“THE MORE PLACES THE OLIVES HAVE COME FROM, THE LESS ASSURED YOU CAN BE OF THE OIL’S QUALITY”

Portrait: Kim Lightbody

Though today home to a host of Greek speciality foods, Oliveology began, as the name suggests, with olive oil, grown and pressed by traditional, organic family farms on a part of the Peloponnese peninsula that has been cultivating olives for over 3,000 years.

The best way to understand olive oil is to view it in the same way you would wine. Like wine, there are many different olive oils from numerous different regions – and, like wine, there are many factors that will affect the price and quality. The scale of production is one; if the plantation is large, and most of the harvesting and processing is done by machinery, the olive oil will be cheaper. One reason that olive oil from Greece is rarely cheap is because Greece is so mountainous; you inevitably have no choice but to harvest at least some of the olives by hand.

Another factor to consider is whether you’re buying a single-variety olive oil or a blend. If the oil is produced from a single variety of olives from a single plantation, you can – again, like wine – really taste the terroir. Some producers blend two or three different types of olives, gathered from estates that don’t grow enough olives to make their own oil. This can produce a good result, but blends are often used to hide faults in a particular harvest.

The more places the olives have come from, the less assured you can be of its quality. Kalamata olive oil will be a blend of olives from across the Kalamata region of Greece; Greek olive oil will be a blend from across Greece; European olive oil will be a blend from multiple countries. Our olive oil is a single variety, the Koroneiki variety, from a single estate in Sparta, Greece.

Of course, the main thing affecting the quality of the oil is the quality of the olives themselves. If you use pesticides and fertilisers on the crop, the quality will inevitably be affected, because these chemicals make their way into the harvest – you can’t wash them away if they’ve been applied from the start. But growing organically is becoming a lot more challenging because changes in climate have resulted in more diseases, pests and extreme weather events.

Then there is harvesting. On commercial plantations, they let the olives fall to the ground. This makes them easier to collect but can result in some olives being bruised or rotting slightly. The longer the olives are left, the worse this will be. Even for extra-virgin olive oil, you can allow up to 48 hours between harvesting and pressing. If those damaged olives go through the press, they will affect the result. Our producers pick the olives rather than allowing them to fall, then transport them to the press in less than two hours. Before pressing, they discard any that are defective; last year they had to discard 30–40 per cent. They would rather suffer that loss than damage their reputation.

Finally, there is the processing of the olives into olive oil. For an oil to be extra-virgin, the producer must cold-press the olives, meaning the temperature at which the oil is extracted is no more than 27C. At higher temperatures, the olives start to cook, the acidity of the oil increases, and the flavour and nutritional benefits deteriorate. Cold-pressing results in less yield, so you need to use more olives, but the lower the temperature, the higher the quality of oil. Each of our oils is labelled with a large number, which refers to the temperature of extraction. We’re keen to teach people why this is relevant.

Any olive oil that is not labelled ‘extra-virgin’ will have been extracted at a higher temperature and made with poor-quality olives. ‘Virgin’ and other low-grade oils are simply a way of selling off bad olives. Sometimes people think they have a higher smoke point so are better for cooking, but that’s not true: extra-virgin olive oil has the highest smoke point of any type of olive oil. It’s also a bad way of thinking about it, in my opinion. You’re still eating it, you’re still putting it in your body.

Another common impression is that greener olive oil is fresher and better – in fact, some manufacturers add green colouring because of this perception – but the colour of olive oil is not a guarantee of its quality. Olive oils that are unfiltered and cloudy are good to buy if you are going to use them quickly, but the sediment means they will deteriorate much faster. Our olive oil goes through a simple, natural filtration process – it is left in a metal tank until the sediment settles to the bottom.

I usually recommend that people go around Borough Market, try different olive oils from different stalls, and see which flavours they prefer. There are olive oils from Croatia, Spain, Italy – and Greece, of course. They are spicy, or bitter, or vibrant, or subtle. I don’t believe there is a ‘best’ olive oil, in the same way that there isn’t a ‘best’ wine. It is totally subjective.

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

“MY FOOD IS A POSITIVE REPRESENTATION OF A COUNTRY THAT HAS NOT BEEN REPRESENTED IN A POSITIVE WAY AT ALL”

Interview: Clare Finney / Portrait: Adrian Pope

Though your dad is from Mosul and you grew up surrounded by Iraqi relatives, you were born and bred in London. Did you enjoy Iraqi cuisine growing up, or did you ever set out to rebel against it?

I ate western fare for the majority of my childhoood. My mum was western – English-Irish – and so were my friends. But on special occasions, I’d walk into the kitchen to find my dad and my aunties there cooking and I knew that guests were coming, and it was going to be big. That is when we would have the big show-stopping platters, the mountains of food prepared days in advance. I didn’t appreciate the time, love and flavour that went into it then – I just wanted to eat as much as I could and go and play football – but the seed was planted by those big family meals. 

You working in finance for years before turning to cooking. What stopped you from pursuing food from the off – and what was your family’s response to you leaving the security of banking behind?

Food just wasn’t a consideration when I left university. I always cooked as a student, and that was great – but finance and money were the big boxes my family wanted me to tick. To be fair, that is what I wanted to be able to do as well. I left to pursue my passion, and I left with great drive – but that decision was met with a lot of concern from my family, and understandably so. As any parent will tell you, passion alone isn’t going to cut it – particularly in an industry and a cuisine that is extremely hard, which I had no formal training in. 

Yet you believed you could do it?

I never believed I could achieve all I have; I just wanted to put Iraqi cuisine on the map because, as we say at KUBBA, it’s the best cuisine you’ve never tasted. Though Lebanese and Middle Eastern cuisine is on everyone’s lips, and even Iranian and Syrian are having a surge in interest, no one is really flying the flag for Iraqi food in Britain, and no one knows what it is. The problem is that if you are not Iraqi and someone says the word ‘Iraq’, your head automatically go to war, terrorism, refugees – everything the media has been feeding people in this country for years. In fact, when I first started people told me to avoid the word Iraq in my branding. They said, “Cook the food, but just say it’s Middle Eastern.” I said, “No way: I am going to champion this, and be proud, and bring Iraqi food into the mainstream.” I knew it would be tough because of those negative associations, but I honestly believe persistence, love, and love through food, always wins.

How has growing up both a part of and slightly separate from Iraqi cuisine informed your approach?

It’s been hugely formative. I have had the best of both worlds. When I was at secondary school, I would bring in leftovers for friends to try – biriyani, date and cardamom cookies, bourek – and I was so struck by their reactions, because of course they had never had food like that before. I got so much kudos for bringing those dishes in and sharing them with love and generosity; it made me realise just how special they are, and appreciate the layering of spicing and the complexity and intricacy of flavour and texture compared to most western fare.

