe as Sal saws apart the rib cage, separates fore and hindquarters, and from these pieces creates racks, cutlets, shanks, neck fillets and shoulders. Little to nothing is wasted: one of Sal’s many skills is in being able to cut as close as possible to the bone. “Any meat left on the bones is ex-profit—but for me, it’s not so much about profit as the fact this is food, and it can and should be used for something,” he says feelingly. Lean trim goes into mince or burgers; the fat around the kidneys has “a more neutral taste than most fat and a lower melting point, so it can be used in pastry or popped into sausages.” Those of us in the class who own dogs are encouraged to take home the bones.

It takes Sal less than an hour to break down an entire lamb’s carcass into separate cuts, explaining with each one how you might cook with it. Though I knew it before, there is nothing like a live demo to convince you of Ginger Pig’s commitment to nose

24 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 24

18/07/2019 17:32

If I can use my hands instead of my knife, I will, so I don’t risk damaging the meat—or indeed my hand

25 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 25

18/07/2019 17:32

Any meat left on the bones is exprofit—but for me, it’s not so much about profit as the fact this is food, and it can and should be used for something

Ginger Pig butchers George and Jozsef (right)

26 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 26

18/07/2019 17:32

passing it around so we can feel its elasticity and firm, rubbery texture.

Finally, with the lamb carcass in pieces on the table, it’s time to turn to the main event: deboning and rolling the shoulder. Each of us is presented with a shoulder, a spool of string and a boning knife: “Every butcher’s best friend.” Contrary to what you might expect, professional butchers don’t use expensive knives. “They get so much wear and tear, we need to replace them every two years at least,” Sal continues. “You can get these for £15.”

That said, each butcher has their own set of knives and, like chefs and hairdressers, are prone to tantrums if they find their colleague has been using their tools.

Whether boned, rolled, or left as is, lamb shoulder is a fine bit of meat. “All four-legged animals are front heavy because their heads

weigh a lot in relation to the rest of their body, so the shoulder has more fat and connective tissue,” says Sal. Boning and rolling are some of the toughest things to master—even for professionals. “I could say it’s straightforward, but I’d be lying. There are three bones to remove: the scapula, the hock and the humerus. But the first thing we want to do is remove excess sinew, getting under the fat, scooping it out and losing as little meat as possible.”

I look at the shoulder in front of me, then back at Sal, trying to mirror his movements.

“I have tried to do this before, but I didn’t think about the anatomy. I just went at it with a knife,” murmurs the chap next to me who, for all his modesty, is doing a far better job than I am. I despair at the amount of meat I’m removing at the same time as the fat and sinew, but Sal is reassuring. “Don’t worry too much—lamb is a

THE FIRST CUT AMELIA WOOLLEY OF GINGER PIG ON WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A BUTCHER How are your butchers trained?

We have supported the progression of a large proportion of our staff into being fully fledged butchers over the years. Quite a number of our butchers, and even our shop managers, started their careers at Ginger Pig working on our deli counters, as general shop support or as cleaners. After someone expresses an interest in being a butcher, we do our utmost to nurture this. They can shadow one of our more senior butchers in order to gain the knowledge they need. They get hands-on experience from the start and instruction as they go. As with most skills, learning on the job is the best way to do it. This is the case in most butchery companies, but it has become engrained in the Ginger Pig culture.

What do you look for in a butcher?

The desire to be a perfectionist. It’s also enormously important that they have respect for the craft and for the animal and how it was produced, otherwise they simply won’t be a good butcher.

What do you think is the attraction of being a butcher?

Butchery is a career with a great future.

It cannot be usurped by machinery. It is a craft that has to be done by hand. It requires attention to detail, creative flair and passion.

Do your butchers train in the butchery school?

The dream is to have a fully equipped butchery school, where we can train young butchers from the start, the Ginger Pig way. This is a huge project and we aren’t quite there yet.

What is the Ginger Pig way?

