“THE BEST THING ABOUT THE FOOD FROM SINGAPORE IS THAT IT’S A COMBINATION OF MANY DIFFERENT CULTURES”

Interview: Ellie Costigan / Portrait: Steele Haigh

Elizabeth Haigh established herself as a chef to watch back in 2011, when she competed on MasterChef aged just 24. As its inaugural head chef, she helped east London restaurant Pidgin win a Michelin star, before setting out on her own with a mission to bring her heritage Singaporean cuisine to the masses. “There are not enough Singaporean-Malaysian restaurants,” she says. “Everyone can name a Chinese restaurant, an Indian restaurant, a Vietnamese restaurant in London. How many Singaporean restaurants can people name? Not enough. Representation matters.” Mei Mei is her answer to that shortage: a Singaporean ‘kopitiam’ in Borough Market Kitchen.

What’s your strongest early memory of food?

As far back as I can remember, we would eat round the dinner table together as a family. We would be eating so quickly and hastily that we wouldn’t be having a conversation, but it was just the nicest thing – being with my family, having this tradition every night. We would usually eat quite late, because my mum worked late, but she would always prepare fresh food. It’s something I’m trying to continue with Riley, my son. There’s a lot of distractions now – TV, YouTube – so I really push the importance of having that time together.

You say that there’s no such thing as ‘typical’ Singaporean cuisine. What defines it for you personally?

It’s like trying to define what London food is: you can’t. The best thing about the food from Singapore – and London – is that it’s a combination of many different cultures. Everyone brings their own influences and knowledge. What I love about being in Singapore and the cuisine there is that there’s an undeniable respect for everyone’s background.

Something that’s definitely common, though, is chilli – we’re not talking blow-your-socks-off chilli, but heat. There are a lot of aromatic ingredients such as lemongrass and galangal – that’s very common in all the food right across the country. Galangal is called blue ginger back home. It’s as aromatic as lemongrass but with slightly more fragrant notes. It’s distinctive to our cooking. As is pandan, a leafy green with a unique flavour profile – savoury and sweet at the same time. It’s a key ingredient in the Hainanese chicken rice. There’s also never enough garlic in a Singaporean’s eyes.

When did you discover your passion for cooking?

My mum never let me cook at home. I studied architecture at university, so it was 18-hour days studying, working from home mostly. Before that, if I was feeling a bit down my mum would always say: “Let me make you that herbal soup that makes you feel better.” I found I was really lacking that instant comfort and the luxury of someone cooking for me. I tried to recreate some of the dishes, but I just didn’t have the knowledge and didn’t have access to the ingredients, even though I was in London. I’d go into Chinese supermarkets and think, what is all this?! I don’t know what any of these things are. I would pester her on the phone: “Mum, how do I make that crispy roast pork?” She’d say: “You just prick the skin, put it in the oven and cook it.” I’d be like, there’s probably a bit more to that?!

For her, it’s second nature, so to ask her to quantify things was so hard. There’s a Malaysian phrase, ‘agak agak’, which means ‘your ancestors will tell you when it’s enough’, so basically measuring from the heart. Jamie Oliver westernised it with a swish of this, a slosh of that – it’s the same with our cooking. It’s about going with your gut. That’s what my mum was trying to teach me.

How accurately do the dishes at Mei Mei reflect your mother’s recipes?

We don’t try to recreate them, but we treat the recipes with respect. It’s not going to be authentic, because we use chickens from here in the UK, not ‘kampung’ chickens, which means village chickens. We don’t use the same lemongrass and chilli – the chillies over there are vastly different from the Dutch chillies we have here. Even the lemongrass and galangal – everything is a lot fresher there, because obviously these things have to travel to get to the UK. We try to adapt it so that it works in Britain, while being respectful of tradition. I think we have achieved it, because we do get a lot of people telling us our food reminds them of home. We had a customer here last night for dinner who said: “That barbecue makes me feel like I’m back in the hawker.” That’s exactly what we wanted.

How did you go from training to be an architect to becoming a chef?

I did four years of my architecture course before I realised I wasn’t entirely happy. I was spending all my time in the kitchen cooking and watching MasterChef, and I just felt more satisfied doing that than I did studying or working in the studio. My friend dared me to apply for MasterChef and I got on. I did well in it – or well enough, I didn’t win it – and I enjoyed being around people who were likeminded about food. People of all ages, all with that similar passion. I’d never considered a career in cooking until then, because I was pushed into the university route. I wish I’d had the guts to follow my true passion.

I’m more of an artist, so the design and creative process of architecture really fascinated me and I think that translated easily to being a chef. There’s also a lot of time management, money management, people management – you need to understand people, listen to customers and clients, so becoming a chef wasn’t too hard a transition. The hardest thing was giving up evenings and weekends, birthdays, holidays, weddings. Everything. Your social life, basically. But in exchange I I’ve gained all this invaluable knowledge and skill. It was important to me to start my own business so I could pass on that knowledge.

Did you always want to open your own restaurant?

When I left Pidgin, I wanted to open a restaurant. I had many failed attempts – it’s a lot harder than you might think. But we’ve always wanted a restaurant and I had a very distinct vision of what it should be. I wanted to have an open plan kitchen, so you could see all the chefs cooking, working away. It’s a very visual thing. It feels like you’re in a hawker – or kopitiam, as I say.

Tell us more about the kopitiam concept. What’s the cultural significance?

Kopitiams and hawkers are literally all over Singapore and they run day and night. ‘Kopi’ is coffee, ‘tiam’ is shop. Kopitiam; coffee shop. They are integral to the culture of Singapore. In every community, in every area, you will have a kopitiam. I will go down in the morning in my vest and slippers, have my teh tarik, order my kaya toast – both of which we serve at Mei Mei – and sit there. No one will interrupt you. The aunties and uncles will be chatting happily. One thing to know about Singaporeans is, we are loud. Very loud. 