You’ve been shortlisted in the Best Street Food or Takeaway category of the BBC Food & Farming Awards 2021. What is the significance of that to you?

It is really moving to be recognised on that platform – not just for my food, but for what I was doing through the pandemic, helping to feed people in the NHS, pivoting my business. I didn’t realise anyone was watching, really. I just wanted to bring love and generosity to a terrible situation. For those efforts to be recognised is a beautiful thing. 

Why was establishing KUBBA in Borough Market so important?

I was on a journey, doing pop-ups, supper clubs, catering events and so on, then Borough Market came on the radar and it just ticked everything I wanted for my brand – for my cuisine, really. It’s an iconic destination for tourists and Londoners. It’s the platform this cuisine needed and deserved. I knew that from the reaction of Iraqis in London when we opened: all that first week people were coming with gifts, coming to say how much it meant to them. The diaspora are so proud of me; I am so proud, as well as grateful and honoured, because what I’ve created is more than just tasty morsels: it’s a positive representation of a country that has not been represented in a positive way at all.

Cooking the cuisine from another country in a city with a large diaspora seems bound to invite questions of authenticity. Has it?

Oh absolutely! The mamas are always coming and saying, this is not proper dolma, this is not proper biriyani. I used to take offence, but now I laugh. It is about pride, passion, education – and it’s a reflection of just how many versions of a dish there are across Iraq; how much it varies from region to region, city to city, family to family. The more we acknowledge that there is more than one way of doing a dish, the more space there is for more people, more ideas, and I want to promote and encourage that. I’ve been trying to represent a whole country through my cooking, and now other people are coming up behind me: it’s a beautiful feeling. 

“THESE ARE THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM BEING AT THE MARKET IS NOT ABOUT MAKING A LIVING, IT’S ABOUT LIVING”

Words: Clare Finney / Images: Orlando Gili

Maybe it’s the conviviality of it. Maybe it’s the camaraderie forged by long hours and hard work. Maybe it’s the fundamental sense of connection that comes with nourishing one’s fellow human beings. But there’s undoubtedly something about food and drink that lends itself to family businesses, be they husband and wife teams, parent and child teams, or teams that span the whole family.

Borough Market is a place that abounds with family ventures. But as with anything at Borough – anything in food, come to that – there are as many differences between these businesses as there are similarities. Some children, like Leo McCourt at Northfield Farm, always knew they were going to follow their folks into food. Others, like Mary Topp at The Cider House, have almost fallen into it. “I wasn’t at school thinking one day I’ll take on the family business – but when the time came it seemed a natural thing to go into,” she explains. Some have found rubbing along with their parents comes easily; others have had to work harder at it by drawing clear lines between their professional and personal lives, leaving shop talk on the shop floor.

Yet all of them have, one way or another, got on – and thank goodness they have. As Esther Crouch of The Parma Ham & Mozzarella Stand notes, Borough Market itself “feels like a family” – and at least some of that feeling is born of the actual families who work there. These are the people for whom being at the Market is not about making a living, it’s about living. Inevitably these businesses have evolved as the new generation has got involved. Social media, once dismissed as a frippery, is now a must-have for any food and drink business, rendering the experience and insight of younger people invaluable. The young are, often, more in tune with trends. They have the energy and enthusiasm to try new ideas, and have different education and experiences to bring to the business. Yet the real strength of family businesses comes from what is passed down through the generations. All of the new breed, to a man and a woman, credit their parents with instilling in them and their teammates the core values of honesty, quality and sustainability that make their businesses – and by extension, Borough Market – what it is.

Dom McCourt, Northfield Farm

While his brother Leo “practically came out the womb saying the word tractor,” it was 20 years until Dom McCourt expressed any interest in the family business. “I was into eating, but never into cooking,” he smiles. “Then I finished university and was drifting along, not knowing what to do, and dad suggested I go to London and have a go working at the stall.”

Dom’s dad is, of course, Jan McCourt: one of the ‘original’ traders, who had a table here back when Borough Market in its current incarnation first started, in 1998. His stand and the McCourt’s farm up in Leicestershire have evolved a great deal since then; yet the family’s ethos and vision are as they’ve always been: “Rare and traditional breeds, grown slowly: that is the heartbeat of the business that dad set in motion,” says Dom. Though he and Leo are steering the business now – Dom in the Market, his brother on the farm with his tractors – Jan is never far away. “We look to him for advice when we need it – mostly when we’re doing something new, like the restaurant pop-up we’ve just launched, or on financial matters. He’s far more financially minded than we are,” Dom continues. Meanwhile, Dom has worked hard to inherit his mother’s culinary talents. “Our mum Tessa is an amazing cook and I’ve always loved food, but it’s only in working with her that it has gone from the mystery of mum’s food to understanding what it is she does.”

Tessa too can often be found at the stand – and her fingerprints are all over their recipe cards, most of which are her creations. “When I give a customer one, I can say, my mum makes that. Trust me, it’s delicious.” Now the pair feed off each other with ideas and inspiration: “There’s a synergy there.” Dom’s determination and vision are palpable. He talks passionately about the role regenerative farming has to play in sustainable food production, and about the changes he and Leo have made and will continue to make regarding things like branding.

“We wanted the brand to be red – which seems obvious, but actually not many meat businesses lay claim to that colour.” It stands out, he continues – much like the truly family nature of the McCourts’ business. “There are a lot of family business out there in the world that aren’t really family – they just use it as a marketing tool. We are, and people like that authenticity.”

Esther Crouch, The Parma Ham & Mozzarella Company

“Esther, Clare is doing an article about parents and children who work at the Market. Can she speak to you around 4pm? And be nice about me – pretend?” writes Philip Crouch, introducing me to his daughter. The message is followed by a ‘winking face’ – but it’s not until I come to interview Esther that I realise just how firmly in his cheek Philip’s tongue really is.

Esther, who joined her brother Jonathan last year at the family’s business, is full of genuine praise for her dad, another of the Market’s true stalwarts. He is, she says, “someone many traders still come to for advice and support”. That’s not to say it’s all been plain sailing: “When I first started working for him part time as a teenager, I just treated him like my dad. I’d be snappy, and mean and unprofessional.” A typical teenager, it sounds like – yet age, the experience of working for another boss, and the demands of the pandemic have conspired to create a more harmonious dynamic between the pair. “I’ve learned to be more professional… to find a more balanced way of working. We definitely have a good working relationship now,” she smiles. What gripes she and her brother have are born less of irritation, more out of concern at her father’s absolute refusal to slow down to even three quarters of the pace and scale at which he’s been operating throughout his career.

