“THE BIGGEST ISSUE IS ACCESS TO FOOD. WE PRODUCE ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, THEN THROW HALF OF IT AWAY”

Interview: Ellie Costigan / Images: Orlando Gili

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 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.

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 mega-corporations. 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.

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!

“A MEAL IS A SHARED EXPERIENCE. FOR PROSPECTIVE COUPLES, IT’S ALSO A DANCE OF COURTSHIP AND A MEDIUM OF COMMUNICATION”

Though well known for coining the phrase, the late, great Julia Child can’t have been the first person to recognise that people who love to eat are always the best people. No sooner had I ‘discovered’ boys than I realised how and what they ate is one of the most reliable ways of sorting the wheat from the unnecessarily gluten-free. Slow eaters were out; ditto unethical consumers, caffeine eschewers and, I’m afraid to say, vegans. No disrespect to their principles, but I can’t love anyone who can’t share a bubbling vacherin mont d’Or with me on a winter’s evening. ‘In’ was, well, pretty much anyone with an appetite, an open mind and eating at Noma as a serious life goal.

Equally telling of course – for me, as much as for my date – is how I ate in front of them: whether I picked or tucked in with gusto. The first dinner date I ever went on I was 16 and, naturally, loathed every inch of myself. My date, meanwhile, was a rugby lad and a joker, popularly considered to be “a solid eight out of 10”. Inevitably, by the time I got to the restaurant, I felt sick with nerves. “Chicken caesar salad, please,” I whispered. “Without the, um, chicken. Or bread.”

“Is that even a thing?” my date asked, perplexed, ordering himself cheesy garlic bread, pizza and dough balls. Needless to say, a second date never occurred – and while I can’t be sure that my comprehensive rejection of sustenance was the reason, it probably didn’t help. “Just don’t order a salad. Ever,” my brothers advised me afterward – wisdom I have followed to this day. 

Dating at university proved mostly foodless, the only edible measure of someone’s affection being cheesy chips and their capacity to share them. True love was giving someone first dibs on the hottest, cheesiest chip in the tray; true selfishness, to my mind, was smothering the entire pile in curry sauce. It was there, outside one-armed Jane’s chippy in Durham, that I started to develop my condiment theory: the idea that what a person added to their food could prove a reliable indicator of our compatibility. I wouldn’t go with curry sauce any more than I think chips do, but I would have mash with wholegrain mustard (preferably from Fitz Fine Foods) and Ginger Pig sausages.

Looking back over my disappointments in love, I see now that the warnings were written in the sauces: kisses thick with garlic mayo, coruscating obsessions with chilli and, worst of all, the man who couldn’t resist squeezing the jelly-ish mustard you get in those yellow bottles in insalubrious pubs directly onto his spoon.

Naturally, the headiest moments of my romantic life so far have had food at the heart of them. Pistachio gelato from an old Italian ice cream parlour on Eastbourne seafront; a BYO, blink-and-you’d-miss-it Thai place in Kentish town; a brown bag of pink, pert radishes from Elsey & Bent shared by the river. That any man could demonstrate an appreciation for something so small and honest as a fresh, seasonal radish blew my mind almost as much as the radish itself. Later, the same chap would make me gravadlax, fragrant with dill and blushing with beetroot: reader, I should have married him. Instead, I got cold feet and ended it a few weeks later for no good reason beyond his being a bit too perfect, and my own insecurity.

I spent the next five years trying to win him back. Gin, young goat’s cheese, ripe vine tomatoes, Bread Ahead focaccia, St Lucian chocolate: if you can find it in the Market, chances are I bought it in pursuit of his affection. But if the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, his was on a diverted bus route. My caraway seed loaf fell on stony ground. My venison prosciutto was lost on him. “Once bitten, twice shy,” he explained, like he himself was an Alpine deer. That said, the experience did prove to me just how inextricably linked love is with the giving and receiving of food.  

The more relationships I went through, the more I realised mealtimes were the fulcrum of my daily life – and by extension, any life I hoped to share with a partner. We need breakfast to plan our day, coffee to make it happen, tea and cake to chew our problems over, and wine to spin dreams out of. To not care deeply about those things, as has often been the case on dates, to me implied a blatant disregard for ‘us’ as a whole.

“It might be ‘just milk’ to you my friend,” I’d think furiously as an ex reached for the cheapest bottle in the supermarket, “but for me it’s commitment, trust, bovine welfare and the economic and environmental sustainability of agriculture.” To care where and who your food comes from is to care not just for your wellbeing and that of those you love, it is to care for producers, traditional, ethical practices, and for the planet as a whole. The man who had eaten dog, whale and “wouldn’t say no to cat” was a write-off from the moment he said so, despite his good looks and intelligence. The man who waxed lyrical about the ecological benefits of biodynamic viticulture, however, had me at natural pest control.