In Singapore, you will go out for breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper, tea, elevenses – rarely will people eat in or cook at home, unless you have an au pair or a grandmother who cooks, because it’s so affordable to eat out. You start off in a kopitiam and then you might go to a hawker, which is a little collection of stands, each of which specialises in one dish. Maybe in one hawker there will be an uncle that does the best coffee. Next door to him there’ll be the best fish ball noodles. Next door to him will be a spot that does the best barbecue stingray and satays – a giant open charcoal barbecue with racks of food. They will be masters of those recipes because all they focus on is doing that one dish. They’ll put in 10,000 hours to master it.

What would you say is Mei Mei’s hero dish?

We specialise in Hainanese chicken rice – that’s our hero dish and it’s one of Singapore’s national dishes. It’s also the one dish I can eat at any time of the day and not be sick of. We’ve been here nearly two years and I’m still eating it every day. It’s very nourishing: chicken poached lightly, served cold but you have a hot soup with it, so it works well in winter and summer, then you have the spicy chilli to wake you up. Rice is the most important bit. It’s cooked in the chicken broth and fat with ginger and garlic. We like to think we’ve put our 10,000 hours into that dish. Definitely 10,000 chickens!

“THE GEOLOGY AND SEASHORE SETTING OF LESBOS CREATE THE PERFECT FOLIAGE FOR PRODUCING QUALITY MILK AND CHEESE”

Should you ever be so lucky as to find yourself sailing around the Greek island of Lesbos, keep your eyes peeled for a boat full of sheep, manned by a shepherd. It shouldn’t be hard to miss. They’ll be heading to a small island of volcanic rock across the bay to supplement their diet with its unique varieties of mineral-rich herbs. The sheep are a hardy breed, native to the island, and they graze outside throughout the seasons – “not that winter is ever that bad here, but it can get cold in the mountains,” says Dominic Coyte of Borough Cheese Company. “In the summer months they have to find shelter during the heat of the day, and graze evenings and mornings.”

Being one of only a handful of Greek feta cheeses to hold protected designation of origin (PDO) status, the feta of Lesbos is invariably better and certainly more reliable than commercially produced iterations. The island’s geology – “the area producing feta sits on a caldera, which is essentially a volcano that has collapsed on itself” – and seashore setting makes for the perfect foliage for producing quality milk and cheese. “Much is made of the minerality of the Agra area, where our feta is produced, and the benefits to the herbage. There are no olive trees” – the roots of which make for quite bitter milk, if the sheep eat them – “and a real diversity of shrubs, herbs and wild flowers,” says Dominic.

Though best known for his mountain cheese, in recent years Dominic has been alternating mont d’Or, his venerable winter cheese, with this delicate, summery Greek number – its tangy, sweet and salty strains just crying out for fresh cucumber, black olives and tomatoes.

“Our feta is produced by the Tastanis family, who have been making cheese in this area for three generations,” says Dominic. They work with 15 shepherds and 1,500 sheep to produce feta from December to July. Three months ago, he went to visit them and was fed feta on every possible occasion. “We had about 20 courses and each had feta: with fish, wrapped in pastry, warm, cold… it just showed how versatile it is as an ingredient.” Though the majority of feta are a mix of sheep’s and goat’s milk, the Tastanis family make theirs with 100 per cent sheep’s – “so it has a very smooth texture, which is unusual in feta. What I like about the cheese is, that salty sharpness is not so obvious, so slightly fruity flavours can come out in the background.”

The sheep are milked twice a day. “It’s very impressive. Sixty per cent of the herd are milked by hand: I remember this guy sitting on an upturned bucket being jostled by sheep as he quickly milked each one.” The milk is taken to the dairy that morning and again in the evening, filtered, pasteurised and made into cheese. The Tastanis use their own yoghurt to culture the milk. “The most significant thing about feta is the use of salt: dry salting the curd and ageing it in brine,” Dominic explains. Feta varies hugely between regions and producers, but the method doesn’t vary much up until this point. What happens next – how long it matures for and whether that maturation takes place in metal or a wooden barrel – is at the discretion of the maker and seller. “Ours is six months, but it could go a little longer, over which time it will get slightly denser and saltier. I think if you capture it around the six to 10 months mark, it’s perfect,” he continues. “You have that creamy deliciousness. You have that blend of flavours.” You have a cheese savoury enough for a spanakopita, sweet enough for watermelon, rich enough for a salad and creamy enough for our personal favourite: a slice of sourdough toast and a drizzle of Oliveology’s Greek honey.

“GET YOURSELF A FEW BOTTLES OF RIESLING AND SOME WHOLE CRABS AND MAKE A DAY OF IT”

Images: Regula Ysewijn

I lived for many years in Norfolk, mainly in Norwich, and particularly there and in the north of the county, all the way from Yarmouth to the Cromer sands, nothing heralds the start of the culinary summer so much as the arrival on the menu and market stalls of crab. In a world where few things still seem to be local and seasonal, where the great herring fisheries have long since moved on and where even Colman’s mustard, until recently the pride of Norwich, has relocated its factories, the Cromer crab is still very much a going concern, available during the season in every cafe and restaurant east of the Wash. Although the people of Cromer are right to be proud of their local crustaceans, really they are good all over the country, if often compared unfavourably with the apparently more glamorous lobster.

In defence of the crab, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has made the remark that while lobsters cost twice as much as crab, they are not twice as delicious – which is true. Even this misses the point, though, which is that crab is in fact a very different eating experience to lobster, and not really to be compared at all. Bisques and ravioli notwithstanding, the somewhat ephemeral taste of lobster is to my mind best enjoyed as-is, halved and in the shell, with only a flavoured butter of some sort (garlic, usually) to adorn its sweetness – the kind of meal best seasoned by the close proximity of seawater. Crab, it’s true, is often served like this as well. Order a crab salad at, say, Cookie’s Crab Shop on the north Norfolk coast and you will get not a mixed affair but rather a selection of salad items alongside a whole dressed crab – a crab that has been boiled, cracked open, picked over and packed back into the shell.

While nice once in a while, I think this is in general simply too much crab to eat. To me, the strong flavours of both the sweet white meat and the murkier brown really come into their own when combined with other things.