“It comes from a place of love. He just loves coming into the Market every day, having a chat to everyone. It is not a long journey, but it’s still a journey,” she shrugs, with the smile of someone who knows she’s probably lost that battle. Yet it’s clear, from Esther’s ease behind the stand, her comfortable relationship with her customers and the vision she has for the coming years that when it comes to manning the stand she’s happy playing a more senior role. “I’ve known how to slice ham since I was 15,” she says. “Then when I first left university, I helped manage one of dad’s places in Soho before working at a bar in Tooting.” It was there she learned what she brings to a business. “My old boss told me that no matter what happened I remained positive, which was great, and I’ve since brought that to The Parma Ham & Mozzarella Stand.” That and an enthusiasm and aptitude for social media. Meanwhile Jonathan works “behind the scenes, on the bookkeeping side”.

That a family business strengthens the bonds between family members is a virtue born of necessity: “You have to get on,” says Esther. “You have to be professional to be successful.” Yet being a family business in Borough Market exposes Esther and Jonathan to “the way in which other people see my dad – because I hear how the traders talk about him, with such respect.” It’s this, and the way in which everyone has pulled together to get through the past 18 months. that has highlighted to her the extent to which Borough Market is in itself a family, regardless of blood connections. “It’s a really lovely, familiar place to work.”

Mary Topp, The Cider House

There aren’t many families who can happily work in the same business. There are even fewer families who can happily live in the same place once the children hit adulthood. As for families who could work in the same business and live in the same place – well, it’s a wonder they even exist. And yet that is exactly the setup of the Topp family, who run New Forest Cider Company and its Borough Market stall, The Cider House.

The business’s founder is Barry Topp, who together with his wife Sue set up a cider press on the farm Sue’s family had owned for four generations. His son John took over the production side of things a few years ago, and his daughter Mary handles the marketing, the market stall and pop ups around the country. “My sister Sally does the accounts and finances – and we all live here in each other’s pockets,” she laughs. Though not, she stresses, in the same house. “I think that would be a bit much!

“The important thing is, we have the same goal,” she continues – that is, producing unpasteurised, real cider from their orchard fruit and that of neighbouring farms, and bringing it to customers around the country. “We are all really passionate about the product because we know exactly what goes into making it, and we’re prepared to put the time and effort in.” At busy periods – Christmas at Borough Market, harvest time at the orchard – the Topps are ready to pull out all the stops.

There are many advantages to their being a family business, says Mary. There’s the spectrum of strengths which invariably exist across different siblings – “I’m more creative, my sister is more logical, and my brother more manual” – and across different generations: “When I first joined the business I came in like a ball of energy and enthusiasm – and while dad was a bit reluctant at first to take on new ideas, he did allow me to try stuff out.” Mary took them to new festivals, expanded the Borough Market stall to include ciders from other likeminded producers, and developed it into one of the first dedicated cider venues in London. “When we first started, it was just selling our New Forest Cider; now it’s known as a really good cider venue,” she continues – something she’s keen to build on in future, with apple-based spirits and cocktails in the pipeline as well as workshops and producer talks.

One area in which family businesses do tend to vary is in their tolerance for ‘talking shop’ at social occasions. The Topps’ rules on this are clear: “we have regular, proper meetings, which professionalises the business, as we have a number of other employees. At the dinner table and at family events we have bans in place to make sure we don’t talk about work.” As a result, they rarely fall out – and if they do, “none of us hold a grudge. That’s the best thing about our family: we’ve always just got on with it and made it work.”

Richard Cartwright, Cartwright Brothers Vintners

When Richard Cartwright first joined his dad Martin and uncle David in their wine business, the only thing he knew about wine was that he enjoyed drinking it. While the eponymous Cartwright brothers imported wine from France and chatted their customers through the merits of various vintages, Richard listened in, gleaning information as he processed transactions, and restocked the stall from the cellars beneath the Market.

Having been behind the phones in a recruitment firm prior to joining Cartwright Brothers, Richard found that the experience of manning the stall was a real confidence boost. “I just did what I was told to start with and deferred to my uncle, but my confidence grew as I did wine courses and read more.” Now he decides what to stock – where his dad and uncle concentrated on French and then South African wines, Richard has expanded into Italy, England and more of the New World – and talks animatedly about the next 20 years: the Sunday opening, the return of tourists, the online trade which “really kept us going through lockdown” – even the possibility of making their own Cartwright Brothers gin or rum. “I introduced spirits a few years ago, and they sell pretty well,” he says. “So maybe we’ll set up a small bespoke distillery one  day.”

Where most of the family businesses in the Market are parent-child affairs, the ‘brothers’ nature of the Cartwright Brothers means it’s not just one side of the family that has a stake in the firm. The close relationship between Martin and David laid the groundwork for the close relationship between their children: “My cousin Hannah and her husband Stuart both worked here when we started out – and Hannah was pregnant at the time so all three of them were involved,” Richard laughs. “Stuart, who’s a firefighter, still helps out when his shifts at the fire station allow. Now we’re in the process of developing the website, my cousin James’ wife Natalie is going to be responsible for our social media – because I’m terrible at all that, and Natalie really knows her stuff.”

Of course, all families who have businesses in Borough Market are close – but there’s close, and there’s the Cartwrights, who have lunch together every Sunday, without fail. “It used to be on one large table, but now there’s loads of children, we need a few tables. There’s loads of lovely food – and of course, lovely wine.” He credits the fact that they’ve never really fallen out with their being so close, and so respectful of each other’s decisions. “There’s no rivalry. There are no challenges. It’s all support.”

Richard Stark, Stark’s Fruiterers

The twinkle in his eye might be familiar, his friendly salesman patter sounds much the same, but if you do happen to note a similarity between Richard Stark and his dad Jock, mind not to mention it – because if there is one thing that does irk the otherwise eminently affable Richard it is people commenting: “You’re just like your dad.”

“That really annoys me,” he exclaims, with only a half-smile to suggest he’s not entirely serious. Afterall, Jock Stark was and is one of the most popular traders in the Market. No one in the history of his decades-long long tenure at the Market could visit Jock’s stall and not walk away with at least one piece of fruit they were not intending to buy. “I’ve learned a lot from him. I’ve taken lots of leaves out of his book,” says Richard: “The way he talks about produce – not in order to sell, not to force it on you, but because it’s great produce and he wants you to enjoy it.” The way Richard sells is slightly different, he continues – as is the way he buys. One of the most obvious changes at Stark’s Fruiterers since Richard took the reins is the improvement in the range of the produce on the stall – not that Jock bought anything of poor quality, but he “bought cheaper than I did. I buy a better class of produce, but still sell it at a competitive price.”

