“AN ENGLISH DICTIONARY PUBLISHED IN 1677 DESCRIBED THE TOMATO AS ‘A SPANISH ROOT OF A COLOUR NEAR VIOLET’”

In his book Borough Market: Edible Histories, Mark Riddaway tells the epic tales of some of the everyday ingredients found on Borough Market’s stalls. This extract from the chapter on the tomato offers a taste of the surprising stories found within.

Much of what we know about the tomato’s early cultivation in Europe after it was brought across the Atlantic from its Mexican homeland can be found in the writings of the continent’s burgeoning community of herbalists, and their responses to this oddest of fruits were almost uniformly wary.

The earliest substantial reference to the tomato’s presence in Europe was penned by the Italian herbalist Pietro Andrea Mattioli in his Discorsi (1544). Mattioli suggested that this exotic new fruit, which he deemed it unnecessary to name, was a new species of aubergine – itself a fairly recent arrival, having migrated from Asia following the Arab invasions of Spain and Sicily. He wrote: “Another species has been brought to Italy in our time, flattened like the ‘mele rose’ [a variety of apple] and segmented, green at first and when ripe of a golden colour.” It was “eaten in the same manner” as the aubergine: fried in oil and seasoned with salt and pepper.

Ten years later, in a revision to his book, Mattioli alighted upon a name: ‘pomo d’oro’, meaning ‘golden apple’, later established in Italian as ‘pomodoro’. That same year, 1554, the Flemish physician Rembert Dodoens published both a woodcut picture of a tomato and a stark warning to anyone thinking that Mattioli’s fried, seasoned tomato slices sounded nice: “This is a strange plant and not found in this country except in the gardens of some herbalists, where it is sown … the complexion, nature and working of this plant is not yet known, but by that I can gather of the taste, it should be cold of nature, especially in the leaves, somewhat like unto the mandrake, and therefore also it is dangerous to be used.”

According to the enduring Galenic theory of ‘humours’ – a classical philosophy named after Galen, a 2nd century Greco-Roman physician – all plants offered a blend of four inherent ‘qualities’: hot, cold, moist and dry. Eating them could be either beneficial or dangerous, depending upon the current state of your body’s four humours (blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm), an imbalance of which would lead inevitably to illness. Tomatoes were deemed to be moist and extremely cold – according to Gerard, “perhaps in the highest degree of coldness” – which could be highly problematic. The consumption of a cold, moist food would, it was believed, be likely to result in a dangerous excess of phlegm, particularly in cold, damp countries like this one, where people were considered naturally phlegmatic and hot-bloodedness was rare. 

As a result, most writers deemed the tomato to be corruptive. In England, a book from 1600 warned that “the fruit being eaten provoketh loathing and vomiting”, a result more commonly associated today with the late-night doner kebab. The Venetian botanist Pietro Antonio Michiel insisted that a tomato’s smell alone could cause eye diseases and headaches, while the physician Giovanni Domenico Sala, writing in 1628, called them “strange and horrible things” that only “a few unwise people” were willing to eat.

Humours aside, this reticence is easy to understand. Tomatoes were both foreign – although contemporary writers were highly confused as to their origins: Peru? India? Spain? – and odd. They didn’t look or taste like anything a European had seen before, and they probably didn’t taste anything like as good as they do now, after centuries of selective breeding. Their association with the aubergine didn’t help – known as the ‘mala insana’ (‘mad apple’), the aubergine was, wrote Michiel, “harmful to the head”, so being categorised alongside it was far from a compliment. Plus, the leaves and stems have an unusually strong smell and are indeed mildly toxic. Applied externally, the juice of the tomato was thought to be effective for the treatment of scabies or burns, but when it came to using the fruit for food, the consensus was solid: steer clear.

Largely because it was known in some places as the love apple (‘pomme d’amour’ in French), it is often stated that the tomato was considered an aphrodisiac – and some herbals of the time do allude to this reputation – but there is little evidence of this having had any practical consequences (indeed, ‘cold’ foods were considered passion killers, not a source of ardour). No one was eating tomatoes in the hope of a night of passion. In fact, people weren’t even eating them in the hope of a nice salad. Across most of Europe, the tomato grew widely in botanical gardens, but rarely found its way into the kitchen. 

Italy and Spain, though, were different – southern Italy, in particular, where people were traditionally less averse to the consumption of vegetables than, for example, the meat-obsessed English, who considered plants the lowest form of sustenance. The influence of Spain, which ruled the kingdoms of Naples, Sicily and Sardinia for a large part of the early modern period, was also marked, making the region fertile ground – in every sense – for the Spanish conquistadores’ New World discoveries. By the end of the 17th century, Antonio Latini, chef to a noble household in Naples, was happily using tomatoes in the palace kitchen without any concern for the resulting levels of phlegm production. Latini’s book, Lo Scalco alla Moderna, published in the 1690s, included a sauce of tomato, chilli, thyme, salt, oil and vinegar, a dish of sautéed aubergine, onion, squash and tomato, and ‘cassuola di pomadoro’, in which roasted tomatoes were added to a stew of pigeon, veal, chicken necks, herbs, eggs and lemon juice. Oh, and for real savoury depth, some testicles. Two of Latini’s recipes referred to the tomato as being of the ‘Spanish style’ – an indication that the use of this fruit still felt a little foreign, even in its new heartland.

It was in the works of another Neapolitan chef, writing around a century later, that southern Italian cuisine could be seen to be truly taking the tomato to its bosom. Vincenzo Corrado’s famous book Il Cuoco Galante (1773) began to define a type of cooking now inexorably linked with the Mediterranean – simple and balanced, packed with olive oil and vegetables. The tomato featured heavily, and in very recognisable ways: a tomato soup, topped with basil, thyme and parsley; a tomato sauce flavoured with chilli, garlic, pennyroyal and rue; a dish of whole baked tomatoes stuffed with anchovies, garlic and herbs and topped with golden breadcrumbs. This latter dish Corrado called ‘pomidori alla Napolitana’ (‘Neapolitan-style tomatoes’) – by then, no mention of Spain was required.