The white meat, from the legs and the fat claws, is essentially the muscle meat of the animal (insofar as a crab can be said to have such a thing), while the brown, composed of not-yet-formed shell and the various organs inside the main body, is crab offal by another name, and the same sort of hierarchy between the two exists as in the meat of any other animals. When I was cooking at Little Duck, lacking the time and the space to really get to grips with a crab, we would buy tubs of either white or brown meat, the former being more than three times as expensive.

As, again, with the cheaper cuts of meat, this distinction is a blessing for those who like deeper flavours; less sweet and delicate, the brinier brown meat is doubly economical, as a little goes quite a long way. Just a tablespoon or two, loosened with a splash of the cooking water, seasoned with some garlic and chilli just-tempered in oil and brightened with a squeeze of lemon juice, makes a wonderful sauce for thick spaghetti; or stir the same amount through a risotto with fresh peas for something that feels like a Venetian spring. The classic treatment, of course, is just to mix it through some mayonnaise and spread it on toast.

Even the less pungent white meat can be happily stretched further with a little thought. A good option is to pair it with something similar in texture, sweetness, or both. At The Sportsman in Kent, Stephen Harris serves white crab meat with hollandaise sauce and a little shredded carrot, the texture of which exactly matches the just-cooked crab. Eating this was the first time crab really made sense to me, its flavour distinct and exact.

At the restaurant, we used to make a sort of crab soup with sweetcorn and fideos, the little lengths of angel-hair pasta. With brown meat as well as the white stirred through, it was hard to tell what was pasta and what was crab, and the result was a very satisfying plateful. More recently I have cooked firm green courgettes with red spring onions and a little garlic in olive oil and their own juices, sweated together until bright and glossy, but with a good bite still to them, and then mixed the result with mint, white crab meat, and sliced lemons preserved under oil, sweet and green and sunny.

These, like the neatly dressed shells sold by the fishmonger, are all very convenient things to do with a crab, but sometimes convenience is not what you are after. Sometimes (not often enough), lunch is something that takes a very long time, and results in a great deal of mess. If you find that this is to be the case, then absolutely the best thing you can do is to get yourself a few bottles of riesling and some whole crabs – one of each between two should be enough, at lunchtime – and make a day of it. Any good fishmonger or market stall, including those at Borough, will be able to supply you with whole crabs. In some cases, if you are adventurous, you might get them live, from which state they will need, for kindness’s sake, to be swiftly despatched, and then to be just as swiftly cooked as once dead, crab does not like to hang around. I won’t, in any case, go into the details here – you can look up the process elsewhere, if you feel up to it. Whether you buy your crabs alive or cooked, however, you will need the same accompaniments. Crab-crackers and picks if you have them, a couple of hammers and a pack of skewers if you don’t; a bowl of mayonnaise, another of lemon halves, and your best friends. You can clean up tomorrow.

“ENGLISH CIDERMAKERS’ EXPERIMENTS WITH ENCOURAGING FIZZ WERE ADAPTED BY THE CREATORS OF CHAMPAGNE”

Such is its simplicity (being nothing more than pure apple juice, left to ferment), it is easy to presume of cider that it must be a remnant of our misty past – the refreshing draught a Neolithic Briton would have supped upon after a hard day erecting megaliths. The relative brevity of its story may be something of a surprise, then – until you think for a moment about the form of an apple: the tight skin, the sinewy core, the dense, tense web of cellulose and pectin that provides its signature crunch. This is not a fruit that surrenders its juice easily. Even the crushing or milling of an apple, itself a labour-intensive task, is only half the job, with the resulting pulp then requiring a hard and heavy pressing. No doubt, apples have at various times been bashed with crude tools in the pursuit of inebriation, but when it comes to getting the party started, nature offers some far less tiring options.    

Certainly, if the ancients were routinely making cider, they left very little evidence. One of the earliest references to the drink came from the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, whose tone suggested it was of minimal importance to his contemporaries. In a chapter of The Natural History (77-79AD), he described 66 varieties of “artificial wine”, including drinks made “of the pods of the Syrian carob, of pears, and of all kinds of apples”. No further insight was offered into this apple wine – in fact, more of Pliny’s words were devoted to booze “made of the naphew turnip”.

It wasn’t until the early medieval period, in northern France, that cider visibly overtook turnip hooch in the pantheon of drinks. Compelling evidence of this came in De Villis, a management manual for the royal estates of Charlemagne, king of the Franks (768-814). This required that “siceratores” (makers of booze) be employed to create “pomatium” (cider), “pyratium” (perry) and other liquors. That Europe’s wealthiest monarch was making cider was telling: it was the development of the screw press that made its preparation viable (as well as transforming the speed of wine and olive oil production), but constructing a screw press was an expensive business. While the humblest of households could brew beer, only the rich could afford to make cider, and even then its production was usually a secondary pursuit: those abbeys and aristocratic estates that made wine in the summer used the same costly presses to juice apples in the winter.

It is often said that the Norman conquest brought cider to England, but evidence of the drink being brewed here only really began to emerge in the 13th century. Over the two centuries that followed, occasional references to mills, presses and cider sales began appearing in estate records, but it was only after 1400 that the dam broke and the scrumpy began to flow. This move from the margins was closely linked to the progress of enclosure: the transformation of the English countryside from a system of vast, unfenced common fields, narrow strips of which were tended to by individual peasant families, to one dominated by larger farms. Orchards, which had no place in the old open field system, became a viable option for yeoman farmers, and hence, too, did the production of cider.

This was particularly true in the west of England. In the counties of the southeast, the flat landscapes and light soils lent themselves to intensive arable farming, but in the wet and rugged westerly regions, where cereals flourished less readily, apple trees and livestock offered a complementary combination: trees provided shelter, and the pomace from cider making – the mulch left behind after pressing – could be used as feed. As presses and mills became more readily available, Devon, Somerset, Gloucestershire and particularly Herefordshire became centres of English cider making. One of the major destinations for this cider was the region’s ports, to be used in sailor’s rations. John Parkinson wrote in 1629: “In the West Country of England great quantities, yea many hogsheads and tunnes full are made, especially to bee carried to the sea in long voyages.”