Sicilian lemons, smoked garlic, wild mushrooms and courgette flowers abound. “I know people love a quality Sicilian lemon and are happy to pay for it. I’ve also introduced more vegetables, and did home deliveries during lockdowns,” he continues. “Dad was worried I wouldn’t be able to pull through this last year, but I’ve just about managed to do it.” It’s a significant achievement – for Richard, but also for the family business, which has been running for as long as he can remember. Jock Stark established his first grocer’s shop in South London over 40 years ago, and Richard has “known the game since I was a kid, when I worked on Saturdays at school.”

After 15 years in the building trade, Richard joined the family firm full time, and they worked “under each other’s feet” for the next four years. “Sometimes we couldn’t stand each other. I’d drive home and think, I can’t do this anymore – but we were always absolutely fine the following morning,” Richard smiles. “That’s family. And since he has left, and only comes in occasionally – we have got on really well.”

“OTHER WRITERS DECORATED THE WALLS OF BRITAIN’S DOMESTIC CULINARY CULTURE. BUT DELIA BUILT ITS FOUNDATIONS”

At the start of the 1980s, there were four cookbooks on my parents’ kitchen shelf: a battered family-heirloom edition of Mrs Beeton, and the three volumes of Delia Smith’s Cookery Course. I don’t think Mrs Beeton ever saw much action (hare soup and matelot of tench weren’t really the order of the day in the new towns of the M4 corridor), but those Delia books, crusted with flour and yellowed by spicy thumbprints, dictated absolutely everything that happened in that room.

Back then, Delia (whose level of fame rendered her surname completely redundant) bestrode British domestic cookery in a manner that today, in this multi-platform, multi-channel era of ours, seems completely implausible. Those three books alone – in their individual volumes, then later repackaged as a single edition – sold over six million copies. Her TV broadcasts drew audiences of a scale that today would be more representative of a World Cup semi-final or a royal death than a show about omelettes. A casual mention of an unusual ingredient or a specific item of cookware could cause an earthquake in Britain’s retail supply chains. There were, of course, others who wrote and talked about food, often much more brilliantly – the likes of Margaret Costa, Madhur Jaffrey, Claudia Roden – but while they played their part in decorating the walls of Britain’s domestic culinary culture, Delia built its foundations.

It was in 1969, as a cookery writer for the Mirror, that she began her ascent into the public consciousness. Her earliest appearances on TV came on Look East, a distinctly Partridgean regional magazine programme in East Anglia, after which, in 1973, she was offered her first solo BBC1 show, Family Fare. The Delia Supremacy began in 1978 when the first series of Delia Smith’s Cookery Course landed on BBC1 and it only really ended at the close of the millennium when Jamie Oliver began slugging olive oil around to the sounds of Toploader. Even as that new era of more kinetic TV cheffing knocked her from her pedestal, she still sold books by the bucketload – 2009’s Happy Christmas being a particularly gargantuan hit.

Her power was drawn from the convergence of several streams. Those early appearances on the screen coincided with the explosion in availability of colour televisions – as big a game-changer for TV cookery as it was for snooker. At the same time, the supermarkets, for all their many faults, were beginning to make available to the wider public wildly exotic ingredients such as pasta and chilli powder. And then there was Delia’s true genius: her realisation that, right then, an entire generation was crying out for basic instruction – and that she was exactly the right person to provide it.

People who were raising families in the 1970s had grown up in a post-war world in which food was scarce and cooking was functional. Butter was rationed until 1953, meat until 1954. Government intervention aimed at making food production efficient also made it narrow and cheerless. Imports were rare and costly. Britons of my parents’ age never really learnt to cook, because ‘cooking’ wasn’t really a thing. At school, children were taught ‘home economics’ – the single most depressing synonym imaginable, stripped of any vestige of pleasure. Bereft of choice or skill, you just ate what you had. If you had cheese, you made a sandwich. If you had vegetables, you boiled them.

Then along came Delia, with her colourful floral blouses and direct, school-teacherly manner, and slowly but surely things began to change. She presumed no foreknowledge, she judged nobody. In her generous, unpatronising tone, she offered instructions on how to poach an egg or soften a chopped onion. Then, as her audience’s confidence grew, she took on complex-sounding techniques with frightening French names, and thoroughly demystified them. And she did this not just on the telly, which rarely troubles the long-term memory, but in the books that accompanied them – a revolutionary multi-media concept.    

Delia was never cool, never particularly charismatic or interesting. Serious food people often derided her utilitarian approach to cooking, her embrace of tinned vegetables, stock cubes and sliced bread. But the effect of her work was quietly radical. It was she who opened many people’s eyes to the possibilities that lay in foreign flavours, giving short shrift to the old idea that spices and garlic were disgusting and un-British. It was she who made large parts of the population aware of the very existence of bean sprouts, tahini and cranberries. Her ‘exotic’ food may have lacked for regional authenticity and cultural context, and I’m glad that I can now buy a Palestinian cookbook produced by two Palestinians and a guide to the food of the Caucasus written by a Caucasian (in the very narrowest sense of the word), but I also have no doubt that Delia’s repertoire of curries, chillies and goulashes played their part in shaping Britain’s current openness to the myriad flavours of the world. And while my mum’s chicken curry – Delia’s 1979 chicken curry, plus a few decades of subtle evolution – is no more Indian than my elbow, I still love eating it.

Looking at the front covers of those Cookery Course books, with their very of-its-time italic serif font and their strange inconsistency of cover images (a pepper grinder on part one, a pavlova on part three), gives me the strongest of Proustian rushes. It makes me think of licking a wooden spoon coated in raw cake mix, of the smell of browning meat, of my dad peeling spuds while Sports Report chuntered from the radio. It makes me think of the excitement of dinners that warranted a side of potatoes boulangere – a special Delia dish for special occasions. And it makes me grateful that, because of those books, I had the opportunity to grow up in a kitchen where cooking actually happened.

The Borough Market Cookbook Club’s Delia Smith at 80 takes place on 25th September, 10.30am – noon. Members will come together to talk about Delia ’s books and recipes, and indulge in a celebration of her work and influence.

“I THINK THAT THIS APPROACH – TO COOK VERY THOROUGHLY, IF YOU ARE GOING TO AT ALL – IS BEST FOR MOST VEGETABLES”

Images: Regula Ysewijn

That until relatively recently this country favoured the thick-skinned bulk of the marrow over the courgette, whether in its flowering immaturity, its firm sweetness or through its juicy peak, has always struck me as peculiarly and doggedly British.

The apparent efficiency of allowing the vegetable to grow to its maximum volume, which really makes sense only when preparing for a competition at a traditional country show, is made a nonsense of when you consider that anyone who grows courgettes has, at the height of the summer season, far more than they know what to do with, and that many of the most successful recipes for them involve reducing their volume as far as possible, in an often vain attempt to make some dent in the glut. It is remarkable, if you are not used to it, how quickly vegetables grow, with the weather on their side – only a handful of days separate the fruit from the flower.