This is not about pretension. It’s not even about luxury. Indeed, the worst date I ever had was in a three Michelin-starred restaurant in Venice. I couldn’t tell you what we ate, but I can recall in vivid detail every word my partner said as he coldly assassinated my character over successive plates of intricate food. As we left, I remember wondering that such a quality meal could prove so tasteless, purely on account of how I felt. No wonder one of the most common symptoms of sadness is lack of appetite.

A meal is above all else a shared experience, whether it’s a takeaway pizza or plates of pig cheeks and judión beans and pink fir potatoes with tarragon butter at Elliot’s. For prospective couples, it is also a dance of courtship – “Here, try some of this.” “Can I try yours?” “You have the last piece.” – and a medium of communication. To feed somebody, to buy and prepare food for them, is to express a universal and elemental urge.

You want them to live. You want them to live and to thrive because you love them, and feeding them is the best way to ensure this. You want to share your life with them in the same way you share a fresh loaf of sourdough and hot pumpkin soup ladled from a gleaming tureen. It didn’t work out with the pizza man, which on reflection I should have guessed – favourite condiment? salad cream – but I’m optimistic about the future.

However you feel about Valentine’s Day, do eat something delicious with your loved ones. And if you see any eligible bachelors lurking around the wholegrain mustards at Fitz Fine Foods, please send them my way.

“ACCORDING TO WILLIAM SALMON, WRITING IN 1710, POTATOES ARE ‘SPERMATOGENETICK’ VEGETABLES WHICH ‘PROVOKE LUST’”

Words: Mark Riddaway

Southwark resident and likely Borough Market shopper William Shakespeare once suggested that music might be the food of love, but real food of love is, well, food. Since time immemorial, people have been eating and drinking in the service of courtship and romance. Many of the ingredients sold by the Market’s traders have at various points in history, in different parts of the world, been perceived as having romantic or aphrodisiac qualities – some of which are quite surprising. Here’s a Borough shopping list for anyone with loving on their mind.

Chocolate

Ever since chocolate first arrived in Europe in the early 16th century, brought back from Mexico by Spanish conquistadores, it has carried about itself a hint of carnality. It started with ribald tales of the Aztec emperor Montezuma downing gallons of drinking chocolate before entertaining his hundreds of wives and concubines; stories which fired the imagination of repressed Europeans. By the 17th century the drinking of hot chocolate was a widespread and rather fashionable pursuit, especially among women, but that sense of naughtiness never went away: Casanova spends a large proportion of his memoirs “taking chocolate” and trying to persuade women to take chocolate with him. The first chocolate bar went on sale in 1847, with boxes of candied chocolates in production by the 1860s. These were quickly assimilated into the rituals of courtship and have remained so ever since.

Potatoes

In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff, dressed as a stag and massively over-excited at the prospect of having his way with the comely Mistress Ford, cries out: “Let the sky rain potatoes.” To a modern audience, that’s just confusing. But to an Elizabethan audience, it would have made perfect sense. Potatoes, now the most mundane and everyday of vegetables, were for a while the essence of risqué exotica. According to William Salmon, in his 1710 Botanologia; or the English Herbal, potatoes are “spermatogenetick” vegetables which “restore in consumptions, and provoke lust”. It’s fair to say that they’re considered somewhat less sexy these days.

Turnips

Surely the least-likely aphrodisiac in the world – more so even than potatoes. According to Pliny the Elder, there was some debate about the true nature of the turnip: “Democritus entirely disapproved of the turnip as a food on the ground that it causes flatulence,” he wrote. “Diocles, however, praised it highly, maintaining that it is also an aphrodisiac. Dionysius agrees, holding that its effect is greater when it is seasoned with rocket.” Taking into account what we’ve just learnt about potatoes, this puts the Scottish penchant for tatties and neeps in an entirely new light.

Onions

Definitely the nuclear option among food-based aphrodisiacs, particularly when consumed by men. The first century Roman poet Martial summed it up nicely in one of his typically lewd epigrams: “If your wife is old / And your member is exhausted / Eat onions in plenty.” The decidedly filthy 15th century Arabic sex manual The Perfumed Garden by Muhammad al-Nafzawi is filled to the brim with onion recipes and contains a poem that begins: “The member of Abou el Heiloukh has remained erect / For 30 days without a break / because he did eat onions.” In France, this apparent quality is still put to good use: newly-weds have traditionally been served onion soup the day after the wedding in an attempt to reinvigorate their ardour.