Spain had been the first port of call for the tomato plant on its long journey to European ubiquity, but at first its fruit made very little impression on the historical record beyond a few dull lines of household admin and some mundane still-life paintings. Slowly and with very little fanfare, though, the tomato would become an important part of the Iberian diet, particularly in the south. In 1784, the Spanish botanist José Quer y Martínez described how tomatoes were “cultivated in great abundance on the truck farms and irrigated fields in all the provinces and lands of our peninsula” and explained that in the south they could be enjoyed almost all year round, so early did their fruiting begin. Quer wrote of their use as a light breakfast for the field workers of La Mancha and Valencia and as a supper dish of the poor, “who get fat and strong in the tomato season”, but he also waxed lyrical about their use in “sumptuous and delicate dishes” enjoyed by the rich, “seasoning the most delightful foods and forming a delicious sauce”. He dismissed the health concerns expressed by “those in the north”, noting that “the experience in our peninsula” showed such worries to be baseless: “Certainly in Spain they are not harmful and are used by the rich and the poor, and neither the former who eat them because they like them nor the latter who eat them out of necessity have suffered the slightest detriment to their health.”

Gradually, the appeal of the tomato spread northwards, to northern Italy and southern France. “One also begins to find in Lombardy a fruit that is common in Rome, and which is slightly known in Paris,” wrote one late-18^th century French visitor to Italy, while a French dictionary of agriculture from 1789 proclaimed: “In Italy, in Spain, in Provence, and in Languedoc, the fruit of the tomato is very much sought after.” Of any loathing or vomiting, not a mention was made.

For a while, the Brits remained stubbornly unimpressed. In 1673, the English naturalist John Ray, who travelled widely in Italy, included the “love apple” in a list of the “many fruits they [Italians] eat, which either we have not, or eat not in England” – these also included the aubergine and carob, which, according to Ray, the English considered “fitter meat for swine than men”. Demonstrating just how alien the tomato remained, an English dictionary of ‘difficult terms’, published in 1677, described the ‘love apple’ as “a Spanish root of a colour near violet”. Other than it not really being Spanish, or a root, or violet, this was extremely useful information.

Eliza Smith’s hugely popular The Compleat Housewife (1727) contained no mention of tomatoes, while Hannah Glasse, another pioneer of English cookery writing, included tomatoes in just one of her hundreds of recipes. Published in 1758 and entitled ‘to dress haddocks the Spanish way’, this involved cooking the fish with spices, garlic, vinegar and “some love apples, when in season”. And yet, just a few decades later, the 1797 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica stated: “The tomato is in daily use, being either boiled in soups or broths, or served up boiled as garnishes to flesh and meats.” As the fruit became more widely dispersed – and the dodgy foundations of classical medicine became increasingly undermined by the progress of science – the dam was finally breaking.

In 1837, a new edition of The Cook and Housewife’s Manual, written by the Scottish journalist and novelist Christian Isobel Johnstone under the pseudonym Margaret Dods, included a short addition to the chapter on vegetables and roots, which hadn’t been present in her original 1826 version. It stated of tomatoes: “These have gone down in France, but are just (like other fashions) coming into vogue among us. Tomatas are used both in sauces and soup, and pickled.” Eight years later, Eliza Acton’s masterpiece of Victorian food writing Modern Cookery (1845) came stacked full of tomato-based recipes, the quantity and breezy nature of which reflected a fruit whose use would by now be far from unsettling to readers.

Acton recorded two recipes for tomato sauce – one “common”, one “finer” – which she listed among the “appropriate tureen sauces” for beef steaks, broiled oxtail and “all roasts of pork, except a sucking pig”. She added tomatoes to curries, roasted them (an excellent garnish for leg of mutton, she suggested), stewed them, and turned them into a creamy puree to be served with meat. She provided two recipes for “forced tomatas” – stuffed tomatoes – one English, one French, the English one suitably plain and modest (a stuffing of tomato pulp, bread and butter and some optional mushrooms), the French one involving a far more elaborate merging of ingredients, including ham, breadcrumbs and egg yolk. Oh, and for that authentic Gallic edge, garlic, which, Acton warned, “if added at all, should be parboiled first, as its strong flavour, combined with that of the eschalots, would scarcely suit the general taste”. Tomatoes may have become an acceptable foodstuff, but some foreign flavours remained firmly beyond the pale.

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

“THERE ARE ONLY THREE STIGMAS PER FLOWER, AND THEY MUST BE CAREFULLY PICKED ON THE FIRST MORNING THAT FLOWER BLOOMS”

These are two flavours that immediately bring to mind the heady tastes and indeed colours of the Levant. One, saffron, has been with us in the UK since the Middle Ages (and is even grown here). The other, sumac, is relatively new to these shores, but is set to become an essential component of every spice drawer, if it isn’t already.

Sumac

Technically, there are multiple varieties of the sumac bush, some of them poisonous, but we should side-step that detail and keep this simple.

As far as we’re concerned, the red, flaky powder you see on the shelves has been ground from the sun-dried (and very edible) sumac berries. It’s a spice that has been used as a condiment in Middle Eastern cooking for centuries, and one that has gained traction in the UK since Claudia Roden and Yotam Ottolenghi began to make Levantine cuisine a dinner party staple.

The first thing you think of when dabbing sumac to your lips is lemon, though it’s arguably more like a sharp apple – there’s a mellow, rounded acidity that enlivens anything it is sprinkled on or run through. It’s a cracking addition to food aesthetically too, as the flakes leave a bold red-maroon colour trail wherever they’re scattered.

Not all ground sumac is created equal; once you’ve tasted a particularly potent version, you’ll know what I mean. Thankfully, the sumac sold at Spice Mountain and Arabica is of excellent quality.

Generally, sumac comes in flaky powder form, which, as with most of the ground spices in this series, lasts reasonably well for six to 12 months in an airtight container. It’s sometimes possible to pick up branches of whole sumac berries, which could be reconstituted, crushed lightly and the juice used in stews or sauces.

Some recipes will call for sumac to be used in a marinade. It has most impact, though, when sprinkled liberally as a condiment at the end of the cooking process. Sumac can also be mixed with olive oil or yoghurt to create a ruby coloured slick of flavour, again to lash your food with just before eating.

In countries like Lebanon, Israel, Turkey and Iran, sumac is as common on home tables as salt and pepper are on ours. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in 20 years’ time, there’ll be pinch pots of it at most meal times over here too.

Saffron

We know, of course, that saffron is one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive spice per gram. Have you given thought to why that is?

