“IF A COMPANY MAKES MONEY FROM A PRODUCT, I THINK THE PERSON WHO PRODUCES THE PRODUCT SHOULD BENEFIT”

Words: Clare Finney

“One of the strongest memories I have of the poverty I saw growing up in Colombia is of houses where the floor was the same inside as it was outside: soil. Just soil,” Eduardo laughs, as he remembers how struck he was as a child. “I didn’t understand then, but now I realise that was poverty. People couldn’t afford wood or concrete to make a floor.” It’s proved a defining image for a man with a master’s degree in finance, an MBA in marketing and a sense of social justice so profoundly held he’s ploughed all his qualifications and experience into The Colombian Coffee Company: a social enterprise that aims to model a new way of trading coffee to help Colombian coffee growers out of poverty, and support peace and stability in areas previously affected by the country’s decades-long civil war.

It’s a big ambition, but then Eduardo is no stranger to challenges. He grew up in a country devastated by war – and, when he meets us, has just sold espressos to a group of Italians. “The good thing about Borough Market is that it is about quality, and people ask questions. They are interested.” Italian customers asking questions about his lightly roasted single origin coffee opens up the opportunity for Eduardo to also talk to them about the wider complexities and challenges of the coffee trade, seen from the producer’s perspective. Many coffee growers remain poor, as the beans themselves only fetch a low price on the global market, and, in order to make ends meet, they must still pick them even when they are unripe or poor quality. “That dark, shiny look that beans often have is actually coffee which has been over-roasted, to cover up its imperfections.” Eduardo’s beans, meanwhile, are lightly roasted to a gentle brown. In the former scenario, “coffee farmers get less money and consumers get bad quality coffee,” Eduardo summarises. “It doesn’t make sense to me.” That’s why quality can be a route out of poverty.

Colombia’s vast mountain ranges and warm, wet climate make it perfectly suited to coffee cultivation. Indeed, the country is the largest producer of single origin coffee varieties in the world. “The demand for speciality coffee is growing,” he continues. But what should be a great opportunity for Colombia runs the risk of being lost in the huge global coffee market, which is dominated by multinational coffee brands, often selling poor quality or instant coffee. “Coffee is one the world’s most volatile commodities. It’s second only to oil – but the volatility of oil is pushed onto consumers.” When we arrive at a petrol station, we pay the price it gives us on the day. The volatility of coffee, however, is on the growers. “They receive the day’s prices, which are determined by the futures market. At the moment, the price farmers are being paid for their coffee is the same as 1983.”

That’s almost 40 years ago. Costs have increased, the country is decimated by civil conflict and warring factions have capitalised on farmers’ desperation by forcing them to grow coca and opium. “They generate more money than coffee,” says Eduardo. “They also generate terrible violence as the drugs trade is controlled by gangs.” The farmers are trapped, farming being the only life they know of, and the cycle continues. “But coffee can make a difference. So, as a smaller enterprise, I have taken a risk to trade coffee ethically, and to really try to find new ways of working. For me, the only way is ethics, and I think more and more customers care about that.”

Fairtrade schemes are great and do help, he says, “but they only offer a premium on top of the original price. The market price can still go down.” Also, although growing, the fairtrade market does not cover most coffee production in Colombia. Eduardo aims to go ‘beyond fair trade’; not just paying above market price – enough to cover production costs and improve their business and livelihoods – but also developing long-term relationships with the farmers. “I teach them English business language and the language of coffee tasting and valuation, so they can describe their coffee to potential buyers overseas. Because they have no idea!” he exclaims. “They are used to just taking the coffee down the mountain on market day and finding a quick sale. They don’t know how good their coffee is. How can they negotiate or get the best price for their coffee if they don’t know the quality of their own produce or how much it sells for overseas?”

Education is power and by talking to the farmers about fragrance, uniformity, balance, sweetness and aftertaste – the words used in the Speciality Coffee Association guide – Eduardo can enable them to sell to other gourmet coffee buyers. “Encouraging the farmers to talk about quality will increase the price of what they make, ultimately needing less farm space as they focus on quality rather than quantity.”

Nor does Eduardo stop there. “In a sustainable system, the farmers grow arabica coffee trees that need shade, so they also grow bananas, guanabanas, oranges, mandarins, avocados and so on. On Sundays, farmers go down to the nearest village to sell their produce. As they bring a variety of products, they are less exposed to the volatility of coffee market prices, thus they can participate more broadly in the economy – and they make small profits, so they can then buy other products.”