Asparagus

Some foods have been ascribed with aphrodisiac qualities thanks largely to looking a little, well, phallic. This is true of celery and carrots, and especially of asparagus. According to the English botanist Nicholas Culpeper, in his Complete Herbal of 1653, asparagus, when boiled up in wine and eaten in the morning, “stirreth up bodily lust in man or woman, whatever some have written to the contrary”. This belief, which dates back to antiquity, reached the Arab world as well. Back to The Perfumed Garden: “He who boils asparagus, and then fries them in fat, and then pours upon them the yolks of eggs with pounded condiments and eats every day of this dish, will… find in it a stimulant for his amorous desires.”

Oysters

A further subset of aphrodisiac foods contains those we can politely call ‘yonic’ – the female equivalent of phallic. Oysters have plenty of that going on, as well as being saline, slippery and impossible to eat in a dignified manner. They have been associated with love and sex since antiquity, as illustrated by these words from Juvenal about the love goddess Venus: “Does Venus care about anything when she’s drunk? / She no longer knows the difference between head and tail, / She who laps at giant oysters, long, long after midnight.”

Casanova, who had a similar penchant for food and romance, ate a staggering quantity of oysters with two young women, Emilie and Armelline: “We ate 50 oysters, and drank two bottles of sparkling champagne, which made my two guests eruct and blush and laugh at the same time.” They ate a further 50 “for dessert”, accompanied by a rum punch, spicing things up by sucking oysters from between each other’s lips. The polar opposite of Casanova was Nehemiah Wallington, a 17th century Puritan from London, who attempted to dampen his lustful inclinations by abstaining from “eggs and oysters and wine and many other things which I loved very well”.

Bay leaves

A correspondent to the Connoisseur journal in 1755 provides a lovely description of an old British Valentine’s Day tradition: “Last Friday was Valentine’s Day, and, the night before, I got five bay leaves and pinned four of them to the four corners of my pillow and the fifth to the middle; and then if I dreamt of my sweetheart, Betty said we should be married before the year was out.” She goes on to explain how she made absolutely sure of success: “I boiled an egg hard, and took out the yolk, and filled it with salt; and then I went to bed, ate it shell and all, without speaking or drinking after it.” Delicious.

Basil

With its heart-shaped leaves and sweet scent, basil is a symbol of love in several European countries. In Romania, on the day before the feast of boboteaza (epiphany), there is a similar tradition to the English bay leaf one, with sprigs of basil being left under the pillow to inspire a future marriage. One of the colloquial names for basil in Tuscany is amorino, meaning ‘little love’, and in Italy these fragrant leaves have been used in a number of romantic traditions. Or, at times, not so romantic: in some parts of Italy the presence of a pot of basil on a balcony was meant to symbolise that the owners had a daughter of marriageable age under their roof and that they would happily listen to offers from suitors.

Wine / beer / spirits

Absolutely no evidence needed for this. In the immortal words of American poet Ogden Nash: “Candy / Is dandy / But liquor / Is quicker.” Wine has provided the petrol in the engine of romance since the first time some slightly off grape juice was shared by an increasingly giggly couple long before the invention of writing. Still the only aphrodisiac that actually works, hence the fact that single people go to parties with bags of bottles, not barrels of oysters.

Mark Riddaway is the author of Borough Market: Edible Histories, a book filled with epic tales of everyday ingredients.

“SMOKED GARLIC IS MELLOWER THAN THE AGGRESSIVE ALLIUM WE’RE USED TO, OFFERING A LESS INTENSE HIT OF FLAVOUR”

Smoked garlic

Hung by a string from ceilings in large, airy rooms and hot smoked over oak chips for up to two days, this smoked garlic is mellower than the aggressive allium we’re used to, making it great for dishes that require a slightly less intense hit of flavour. Use it to stuff a roast chicken, add depth to stews and casseroles, or let its subtlety shine through in a simple garlic sauce or mayonnaise.

Smoked anchovies 

Fished using small ‘ceco’ nets from day boats in the small fishing port of Zumaia, Basque Country, these anchovies, available from Brindisa, are processed and tinned the day they’re caught. Once gutted, washed and brined, the fish are cold smoked over beech wood, resulting in a delicate flavour and moist, melting texture – unlike any anchovy you’ve ever eaten. Best enjoyed with nothing but a simple green salad.

Chipotle chilli 

This wrinkly, prune-like capsicum from Spice Mountain is a jalapeño that has been smoked over wood to infuse it with a rich, chocolatey flavour. They’re sold whole, flaked, powdered or in tins of adobo (the hot, smoky, Mexican sauce). The whole chillies need to be rehydrated in warm water before use. Once brought back to life, blitz them up into a paste and stir into any dish that would benefit from an injection of smoky heat.

