Hi, I'm Ed Smith, I'm a cook and a food
writer and about eighteen months ago the
trustees of Borough Market asked me to
write this, The Borough Market Cookbook:
recipes and stories from a year at the
market, which is a celebration of
seasonal market ingredients, of how
shopping at fresh produce markets
wherever you are can inspire and aid
your cooking at home. Of course it's also
about trying to capture the essence of
this place, Borough Market, about its
values on attacking waste and
sustainability, about the
innovative and characterful
food producers, businesses and traders
that operate here five, sometimes six,
days a week. And about the diverse and
occasionally quirky community events
that take place here throughout the year.
There's actually been a market on this
spot of land near London Bridge for a
thousand years. I've been lucky enough to
work in and around the market for around
six new years now so I'm quite familiar
with the maze that is in front of us and
I thought it would be a nice idea if I
could show you some of the places that
you can get some great food from and
link it to a few things in the book. One
of the joys of seasonal market shopping
I think is that the markets are
constantly changing with the seasons of
course, but almost on a weekly basis, and
I think that the green grocers are often
the bellwether and the guardians of our
palates both in terms of taste and
visually. So at the moment we're at the
bridging point between summer and autumn
so we're kind of moving on from berries
like strawberries and golden raspberries
there, through stone fruits, so greengages
plums, damsons. But soon into
apples and pears and the colors in the
market change from the yellows and reds
and oranges of summer through to greens
and browns of autumn with cavalo nero
and all the brassicas
and the winter squashes that are gonna
come through. And of course also
mushrooms. So there are a number of
different traders at Borough Market who
specialize in wild mushrooms and one of
them is this Tartufaia – both
mushrooms and also anything fungi
they've got amazing truffles throughout
the year.
Mushrooms are one of those amazing
autumnal ingredients that really sort of
make you think of those crisp mornings
and nutty flavours. And I think that
whenever you come to a market you should
be able to pick things that really grab
your attention and then treat them
simply and cook them without too much
fuss. And mushrooms are a great example
of that because really, all they ever
need is to be fried in butter. But
there are a couple of recipes in the
book that add a little bit more than
that. There's wild mushrooms with tarragon
and mustard on toast. Malfatti with wild
mushrooms and also a mushroom ketchup to
go with your steak. So another thing I
love about Borough Market is that it's a
one stop shop for speciality ingredients.
Literally within a couple of
metres you can fill your larder with
spices, with specialist salts, with honey,
all different varieties and of course
olive oil. I love this importer of Greek
produce Oliveology. They've got amazing
pistachios and honey and feta and olives
and olive oil. All of their olive oil
comes from the same estates, the same
olives, but they're pressed at different
temperatures and they taste remarkably
different. In the book there are plenty
of recipes of course with olive oil used
as a flavor as well as an
ingredient. There's even a cake in which
olive oil replaces butter so it's
dairy-free and it tastes delicious.
Like many people I suspect that my first
encounter with Borough Market had
something to do with cheese which is not
really a surprise because there are
actually over 20 different affineurs,
dairies and importers of cheese here at
Borough Market. Some produce their own
cheese, some curate it from around Britain
and others bring it in from different
regions around the world. There can't be
many better places to stock your cheese
board. From time to time I like cooking
with specialist cheeses too. And I
certainly enjoyed working out which of
the aged Comtés I preferred in the
recipe for the family style sharing aged
Comté soufflé. Another thing that's
really great about shopping at produce
markets is that you can talk to the
people who are really, really close to
the things that you're buying, if not the
producers themselves. And you can often
taste as well in advance like at this
place From Field and Flower who
specialise in honey from Italy and
Sweden, from the UK, from Spain and Mexico.
Honey tastes completely different
depending on what the bees have been
feeding on and this is a really great
example of that. And so where some people
say that honey's like a good natural
sweetener, it is, but it's actually a
flavour. And in the book there are lots of
recipes that really make the
most of honey as a flavour rather than
just a sweetener; whether that's figs
baked in honey, creamy cold rice pudding
with bee pollen and honey and roast
seasonal fruits on top.