Those orangey-red threads are the stigma of the crocus sativus. There are only three stigmas per flower, and they must be carefully picked on the first morning that flower blooms, before the flower wilts, or rains or frost ruin the crop. Moreover, before the stigmas are picked, each flower needs to be bred and nurtured by human hand, and the drying and storing process appears to be just as labour intensive and time consuming. It’s perhaps no surprise to read in John O’Connell’s The Book of Spice, that it takes around 150 flowers to produce a gram of saffron.

Saffron was originally cultivated in Kashmir, and that remains a region famous for the spice. Iran now dominates with over 90 per cent of production. But other countries are in on the act as well, not least Spain and Greece. There’s even a boutique industry in Essex too – Saffron Walden (of course!) is historically famed for growing and harvesting the right type of iris.

Why all the fuss? Saffron would not be such a highly priced spice were it not for its prized flavour. The delicate threads emit complex notes of honey, dried meadow grass and bittersweet flowers. I have to say, I also get toilet cleaner on the nose and a metallic tinny taste when saffron dominates rather than supports (which is much of the time). But perhaps that’s just me.

This spice requires a liquid to make the most of its flavour – in contrast to sumac, saffron is not for sprinkling over dry food at the last minute. The Persians, probably the original users of the flavour, have it right when they temper a few threads for at least 15 minutes in a spoonful of boiling water, before adding it to their dish (often rice, but also stews).

There are a number of places to buy saffron in the Market. Spice Mountain stocks both Iranian and Kashmiri crocuses. Oliveology has a Greek variety, and Brindisa has saffron from La Mancha, Spain. I suspect most packs you have include a ‘best before’ date on them. Of course, these things are best used relatively quickly, though I’ve found old threads seem to come back to life using the boiling method. And this is one spice that I wouldn’t chuck out in a spring clean.

Culinary uses

Sumac brightens many savoury flavours. Expect, though, to see it sprinkled over lamb or chicken, hummus, yoghurt-based dips, fennel or onions, or added to anything where there’s already lemon or oranges involved, thereby added a more complex layer of acidity. It’s a wonderful addition to already well-oiled or buttered hot bread.

Sumac is a vital part of the za’atar spice mix, which also features sesame seeds, dried thyme and sometimes oregano and salt. Again, this is generally used as a condiment, sprinkled with abandon over meats, vegetables and fish, or mixed into olive oil to use as a dip for bread.

We associate sumac with Middle Eastern cooking and indeed most of the classic uses stem from this. One of my favourite dishes involving sumac comes from Turkish grills, where onions are burnt but still retain a little crispness, and are then dressed with pomegranate molasses, loads of sumac and parsley. It’s savoury, sweet and sour all at the same time. Sumac also adds a great deal to fattoush, that Levantine bread and parsley salad which should be tart enough to make your lips pucker. And I wonder whether it might also be used on sweet dishes too?

There are some key ingredient and flavour pairings for saffron that are worth remembering – if you’ve spent your pocket money on a little pack, you should use the threads wisely. In The Flavour Thesaurus, Niki Segnit mentions that saffron goes well with almonds, anise (think fennel), cauliflower, chicken, white fish, orange, potatoes, rosewater and shellfish. I agree with all of that.

Classic dishes using saffron all stem from the spice route, and quite probably all derived from Persian cuisine. So a tah-dig, that crisp-bottomed Persian rice, and other pilafs may have prompted Italian traders to create the Milanese risotto, which is served underneath yielding veal shin. Other rice-based dishes such as Spanish paella and Indian biryanis take their signature colour and aroma from just a few threads of saffron, and could well have taken their lead from the tah-dig.

Spanish seafood stews often have a hint of saffron in them. As does a proper bouillabaisse from Marseille, France. And we see saffron employed in many classic baked and sweet recipes too – loaves enriched with milk and saffron, saffron and almond cakes, and numerous ice creams and dairy based puddings and drinks.

We should also mention Cornish saffron cake / bread, a historic product, which shows that this spice has been used in the UK for centuries.

Market spice heroes

It’s hard to look past Arabica when it comes to sumac. James Walters has been trading at Borough for over 15 years, with sumac to the fore, and it continues to be sprinkled as a condiment over many of the restaurant’s dishes.

As mentioned above, you can buy a variety of different types of saffron at the Market. But look also for products that use the crocuses to great effect – like Brindisa’s saffron mayonnaise, which is excellent when dolloped next to lobster, or perhaps onto garlicky toasts sitting atop of a fish and clam stew.

Specific recipes to look out for

Any well-used Spanish or Middle Eastern cookbook will be stained with saffron. Great recipes from my collection include:

— The picada and the fishermen’s stew it flavours in Monika Linton’s encyclopedic Brindisa: The True Food of Spain.

— I love Sabrina Ghayour’s saffron chick, fennel and barbary stew in Persiana

— Sumaya Usmani utilises saffron in many of her recipes in Summers Under the Tamarind Tree. From the savoury (nutty saffron rice), to the sweet (saffron bread pudding and saffron halva).

— Yoghurt, a little water and icing sugar makes a bright yellow yet mellowing drink.

— And back to Spain: In The Food of Spain, saffron gives both name and flavour to Claudia Roden’s Malagan pescado en amarillo.

Although you’ll find that it’s mostly just suggested as a condiment or seasoning, sumac crops up in some lovely recipes too:

— Along with Claudia Roden, we probably have Yotam Ottolenghi to thank for the prevalence of sumac on our shelves, now. His version of Palestinan m’sakhan in Ottolenghi: The Cookbook is probably the place to start for a classic roast chicken with sumac, za’atar and lemon.

— Also note the sour cream and sumac sauce that goes with the same food writer’s turkey and courgette burgers in Jerusalem.

— Check out the use of sumac-macerated onions in a mackerel baguette in Rick Stein’s From Venice to Istanbul.

See Ed’s recipe for my sumac & hazelnut meringues.

“THE ASPARAGUS AND GREENS ARE THE STARS, BUT THE ADDITION OF FISH TURNS THE DISH FROM A SIDE SALAD TO A LIGHT LUNCH”

Image: Ed Smith

Many of us head to the Market with a list and a purpose. Maybe we’ve friends or family coming over and are up for cooking something grand at the weekend – a rib of beef, a shoulder of lamb, a monkfish tail or cheese souffle. Or perhaps there’s a specialist ingredient we need to grab: Calabrian nduja, Spanish olive oil, Kentish feta cheese. I have to say, though, that I quite like spontaneous, low-key shops (and indeed lower-effort cooks once home).