Ricotta affumicata

Produced in Trento using a blend of sheep’s and cow’s milks, ricotta becomes a different beast altogether after smoking. Noticeably drier than its unsmoked counterpart, ricotta affumicata has a burnished brown exterior and a crumbly texture, yet the flavour retains some of its ricotta-like creaminess. Buy some from Gastronomica then crumble over gnocchi, grate onto caponata, or shave onto winter leaf salads. 

Smoked Darjeeling second flush

Harvested from lower-lying plants in June each year, this tea comes from the second wave of the Darjeeling harvest. Once handpicked, the leaves are roasted over timber fire, infusing it with a mild smoky taste that’s less assertive than the likes of lapsang souchong, with a ‘clean’ taste to the finish, but leaving a distinctly earthy flavour and a smell like wet woodland. Sold at Tea2You.

“GOOD TRUFFLES SMELL LIKE GOD’S BODY ODOUR AT THE END OF THAT HARD SIXTH DAY OF CREATION”

Image: Orlando Gili

Most of the foods that come plastered like baroque gilding over the menus of the super-rich – caviar, wagyu beef – I can take or leave. Victories of name over taste. Truffles, though. Truffles are worth every bit of their reputation. These winter truffles – brought to Borough Market’s Tartufaia from the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy – smell like God’s body odour at the end of that hard sixth day of creation, pungent and heady, while their knobbly oddness offers a heartening two fingers to any reductive conflation of the tasty and the photogenic.

My first taste of the peerless Tuber melanosporum came in Tuscany, in deep midwinter. My girlfriend and I hadn’t been together long, and the path to true love was a little bramble strewn. Even before we set off for dinner in a tiny, homely restaurant, she was complaining of not feeling well. Then, when I noticed she wasn’t drinking, I knew something was seriously wrong. Straight after we’d ordered, it became obvious from her stomach cramps and clammy pallor that I should immediately cancel and take her straight home.

But my starter was going to be fresh pasta with butter and black winter truffle, and I really wanted to try it. Forced to choose between decency and truffles, I went with the latter, feigning elaborate concern while desperately delaying our increasingly urgent exit. The story has a happy ending: the truffles were all I’d hoped they’d be – angels dancing on a few milligrams of fungus – and because my girlfriend was so ill by the time the primi came out, I got to eat hers too. Oh, and we’re still together, happier than ever, and I know now that she would definitely have made the same decision were the roles reversed. The choice between moral fortitude and transcendent truffle pasta is no choice at all.

“PEOPLE CAME FROM MILES AROUND. WHO THEY WERE, I JUST DON’T KNOW. IT WAS LIKE RAIN ON A DESERT”

Interview: Mark Riddaway / Portrait: Orlando Gili

In the modern history of Borough Market, there have been few figures more pivotal than Henrietta Green. Her formal relationship with the Market may have been brief and – as she readily attests – not without its tensions, but her influence still pervades. After a previous career in theatre, film and advertising production, and another as co-founder of the Graham & Green homewares boutique, Henrietta carved out a niche as a knowledgeable and energetic advocate for traditional producers of high-quality British food, most notably through her ground-breaking Food Lovers’ Guide to Britain, which was first published in 1993. In November 1998, as part of the annual Southwark Festival, she arranged for more than 50 of her favourite British producers to join some of Borough Market’s more progressive wholesalers for a three-day Food Lovers’ Fair. Its overwhelming success was instrumental in persuading the Market’s trustees that a regular retail market could offer a route out of the seemingly terminal decline faced by this famous institution as demand for fruit and veg wholesale atrophied. Many of Henrietta’s traders would go on to form the core of the new retail market. Some, including Neal’s Yard Dairy, Monmouth Coffee Company, Wild Beef, Mrs Kings Pork Pies, New Forest Cider (a precursor to The Cider House) and Ginger Pig, are still here today.

Was good food a feature of your youth?

No, the food was pretty grim in our house. I was brought up in London, very near St John’s Wood high street. We had a housekeeper-cook whose aim in life was, I think, to ruin everything: wonderful ingredients, cooked beyond recognition. I was brought up rather grandly in a very large house. There were quite a lot of staff: cooks and butlers, nannies and drivers. I never ate with my parents – we ate in the nursery, they ate downstairs in the dining room. One Sunday, I remember having our nursery lunch when this unbelievable golden apparition appeared at the table. I remember biting into it, and it being juicy and slightly gamey – a completely different flavour to anything I’d ever had. It was roast chicken. In those days, chicken was very unusual, a great luxury. There was a huge furore – the cook had sent us the wrong dish; my parents were meant to be getting that golden chicken, not us.

So, how did your obvious love of food emerge?