At the restaurant the other day I made a pasta sauce from romane courgettes, ridged and slightly stubbly, a couple of kilos of them grated and cooked over a high heat with olive oil and garlic in a slightly-too-small pan so they steamed more than they coloured, stirred the whole time as they gained in intensity what they lost in mass; those couple of kilos made only enough sauce to coat six people’s pasta, but the colour was bright lime and its flavour the essence of courgette.

My father makes a dish that is nothing more than thickly sliced courgettes, thinly sliced tomatoes and some form of grated cheese, all layered up together, and the tomatoes bleed their rich umami into the juices as they all braise their way into softness. Sometimes the best thing to do with vegetables is to cook them right down into total submission, and marvel at the depth of flavour – although sometimes the best thing to do is to leave them alone, at least as far as cooking goes.

If you have a lot of quite small courgettes – perhaps the bright yellow ones, but at any rate thin-skinned and very fresh – shave them all on a mandolin or with a vegetable peeler into Rizla-thin collapsing ribbons. Your boxful is now a bowlful, into which you can massage coarse salt, lemon juice, mild red pepper flakes, olive oil and mint, in that order, and leave to sit happily for an hour or so while they merge into a whole somewhere between a salad and a relish. It will sit happily alongside a very plainly roasted chicken or a fresh white cheese for a lunch or outdoor dinner that tastes of a brisk summer’s day.

On the whole, I think that this approach – to cook very thoroughly, if you are going to at all – is best for most vegetables, from the gnarled roots of winter to summer’s snappy fruits. It stems as much from the traditional British approach to greenery as it does from the more recently (for me) acquired Italian taste for braised and stewed vegetables of all kinds, preferably eased along with plenty of oil or pork fat, and perked up with anchovies, capers, olives, or just a sharp dose of lemon or vinegar – a good one, as sweet as it is sour.

It is the braising and the dressing, of course, that makes the overcooking worthwhile, allowing all the flavours to penetrate the softened flesh of your bobby bean, your aubergine, your chicory, your courgette or even your marrow; if you are going to plainly boil a vegetable it is best to err on the side of crunch, and allow texture and colour to make up for any deficiencies in flavour.

In some restaurants, summer is all about the somewhat frenetic practice of blanching and shocking green vegetables – cooking them briefly in briskly boiling salted water and then bathing them in ice to immediately stop the cooking. This is fine in the professional context of high volumes, or if there is something else you intend to do to your green beans, say, on their way to the plate, but I must admit I shudder slightly when I read articles advising cooks to do so at home.

Few things have their flavour improved by a dip in iced water, and in any case the logistics of doing so in a small kitchen – of gathering enough ice, suitably large containers, utensils to retrieve and to stir and to strain, and so on – seem to outweigh the efficiency of the operation, at least in my experience. I like my home cooking to be a little more relaxed, so I scoop my just-underdone green beans straight from the water and into the frying pan, to nestle in the garlicky oil while little twists of pasta cook in the same water; I would, in any case, never boil a courgette.

If I was disparaging earlier about the marrow, it is perhaps in memory of boiled cubes of the vegetable, overgrown, overcooked and under-seasoned, leaking the remains of their flavour into the edges of my school dinner, and the same treatment serves its younger cousin no better, even with salt and cooking time more carefully regulated; the water simply brings out its watery nature.

If you must cook your courgettes al dente then it is better to do so as near as possible to fire (though preferably not on a skewer with button mushrooms and chunks of sweet red peppers), and to let the heat and the smoke fill in the flavours that long cooking might otherwise provide. You don’t need to barbecue; I still have somewhere an old cast-iron griddle pan I acquired from my first professional kitchen on which countless slices of courgette have been striped with black, softened but still with a slight crunch, before being left to linger in lemon and oil to a warm room temperature.

A thick-bottomed pan of any kind will do the job, though, if you cut your courgettes into decent chunks – perhaps on see-sawing diagonals for a maximum of exposed flesh to caramelise and almost burn – and then coat them lightly with oil and heavily with seasoning to roll around the hot pan, kept for a minute on each cut side until they start to colour and smoke. You could pick the pieces straight out of the pan and toss them from hand to hand until cool enough to grasp between thumb and two fingers and dredge firmly through, say, taramasalata, seasoned yoghurt, or any of the pounded mixtures of nuts, spices and vegetables popular from Syria to Spain.

If you have a little more self-restraint, then tip the contents of the pan into a waiting bath, whether of vinaigrette, anchovy and tomato, or perhaps masses of thinly sliced onion, cooked gently with honey and vinegar. In any case, the point of a courgette is abundance, the expression on a plate of the generously trailing plant, so cook them in piles, and gather friends, and eat the heat of the summer.

“CRUCIALLY, FRENCH CHARCUTERIE IS ABOUT PRESERVING MEAT AS A COOKED ITEM, AS WELL AS AIR-DRYING AND SMOKING”

Words: Ed Smith / Image: John Holdship

Having covered Italian salumi in some detail (see Italian salumi parts one and two), you might well ask what more there is to write on the subject, even in the context of other European countries. Whether it’s called salumi, charcuterie (French, Spanish and English), wurstwaren (German) or something else, isn’t cured meat all the same – just pork, beef or venison, salt, maybe some flavourings, and time? Answer: non.

We could, of course, go into great detail about different breeds of pigs – for example, the qualities of Iberian black pig that becomes jamon Iberico de bellota versus that of the Basque pig that’s used to make jesus du pays Basque. We might also consider the impact of climactic conditions on resulting meat products, for example areas with a warm sea breeze (such as that which is harnessed by the makers of prosciutto di San Daniele) versus cold and wet environments in Alpine regions, which tend to foster smoked rather than simply air-dried meats.

But perhaps it’s useful to take a more simplistic, bird’s-eye view. Literally: imagine walking round a French town or market, compiling a charcuterie platter, then using your phone to take a ‘flat lay’ image for Instagram. How would it look? What’s discernibly ‘French’ about it? How does it differ from something you might put together in Tuscany, southern Spain or Germany? To my mind, the thing that makes a French platter stand out is that it’s not simply a selection of air-dried meats (though saucisson and sliced muscle meats are important): in France, there’s more variety to the genre. On a French board, there’ll be some ‘soft’ charcuterie too, a pâté or terrine, maybe a big clump of rillettes.

Crucially, French charcuterie is about preserving meat as a cooked item, as well as by way of air-drying and smoking. In fact, the word charcuterie derives from ‘chair cuit’, meaning ‘cooked meat’. Long before they were licensed to sell raw sausages and smoked and air-dried meats, charcutiers were first and foremost purveyors of cooked meat products, and this tradition still impacts what the charcutiers and butchers in French villages and towns offer now.