A few years ago, I wrote a series for this website in which I had the task of grabbing the equivalent of a weekday packed lunch from the Market. It wasn’t a tough gig and was exactly the kind of ‘low-key’ Market experience I’m talking about. Ten minutes of shopping, a rip of a baguette here, a slice of pork pie, a spoonful of rillettes or chutney there. Beats a shop-bought sandwich any day. For this series, I’m fortunate to be doing something similar. Except now it’s to feed more than just me: I want to show how easy it is to turn a handful of Market produce into a plentiful platter.

Each platter will centre on one ingredient that catches my eye when I start walking round, coffee in hand. It might be a recently arrived, hyper-seasonal fruit or vegetable; an artisan product that’s been crafted for our easy enjoyment; maybe even just something ‘staple’ that I know is really good (and once I see it can’t think of much else). From there, it’s a case of: what other ingredients can I gather and combine so that the ultimate assembly will be more than the sum of its parts?

The dish will involve minimal effort once home – a little slicing or peeling, a blanch or a simmer at most (but often not). I’ve a £15 budget, and the produce will always come from more than one stall. You’ll be able to follow the ideas to the letter, or just use something from it as your own starting point next time you visit.

British asparagus had just arrived at the Market when I visited to gather ingredients for this first post. As a result, I couldn’t start the platter planning with anything else.

My favourite way to prepare asparagus is to show it a large pan of boiling water for barely three minutes, so it’s tender but not yet floppy, then roll it in melting butter and a little salt and black pepper and eat it with my fingers. However, you can’t fill a platter with the five or six spears that make up a bunch, so I thought on this occasion of spreading the spears further by using my least rusty speed peeler to shave them into a salad.

I picked up the ‘extra select’ graded asparagus from Elsey & Bent, which are chunky enough to be peeled. From there it was a relatively quick decision to also grab some baby cucumbers – which are at the intersection of the cucumber Venn diagram of ‘crunch’, ‘juiciness’, and ‘flavour’ – a big bunch of dill and a lemon. A bag of rocket would pad out the assembly and also bring nasal-bracing pepperiness, something that layers well with the freshness of the asparagus and sharp citrus.

The dill made me think of the Severn and Wye smoked salmon at Shellseekers Fish & Game, which would provide a necessary dash of pink and a contrasting flavour and texture. The asparagus and greens still star, but the addition of this fish turns the dish from a side salad to a light lunch that’ll feed at least two – possibly more if you add some fresh sourdough and maybe some other cold cuts or platters, picked up at the same time. In terms of assembly, you can pretty much do what you want, though I suggest peeling and then chunking the cucumbers and letting them sit in a little olive oil, half the lemon juice, sugar, salt, white pepper and chopped dill while you prepare the rest of the salad. Let the shaved asparagus (and any chunky bits that can’t be shaved) sit in the remaining lemon juice and more olive oil, and mix the rocket through that at the last minute. Transfer to a platter, scatter over the marinated cucumbers, then more dill fronds over the top.

“I USE IT ON ROOTS AND BRASSICAS IN THE SAME WAY THAT AS A CHILD I POURED GRANULATED SUGAR ON MY WEETABIX”

I once worked with a girl who had read that drinking olive oil could prompt miraculous weight loss, while also protecting from disease. That, she insisted, is why Cretan fishermen and Italian farmers are slender and chiselled and live to be 110. Something to do with squalene or antioxidants or some such guff. She also believed that drinking cider vinegar would have similar results, although why she insisted on downing them individually, rather than mixing them together to make a nice vinaigrette, escapes me. Maybe that would have messed with the power of the squalene.

While it’s easy to sneer at stupid diets, the health benefits of really good olive oil should not be completely dismissed. For me, though, its powers have nothing to do with miracle molecules and everything to do with its ability to make whatever it touches taste of holidays.

With a tin of cold-pressed Greek olive oil from Oliveology in my cupboard, I can happily live on the kind of southern European food that I know I should eat, but might otherwise struggle to be excited by. Pour this elixir over a big pile of vegetables, and suddenly even the worthiest of meals tastes like a week by the Aegean.

Made early in the season from small, immature, intense little olives on a Spartan estate (by which I mean ‘in Sparta’, not ‘stern and austere’), it explodes with flavour. I use it on roots and brassicas in the same way that as a child I used granulated sugar on my Weetabix, poured on with wild-eyed abandon to bring magic to the mundane.

Just out of nostalgia for my old colleague’s funny ways, I did try drinking a little shot. It made me cough and my eyes water – and yet had no noticeable impact on my weight. Even an oil as apparently divine as this cannot work actual miracles.

“TRADERS ARE OFTEN LEFT WITH A SURPLUS OF FOOD THAT IS GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT, BUT NOT QUITE GOOD ENOUGH TO SELL”

It was almost seven years ago that Plan Zheroes volunteers, clad in their familiar purple t-shirts, arrived at Borough Market to make their very first collection of surplus food from the Market’s traders. The charity, which acts as a middleman between businesses with surplus and organisations that require food donations, has been coming to the Market ever since.

This spring saw their 500th collection, taking the total amount of food collected to more than 80 tonnes – the equivalent to almost 200,000 meals. “We’re really grateful for the support that we’ve had from the Market over the years,” says Plan Zheroes co-founder Chris Wilkie. “We’ve built relationships with a lot of the traders. They know us now and are always keen to help. Thanks to the initiative, the charities are receiving top quality food that many of their recipients otherwise would not be able to afford.” Unfortunately, Plan Zheroes was not impervious to the impact of Covid, having to pause collections for a period last year. “It’s been such a difficult time for charities, they’re all really struggling, but things are improving,” he continues, “and in the meantime, food has been getting to people who need it.”