We don’t do things unless they are done properly. We use traditional methods and work hard to educate people on how to eat sustainably and understand the lesser known cuts and the importance of provenance. We are nose-to-tail butchers and mindful of carcass balance, producing minimal waste.

We look for people who can become part of the fabric here and continue to share our story.

fatty meat and you are going to slow roast it, so I wouldn’t go overboard.” He comes round to inspect my progress. “You’re doing fine!”

We move onto the shoulder blade and I am struck by how often Sal uses his hands over his knife, to feel out the bones or to remove glands and gristle. “If I can use my hands instead of my knife, I will, so I don’t risk damaging the meat—or indeed my hand,” he explains. He uses his fingers to feel out the blade bone, cuts down to reveal it, then steadily scrapes away across the surface of the bone to separate it, angling the knife so that the edge scrapes across the bone, not into the meat. The flesh is surprisingly pale— a notable feature of spring lamb which, by definition, has drunk its mother’s milk and then eaten spring’s new-growth grass. “Now, not Easter, is in fact the right time to buy if you want spring lamb. Spring lamb has only just become available.” I scrape away against the bone, removing slightly less meat this time— baby steps—then turn my attention to the gland Sal has warned us about, lodged deep inside a wedge of fat inside the leg.

At long last I am ready to roll. Free from its bones, the meat is slippery and unwieldy, and I’m reminded of those ‘high tech’ sleeping bags which flatly refuse to roll back into their cases. I enlist Sal, who informs me that, despite its shabby appearance, I’m nailing it.

“That’s what the string is for—to make it look neat at the end.” I’m relieved to discover all the meat trim I inadvertently removed during butchery can be tucked into the roll—“no one will know after you’ve roasted it”—and, with one eye on my messy little bundle, reach for the distinctive red and white string.

“This is the hardest part of the class,” says Sal, and I wince. I already feel stretched.

“All butcher’s knots are slip knots, but every butcher has ones that they favour. I have a couple I use, but another butcher will tie differently to me.” His hands fly rapidly across the surface of the rolled shoulder— loop, secure, cut, loop, secure, cut, repeat— and we beg him to switch to slow motion, which he does. Then he shows each of us individually, so we can follow more closely.

Nevertheless, when I come to tie my roll, it takes me almost 15 minutes to do what Sal can achieve in three.

A sprig of rosemary slid beneath the string to rest on the top of the roll like a green spine and I’m finished. Sal wraps my shoulder into a bag to take home and, to my slight disappointment, puts my name on it. It’s not that I’m not proud of myself, but my classmates’ efforts were significantly neater. I’m not quitting the day job any time soon. “You won’t be able to tell after you’ve roasted it,” Sal repeats—and I am sceptical until, 10 minutes and a quick clear up later, he’s cutting into the perfectly rolled, tender shoulder of meat that had been left to roast while we worked.

It falls apart. It melts. It tumbles into tender, rich, herbaceous chunks of light brown meat and crisp fat—and if there is the odd bit of trim rolled in there, no one knows it. There are dauphinoise potatoes, gooey and bubbling; a crisp, dressed salad; and an array of sauces and jellies. There is red wine—a Bordeaux—and a palpable sense of delight as we raise our glasses to Sal, the Ginger Pig team, and each other: butchers and cooks, students and teachers, food lovers.

27 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 27

18/07/2019 17:32

EDIBLE HISTORIES ALLIUMS

From Babylonian gluts to World War II shortages, via bad breath and eye-watering erotic adventures, Mark Riddaway on the long history of the allium family

Around 4,000 years ago in southern Babylonia, in what is now Iraq, the world’s oldest surviving written recipes were carved into three clay tablets.

One of these, the best preserved, summarises the ingredients of 25 stews or broths, giving the very briefest of directions, while the other two contain fewer recipes in more detailed form. Among the many insights offered by these remarkable works of cuneiform is that the Middle East’s appetite for spicy, aromatic lamb stews is absolutely nothing new, and that leeks, garlic and onions—the commonest forms of allium— have been fundamental to the creation of such dishes since the dawn of civilisation.

