“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)

“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.