One such beneficiary is Lucy Brown House: a sheltered housing complex based around the corner from Borough Market. “Our residents range in age from 60 to 90-odd,” says sheltered housing officer Richard Geary. “When we first set up the link with Borough, residents would go across to the Market on a Saturday, get the surplus and bring it back to the communal lounge where people could help themselves,” he explains. “Nowadays the guys at Plan Zheroes bring it over to us at the end of the day: most often it’s fruit and veg, as well as quite a bit of bread from Bread Ahead, who’ve been fantastic. Some of our residents are on universal credit and really struggle, often using food banks, so it’s great to be able to give them that extra fruit and veg. Most aren’t, but they often still have limited income and ordinarily wouldn’t buy fruit for themselves – they see it as a luxury – so they love it when I bring things like fresh strawberries or apples from the Market.”

Prior to the pandemic, the Market also played host to Wok for 1,000, organised by Plan Zheroes in collaboration with School of Wok: an annual event which sees people come together to cook enough meals to feed 1,000 people using surplus food. Like many other events, sadly it did not take place in 2020. However, School of Wok head of operations Shannon McAuliffe was not prepared to give up entirely. “Shannon is incredibly kind-hearted, so seeing the impact of the pandemic on many, he was not about to sit around and do nothing,” says Jeremy Pang (pictured top), founder of the cookery school and a Plan Zheroes patron. “I had to furlough most of my staff, so with help from our operations team he used that time to launch a project called Feed.The.Nation to continue raising money for Plan Zheroes, offering virtual cookery classes in exchange for donations. He used the school space and our ingredients, free of charge, to do what he could in his spare time.”Jeremy returned to Borough Market to help with the 500th collection. “It was uplifting. Everything was still so good and fresh – some of it might be blemished, but otherwise it’s worth good money,” he continues.

The ultimate goal is, of course, for food surplus to be prevented as far as possible (not to mention for nobody to be reliant upon food aid). The basic tenets of food waste management – prevent, re-use, recycle – are exemplified by the Market. Indeed, the Market’s holistic approach to waste management – whereby nothing goes to landfill; packaging is recycled, while inedible food waste is sent to an anaerobic digestion plant – was this year recognised by being named Best Circular Economy Initiative at the National Recycling Awards. 

The initiative begins and ends with the traders, who are encouraged to plan effectively to avoid waste. But “it’s impossible to get quantities exactly right,” the Market’s managing director Darren Henaghan admits. “Our footfall numbers vary daily, with factors as simple as the weather or as complex as Covid having an impact on people visiting us.” The result, says Kath Dawson of Ted’s Veg, is that traders are often left with a surplus of food that is “good enough to eat, but not quite good enough to sell – and I can only eat so much myself! That’s why I pushed for us to get involved with Plan Zheroes. We and other traders would so often end up throwing perfectly good food away, then there’d be hungry people going through the bins for food. It’s just not right.”

Such is the traders’ commitment that in the absence of regular collections during Covid, Kath’s team were delivering surplus produce to local charities themselves. “There are more people than ever who need help, so I got in touch with St George the Martyr. They’re two minutes down the road, so we’ve been dropping pallets of produce to them, which they either sell on at a reduced cost or use to cook hot meals for people who need them,” says Kath. “Ordinarily if there’s too much leftover, we’re forced to put it in the bin – I would much rather it feed people.”

And that, in a nutshell, is the essence of the Plan Zheroes collaboration: less food in the bin, more food bringing sustenance and pleasure to people who need it.

“POTS THAT DRIBBLE AND SPILL HAVE BEEN MADE FOR LOOKS ALONE, WITHOUT CONSIDERATION AS TO HOW THEY SHOULD WORK”

Interview & illustration: Ed Smith

At Tea2You, we sell fine teas from the Indian sub-continent, so we use teapots all day every day. Before I started at Borough Market, I spent three years studying ceramics at Sunderland University, and before that I was a ceramicist in India – so it’s fair to say I have a lot of knowledge about teapots and an opinion as to what makes a good one.

A good teapot has a very stable base and remains stable and balanced when you pick it up by the handle, which needs to be an appropriate size. The spout is obviously crucial. For it to pour properly, the top of the spout should be parallel with the lip of the pot, so if you took the lid off and rested something between the lip and the spout, it would sit flat. The spout needs to be angled or fluted in a way that helps the tea to pour easily, and the hole at the tip of the spout needs to mirror the shape and angle of the hole at its base. All these things help the liquid to flow well. There’s nothing worse than a teapot that doesn’t pour properly. Usually, the ones that dribble and spill have been made for looks alone, without real consideration as to how they should work.

I prefer a two-cup pot. For me, a four-cup teapot never brews quite as well. For some teas, we will use a strainer, but with very fine teas – my first flush Darjeeling, for example – you shouldn’t use a strainer. It confiscates the flavour. Really all you need to do is let the tea leaves settle down.

If it’s just me, I make tea in a cup: boiled water, dash of cold water and let the leaves drop. But when there’s more than one person, I do like using a teapot.

“THERE’S SO MUCH POVERTY AND SO MUCH SURPLUS FOOD. IT’S CRAZY THAT THIS CONNECTION WASN’T MADE SOONER”

Images: Orlando Gili

For the past decade, Borough Market’s traders have been donating surplus produce to the Plan Zheroes charity, which helps distribute excess food through local networks to those people most in need of feeding. It was with great sadness that we learnt recently of the death of Lotti Henley, the charity’s inspirational co-founder, at the age of 95. To mark her passing, we thought we would revisit her interview with Market Life from 2017, which gives a little flavour of the warmth, drive and charisma of a quite remarkable woman.

Where do you think your instinct for social entrepreneurship comes from?

My mother was German, my father was Austrian, and I grew up in Slovenia. We had a big family, who were always concerned with social action. In the village where we lived, my father had the only car, so if anybody fell ill, they came to him. During the war, one night a woman came to him and said, “My son has fallen from a ladder and needs to go to hospital.” My father knew precisely what had happened – he had been shot. He took him to hospital. The next day a German officer came round. He said: “What have you done? You have taken a partisan to hospital!” My father replied: “We are all human. I shall do what I have always done.” It was instilled in us that we are all given a certain role in life, and that ours is to look after other people. This is the attitude I have, and I got it from my parents.

How did you become interested in food waste?

It is a strange story. After the war I was in a refugee camp, waiting to be repatriated. The Russians who ran the camp did not think we should survive – after all, we were supernumeraries, there was no need to spare these people, certainly not to feed them. They did not give us more than soup once a day, the odd potato peel, peat and nothing else. I was literally starving, to such an extent that I took some papers and put them in my mouth to make my stomach think that I had food. That lasted for six to eight weeks and I have remembered this experience all my life. When I go to the post office I still take a sandwich with me. It’s security. Food is life.