One fairly typical recipe, for a dish called ‘tuh’u’, involves searing a leg of mutton, then folding in “salt, beer, onion, rocket, coriander leaves, Persian shallot, cumin, and red beet … leek and garlic”. After sprinkling some coriander seed on top, the cook adds kurrat—another allium, known as Egyptian leek—and a touch more fresh coriander. Despite the vast gulf of time that separates us from Babylon, it really isn’t hard to imagine—and appreciate—how this tagine-like dish would have tasted, and how fundamental to its success the sweet, acidic, umami charms of those alliums would have been.

Domesticated alliums first emerged in Asia, but where or

when is hard to pinpoint: the wild ancestor of the common onion disappeared long ago, and wild garlic grows just about everywhere. Trying to track their progress has proved similarly futile—the growing and cooking of alliums leaves little trace—but it is clear from written sources found everywhere from Korea to the Levant that their ubiquity was established in ancient cultures across the length and breadth of Asia. It isn’t hard to see why. Alliums propagate easily and grow reliably. Some enjoy a rare longevity—the value of a vegetable that can be stored through the fallow months is easy to overlook in this time of constant plenty.

And most importantly, they make everything they touch taste better. Wherever alliums were taken, they were received with open arms, and now there’s barely a corner of the globe where in one form or another they are not considered a native crop.

In Egypt, where the consumption of onion, garlic and leeks was represented in the decoration of tombs dating back to the Early Dynasty period, around 5,000 years ago, they were a staple food of the poor: Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian, visited Giza and was told that 1,600 talents of silver, a vast sum of money, was spent on the mountain of radishes, onions and leeks needed to feed the workmen

during the construction of the Great Pyramid around 2560BC. Alliums were also used in funerary rites: onions could be used to fill the body’s cavities (for the mummy of Ramses IV, they served as false eyes), and preserved bulbs of garlic were found among the more gilded treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb. According to the Roman poet Juvenal, some Egyptians worshiped alliums as gods (“It is an impious outrage to crunch leeks and onions with the teeth / What a holy race to have such divinities springing up in their gardens!”), but then Juvenal wrote quite a lot of things about Egyptians that probably weren’t true.

According to the bible, it was while in captivity in Egypt that the Jews first developed a taste for alliums. In the Book of Numbers, the absence of delicious vegetables became a major source of irritation among the hungry, weary Israelites as they made their way towards the Promised Land: “We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely: the cucumbers and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic,” they lamented. “But now our soul is dried away, there is nothing at all, besides this manna, before our eyes.” And while the whole exodus story is historically questionable, the enduring centrality of onions and garlic to Jewish culinary culture is absolutely not.

Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (77-79AD), provided an exhaustive list of the various onion varieties enjoyed in ancient Roman society, including the tiny, sweet ‘setanian’ onion, the ‘schistan’ onion, which could be stored through the winter with its leaves still on, and one from Cyprus, “which draws tears from the eyes” more than any other. He described the “peculiar nature” of the Ascalonian onion— probably a shallot—and wrote of how the spring onion was “employed for seasonings”. He also told the entertaining tale of how the leek (the most prized of which came from Egypt) had “recently acquired considerable celebrity from the use made of it by the Emperor Nero. That prince, to improve his voice, used to eat leeks and oil every month, upon stated days, abstaining from every other kind of food, and not touching so much as a morsel of bread even.” He doesn’t say how effective this was, but if leeks do improve singing, that would certainly explain the Welsh.