It’s interesting that Jane Grigson’s seminal Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery barely touches on saucisson sec, let alone air-dried hams. Those items do of course exist, but it does emphasise the fact that, if you want to serve an authentic French meat board, you need to begin with the soft stuff.

Soft charcuterie at the Market

Grigson notes that the words ‘pâté’ and ‘terrine’ are used relatively interchangeably, and she tends towards suggesting that pâté is the general term to cover all types of forced or minced meats that are gently cooked, with plenty of fat and gelatinous stock, so that they last in a mould for a good few days. It’s sometimes the case that terrines are made in straight-sided, rectangular moulds, and are often relatively coarse; pâtés are smoother, sometimes mousse-like in form. But then, technically, the filling of a hand-raised pie (whether a round pork pie or something more decorative) is a pâté.

In short, don’t get too caught up in semantics. Do, instead, sample and buy some of the many pâtés on offer at The French Comte. These are coarse country pâtés, some involving apricots, based mostly on venison or boar rather than pork. Pâté seasonings and peculiarities are almost infinite and generally follow regional preferences and ingredients – one of The French Comte’s pâtés is seasoned with pine needles, reflecting the Alpine fauna of the Jura region.

A rillette is more easily defined as cooked, pulled and potted fatty meat. It tends to be pork belly sat in its own fat (or the fat of a duck or goose), though it can also apply to potted goose, duck or rabbit (also plus goose or pork fat). Le Marché du Quartier is an excellent place to head for rillettes, as is The French Comte.

Smoked and air-dried charcuterie at the Market

It’s not clear whether the French created the smallish, air-dried and sometimes smoked saucisson, but they’re both prolific and very good at making them. Any French market will have buckets of these small, often quite hard cured and dried sausages. They’re typically flavoured with black peppercorns or rosemary, or perhaps they’re quite plain. At Borough Market, Une Normande a Londres has a wondrous selection of them. Use a knife to cut discs somewhere between the thickness of a 50p and £1 coin.

Air-dried meats from the Jura

Perhaps saucissons are so prevalent in France because like the UK, before modern curing technology existed, the climactic conditions across much of the country were not particularly well suited to curing and drying large muscle meats. A small sausage could be left to dry out without going mouldy. Large hams, not so much.

That said, there are still areas in France with a tradition of cured and air-dried meats – in particular,  plenty of stellar hams such as bone-in Bayonne ham from the town of the same name in the Basque region (similar to a prosciutto); jambon de Savoie (cured with the bone-out – like a speck, although not salted); jambon de l’Ardèche and jambon de Lacaune from south-west France. Each use heritage breed pigs from specific regions and have minimum periods of maturation (usually between nine and 12 months). Those four hams are from relatively mountainous regions – again indicating that geography and climactic conditions are important in establishing curing traditions.

The Jura region is another environment that appears to be suited to curing, as The French Comte’s meat counter suggests. Here you can sample and buy a number of different meats, many of which are smoked, as is the region’s style. Consider, in particular, walking away with wafer thin slices of their whole hams, the smoked noix de jambon (the central muscle of a ham); some beef fillet marinated in plum brandy before being cured and dried (known as ‘tavaillon’); or dry-cured duck magret (breast), which is outstanding sliced thinly and mixed among bitter frisee lettuce leaves.

The ultimate French charcuterie board

It’s tempting to buy everything. I would suggest, however, that when it comes to putting together a charcuterie board, less is more. Select appropriate quantities (about 35-50g per person) of three different meats: one soft, one saucisson, one muscle meat. You can always come back on another occasion and put different meats into the same formation. But do always include a pile of cornichons from Borough Olives and / or turn the charcuterie board into a meal with the addition of a baguette or pain rustique from Olivier’s Bakery.

See Ed’s recipe for carottes râpées & celeriac remoulade: perfect accompaniments for French charcuterie.

“IT IS A BEAUTIFUL THING TO SEE THE BEGINNINGS OF A CONNECTION WITH THE IRAQI PEOPLE”

Interview: Viel Richardson / Image: Adrian Pope

1. There is a definite mix in my family, with Iraqi, English and Irish in my background. Food was always a big part of growing up. I was always passionate about it, but more from the perspective of eating rather than making. I was not sat on my grandmother’s knee, soaking in her culinary knowledge.

2. The food that was cooked by my father, aunties and rest of the family was nowhere to be found outside our homes. I worked in the Square Mile before doing this and when I took leftover dolma and biryani to work, my workmates loved it. I knew that the cuisine was incredible, but to get that kind of recognition from people who were so new to it was exciting. At the time, London was going through a street food explosion and while I was out there enjoying the food, the thought that Iraqi food must have a place here was always at the back of my mind. I decided to do something about it and hosted my first supper club in 2012.

3. It was my father, who was born in Mosul, northern Iraq, who taught me to cook Iraqi food. He gave me the family recipes for dolma, stuffed onions, stuffed vine leaves and stuffed vegetables. When I tried them and they turned out really well, something just clicked. From that point on, I drove my dad mad pestering him for knowledge and recipes. He is a real “Stay out of the kitchen when I’m cooking!” cook and can have a short fuse, so having me constantly asking questions drove him crazy. But I needed to know. He came to realise that he could either give in or keep on shouting. He taught me the spice blends and the cooking techniques – the baharat blend I use is unique to our family.

4. Kubba is a real staple of Maslawi food – the food of my father’s region. It can best be described as like a filled dumpling or a croquette. They come in a variety of tastes and textures and can be boiled, fried or baked.

5. I chose kubba to be a theme of KUBBA because it is such an undeniably Iraqi food. You mention kubba to someone from Iraq and they instantly know what you are talking about. The challenge is to introduce this to people who do not know about the cuisine. I get a lot of joy and pride from explaining the dishes to new people.

6. If you say to an Iraqi someone is Maslawi, they will say, “Okay, they know how to cook.” Mosul is known within the country as a place where the food is excellent, using very delicate and intricate spicing.

7. If I were to describe the flavours of this cuisine, I would say, think Turkish or Persian but with Indian spices. We use things like black pepper, cloves, rose, cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, coriander. These are familiar spices, but it is the way they are combined and the techniques we use that give the food its unique style.

8. Juma Kitchen is quite meat-heavy, as is the custom with this food. Beef is predominant and lamb is very popular, but on the stall we have innovation as well as tradition, so I designed a mushroom kubba. It has turned out to be wonderful – even the meat lovers are asking for it sometimes.

9. Making kubba is a labour of love. Everything is handmade. There is a lot of craftsmanship and technique involved, and I want to honour that. I tell all my staff about the amount of respect we must give to each one as we make them.