How did Plan Zheroes come about?

I had the opportunity to speak in public, through an organisation called London Citizens, about the terrible injustice of the UK’s food waste crisis when there is so much poverty, and I thought: wow, this is it Lotti, go for it! I found two kindred spirits: Chris Wilkie, who is still with us, and Maria Ana Neves, who are both so intelligent and educated, who helped set up Plan Zheroes. I had no idea how to go about setting up a business, but I had ideas and enthusiasm. I had also retired, and I am not good at doing nothing! That was in 2009. It’s just amazing how this little idea has grown. 

How does Plan Zheroes work?

We help put businesses with surplus food in touch with charities who work with those in need. It’s a completely free service. We want to build local networks, which in turn brings local cohesion. There was an amazing event at Borough Market, Wok For 1000. It was such a good example of how food can bring the community together. People were sitting together, talking, cooking. That’s the great thing about the project we run with the Market – there’s a real sense of community. The charities come to Borough every week, so they get to know each other and the traders who participate. It’s community building, which was part of my dream..

How did your relationship with Borough start?

The EU had given funding to Sustain, an organisation for businesses and organisations which promote better food and farming practices, to launch a project called Food Save. It was a programme organised by the mayor of London to get smaller businesses to reduce their food waste. Sustain put us in touch with Borough Market to discuss doing a project together. The Market has been distributing surplus produce from the traders to local charities ever since.

Do you think, generally speaking, that attitudes to food waste are changing?

Absolutely. When I started this there was such little awareness and understanding. There is more pressure on supermarkets now to be more ‘green’ – there have been some public campaigns and as a result, many supermarkets and food businesses have signed up to the Courtauld Commitment 2025, which is a voluntary commitment to work together to tackle food and drink waste, emissions and high water intensity. There has been a lot of support for it and we have been contacted by supermarkets, looking for a solution. So things are moving, but there’s still so much poverty, and so much surplus food. It seems crazy that the connection between the two wasn’t made sooner, and that it hasn’t yet been made on a wider scale. You’d think it would be normal! When we started, there was no connection. The donors were there, but the charities – I thought they would come running, but they didn’t. And they still haven’t.

Why do you think that is?

Lack of internet. Lack of awareness. There are people who want to help, but they’re not energetic, they’re not go-getting. I think the next step is to teach young people to cook. To teach disadvantaged people and those who run charities to cook. That’s the way forward. That’s the next step for Plan Zheroes – for everybody.

Do you think wider-scale change needs to come from the government, or grassroots?

I think grassroots actually, but it would be useful to have something in the law to say that all food surplus can be redistributed. In Denmark all food is available, there is no distinction – you can distribute food after a best-before date, for example, and there’s research to say it is helping.

There’s also the problem of resources. Who will sort out the surplus food at night after the shop shuts? Where will it be stored so that the charities can collect it the next morning? There are lots of practical obstacles to overcome.

WRAP, the Waste and Resource Action Programme, estimates that we’re only distributing about a quarter of the food that could be redistributed at the manufacturing and retail level, but if we were able to redistribute all that food, the charity sector couldn’t handle it. There needs to be governmental investment and grants – all the amazing small charities and groups who aren’t on the internet, school breakfast clubs, they all could benefit, but you need more resources.

Do you think the food industry is partially responsible for the fact so much food goes to waste?

The supermarkets are naughty, because they refuse to accept carrots that are misshapen, or anything that doesn’t look perfect. It’s not the customer, we don’t mind a bendy carrot! The farmers must suffer greatly. Again, from the very beginning, food is not appreciated. Farmers are not appreciated.

The best before date thing, too, causes problems. We are taught to be so careful. I have my grandchildren staying with me – there are seven of us, it’s good fun – and they look in the fridge and say things like, “Oh, gran! These eggs are out of date!” Eggs? You can keep them for ages! Just because the date has passed, doesn’t mean they’re off. They are taught to be so extra careful. Too careful, I think. You have to throw some stuff out, of course, but there are too many laws. Why can’t people just use their noses to see if it’s okay? We are too protected, in a way. If the Danish aren’t killing themselves by not having all those laws, I think we will be okay.

What about wastage at home – how can people help?

Buy less. Use local markets. Most people do a giant weekly shop. It was very interesting when my daughter moved to Switzerland, people there go to tiny shops and have tiny trollies. They shop every day – pop out to somewhere local, get what they need and get it fresh. If you have some left over, you use it up the next day. In our society there’s not much value placed on food. There are always promotions, and you feel stupid if it’s only a pound to buy one more packet and you don’t buy it. Industrial production has driven prices down, so people buy too much and don’t value their food, but then on the other hand you have downward pressure because people are struggling to afford it. There’s an imbalance. It’s difficult.

Is that something Plan Zheroes will be looking to help tackle in future?

It is something to tackle, but it is not our role. There will always be a surplus, as you can’t always predict demand; at night a supermarket will always have stuff on the shelves, because if there was nothing there in the morning, nobody would come in. We do advocate for businesses to prevent that waste from arising in the first place, but our role is to help them when it inevitably does.

“IT CAN CREATE FOODS THAT ARE CRISP AND CRUNCHY, THIN AND FOLDABLE, LIGHT AND SILKEN, OR THICK AND FLUFFY”

Image: Regula Ysewijn

The general idea behind these columns has been to persuade you to seek out an uncelebrated ingredient, and then make it one of your staples, because it’s one of mine. This one is slightly different. The ingredient whose virtues I wish to extol is chickpea flour, and I won’t lie to you: while this is a product that I have used on a number of occasions, it’s a number so low that my toddler could probably count to it.

I’m not a frequent user, but I think I could become one. I can certainly see its appeal: it’s nutritious, can be utilised in a variety of ways, and is gently nutty, savoury and properly tasty. Rachel Roddy (a food writer I admire tremendously) stated recently: “I have come to feel about bags of chickpea flour as I once did about packets of cigarettes: one on the go, one spare at all times.” If there’s a culinary hit that Rachel is addicted to, I want a piece of it.