When I was about four, I went to France with my parents. Caroline, the French cook, used to take me to the market every day. I’ll never forget my first visit to the market at Cannes. I have since that day been absolutely fascinated by markets. I remember being hit by the smell – the muskiness, the slight dampness from people spraying their fruit in the heat, the sweetness of the fruit ripening, the saltiness of the fish. The scents were just unbelievable. One of the strongest memories I brought back from France was of a sauce that Caroline made with tomatoes from the market: I was just spellbound by the richness and warmth you got out of them. I’ve never forgotten that. When I was eight or nine, I found myself alone in the kitchen and I wanted to recreate that memory. I thought, I’m going to make that rich tomato sauce myself, and I just cooked it completely instinctively. I knew I had to boil them down to make them thick and put sugar in to make them sweet. My mother had never knowingly cooked in her life, but I embraced it immediately. 

When you struck out into the world of food, it was initially as a writer of recipe books. How did you end up becoming an expert on British food producers?

I got a job, purely by chance, which completely changed my attitude to food. I was taken on as consultant to a new restaurant called The British Harvest at the Hilton on Park Lane. It was so ahead of its time. This was 1984 maybe. The first thing they asked me to do was go off and come back with 100 traditional British recipes, but I didn’t want to do that. What I thought we should be doing is getting the best seasonal ingredients we possibly could, from very specific places, and cooking them in a bright young style, with a nod to Britishness. So, that’s what we did. We had a board of unpasteurised British cheeses, which raised a lot of eyebrows at the time. We had three or four different native oysters from different waters. We got our apples from Brogdale. I rang up the Rare Breed Survival Trust and said we’d like a different rare breed of lamb each month, from a different region, but they told me, “Oh no, we don’t eat them, they’re rare.” And I said, “Well unless something happens to them, they’re going to get even rarer.” Eventually I managed to meet with the trust’s chairman, who was a wonderful man, and he managed to see what I was getting at. That job was so good for me, it really opened my eyes. I was fighting red tape a lot of the time and eventually got fired because I refused to do something, but I didn’t care. I had my vision. We could have achieved so much more – the restaurant got a lot of publicity, but it didn’t do very well.

Your ground-breaking books, British Food Finds and Food Lovers’ Guide to Britain, introduced chefs, buyers and the British public to a vast array of traditional, small-scale producers. What inspired you to start collating those directories?

I remember being invited on a press trip up to the Lake District by this incredibly dynamic PR officer for the English tourist board. We were introduced to all the local specialities. It was just absolute heaven. I met this wonderful man called Richard Woodall, who produced quite wonderful ham. It was just extraordinary. I thought, I have to do something with this. The food was what grabbed me – first and foremost, it had to be good – but then it was also the people behind it, the stories behind it, the integrity, the sense of connection. So, I started collecting. I was beginning to see the change, the insidious creep of homogeneity, and I wanted to help these people fight against it.

Where did the idea of a Food Lovers’ Fair come from?

I had been to America and seen the farmers’ markets there, and I was completely rivetted. I campaigned for many a year to get farmers’ markets going over here, but without much success. Then, after I had written the Food Lovers’ Guide, I was approached by a property company that at the time owned St Christopher’s Place, off Oxford Street. They asked me if I would do a market there. It coincided with the publication of the second edition of the guide, so I chose 25 of the top producers from my book and invited them to come and take a stall, and it was a great success. Randolph Hodgson from Neal’s Yard Dairy was one of those producers. He told me he was moving to Borough and said that we should do a food fair there. Three years later, that’s what we did, as part of the Southwark Festival. The Market in those days was a pretty grim, dusty place. Randolph and some of the other wholesalers had done a couple of ‘open days’, where they had sold direct to the public, but nothing quite like this had been tried there before.

What did you want that weekend at Borough to be?

I had a pretty clear vision for the market. It was quite instinctive. I couldn’t always articulate it, but I knew what it should be. I had formed an advisory committee, but as someone wise once said, a committee should always have an uneven number on it, and three is too many. As the date approached, we were struggling to get enough producers, but I wouldn’t compromise. I could see everyone else thinking that I was just being difficult, but looking back, that control was so important. I wanted to create a fair where people would walk from stall to stall and say, “I can’t believe it, this is heaven.” It was a quest for excellence, unusualness, integrity – proper food made in the proper way with the proper ingredients.

What are your memories of the fair itself?

At quarter to 10 on the Friday morning, I was standing in the main hall. It was grimy, it was dark, there was rain dripping on the traders. I remember standing there with my heart thudding, thinking, what have I done? I’ve brought together these 50 people, they’ve travelled for miles, they’ll sell nothing, they’re going to lynch me. But by 12 o’clock, several producers had sold out their entire weekend’s stock. Ian from Mrs Kings Pork Pies had brought 900 pork pies, and they’d all gone. The Ginger Pig had never done a market before. They’d brought pigs’ heads and trotters. Completely sold out.   