10. Getting the phone call to say that I had been accepted here in the Borough Market Kitchen was wonderful. I’ll never forget that moment. It was very emotional. It is validation not just of me but of Iraq as a country. It is a beautiful thing to watch people walk away after trying our food and to see, in a very real sense, the beginnings of a connection with the Iraqi people.

“IN THIS COUNTRY WE HAVE SOME OF THE BEST MILK IN THE WORLD – CREAMIER THAN ITALIAN MILK AND PACKED FULL OF FLAVOUR”

In many ways, making ice cream at home is tricky. It’s time-consuming and laborious, it can be more expensive than the stuff you buy from the shop, and is certainly much more difficult than dropping by the nearest gelateria. Especially if you make it without a machine.

And yet earlier this month, that is exactly what I set out to do with the help of two of Borough Market’s most respected – and patient – ice cream experts: Craig Allen, co-founder of Greedy Goat, which specialises in ice cream made using British goat’s milk, and John Marco of 3BIS Gelateria, who serves-up award-winning gelato based on a 30-year-old family recipe from Rimini.

I have to confess – it didn’t start well.

“I’m sorry, but it’s just not possible to make proper gelato or ice cream at home, unless you have an ice cream maker,” warned John. “Would I ever attempt to make ice cream at home? No, sorry, I just wouldn’t. In fact, the only tip I can give you is to avoid it altogether.” Craig wasn’t exactly brimming with enthusiasm either: “It’s so much easier with an ice cream maker – you just pour in the ingredients and it’s done in like 20 minutes.”

The technique

Fortunately, after some gentle persuasion the duo agreed to help me, inspired – I like to think – by a rant of mine bemoaning the cost of such machines and celebrating the virtues of good old elbow grease. “Okay,” said John, with a small sigh. “Let’s start with the milk and cream – both should have a decent amount of fat content, so I would always suggest whole milk and double cream. And they should always be British. In this country we have some of the best milk in the world – it’s creamier than Italian milk and is packed full of flavour, as most of the cows are grass-fed.”

Craig agreed, although his preference, unsurprisingly, was for goat’s milk. “It contains less lactose than cow’s milk, which means it can be enjoyed by many of those who are lactose intolerant,” he said. “It’s also easier to digest than cow’s milk, because the fat particles are smaller. And finally, it’s lighter and cleaner tasting, meaning you’re not left with a fatty film coating your mouth.”

If you were to freeze the milk and cream at this stage then you’d end up not with a tub of deliciously creamy ice cream but with a giant milky ice cube, which is why the second most important ingredients are eggs and sugar. The former acts as a natural emulsifier, preventing the water and fat molecules from separating, while the latter not only provides the all-important sweetness but also lowers the freezing point of the mix, ensuring it doesn’t freeze solid.

The flavourings

As for flavourings, I’ve met foodies who argue that the best ice creams are served pure and unadorned, with no need for extravagant additions – not even the faintest suggestion of vanilla. It’s an honourable idea but not one I’m willing to endorse. How can you, when faced with so many possibilities? The Greedy Goat, for example, serves more than 25 flavours on rotation, ranging from rhubarb and custard to cherry bakewell, while 3BIS offers gelato made with everything from mascarpone and figs to peanut butter and liquorice.

“Our bestseller is pistachio and this also happens to be my favourite,” said John. “But ultimately, it doesn’t matter what the flavour is – this is just personal preference. The key is sourcing the very best ingredients you can get your hands on. For example, we use pistachios from Sicily, hazelnuts from Piedmont, coconut from Sri Lanka, mango from India and strawberries from England.”

In the end I opted for Craig’s preference, earl grey tea and lemon zest. The ingredients are cheap and readily available, and this zingy flavour combination perfectly suits what is shaping-up to be one of the hottest summers in living memory.

The freeze

The initial stages of making the ice cream were surprisingly straightforward: I created a custard of milk, double cream, sugar, egg yolks and tea, which was pasteurised before being cooled and infused with fresh lemon zest. So far, so easy. The hard part, unexpectedly, was the freezing. While most recipes call for just a few hours in the freezer, my initial attempts still had the consistency of unpleasant milkshake some two days later. Not the result I was looking for.

The problem? I was using too much sugar, which was preventing the ice cream from forming large enough ice crystals. More still, the volume of ice cream I was attempting to freeze was too large, especially with a freezer struggling to hold its own in such balmy conditions. The solution was easy: in my next test batch I decreased the sugar and split the mixture between two bowls. A day later and voila, I was rewarded with a rich and velvety-smooth ice cream brimming with flavours of lemon and bergamot.

Sure, a machine might have saved me time, but what could be more important than an afternoon spent making ice cream?

Earl grey tea & lemon zest ice cream

Whisk six egg yolks vigorously in a bowl for around 5 mins and set aside. Place 250ml whole cow’s or goat’s milk, 90g icing sugar, 400ml double cream and six earl grey teabags in a heavy saucepan and heat to just before boiling point, stirring occasionally. When the milk and cream mixture reaches 80C, remove the tea bags and set them aside.

Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature before slowly stirring it into the egg yolks. Whisk until it forms a thickened custard. Add this mixture back to the pan and bring up to almost boiling point (around 80C), stirring regularly until it reaches coating consistency (thick enough to coat the back of a spoon).

Transfer the mixture into a large bowl and leave to come down to room temperature. Add the zest of a lemon and the tea bags, cover with clingfilm, and place in the fridge overnight. In the morning, remove the tea bags and decant the mixture into two shallow bowls before placing them in the freezer.

Remove the bowls from the freezer every half an hour, using a fork to whisk around the sides. This needs to be done repeatedly for the next 3 hours, or until you achieve a smooth consistency. Leave in the freezer undisturbed for at least 24 hours before serving.

“BOROUGH MARKET ITSELF IS A WHOLE FAMILY – I’VE REALLY SEEN THAT IN ACTION”

Interviews: Clare Finney / Images: Lucy Young, Christopher L Proctor, Alice Mann

Esther Crouch on Philip Crouch, The Parma Ham and Mozzarella Stand (pictured above)

I’ve been doing the odd shift with The Parma Ham and Mozzarella Stand since I was 15 but when I was first working for my dad, I just treated him like my dad. I would be mean and snappy if I felt like it. It was only when I went and worked for someone else in a bar in Tooting that I learned to be more professional with him while at work. It was good to learn how to be in a work environment, because I think when you’re with family there is a tendency to just be how you usually are with them.