You can buy chickpea flour at From Field and Flower, and as with all the stall’s products, it has been carefully sourced and represents the best of its kind. This version is Italian (‘farina di ceci’), though as chickpea flour is typical to southern Europe, you might also find it labelled ‘harina de garbanzo’ (Spanish) or ‘farine de pois chiche’ (French). There’s ‘gram flour’ (Indian), too, which is technically an ever so slightly different chickpea, but also basically the same.

This soft, super-fine yet strangely tactile gold dust is gluten free, which means you won’t have much luck using chickpea flour if you’re after bouncy pasta or ethereally light loaves of bread. It is, however, remarkably diverse in its uses and can create foods with a multitude of very different characteristics: crisp and crunchy, thin and foldable, light and silken, thick and fluffy.

Flick through a cookbook that focuses on Indian cuisine and you’ll see that gram flour is often used as a dusty coating, or mixed with water to form a batter, which will turn crisp when fried: think gram flour-rolled vegetables, pakoras and bhajis. This is also the method used for tortillitas de camarones, an Andalusian fritter for which small shrimp and chopped onions are rolled in a loose batter and deep-fried into a moreish web, the very thought of which has me reaching for a glass of cold fino sherry.

Head to Horn OK Please in the Borough Market Kitchen for a lesson in making dosas – thin chickpea flour and water pancakes made using an ever so slightly viscous but still smooth batter, which is ladled onto a flat pan, spread into a large circle, dry fried until golden-brown and bubbling, flipped, filled with spiced potato, then folded. I’ve tried this with equal parts flour and water, a pinch of baking soda and salt, and filled them with bean sprouts, normal chickpeas, loads of fresh herbs and a cumin and lemon-licked yoghurt – and it was grand.

In fact, pancakes are very much a chickpea flour thing. There are thicker, oven-baked pancakes known as socca in France or farinata in Italy, where again a batter is made up, at 2:1 water to flour this time, then left to thicken for eight hours or overnight before being poured into a skillet or similar and baked until set. Slices of this work well as a base for cooked seasonal greens and salty soft cheeses, springtime ragus and early summer tomato salads.

To be honest, you can also cook the same batter in a pan like a normal pancake (just don’t call it a farinata). A more substantial result is achieved if you whisk or blend in another agent at the same time, like eggs (to make an omelette or frittata) or silken tofu. Maybe my favourite of the handful of chickpea flour experiments I’ve run so far was using the flour as the prompt to make okonomiyaki, a Japanese savoury pancake/omelette, filled with carrots, cabbage, ginger and spring onions and coated with an unhealthy drizzle of Kewpie mayonnaise – I heartily recommend looking up a recipe for that and having a go.

I leave you, however, with one further suggestion, and that is to make a platter of panisse – a snack that’s on-trend right now in London’s restaurants, and can also be used as a vessel for some of the Market’s other fine commodities: a snow shower of comte or parmesan, a scattering of za’atar or dukkah, or a dunking of something punchy like aioli, romesco sauce or a salsa verde.

“CHANGE IS NEEDED TO AVOID IRREVERSIBLE CLIMATE CHANGE AND A BREAKDOWN OF CIVIL SOCIETY”

Interview: Ellie Costigan / Images: Orlando Gili, Steph French

Patrick Holden is the founder of the Sustainable Food Trust, a charitable organisation that strives for a better food and farming system, for people and planet. A self-proclaimed hippy, when Patrick set up his west Wales community farm in 1973, he wrote the rules on organic dairy farming. Alongside his internationally influential advocacy work, Patrick continues to produce exceptional cheeses (one of which, the cheddar-like Hafod, can be found at Neal’s Yard Dairy) from the milk of his Ayrshire herd.

You’re known for promoting a more ‘sustainable’ food system. What do you mean by that?

It’s the food system we all need if we’re going to avoid irreversible climate change, biodiversity catastrophe, a breakdown of civil society, and all the other things we’re scared about these days. The pre-requisite for a stable and civil society is a secure and relatively local supply of food. We want to produce food in a way that protects and preserves our human capital. Also, the food we produce needs to be of high nutritional quality, otherwise we’ll continue to have the problems we’re experiencing in the National Health Service – it would currently be more accurately called the National Diseases Treatment Service, because it’s picking up the bill for deficient agriculture. To do that, we need a return to farming systems that build soil fertility through crop rotation. You need the cycle, because that’s the way to build soil. That’s the way all the soils of the world have been built, through this kind of practice – either managed by nature or managed by us.

What changed?

During the second world war, we made explosives using a process of fixing atmospheric nitrogen, called the Haber-Bosch process. Once the war was over, we didn’t need explosives anymore – but we could use the same process to make nitrogen fertiliser, which became widely available. Farmers realised if they put it on the fields, they could avoid the need for crop rotation – not realising that the traditional method was not just providing nitrogen, but also providing carbon, which is vital for soil quality and fertility. Our wonderful UK soils are carbon rich – or were carbon rich, before the agricultural revolution. Unfortunately, we’ve been mining the accumulated fertility of generations. Now we need to put it back.

Many people are advocating a move toward more plant-based diets. Is that the right way to go?

A lot of young people in particular are turning to vegetarianism or veganism and there’s a big campaign now to eat less meat, but better, and move to a plant-based diet. A lot of young people are responding to that, thinking that it’s the most responsible way to eat in a world of climate change. In fact, what we need to do, in my opinion, is differentiate between livestock that are part of the problem – feedlot beef, intensively reared chickens and pigs, intensive dairy – and support the livestock and products that come from systems that are part of the solution. Without a healthy, buoyant market for grass-fed beef and lamb, dairy, pastured chickens and pigs, the farmers that need to rebuild their soil can’t do that.

Right now, the market for beef is on the floor and farmers are going out of business. It should be remembered that 71 per cent of the United Kingdom’s farmed area is grass – so my message to the vegetarians and vegans is, try to align your future diets to what we could actually produce from this nation if we farmed in a sustainable way. If you recognise that, then you need to differentiate between livestock that you shouldn’t eat, and livestock that you should – that is, if you’re not ethically opposed – and feel good about it. Methane emissions do come from ruminant animals, beef or lamb, but the soil carbon gain has the potential to more than offset that.

The narrative surrounding the nutritional merits of meat has fluctuated over the past few decades. What’s driven that?