The 17th and 18th centuries were a golden age of English cider making, chronicled and partly inspired by a group of self-described ‘ciderists’: intellectuals who loved cider, believed that its quality could be improved by embracing a spirit of rational inquiry, and aimed to embed it as our national drink. Two ciderists, John Beale and John Evelyn, were founder-members of the Royal Society when it was established in 1662, making the link between scrumpy drinking and Enlightenment thinking much clearer than might be expected.

The ciderists’ ideas were set out in Pomona (1664) – part polemic, part practical guide – which was prefaced and compiled by Evelyn but built around the horticultural knowhow of Beale. Their hope was to “redeem” cider from the “opinions of those men who so much magnifie the juice of the grape above it,” wrote Evelyn, who argued that English tastes are “generally more for insipid, luscious, or gross diet, than for the spicy, poignant, oylie, and highly relish’d”, and that cider, unlike wine, was a natural fit for the native palate. As evidence, he told the story of a Mr Taylor, “a person well known in Herefordshire”, who had challenged a London vintner to put his best “Spanish or French wine” up against his county’s cider in a series of increasingly rigorous taste tests, every one of which ended in victory for the West Country draught.

As Pomona made clear, fundamental to the boom in English cider making was the cultivation of distinct local varieties of cider apple, known collectively as bittersweets and bittersharps. Beale’s cousin, Viscount Scudamore, was credited with propagating the most famous Herefordshire bittersweet, the redstreak. Cider made with its juice would, wrote Beale, “excel common cider, as the grape of frontignac, canary, or baccharach, excels the common French grape”. It had, according to Captain Sylas Taylor, another ciderist, “the flavour or perfume of excellent peaches, very grateful to the palate and stomach”. Other acclaimed varieties included the gennet moyle, which resulted in cider “of smaller body… yet very pleasant” and the summer fillet and winter fillet, which “passed for white wine” and when mingled with syrup of raspberries made “an excellent woman’s wine”.

Demand for good quality cider was inflated by a series of conflicts with France that led to French imports, including wine, being either scarce or embargoed (the ciderists’ aim was, in Beale’s word, to relieve “the want of wine, by a succedaneum of cider”). The best cider was made with the first runnings of the press, then racked from one cask to another (a process known as ‘keeving’) to inhibit yeast build-up and slow the fermentation, which improved its flavour. The sweetness (and strength) of the cider could also be increased by ‘tumping’ the apples – leaving them to age outdoors for several weeks – or, still better, keeping them in an indoor drying loft. Bottling the cider, a new notion, also added to its appeal. In 1615, when a timber shortage led to a ban on charcoal furnaces, glassmakers were forced to start using coal, which burns much hotter, and the glass that emerged was far sturdier than the delicate stuff of old – sturdy enough to withstand the pressure of a secondary fermentation, resulting in a lightly sparkling drink. It was English cidermakers who first experimented with encouraging effervescence in their bottles – innovations that would later be adapted by the creators of champagne.

Posh cider was far from the only game in town. Hugh Stafford, in his Treatise on Cyder-making (1753), made a distinction between fine cider and “rough” cider, with the production of the latter requiring far less time and care than the former, making it more widely affordable – it was this rough cider that became a staple of public houses around the country. At the bottom of the scale was “an agreeable liquor, for common use, call’d water-cyder”. Also known as ‘cider-kin’, this was made by soaking the pomace in water, then pressing it one last time, the ferment of which produced an insipid, lightly alcoholic drink. This was often fed to farmworkers in lieu of actual wages – a practice known as ‘truck’, which remained common in the cider regions until it was banned in the late 19th century. “This the peasants blithe / Will quaff, and whistle as thy tinkling team / They drive and sing of Fusca’s radiant eyes,” wrote the poet John Philips in his Cider: A Poem in Two Books (1708), an epic paean, written in the style of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. 

Despite its ability to elicit raptures from poets, English cider was destined to be a victim of its own success. Increased demand led to the arrival in the marketplace of cider merchants whose nose for a profit led to all kinds of dilutions and adulterations. Its reputation was damaged further by the 18th century outbreak of ‘Devonshire colic’, an illness attributed to cider but later found to be lead poisoning. Mostly, though, it was killed by the rapid expansion of the beer industry, which quickly out-stripped the largely farmhouse-based world of cider in its range and sophistication. Cider making entered a death spiral, with reduced profits leading to farmers turning their orchards over to other uses. The most prized cider apples, the fabled redstreak included, gradually lost their disease resistance, but a stagnant industry failed to cultivate replacements. In 1785, the agricultural writer William Marshall decried how “all the old types that raised the fame of the liquors of this country, are so far in decline as to be deemed irrecoverable.”

It wasn’t until the late 19th century that a partial revival was triggered, inspired in part by developments in one of the drink’s other great heartlands: northern France. In the 1860s, when their grapevines were ravaged by the phylloxera louse, French authorities had been persuaded to finance a significant survey of and investment in the region’s cider making capacity. This sparked considerable interest among a group of Herefordshire naturalists who began experimenting with French apple grafts and working with some success to bring the county’s orchards back to life.

However, the real spark for the resurgence of cider was lit not in its western hub but in East Anglia, previously a relative backwater (one survey of Norfolk from 1796 had famously concluded: “Orchards very few, and much neglected, consequently no cider”). In 1870, William Gaymer, a Norfolk cidermaker, invested in a hydraulic press and began building a national brand, creating a system of cider making based around factories rather than barns. Gaymer helped break the link between grower and manufacturer by buying in apples from far and wide: in 1903, when the Norfolk apple crop failed, supplies were brought in from Devon. Others followed his lead: Percy Bulmer opened a factory in Hereford in 1887 and proved just as innovative in his embrace of industrial ideas.

Farmhouse cider, and the regional distinctiveness that came from the use of single varietals, became a niche drink as the big factories gradually took over. In the second half of the 20th century, cider became a pasteurised, filtered, carbonated, mass market product, largely made from anonymous apple concentrate, much of it imported. In recent decades, industry ‘innovation’ has seen the creation of white cider: a strong, colourless brew made by adding glucose or corn syrup to pomace – think of it as a weaponised version of cider-kin.