Who came?

People came from miles around. Who they were, I just don’t know. It was like rain on a desert – the appetite was clearly there, but it was completely untapped; the very first farmers’ market had happened in Bath only that autumn, the next one wouldn’t happen until after Christmas. We did get quite a lot of press. I had rung Clarissa and said, “Clarissa, suppose nobody comes…” She was quite famous by this time as one of the Two Fat Ladies. She said, “Do you want me and Jennifer [Paterson] to open it?” That certainly helped. At quarter to 11 on the Friday we had a press call – there was Jennifer with her long fingernails, milking a goat.

One thing that people forget is that Fergus Henderson set up the canteen! It wasn’t much publicised – mainly because he kept disappearing. He had said he would do it, but we couldn’t get any information out of him, so it was a bit touch and go whether he’d come, but it was wonderful having him there: seed cake and madeira at 11am, chitterlings, pork knuckle and a whole Lancashire cheese.

Looking at your career as a whole, what have you been seeking to achieve?

I suppose what I long for is this: I remember going to Slow Food in Turin many years ago and there was a prosciutto crudo tasting, with different cures from all over Italy, six or seven of them. I watched as these three old Italians had this long, terrible and quite hilarious row about which was the best cure. Sometimes you wish for a little more of that here: an informed general public who know the different cures, understand the difference between them, and care enough to argue about them. When it comes to cheese, how many people know the difference between pasteurised and unpasteurised milk? How many people will eat brawn these days? How many eat black pudding? You want that richness, you want that diversity, you want that knowledge. Without diversity, without knowledge, what you’re left with is blandness. Blandness is the biggest danger, and it’s one we need to fight against constantly.

“THEY LACK THE VISUAL APPEAL OF SUMMER’S PILED TOMATOES, BUT THE WHITE ROOTS OF WINTER POSSESS NO LESS POTENTIAL”

Image: Regula Ysewijn

For the first flush of winter, as the cold and the wet really begin to set in, I am more than happy to wallow in the comfort of beige and warming food, of afternoons spent in the slow construction of a braise. After a week or so of this, however, I often find myself craving something that will balance the tangled bowlfuls of collapsing meat and potatoes: a little sweetness and light. If these are not qualities particularly associated with the potato, then luckily winter’s other roots and tubers possess them in abundance, their gnarled and muddy exteriors revealing, after a scrub and a cut, the clean white flesh within.

I must admit to a profound dislike of parsnip. Christmas dinner when I was young always featured chunks of them roasted in a bowl together with the potatoes, and I don’t think I have ever quite got over the unexpected spicy sweetness in amid the salty starch. This is strange, now I come to think of it, as it is exactly that flavour I love in celeriac, in jerusalem artichoke and in parsley root, the latter a particularly close cousin to the parsnip, all with a shared degree of sugar and comfort but each with herbal notes peculiar to itself. It is up to you, when it comes to cooking, which aspect of the vegetable you want to bring out, and to proceed accordingly.

All these white roots take well to high heat, to charring on the bars of a griddle pan or a lucky winter barbecue, or simply browning well in a frying pan. Unlike potatoes, they can all be happily eaten somewhat al dente, so you can concentrate on getting a good colour on them without worrying too much that they are cooking through, removing each chunk of, say, celeriac to a waiting bath of dressing, which it can absorb as it cools to room temperature. Equally, though, once you are happy with their caramelised char, you can finish cooking them all together in the oven to a more giving softness; they have a very accommodating nature, and are good at pretty much every stage of doneness. Charred and undercooked celeriac makes a very good salad, with perhaps some celery leaf for company, some toasted nuts and a little biting onion, while cooked more thoroughly it can be stirred through a meaty ragu instead of or in addition to pasta or other carbohydrates, a little light relief to the fat and richness. The dense minerality of parsley root in particular sits extremely well alongside dark braises of beef or venison.

You can also, if you wish, build these flavours into your stews from the ground up – outside of the western European tradition, in which just about everything begins with the trinity of onion, celery and carrot, other roots often bring their particular sweetness to stocks or stews, becoming part of the structure of the dish rather than an addition to it. A soup in Poland will generally begin with both celeriac and parsley root alongside other vegetables, their flavours blending into those of allium, brassica and pork bones with a certain harmony.