It’s fascinating. The trend away from fatty meat towards lean meat and away from butter and dairy fat towards margarine goes back to the 1980s, when the government published a report which basically said that animal fats and sugar are bad for you. A journalist called Geoffrey Cannon got hold of this report and wrote a big headline story in The Sunday Times. The food industry was upset about this, especially the sugar industry, which embarrassed the government, so they commissioned another report from the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy. It was published a year later, and it focussed purely on the fact that animal fats are bad for you. It turned out that many of the people on the board had interests in the sugar industry. It was a brilliant plot to deflect away from the damage that sugar is doing to public health and put it all on meat. The rest is history. The whole of the modern British diet was shaped by a report that was dominated by vested interests. Now there’s evidence emerging that even saturated fats from animals aren’t necessarily bad for us. The whole thing has turned.

What do you think is the main obstacle to transitioning to a more sustainable food system?

That’s the question: how does change happen? I think it happens through a combination of external circumstances. A problem emerges, it gets to a critical point where people begin to realise something’s wrong, and that creates a degree of fear – what will happen if we don’t change? People in a leadership position think, yes, we do need to change, and then policy makers start to work out how we can. But they won’t do that unless there’s pressure from the public. I think right now the pre-conditions exist: there is growing awareness that agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, and unless we change our food systems, we won’t have a planet fit to live on – and that’s really the truth. I think we’re near a tipping point. I’ve been involved with advocacy for more sustainable food systems since the 1970s; it’s only now I feel that change is happening. A lot of young people, millennials, feel there’s a shift at hand. I think that’s really positive. But I think the shift needs to be grounded in a better understanding of what the issues are.

Do markets have a role in reconnecting consumers with farmers?

At a recent Oxford Real Farming Conference, we had a session on plastics. A guy called Phil Haughton, who runs Better Food in Bristol, put his hand up and said: “I can’t help feeling that getting plastics out of our food packaging is treating the symptom, not the cause. The cause is the move away from farmers’ markets and a direct relationship with our fresh food, toward wrapping it all in plastic and shipping it great distances.” I think he’s right to a large extent. The renaissance of the farmers’ market movement is a fabulous expression of that, and long may it continue to grow and prosper, because it’s needed. Not least, it gives farmers an opportunity to cut out a couple of links in the profit chain and sell at affordable prices, to people who they actually meet, which is a brilliant thing. Even certification is not needed if you know your farmer. The Americans had a scheme during the Obama administration, called Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food – a wonderful motto for markets. As the great food journalist Eric Schlosser said, the thing about the way most food is produced these days is, if you knew the story behind it, you wouldn’t want to eat it. That’s the truth. Which is scary. It’s such a powerful thing to think about. We need to know more about the story behind our food and when we do, we need to still want to eat it.

A big question that’s often raised is whether sustainable farming practices can be economically viable for both farmer and consumer. Do you see a time where these things will go hand in hand?

These things can work in harmony. Many thousands of farmers all over the world would prefer to do what they probably know in their hearts is the right thing. If we can shift the economic conditions, whereby farming in a more sustainable way and producing healthy food pays nearly as well, or even as well, as what they’re doing at the moment, they’ll shift. Who wouldn’t want to farm in harmony with nature? To preserve biodiversity, look after animals as best we possibly can, and promote public health? The only reason why farmers are not doing those things is they’re trapped by the economics and the policy environment into a race to the bottom on price. We are the people who eat their food, so if we want them to change, we have to change. We have to realign our diets. We need to be discerning about which livestock products we eat and once we’ve understood that, we need to eat them. We won’t keep the farmers who are wanting to return to mixed farming in business unless we eat their food.

We spend about 10 per cent of our disposable income on food – it used to be around 30 per cent back in the seventies. I know we have legitimate, big expenses, but actually we could afford to spend more on food. Besides, we’re paying in hidden ways for the so-called cheap food: we’re paying with our health, our water bills, we’re paying in climate change, and we’re passing on that damage to future generations. We must do this. We have to know more, and we have to use that knowledge to shop in the right way – Borough Market, farmers’ markets, finding ways of supporting producers directly, that is absolutely the way forward. We are causing irreparable damage to the planet: we need to use our food buying power to support producers who are not causing it. It’s an incredibly empowering thing to do as a citizen; to use your money to support a more sustainable food future.

“SEA PURSLANE HAS LONG, ROUND LEAVES WHICH HAVE A VERY SUBTLE, IRON-Y FLAVOUR AND A HINT OF SALINITY

Sea purslane

An evergreen available at most of Borough Market’s greengrocers and hugely popular with chefs, sea purslane has pink, star-shaped flowers and long, round leaves which have a very subtle, iron-y flavour and a hint of salinity. Like most greens, the leaves can be eaten raw or cooked – particularly good when simply blanched to retain their crunch, then served with a knob of good butter.

English marsh samphire

Also known by the less attractive moniker ‘glasswort’ (derived from its use in soda-based glassmaking), the native strain of this familiar sea vegetable has a much shorter season than its rock-growing relative – and is incomparable in terms of flavour. While edible raw, it’s incredibly salty, so benefits from cooking – but lightly, so as to keep its crunch. Equally happy alongside fish or lamb.

Sea beets

Known as the ‘spinach of the sea’, sea beets are a close cousin of beetroot, chard and spinach, with a flavour strongly reminiscent of the latter. Noel Fitzjohn of Fitz Fine Foods forages for his sea beets around the shores of the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, or the estuary towards Worthing, West Sussex. Use its squeaky-textured leaves, which can be green or occasionally red, as you would cooked spinach.

Sea arrowgrass

One of the rarer varieties of sea vegetable to be found at the Market, this herbaceous plant grows on sandy wetlands, bogs and marshes of Norfolk, where it is plucked from the shores by Turnips’ trusted supplier, but only upon customer request. As well as being delicious simply sauteed with butter, it’s increasingly used by chefs as a natural way of infusing saltiness into broths.

Sea plantain

A flowering plant that has nothing to do with the Caribbean cooking bananas that share its name, its grass-like leaves make it hard to discern from the salty marshlands in which it thrives. Delicious raw or cooked, sea plantain has a delicate, mildly chive-like flavour: try stirring the leaves into risotto or sprinkling onto summer salads. Use the pretty yellow flowers as a garnish.