The idea of cider as a beautiful, simple, natural drink with a strong local character never entirely died out, though, as a visit to The London Cider House at Borough Market will make immediately clear. As John Philips would say, could he see the stall: “Thy choice Nectar, on which always waits / Laughter, and Sport, and care-beguiling Wit, / And Friendship, chief Delight of Human Life. What should we wish for more?”

Borough Market: Edible Histories by Mark Riddaway (Hodder & Stoughton) is available now from The Borough Market Store, in bookshops and online.

“COLLAR BACON, FROM THE SHOULDER OF THE PIG, IS THE VELVET UNDERGROUND OF BACON: IT HAS A CULT FOLLOWING”

Words: Ellie Costigan

It’s hard to find someone who eats meat who doesn’t love bacon – in fact, the same can be said for a fair few people who aspire to vegetarianism. There’s just something about the salty, savoury flavour and crunch of those crispy edges that hard to resist. Most of us will agree that bacon is one of the best things to come from the butcher but like many crafts, it has a simple process at its heart. “There are several different types of bacon: loin, belly, streaky and middle,” says Jozef at Ginger Pig. “Whatever the type, the most important thing is, you have to begin with really good quality pork – that is where the flavour comes from.”

The pork joints arrive fresh from the farm with the bone still in. Once deboned and ready for curing, the team apply a mix of dry curing salt and brown sugar. “We don’t use all that much cure – somewhere between two to three grams per kilo of pork. It’s there to enhance, not mask, the pork’s flavour. We rub this on the meat and then dry cure it for a week, turning the joints over every other day. When we’re happy with the level of cure, the salt mixture is washed off and the joint is then air dried for two weeks.”

At this point, some are sold as unsmoked bacon; the rest have a few more steps to undergo. Joints can be single, double or triple smoked, depending on the end flavour the team are looking for. They can also take things in different flavour directions, as with their treacle bacon. “For that, we start by using curing salt without sugar, then we rub black treacle over the joints and air dry for at least two weeks. It is delicious.”

When it comes to cooking, Jozef says, “if you use a great quality bacon made from high quality pork it does not really matter what you do with it.” His personal preference is to cook it in an oven on a low heat for 15 minutes, then whack the heat to high for the last two to three minutes. “That gives you crispy edges and lovely succulent meat.”

Dom from Northfield Farm – which sources mostly outdoor-bred British lop from neighbouring farmers up in Leicestershire – agrees. “If you start with really good bacon, you won’t go far wrong. The pork will do most of the work for you.” But he suggests breaking out of the habit of buying your favourite type of bacon all the time. “Firstly, the fact that different types of bacon come from different parts of the animal means the meat has different properties. Then there are different curing mixtures and methods. There are lots of different textures and flavours to explore.”

HIs favourite is collar bacon, “which comes from the shoulder of the pig and is one of the fattiest areas of the animal,” he explains. “Also, because it comes from a hard-working area, you get a rich meaty flavour – a bit more savoury than other bacon. It is densely marbled and does not really have an ‘eye’. That fat really helps bring out the flavour.” Northfield Farm has been selling it as long as they have been here at Borough Market. “I call it the Velvet Underground of bacon: it has a bit of a cult following,” he says with a laugh. “Not everyone knows about it, but those who do really love it.” When it comes to cooking, Dom favours a screaming hot frying pan. “That way you get nice crispy edges, succulent meat and you don’t render out all of that delicious fat.”

“GROWERS MUST EXERCISE SUPERHUMAN RESTRAINT AND STOP PICKING BY JULY TO SECURE NEXT YEAR’S HARVEST”

It’s a late May day in the 1980s. Two old ladies in tabard aprons sit, like wizened Italian nonnas, on plastic chairs in the lay-by of an Oxfordshire A-road. One holds a cash box in her lap, the other clutches a muddy turning knife. Behind them a sparse, sandy field is peppered with fronds of asparagus ferns, swaying nonchalantly in the breeze. Pull up here with your mother on the way home from school, and these gingham-clad keepers of the keys will waddle off into the field, joints creaking, and return with fistfuls of fresh, young asparagus for your supper.

This, for me, offered an early realisation of why some harvests are so prized and their season so fleeting. As a grown-up, encouraged by the memory of those halcyon days, I attempted to grow asparagus myself, but soon discovered that those old ladies were masters of a tricky art. Asparagus is technically possible to grow from seed, but most opt for planting dormant crowns, which must be left for two to three years before harvesting. It has to be picked by hand. And frequently – a spear can grow in less than a day. It needs plenty of space to grow, taking up acres of land, but hates weeds, so that expanse of bare soil must be weeded constantly, also by hand, asparagus roots being so shallow that a hoe would snap them.

And while the ferns will keep coming all summer, growers must exercise superhuman restraint and stop picking by July to allow the juvenile spears to grow into full ferns and secure next year’s harvest. As if all that wasn’t enough, they must then survive the winter without rotting in wet soil or being eaten by hungry wildlife keen to dig the dormant roots out of their shallow graves.

Unlike the growing, the eating of asparagus is best kept simple: steam and serve with butter or a soft-boiled egg. At most, wrap in prosciutto and roast for a few minutes. Or leave it raw, as in the recipe linked to below, to fully appreciate the juicy, crisp greenness of this hard-won harvest.

“OVER THE PAST DECADE, CHEFS AND COOKERY WRITERS HAVE THROWN OUT THE ASPARAGUS RULE BOOK”

Words: Bee Wilson / Images: Regula Ysewijn

“What if you do not possess an asparagus boiler?” asked Jane Grigson in her Vegetable Book. It is not a dilemma that troubles many cooks now. But back in 1978, when Grigson’s book was first published, everyone knew that there was only one way to cook asparagus: boiled, standing in a bundle. Not owning an asparagus boiler could make this tricky task even trickier.