Throughout history, the one member of the almost universally loved allium family that has proven consistently divisive has been garlic, derided by some for its pungency and stench. In his Epodes, the Roman poet Horace howled with disgust after being served a garlicky dinner: “If any man, with impious hand, should ever / Strangle an aged parent, / Make

28 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 28

18/07/2019 17:32

c.2560BC

c.1730BC

1699

1939

The Great Pyramid in Giza is built by slaves fed on a diet of alliums

John Evelyn insists that garlic should be banned from British salads

him eat garlic, it’s deadlier than hemlock, / O you strong stomachs that cull it! / What poison is this that’s burning my entrails? / Has viper’s blood mixed with these herbs / Betrayed me?” The punishment Horace wished upon the garlic-loving friend who had fed him the dish was that “your girl with her hands obstructs your kisses, / And takes the far side of the bed!”

This—the passion-killing effect of alliaceous breath—was a consistent source of humour in the ancient world (as one Martial epigram advised, “Whenever you have eaten strong-smelling shreds of the Tarentine leek, give kisses with your mouth shut”). Perhaps unfairly, then, alliums were also widely believed to boost male virility. In the Talmud, in a set of laws attributed to the great scribe Ezra, Jewish men were instructed to eat garlic the night before the Sabbath, to help them make the most of the holiday, while in Rome, onions were seen as a reliable source of potency—unless, according to Martial, “your wife is old, and your member languid”, in which case “bulbs can do no more for you than fill your belly”.

This belief persisted down through the centuries in various cultures. The Perfumed Garden, a glorious work of 15th century Arabic smut, is full of men who, stuffed to the gunnels with onions, embark on erotic adventures that prove eye watering in every sense. One

Babylonian scribes record dozens of recipes replete with onions

77-79

Pliny the Elder records Emperor Nero’s belief in the vocal-enhancing power of leeks

The outbreak of World War II plunges Britain into an onion supply crisis

verse begins: “The member of Abou el Heiloukh has remained erect / For 30 days without a break, because he did eat onions.”

There is also an intriguingly multi-stage recipe for increasing masculine endowment: “Procure [an ass’s member] and boil it, together with onions and a large quantity of corn. With this dish feed fowls, which you eat afterwards.”

It was the Romans who brought domesticated alliums to Britain. Since their arrival in the country, onions in particular have been a staple food of rich and poor alike—in the 14th century poem Piers Plowman, they were included among the meagre foods with which “the poor people” attempted to “please Hunger”, while that same century they also appeared on page after page of the royal cookery book Forme of Cury: these were foods fit for a king as well as a ploughman.

Unlike many vegetables, of which the meat-loving English ruling classes were traditionally suspicious, onions were considered to be remarkably palatable. Under the Galenic system of medicine, they were deemed ‘hot’ and ‘dry’, but not excessively so, making them, in the words of the 16th century herbalist John Gerard, “good for such as are replete with rawe and flegmatike humours”—a category that included a high percentage of his countrymen.

On the one hand, the onion “causeth headach; hurteth the eies, and maketh a man dim sighted, dulleth the sences, engendreth windines, and provoketh overmuch sleepe”, but its “vertues” were deemed considerable too. Onions were “good against the biting of a mad dogge” (vaguely plausible given the antiseptic quality of onion juice) and “annointed upon a … balde head in the sunne, bringeth againe the haire very speedily” (less plausible, but worth a try).

Leeks, too, were considered healthy. “The Welch, who eat them much,” wrote the 17th century writer and gardener John Evelyn, “are observ’d to be very fruitful.”

Garlic, though, was another matter altogether. In 1699, in his book Acetaria: A Discourse Of Sallets, John Evelyn noted that garlic was “both by Spaniards and Italians, and the more southern people, familiarly eaten, with almost everything”, but that here in Britain “we absolutely forbid it entrance into our salleting, by reason of its intolerable rankness”. As far as he was concerned, the only people garlic might be appropriate for were “northern rustics”, especially those who live in “moist places”, or possibly sailors, but “to be sure, ’tis not for ladies’ palats, nor those who court them”. He also stated that “the eating of it was (as we read) part of the punishment for such as had committed the horrid’st

crimes”—a claim lacking any evidence, but one that would surely have been applauded by our Roman friend Horace.