In general, though, I think they deserve to shine more or less alone; even plainly boiled and mashed with just a little butter and plenty of black pepper, these various roots have plenty of character. For a long time, the only form in which I ate jerusalem artichokes was as a soup, which my dad made with the produce from his allotment, the tubers cooked alongside onion and so forth and the whole passed through a moulis. And for all the toffee’d pleasure of the tuber when roasted, I think this kind of simple cream is one of the best ways to eat them. It is also surprisingly versatile. Soup is always welcome, of course, but made thicker it can be a bed for a good pork chop or braised winter greens, while blended with some crushed walnuts it can dress pasta or gnocchi.

Charring and roasting and buttering all in their various ways bring the sweetness of roots to the forefront, but what if you want something lighter, sharper? I have fond memories of a meal I had in Paris with my family in February a decade or so ago, which was in its way perfectly Parisian: my main course was a bourguignon untroubled by herbs or greens and garnished with a single boiled potato, while my starter was a great pile of tangled remoulade, matchsticks of celeriac softening in their sharp and creamy dressing, shot through with capers and finely chopped chive.

Although I rarely cook such straightforwardly French cuisine, I have retained a great fondness for remoulade ever since, and often make versions with shaved jerusalem artichoke or parsley root. The trick is to get the texture right, somewhere between a crunch and a slump, which is best achieved by dressing the vegetables somewhat ahead of time, first macerating in a little salt and lemon and then adding your mayonnaise or sour cream or both, so the acidity has time to soften your roots slightly. Capers are pretty much essential, but other good additions are chopped cornichons or freshly grated horseradish; it depends, of course, on what you want to serve your remoulade with, boiled ham taking it in one direction, smoked fish quite another. Alternatively, you could strip it right back and remove the creamy element altogether, dressing your roots just in lemon and oil with some fresh herbs. At a residency at Weino BIB in Dalston, I made a salad of shaved parsley root and fennel, macerated in lemon and oil and finished with fennel fronds and a lightly cured egg yolk, which mingled together with the lemon into a bright dressing.

Whichever course you choose – whether blackening or boiling or not even cooking at all – you will find these roots follow happily along with your method, as long as they are sliced appropriately and treated with respect. Covered often with earth and in thick and hairy skins, they might lack the immediate visual appeal of summer’s piled tomatoes or of heaping ornamental squashes, but the white roots of winter possess no less potential. Sometimes I feel I have waited for them all year.

“IT IS A HEALTHY THING TO KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW; TO HAVE HUMILITY AND THE DESIRE TO LEARN”

Image: Liz Seabrook

My first feeling, upon reading that Pamela Yung grew up with working parents who rarely had time to cook proper meals, was not sympathy, but relieved recognition. Here was a woman working in food whose passion and talent stemmed not from her mother’s apron strings, but from her an ambition cultivated after, and even in spite of, her childhood.

“It’s a good story,” she says of the tale told by so many chefs and food writers of childhoods spent around the kitchen table, cooking and eating dishes handed down through generations. “But it’s not the only story. Not everyone has the privilege of growing up with parents who had time to cook from scratch. Not everyone has the privilege of growing up with both parents, with grand- parents. And I don’t think you need to have that to pursue a career in food.”

The proof is in Yung’s CV: stints at Michelin-starred restaurants around Europe, training with the ‘prince of pastry’ Will Goldfarb and opening own her own restaurant, Semilla, in Brooklyn in 2014, which won a Michelin star itself a year later. Today she’s head chef of Flor in Borough Market. All this despite growing up in 1980s America, where women were increasingly eschewing the kitchen in favour of careers.

“It’s intimidating,” she says of the emphasis placed on ‘origin’ stories for those in food – not that she appears intimidated – “but I think it can contribute a sense of imposter syndrome, and that’s something many women suffer from.” Yet a background some might consider a barrier has served Yung well by ensuring she is always learning, always open-minded and never blinded by ideas of authenticity.

“It is a healthy thing to know what you don’t know; to have humility and the desire to push yourself forwards and learn. There’s always some- thing new to explore,” she continues. Being free of the shackles of tradition has allowed her to take risks, “which is really rewarding. It might be harder than doing something that you know works, and that people like – but when you’re someone who likes to learn, it’s interesting to try new ideas, even if they don’t always work out.”

Today, Yung is rapidly establishing herself as a chef who puts environmental sustainability at the heart of her food, but in a way “that is provocative. I’m not saying it should make you sit and scratch your head – food should first and foremost be delicious – but my motivation for menu development comes from working with and supporting producers who share a similar ethos around the environment and sustainability.” These are values she has nurtured throughout her career, but which are finding their fullest expression in Flor: a restaurant that, under the careful stewardship of founder and executive chef James Lowe, has been meticulous about sustainability from the start.