An asparagus boiler – for the uninitiated – consists of a tall cylindrical lidded pan with an inner basket. The bundle of asparagus is put in the basket, stalks down, with a few inches of salted water. The idea is that in the time it takes every last bit of stringiness to be boiled out of the stalks at the bottom, the tips will steam to tender-crisp. To readers who did not possess this elaborate vessel, Grigson suggested improvising an equivalent using some other tall saucepan and a “wire blanching basket”. As for those who had no wire blanching basket, she recommended tying the asparagus in a bundle in a normal saucepan and improvising a domed lid of foil for the tips. The one thing Grigson did not suggest was cooking this sublime spring vegetable by any other method, because back then boiled asparagus was seemingly the only option.

Thinking about asparagus, it struck me that modern cooks express our love of ingredients very differently from cooks of yesteryear. In the past, asparagus-lovers worshipped this expensive vegetable by cooking it in one way only, which almost seemed to be demanded by the anatomy of the plant. To respect asparagus was to know that it needed to be kept in a bundle and boiled upright, with obsessive care for not overcooking the tips. By contrast, cooks now celebrate the all-too-brief season of these green vibrant spears by cooking them in as many different ways as possible. We griddle asparagus and we braise it; we shred it and eat it raw; we toss it with pasta and noodles; we use it to add spring freshness to green minestrone or risotto.

Cooks used to signal that an ingredient was special by cooking and serving it in one particular way and often in a single designated vessel. Turbot, for example, was poached in court-bouillon in its own special turbotiere. Hot salmon called for hollandaise and cold salmon for mayonnaise. And asparagus, prince of vegetables, demanded to be gently scraped to remove any tough outer stalks, then cooked in water.

There are 19 asparagus recipes in Haute Cuisine by Jean Conil, first published in 1953, and except for one recipe for green asparagus soufflé, all of the others consist of boiling it and serving hot or cold with a sauce. Many of these old haute cuisine ideas for boiled asparagus are in fact still lovely. Conil’s suggestions for asparagus sauces include ‘Maltaise’, a tangy hollandaise made with blood orange instead of lemon and a simple fresh cream sauce sprinkled with chopped chives and chervil. I am a big fan of Conil’s ‘asperges Espagnole’: hot asparagus served with poached eggs and vinaigrette.

When I started cooking in the 1990s, I was firmly of the boiled asparagus school. Someone gave me an asparagus boiler for a wedding present and I was determined to master making proper bundles, like a Dutch still life. I knew that some recipe writers had started blackening asparagus on a char-grill, but the first few times I tried it this way, it tasted harsh and burned and half-raw, a waste of those expensive spears. So, I persevered with my asparagus boiler, even though I found the process frustratingly hit and miss. As Jane Grigson said, depending on the size and quality of the asparagus the timing could vary “from 15 minutes to 45”, which made it impossible to plan supper.

The recipe that changed the way I thought about asparagus was River Cafe penne with asparagus carbonara, which I first read about in 2000. This was a carbonara, but with spears of asparagus cut on the diagonal in place of the pancetta. The thing that startled me was the wondrous economy of the method. While the pasta boiled until al dente for nine minutes, you cooked the asparagus in a separate pan. The stalks were added first, then after two minutes, the tips, which cooked for a further four minutes. The blanched asparagus is tossed with pasta, egg yolks, parmesan, butter and thyme to make a richly spring-like dish: green and golden.

The first time I made it, I couldn’t believe that the asparagus had come out so perfectly with so little effort. I never used my asparagus boiler again, realising that I could boil the spears unbundled in a big pan for five minutes, with none of the fuss and better results.

Over the past decade, chefs and cookery writers have developed a much more experimental and playful approach to asparagus. We have thrown out the asparagus rule book. Take the controversial question of snapping versus slicing. Many cooks used to swear by the tradition of snapping each stalk to separate the edible top from the inedibly woody bottom. But in 2009, food writer Harold McGee experimented by snapping 130 spears and found that the snapping method was far less reliable than simply looking at the spears and cutting them at what seems to be the right point. Don’t discard the stalks. Much of the bottom part is still edible too, notes McGee, if you slice it very thinly and add it to a soup or stir-fry.

It was Yotam Ottolenghi who convinced me that chargrilled asparagus could make a welcome change from plain-boiled. Freshly harvested asparagus contains a lot of natural sugar and charring it accentuates both its sweetness and its umami flavours. Ottolenghi’s first cookbook contained a recipe for chargrilled asparagus, courgette and halloumi cheese salad. It was a bit of a palaver to make: the asparagus was blanched before it was charred with thin slices of courgette and anointed with garlicky basil oil. But the firm, bright spears took on a savoury depth that was a revelation. I have since discovered that I like charred asparagus even more if it is sliced up, tossed with salt and oil and browned for between five and 10 minutes under a very hot grill, with lemon zest added at the end.

If you don’t try different things out, you will never know what you’re missing. As J Kenji Lopez-Alt of The Food Lab writes, we should embrace asparagus “in all its forms from raw and crunchy to braised, olive-green and totally tender”. The best of all ways to cook asparagus, I am now convinced, is neither boiled nor grilled, but braised. By braising, I mean browning the asparagus in a single layer in a paella pan or similar before cooking with butter and a splash of water or stock until the liquid emulsifies to a glossy sauce, which takes less than 10 minutes. Braised asparagus offers both the browned intensity of charred asparagus and the delicacy of boiled.

My introduction to braised asparagus was Lopez-Alt’s excellent recipe on the Serious Eats website but I also recommend the Patricia Wells version on the Food 52 website, where the asparagus is flavoured, surprisingly, with rosemary and bay. With middle age, asparagus season has started making me feel wistful. It lasts such a short time, and who can say how many more asparagus seasons remain? This is yet another reason to expand your horizons beyond boiled asparagus. Not possessing an asparagus boiler is no loss. The real pity would be to miss out on squeezing every ounce of asparagus-joy from the season before it is gone.

“USE RAW WILD GARLIC SPARINGLY – IT MIGHT LOOK MILD AND DELICATE, BUT BOY DOES IT PACK A PUNCH”

Image: Ed Smith

I recently realised that I’ve never really covered the question of what makes a herb a herb. That realisation struck when I was pondering whether wild garlic – or ramson, as it is otherwise known – qualifies for inclusion in this series.