This British mistrust of garlic, and its racist association with dirty, effete southern Europeans, persisted for centuries. In a letter sent from Naples in 1818, the poet Percy Shelley informed a friend that Italian countesses “smell so of garlick that an ordinary Englishman cannot approach them” (although, as he pointed out, that didn’t stop Lord Byron), and according to Mrs Beeton, who avoided it as best she could, “the smell of this plant is generally considered offensive, and it is the most acrimonious in its taste of the whole of the alliaceous tribe”.

In 1944, George Orwell wrote of the British working class “that they regard such things as garlic and olive oil with disgust”, demanding instead “tea and puddings”.

Had there been a crisis in the supply of garlic during World War II, it is unlikely that Britons would have cared. But the crisis came in the onion supply, and that really was a problem. It is easy to imagine that overreliance on foreign imports of fresh produce is a recent phenomenon, but at the start of the war in 1939 just about every onion consumed in the UK was being shipped from abroad: long-lasting onions could be imported so cheaply from Brittany, the Netherlands and as far away as Bermuda that British farmers had turned instead to more perishable, higher margin vegetables. When war broke out, the supply all but disappeared, and government efforts to encourage planting did little to help matters. In February 1941, the staff at The Times newspaper raffled a large onion for more than £4—more than the average weekly wage—and in 1943, one American visitor described this unlikely scene: “Served as a side dish at our luncheon of the regular three-course meal, which Englishmen religiously impose upon themselves in conformity with ration regulations, was a medium-size boiled Spanish onion. ‘You’ve been robbing a bank or playing with the black market,’ exclaimed the astonished husband.”

After the war, the onion supply gradually returned to normal, and the British could once again rely on their shepherd’s pies and Lancashire hotpots to have that irreplaceable sweet, acidic, umami base. Never again can such a situation be allowed to arise. Brexit is coming. Start planting now.

29 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 29

18/07/2019 17:32

GOURD ALMIGHTY Kathy Slack on how to get the best from cucumbers Images: Kathy Slack Half-moons of cucumber with tomato and lettuce, preferably iceberg, is the blandest of salads—a repeat offender at many a lunch spread back in the 1980s. The slices of peeled (who peels?) cucumber were blanketed in salad cream to add something approaching flavour, but it remained a beige creation.

The same can be said of the cucumber sandwich, which is equally British and just as vapid, despite its vintage appeal. Then again, if the only cucumber on offer is one of those huge, insipid, watery monsters choked in shrink-wrap, then blandness is hardly a surprise—it is no wonder that the cucumber has been tainted by these humdrum associations and is rarely given an opportunity to shine.

Which is a shame, because a taut-skinned cucumber bought young and livid green is surprisingly full of flavour.

Salads, of the non-iceberg lettuce variety, are the natural home of cucumbers. They look beautiful ribboned with a peeler and tossed with sliced radishes—crispness and fire in harmony—or mixed with creamy goat’s cheese and fennel fronds. Cucumbers pickle well too. Dissolve sugar in an equal amount of vinegar and leave your sliced cucumber to soak for a few minutes, then drain and pile it on top of mackerel or smoked salmon. This is the closest I come to cooking cucumbers. I had cucumber on pizza once and afterwards resolved that I would only ever eat cucumber raw.

The clean, cooling qualities of cucumber make it perfect for chilled dishes and summer cocktails. Here I’ve combined the two to make a gin and cucumber sorbet. A kick of gin and the grassy green flavours of the cucumber make this sorbet a light, palate-cleansing dessert for hot days. Adding glucose and alcohol means that the sorbet is soft straight from the freezer. And don’t be troubled by the colour when you make the juice—it won’t look like pond water once it’s churned, I promise.