It was at the bar that I learned I can bring a really happy energy to work. My old boss told me they noticed that no matter what happened, I remained positive, which was great. I’ve since brought that to The Parma Ham and Mozzarella Stand. Dad said over the last year it’s been a saving grace that I’ve brought that attitude, while from him I have learned how to run the shop and manage people in such a way that they don’t feel like they are being managed. You don’t really realise he is telling you to do something because his approach is so natural, and he doesn’t bring his stress about margins and so on to the shop floor. I try to be like that and remember that at work, you can choose how to present yourself.

Since I’ve been here, Dad and I and my brother Jonathan, who also works in the business, have developed a good, balanced working relationship. My respect for my dad has also grown. I’ve seen how traders come to him for advice and heard how they talk about him. The Market itself is a whole family – I’ve really seen that in action.

Richard Stark (right) on Jock Stark (left), Stark’s Fruiterers

My dad has had shops for as long as I can remember. I worked with him part-time all during school and then for four years after sixth form. Then I trained as a joiner and went into the building game but after 15 years, I was tired of going into the City with a big bag of tools every day. That was six days a week, this was three and I enjoyed it, so when he asked me to come and work with him full-time, it was a no-brainer. We worked together for four years, then I took over Stark’s Fruiterers when he retired.

We had our moments when we were working together – because you do, when you’re under each other’s feet all day long. Sometimes we couldn’t stand each other. I’d drive home and think, I can’t do this anymore – but we were always absolutely fine the following morning and we get on really well now that he’s retired!

The way we buy and sell is slightly different. He was more conscious of price. He’d buy a class two lemon, for example, whereas I know people love a quality Sicilian lemon and are happy to pay for it. I’ve also introduced more vegetables and did home deliveries during lockdowns. Dad was worried I wouldn’t be able to pull through this last year, but I’ve just about managed to do it.

I have to admit I have taken a lot of leaves out of his book when it comes to selling. The way dad talks to customers, talks about the produce – he doesn’t talk in order to sell but it helps, naturally. Like him, I never try to force a sale on someone. If I talk about some asparagus, it’s because it’s really nice produce and I want you to eat it and enjoy it. I’ve definitely learned from him – though when people say, “you’re just like your dad”, that really annoys me!

Dominic McCourt (right) on Jan McCourt (left), Northfield Farm

I’ve got a brother, Leo, who handles the farming side of the business. He has been orientated toward farming and meat since he came out of the womb. Leo’s first word was tractor – but I was not like that. I just kind of fell into it. I was drifting along after college, unsure what to do with myself, and dad suggested I come down to London and give butchery and selling a go.

I loved it as soon as I started. It’s been really positive, working with dad, and I’m grateful he’s given me this career. It has also been good having some independence; being based here rather than under his watchful eye at the farm! In the last few years, as he’s given me more autonomy to make decisions at the stall, we’ve undergone a transition from him being my boss to me being more like his boss. My brother and I drive the business, and we look to him for advice when we need it – mostly when we’re doing something new, like the restaurant pop-up we’ve just launched, or on financial matters. We’re good at handling product and service but he is more financially minded, so when it comes to that we look to him.

Leo and I have changed a lot over the past few years. We’ve rebranded and changed the structure of the Northfield Farm shop – but we’ve maintained dad’s principal values, the ones he started out with. Rare and traditional breeds grown slowly, that is the heartbeat of the business that dad set in motion. We are driving forward.

“FOR THE FIRST TWO TO THREE WEEKS, THE SALTED LEMONS WILL HAVE BEEN LEFT SOMEWHERE WARM TO GENTLY FERMENT”

Images: Regula Ysewijn

When life gives us lemons, we should make lemonade. But what if those lemons have been salted?

Preserved lemons have become a relatively common sight in British cupboards and fridges as our exposure to and interest in north African food has increased. Let’s call it the Roden-Henry-Ottolenghi-Ghayour effect. That said, I bet for many of us the common sight is of a mostly full jar, untouched for several months since being unsealed for a specific recipe, and another unopened jar in the cupboard, purchased because you forgot about the open one in the fridge.

This ingredient is exactly what the name says: the result of a centuries-old process of preserving lemons through salting, for the dual benefit of avoiding the wastage of a glut and harnessing a flavour until long after the harvest is over.

They’re not simply salty, though. For the first two to three weeks after being packed into a jar, the salted lemons will have been left somewhere warm to gently ferment. In addition to making the fruit less hospitable to spoiling bacteria, this process breaks down the sugars, starches and citric acid, which is why the resulting flavour characteristics are floral and, well, lemony, as opposed to being intensely acidic and sweetly tart as fresh lemons are. Over time they also seem to develop umami – ‘the fifth taste’ – which is why preserved lemons are often described as adding ‘depth’ to recipes.

Many recipes for making preserved lemons will call for the fruits to be cut into wedges or slices, or for slits to be made and those openings to be packed with salt. For me, when the flesh has been exposed, the end product is too salty, too soapy, and some of the supposed ‘lemony flavour’ is obscured. I wonder if this particular method was developed in response to the specific fruits used, European lemons being particularly large with a thick layer of pith. I think the more interesting and indeed more palatable preserved lemons are still whole, made from fairly small and thin-skinned fruit. The Moroccan variety stocked by Fitz Fine Foods is a good example, and Arabica’s baby Egyptian lemons are even cuter (as the name suggests).

Anyway, back to how to use them. It hardly needs to be said that preserved lemons are a vital flavouring in many north African and Middle Eastern-inspired tagines, stews and tray bakes. Perhaps the main thing worth noting in this context is that the lemons can be used in different ways to different effect – try, for example, seasoning a dish by just popping a lemon in whole (as you might a stick of cinnamon or bay leaf), rather than slicing or dicing. If you’ve also got a rogue bunch of coriander to hand, consider harnessing the two bold flavours, along with garlic and chilli, to create a marinade known as chermoula. It’s particularly good with fish. Again, though, perhaps this north African relish was the reason you bought that underused jar to begin with.

For more spontaneous moments, you can use preserved lemons in many of the situations that you might consider adding a little fresh zest and juice. Scrape out the flesh and chop up the pith before stirring the lemons into lentils, couscous, barley, spelt or wheatberries; add dices or slices to mixes of minced lamb or spinach and feta and stuff into a filo-shrouded parcel or pie; use as the aromatic base for a herby sauce or salsa to embellish chicken, beef, white fish or fresh cheeses like burrata, soft goat’s cheese and baked ricotta.

Preserved lemon immediately transports familiar accompaniments to an exotic place. That said, I actually think that the best results come when the preserved lemons supplement rather than replace fresh lemons – the flavour profile that you get by using both is most alluring. One final thing: consider making Vietnamese chanh muôiI. Add a wedge of salted lemon to a glass, muddle with a spoon and top with soda water and ice. Ladies and gentlemen, when life gives you preserved lemons, make preserved lemon lemonade.