As it happens, I determined well before getting too bogged down in detail that, regardless of the true definition of ‘herb’, these pungent allium leaves should be included on a matter of practicality: despite their ‘wild’ nature, we increasingly see these long, wide, pointed, vivid green leaves on the grocer shelves next to chives, coriander, mint and so on. They carry and impart an incredible flavour, and over the last few years have become an essential part of the British cook’s springtime larder.

In any event, after a spot of foraging through botanical guides and dictionaries, it’s clear that wild garlic fits technically too. A herb is defined as “any plant with leaves, seeds, or flowers used for flavouring, food, medicine, or perfume”; and “any seed-bearing plant which does not have a woody stem and dies down to the ground after flowering”. To my mind at least, wild garlic fits both of those.

Wild garlic grows in moist soil, usually under partial cover of deciduous but not yet leafy trees (often near to bluebells). The season runs from around March to May, depending where you are in the country. You’ll easily identify a patch of wild garlic as there’ll be more than a hint of garlic in the air – it’s a bit of a give-away. Moreover, towards the end of their season, a flurry of beautiful six-pronged white flowers highlights their presence.

Storage

Whether you’ve found and picked the leaves yourself, or bought them from a grocer, my advice on storage remains the same: use them as quickly as possible. Wild garlic leaves wilt in moderate heat and bruise easily too, so it’s best just to pick or buy a few of them, and in short order.

You should store the leaves in the paper or plastic bag or plastic box that you buy them in (or put them in something similar if you did the foraging). Then put them in the fridge.

I tend to then ‘refresh’ the leaves in a bowl of very cold water before using them. Or, if on the same day and I’ve space in the fridge / kitchen, I’ll cut out the middle storage process and just leave the leaves in the water until required.

Don’t bother trying to dry garlic leaves. You could, though, make an oil as per the chive oil in my previous post. Or beat into butter, roll in clingfilm and freeze until your wild garlic butter is required.

Cooking tips

There are three ways to use wild garlic in your cooking:

The first is raw as a chopped garnish. Slice finely with a knife and sprinkle is probably the best advice to give here. But use raw wild garlic sparingly – it might look mild and delicate, but boy does it pack a punch.

The second is to wilt the leaves in a little butter or oil, or very quickly blanch them. This quick application of heat mellows and rounds the flavour of the herb. It’s also my preferred way to use it – it’s so powerful when raw that you’d struggle to get through all of the garlic you’d picked or purchased if you only ate it in its fresh state.

Finally, many chefs will pickle wild garlic (called ‘ramps’ in the States), and add it as a punchy seasoning to numerous foods throughout the year.

Oh, one other thing: do use the flowers if you have them – they also carry a delightful garlicky flavour. Keep them raw and just sprinkle over your dish at the last minute; they’re not as harsh as the leaves, and they sure are pretty.

Classic uses

In terms of flavour pairings, it’s hard to say what ingredients you wouldn’t match wild garlic with (except sweet things). Basically, where normal garlic goes, wild garlic will too. That said, the likes of white fish, salmon, lamb, beef, eggs and wild mushrooms are particular fans.

It wouldn’t be correct to state that wild garlic has particular ‘classic uses’ in the same sense of many of the Mediterranean herbs covered in this series. However, well established uses and flavour combinations include:

— In a pesto, pistou or picada, obviously swapping normal garlic for the flavour in the raw leaves. You’ll see some recipes that completely substitute wild garlic for basil or parsley leaves too. But for me, this is too much. I’d keep a handful of either of those two herbs in the mix to mellow the effect of the garlic.

— As part of a sauce vierge (green sauce) mix alongside tarragon, parsley, capers, anchovy and a splash of red wine vinegar.

— Blanched at the last minute with asparagus.

— Beaten into a butter to melt over griddled beef steaks and lamb chops, or place within a wild garlic chicken kiev.

— Stirred through creamy risottos.

— Cooked in an omelette or with scrambled eggs.

Market herb hero

Any of the grocers stocking the herb – you’ll find it at Fitz Fine Foods and Turnips (and probably the other grocers too from time to time) – plus Neal’s Yard Dairy who, towards the end of the wild garlic season and then for a month or two after, may well have the wild garlic-wrapped version of Lynher Dairy’s Cornish yarg.

A recipe suggestion

Try my wild garlic & new potato frittata: because of its short shelf-life, I prefer to use as much of the wild garlic in my possession at the same time as possible, which usually means applying a bit of heat to mellow the flavour. One way to do that is to use a good bunch of the stuff in a frittata.

“LOCATION IS EVERYTHING. IF YOU WANT THE BEST PRODUCE, YOU NEED A LOCATION WITH THE IDEAL CONDITIONS FOR THE PLANT”

Interview: Viel Richardson

How did you come to be a professional forager?
When I started Fitz Fine Foods, foraging was never meant to be a major part of the business. We were making mostly pâtés and terrines, and I wanted to ensure that the ingredients we were using came from people whose methods were environmentally sensitive and sustainable. I had been foraging for myself for years, and some of that produce occasionally made it into my products. When I analysed what people were buying, the two most popular areas were our small selection of mustards and anything based on foraged plants. I decided to find a way to combine the two. That led to a range of flavoured mustards using foraged goods.

What is the key to being a successful forager?
Location is everything. If you want the best quality produce, you need to find a location with the ideal conditions for the plant. Plants can often gain a foothold in less than ideal places, but they will not be at their best, so you need to know and understand the environments in which they really flourish. Another big issue is dogs: if you forage in areas favoured by dog walkers, it is inevitable that your favourite patch will one day be used as a dog latrine. Essentially, any public land where dogs are common is off limits, so I mainly forage on private land.

Is that legal?
The laws around trespass and foraging have some grey areas, but from my perspective one thing is crystal clear: if you forage on private land for commercial purposes, you have to obtain the landowner’s permission. Tracking down the owner of a piece of land can be tricky, but it is absolutely essential. One place I go, which produces really wonderful wild garlic, is a private wood used for timber; the wild garlic plant is so out of control that it’s actually a real problem for the owner, so he lets me take as much as I need.