Cucumber and gin sorbet Serves 8

— 300g caster sugar — 40g liquid glucose — ½ lemon, juiced — 3 large cucumbers (600g in weight) — 140ml gin — Put the sugar and glucose in a saucepan with 300ml of water.

Set the pan over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved.

Do not let it boil. Remove from the heat and add the lemon juice.

— Juice the cucumbers. If you have one, you can do this in a juicer. If not, roughly chop them then whizz in a blender to make a watery puree. Line a sieve with muslin and set it over a bowl, then tip the puree into the sieve and leave for a few minutes so the juice drips through to the bowl below. You can gather the muslin into a bag and give it a gentle squeeze to encourage any last drops. Either process should result in approximately 500ml of juice.

— Mix the sugary liquid and the cucumber juice together.

Add the gin and put it in the fridge to chill. Once chilled, churn in an ice cream maker then transfer to the freezer to set completely.

30 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 30

18/07/2019 17:32

BLUE SKY DRINKING MUSCADET Jane Parkinson explores the natural affinity between this delicate wine and lighter fare

There are some wines that miss people’s radars through no fault of their own. The typically shy, unassuming and delicate wines that hail from cooler climates are often a complete contrast to the shouty, fruit-burst wines that are easy to come by in climates where the sun beats down hard.

Judging this type of genteel, sometimes ethereal, wine blind in a competition can be challenging, as the palate and brain try to identify the difference between delicate complexity and watery blandness.

An inexperienced judge could easily miss one for the other, sadly at the wine’s award-winning expense.

Fortunately, in the last couple of decades, wine professionals have become much more sensitive to these softly spoken wines and in turn, so too has the public.

Perhaps it goes without saying (but I will anyway) that these lighter-bodied wines reign supreme with lighter food, because wine and food matching is just as much about weight of flavour as it is about the flavour itself.

Fresh green vegetables and delicately cooked fish, therefore, usually require wines that have a lightness of touch, allowing them to seamlessly carry the flavour of the food without being over- or under-whelmed.

Muscadet Sèvre et Maine is a perfect case in point.

Located in France’s north-western winemaking hub, the Loire Valley, this appellation makes wine using the melon de bourgogne grape, which arrived in the Loire back in the early 1700s after a particularly nasty bout of frost in its native Burgundy.

Melon de bourgogne has flourished in its adopted home ever since—but it’s not all plain sailing. The skill of making delicious muscadet is twofold. First, vineyard site selection is everything. With the inevitable rain, thanks to its proximity to the Atlantic, producers fare much better if they own vineyards with well-drained, chalky limestone and gravel soils—any site too claybased is a gamble for this grape. Second, it necessitates careful vineyard and winery management. If the climate is too warm, melon de bourgogne’s trademark delicacy is killed off; if it’s too cold the grapes won’t ripen fully, so producers are in a constant battle with the elements to get the balance just right.

One of the most common techniques to give muscadet an extra little boost in texture and flavour is to let the wine rest on its lees (the dead yeast cells produced during fermentation). Sur lie, as this contact process is known, gives a richer, creamier mouthfeel to muscadet without letting it lose its attractive lemon, pear and apple flavours—all of which give it the perfect personality to match well with crunchy green vegetables. So yes, muscadet might have slipped off (or never been on) the radar because of its subtlety, but when served with new season peas, or asparagus, or anything doused in parsley, or with the juicy, fresh, herbaceous crunch of cucumber, its raison d’être is clear.

Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie, Château de la Brétesche, Loire, France, 2017 Wright Brothers Made from organically-grown vines that are on average 45 years old—and therefore imparting extra complexity into the wine—this has deliciously breezy grassy citrus fruit on the mid-palate, while the extra brioche-like weight comes from its time spent resting on the lees during the winter months.

31 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 31

18/07/2019 17:32

PRIZE CROSSWORD

CREDITS

Win a signed copy of The Borough Market Cookbook Complete our crossword for a chance to win a copy of The Borough Market Cookbook, signed by the bestselling book’s author, Ed Smith.