“As I’ve got older, I’ve felt the need to have more of an impact than ‘that was a really good dish’ – not that that’s not a great thing, but I want to be able to incorporate environmental and agricultural issues into what I do,” says Yung. Like Lyle’s, its sister restaurant, Flor has sourced from organic and regenerative producers since it opened; now Yung wants to take this philosophy outside of the kitchen and into mainstream conversation. “It’s not just about sourcing well; it’s about communicating to the customer what that means; how it supports the grower; the greater good in the world, and how they can take part.”

Being a baker as well as a chef, grain is the obvious starting point. “It’s an economy that is increasingly important in terms of how it is grown and how beneficial it is in feeding the world. Just saying we use ‘heritage grain’ [slower-growing grain varieties that predate high-yielding, hybridised wheat; the mass cultivation of which has proved so damaging to soil health and biodiversity] is not enough anymore.” This doesn’t mean she’s looking to lecture someone over Flor’s famed, chewy, cheesy flatbreads; more that she is looking to engage the media – and by extension the public – in a more meaningful way.

Our interview is on the phone – but I can almost hear her eyes rolling as we discuss the ‘top 50 insert-adjective listicles’ that dominate some parts of the food media. “We can do better. We have to do better,” she exclaims. “We have just lived through a pandemic that has been, if not brought on by, then exacerbated by many of the issues around agriculture and food production. These are the issues that are going to drastically affect our lives in the next 50 years. It’s more important than anything else we can talk about.”

From The Female Chef by Clare Finney & Liz Seabrook (Hoxton Mini Press)

“FIGS ARE EXTREMELY VERSATILE AND WORK EQUALLY WELL AS THE MAIN EVENT IN A DISH, OR SIMPLY AS A SUPPORT ACT”

Figs are one of those fruits that seem to be available throughout the year (I say one of those fruits, but a fig is, in fact, a syconium containing hundreds of tiny fruits – all those seeds that you see in the reddened centre and that get stuck in your molars as you eat). But of course, they are actually seasonal – and those that are imported into the UK are best at the end of September and through October. Look for the ones that are already purple and ripe – green figs will never truly ripen once picked.

Figs are extremely versatile and work equally well as the main event in a dish, or simply as a support act. Moreover, figs are as at home in a savoury dish as they are in a dessert. No surprise, then, that it was easy to suggest two very different ways with figs for the purpose of this blog.

To my mind, a fig comes into its own when warmed. You can do this in any number of ways (grill, fry, roast, bake, poach) and achieve different effects with each method. I particularly like frying or grilling figs, with the face of the cut fruit in direct contact with high heat. The aim is to get a little charring and some caramelisation, without cooking it completely through.

It’s this method that I suggest for my fig & blue cheese salad recipe. There’s so much going on here – salty, sweet, bitter, sour. The charred and caramelised fig is the ingredient that pairs well with each of the others, bringing the whole dish together. It’s a very simple and decadent salad that would work as part of a feasting buffet, or simply on its own for lunch or supper. Try using a subtle, slightly creamy blue cheese, like Stichelton or Colston Bassett stilton from Neal’s Yard Dairy, bleu d’Auvergne from Mons Cheesemongers or Une Normande a Londres, Bath Soft Cheese’s Bath Blue, or Alsop and Walker’s Sussex Blue.

My second fig recipe is for ginger baked figs, which I suggest serving with melt in the mouth, moreish ginger butter biscuits and cinnamon spiced mascarpone cream. It adds up to a lovely autumnal dessert that manages to be elegant and sophisticated, soothing and restorative, all at the same time. Fig heaven.

Clockwise from top:

Brown shrimp

Character Tiny, sweet and pinkish brown when cooked – which they must be almost as soon as they’re caught, to prevent them from sticking together.

Source Caught by day boats in Morecambe Bay, off the coast of Lancashire and Cumbria, where they’re often set in spiced butter to create the famous local speciality, potted shrimp.

Vannamei (king prawns)

Character Sweet and meaty tropical prawns with grey shells that turn orange-pink with heat.

Source Farmed along the equator in Central America and Asia, where concerns around environmental impacts have led to more sustainable methods being adopted.

Madagascan prawn

Character Large, succulent, grey-pink prawns renowned for their sweet flavour and lean meat.

Source Farmed in the warm waters of Madagascar in accordance with Marine Stewardship Council sustainability standards.

Carabinero

Character Dazzlingly crimson in colour, with an equally intense flavour, many regard these as peak prawn.

Source A deep-sea species sustainably caught by small family-owned boats off the coast of Spain and Morocco.

Langoustine

Character Pale, sunset-coloured crustaceans resembling a cross between a prawn and a lobster, both in appearance and flavour.

Source Over a third of the world’s langoustines are landed in Scotland, though the vast majority are exported to other countries.

Images: Kim Lightbody

From Borough Market: The Knowledge with Angela Clutton (Hodder & Stoughton 2022)