How laborious is foraging?
Anyone who has harvested plants commercially by hand will tell you it is hard work. If we take wild garlic as an example, I will gather for about three hours. That sounds a lot, but the idea is to never clear too large a patch. If you do, other plants like dog’s mercury and cuckoo-pint may colonise the area, crowding out everything else. I will clear a patch about two metres square and then move somewhere else – that way the wild garlic can recover. It is all about preserving the resource. You also have to be very observant and inspect the leaves as you harvest – while you’re not picking the leaves individually, you are glancing at each one.

What happens to the wild garlic once picked?
I wash the leaves in a large vat before inspecting them again. I then lay the leaves out to dry, before inspecting them a third time. I just want to make sure nothing else has crept in. After that, if I am going to make a mustard, I blanch the leaves like spinach; if it is for a pesto or for sale as leaves, it is left raw.

This all seems very time consuming.
Very much so. If you want to do it well, it has to be. That means that I cannot do all the foraging myself, so I do have to buy in produce from other foragers. If you’re going to stock produce that people want, you have to be able to offer it to them most of the time. They will forgive an occasional absence, but to build a stable customer base you have to offer some consistency. This is particularly relevant to me, as I make all the mustards myself, so I simply do not have the time to seek out locations, then forage and process everything I need.

How do you pick suppliers?
You do your research and assess the produce they offer. You really need to know how they operate. To give one example, some samphire pickers are paid by weight, while others are paid on quality. Lower quality, older samphire has wooden stalks in the centre, making it heavier – so if you’re paid by weight, there’s an incentive to pick the lower quality plant. You also need to make sure the suppliers are foraging sustainably. Luckily there are some very good companies out there. It is this mix of self-foraged and carefully bought produce that allows me to consistently offer high quality products.

Where do you get your recipes?
Most of them I create myself through experimentation – trial and error. To get the wild garlic pesto recipe nailed down took about three seasons of honing. There are some happy accidents. One day, some chopped-up wild garlic was left in a pot with some honey by mistake. I found it after a while, tasted it and thought it was quite nice, so tweaked the amounts and made some experimental batches – that is now a product. It turns out it takes quite some time to mature – the longer you leave it, the better it gets. If I had tried it straight away, it would have gone in the bin.

What foraged produce will be appearing as spring unfolds?
As you would expect, this is a time when a lot changes – and it can also be very unpredictable, depending on the vagaries of the weather. As our weather gets more unpredictable, you will often find things that the ‘books’ say are out of season. With the wild mushrooms, I’ll be harvesting St George’s, chicken of the woods and the scarlet elf cap, which is a really beautiful, bright red mushroom. Three cornered leeks should be making an appearance, as well as wild asparagus, marjoram and wild alexanders.

“IT’S PRETTY SALTY BUT ALSO PECULIARLY AROMATIC, THANKS TO THE PASTURES OF PAG UPON WHICH THE SHEEP FREELY ROAM”

“The bora, the sheep, the man, and the island of Pag.” That, writes Šime Gligora is the recipe for Paški sir, a cheese from the Island of Pag. A cheesemaker of world renown, Šime is the third generation to run the eponymous Gligora dairy on this weather-beaten island, where a sunny Mediterranean climate meets the harsh, cold conditions of the snow-covered mountains above the Adriatic Sea.

Their clash sparks a strong wind – the bora – which, rolling down the southern mountain slopes to meet the sea, creates a thick, dense fog of salt water drops that spreads over the island. As it dries, Pag is coated with a white dusting of salt in which only the sturdiest of herbs can flourish: sage, immortelle, cistus, fennel and Jerusalem thorn, upon which the island’s native sheep graze freely.

There aren’t many livestock capable of braving the combination of this dry and salty diet and the bitter bora, but according to Šime, the Pag sheep have been coping since at least 800BCE, when the Liburni, an Illyrian tribe, were (likely) some of the first farmers here.

Then, as now, milk and wool were vital parts of Pag’s economy. Together with salt and honey infused with the sage that grows in abundance on the salty soil, one of the most important exports throughout the island’s history has been its cheese. In 2005, conscious of the uniqueness of the Paški sir cheese and its value to the island, a number of Pag’s most established dairies formed The Association of Pag Cheese Producers, in an attempt assure the authenticity of the product.

Milk has to be from autochthonous Pag sheep milked from January to June by the island’s shepherds, who bring the milk to gathering points for it to be stored and cooled. From there, it’s to the dairy, where it’s pasteurised, coagulated and cut, allowing the mass of cheese curds to form. These are put into moulds and pressed for several hours. The cheese is then salted and left in liquid brine for a few days.

Needless to say, it’s pretty salty – but also peculiarly aromatic, thanks to the pungency of the doughty plants that pepper the pastures upon which the sheep must, according to the association’s rules, roam freely. The cheeses are ripened on special shelves in a mild, humid environment for anything from 60 days to two years, though at Taste Croatia most are six months old. During that time, the cheese producers turn, wash and oil the ripening cheeses every day.

The result is a cheese that looks a little like parmesan. Hard, candle-yellow and granular, on first bite even the taste seems indistinguishable. Then something new and unexpected kicks in. It’s a flavour that’s sturdy, vegetal and savoury; there’s salt, sure – but there’s a definite sense of sheep blowing in with it, adding an extra layer of complexity.

“We serve it to customers with fig chutney, which works very well, even though chutney is more of an English thing than Croatian,” explains Taste Croatia founder Chris Stewart. “There they serve it with charcuterie on boards, drizzled with nice Croatian olive oil.” It also pairs well with wine, he continues – another product for which this veritable pantry of a country deserves more acclaim.

In conclusion, it’s versatile. Though noticeably different to parmesan, there’s nothing to stop you grating Paški sir on your pasta or serving it ‘a l’Italia’ with a drizzle of syrupy vinegar – though naturally, we recommend you try Croatia’s fig vinegar over balsamic. “It’s won a gold medal two years in a row at the World Cheese Awards, so it’s pretty good,” says Chris, but the only proof you really need is in the sample he’ll give you, slathered with sweet, figgy chutney. “We like to get the customers a bit messy,” he grins.