The highlighted squares in the crossword spell out a food-related prize word. Clue: hot water receptacle For a chance to win, send an email to marketlife@boroughmarket.org.uk providing your full name and the prize word. Closing date for entries is 2nd September.

The answer: calamari.

Terms & conditions If you want to receive the Borough Market newsletter, please indicate ‘OPT IN’, on your entry. The solution will be available at the web address below from 2nd September 2019.

For full terms and conditions visit boroughmarket.org.uk/crossword

2

Published by LSC Publishing 13.2.1 The Leather Market Weston Street London SE1 3ER lscpublishing.com Editor: Mark Riddaway mark@lscpublishing.com Deputy editor: Viel Richardson viel@lscpublishing.com Deputy editor: Clare Finney clare@lscpublishing.com Sub-editor: Ellie Costigan ellie@lscpublishing.com Design: Em-Project Limited mike@em-project.com Editorial consultant: Claire Ford

Down 1 Freshwater crustacean (8) 2 Head cheese (5) 4 Meaty batter pudding (4,2,3,4) 5 99 component (5) 6 Land of coddle, crubeens, boxty and blaas (7) 7 Black-clad subculture (4) 8 Unscripted comedy (6) 13 Well-watered (8) 15 Tiny dish (7) 16 Loamy (6) 18 Smell (5) 20 Dish from 6 down, made with 25 across, spring onions and butter (5) 21 Increment (4)

Congratulations to the winner of the previous issue’s crossword prize, Sheena Alleyne.

1

Market Life is a Borough Market publication All material copyright to Borough Market (Southwark) boroughmarket.org.uk

Across 1 Young carnivorous mammals (4) 3 Culinary cavity filler (8) 9 Mineral deficiency (7) 10 Skilful (5) 11 Of higher quality or lesser width (5) 12 Frozen mass (3,3) 14 Day for eating 24 across (6,7) 17 Skewer (6) 19 Repeat (5) 22 City with most Michelin starred restaurants (5) 23 Prized offal (2,5) 24 Batter discs (8) 25 Potato (4)

3

4

6

5

Contributors: Rosie Birkett, Jane Parkinson, Sue Quinn, Kathy Slack, Ed Smith Photographers: Orlando Gili, Kim Lightbody, Polly Webster, Regula Ysewijn

7

8 9

10

11

12 13

14

15

17

16

18

24

Environment In line with Borough Market’s sustainability policies, Market Life is printed by Pureprint Group to the highest environmental standards: ISO 14001. FSC® certified and CarbonNeutral®.

Pureprint is a CarbonNeutral® company.

Manufacturing mill and printer are both registered to the Environmental Management System ISO 14001 and are Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC) chain-of-custody certified.

19

20

21 22

Market Life Issue 46 An interview with James Lowe and John Ogier of Flor, an exploration of sweetcorn

by Kathy Slack, and a brief history of cider

Awards Guild of Food Writers Awards 2019 Winner, Food Magazine or Section of the Year Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards 2019 Winner, Food Writer of the Year, Clare Finney Guild of Food Writers Awards 2018 Winner, Food Magazine or Section of the Year Independent Publisher Awards 2017 Winner, Customer Magazine of the Year Highly Commended, Editor of the Year, Mark Riddaway Independent Publisher Awards 2016 Winner, Customer Magazine of the Year Independent Publisher Awards 2013 Winner Writer of the Year, Clare Finney Highly commended, Designer of the Year, Mike Turner

The paper is Carbon Balanced with World Land Trust, an international conservation charity, which offsets carbon emissions through the purchase and preservation of high conservation value land.

If you have finished with this magazine, please pass it on to other interested readers or dispose of it in your recycled paper waste. Thank you.

23

25

32 Market Life 45 / boroughmarket.org.uk

ml_issue45_JUNE2019_PROOF04.indd 32

18/07/2019 17:32