Anxious not to damage any of the other plants or trees, the farmers avoid the use of pesticides and other chemicals, “so the overall production becomes organic and the environment doesn’t degrade. The lush green environment helps to protect their coffee trees, which they care for almost one by one.” They clean the leaves. In Colombia they hand pick the cherries when they are red – almost purple, lending Eduardo’s coffee a distinctively sweet taste.

For Eduardo, a big part of what he does is just encouraging people to think about the human effort that has gone into making their daily cup of coffee, and the wider systemic challenges of the coffee trade. “Sometimes, at summer festivals, I will run a coffee auction, or a flexible price system for coffees over a couple of hours – where the price goes up depending on supply and demand. It’s just a fun way of showing how markets work and how global coffee prices are set.” Eduardo believes in participatory capitalism: “If a company makes money from a product, I think the person who produces the product should benefit. But that is not what is always happening at the moment. The people who are producing high quality coffee are living in poverty. That is why I have decided to do something to correct it.”

“IN CONTRAST TO THE ALMOST AGGRESSIVELY HERBACEOUS TOP, CORIANDER SEED HAS A COMPARATIVELY SUBTLE FLAVOUR”

Image: Ed Smith

We turn now to the curry spices. Well, to coriander, cumin and cardamom: three spices that are synonymous with the cuisine of the Indian subcontinent… and yet only one of which is indigenous to that region. Intrigued? Read on.

Coriander

Though used (and grown) prodigiously in India, coriander was originally a Mediterranean plant. In fact, we should really consider it a global crop rather than an Indian one, as it is cultivated in (among other places) Russia, Mexico, Morocco and Australia, with the seeds and leaves used in traditional recipes from Cyprus and Greece, the Middle East, south-east Asia, Central America… heck, it’s even been common in British cooking since Roman times: look carefully and you’ll see it’s a key component to many recipes for preserved meats, chutneys, distilled spirits, beer and more.

For this series, we are, of course, talking about coriander seed, not the plant loved by many but hated by the few who are biologically predisposed to tasting detergent rather than perfumed citrus and grassy notes.

Those seeds are a fruit, which come to prominence when a coriander plant is left to flower and then die back. Though initially green, the seeds lighten and eventually turn brown when sun-dried. To finish the harvest process, the dried seeds are shaken from stems in their tens and hundreds.

In contrast to the almost aggressively herbaceous top, coriander seed has a comparatively subtle flavour. I find it warming, mellow and nutty with faintly orange-like citrus top notes.

To my mind, it’s imperative that you store coriander in seed not ground form, lightly toasting the requisite amount (to warm and release its aromatics) immediately before grinding in a mortar and pestle and using as required in your recipe. The flavour is much, much better than that found in ground coriander that’s sat in a pot for any length of time.

For something a little different, try Spice Mountain’s Indian-grown coriander seeds – labelled dhania – which are a tear-drop rather than spherical shape, and have a more pronounced floral and earthy flavour than the coriander more often seen on these shores.

Cumin

Cumin is the world’s second most used spice after black pepper. It’s an important, nay, essential characteristic of the foods of the Middle East, India, north Africa, Central and South America, Spain, Italy, Germany, Thailand and more.

Like coriander, cumin seeds are the fruits that hang around after the flowering plant begins to lose its bloom. They’re a flatter, longer seed than coriander (confusingly similar to caraway) and are normally brown in colour. I note, though, that there is a ‘black cumin’, which is perhaps a little sweeter than the brown (and is not to be confused with nigella seeds).

The flavour of cumin is distinctive, unmistakable, unique and ultimately quite hard to describe without saying “tastes like cumin”. I get musk, lemon zest and ‘spice’, but I’m not sure that’s particularly helpful. More definitively I can write that, as with coriander, you’re much better off buying and storing cumin seeds whole, toasting and grinding them when required (or often just toasting and leaving them whole).

Originally from Egypt, cumin is now cultivated in Iran, Turkey, India, China, Japan, Chile and Somalia.

Cardamom

And so to cardamom, the only one of our triptych of curry spices to be indigenous to India (and Sri Lanka). This tropical spice has two forms: ‘true’ green cardamom and ‘false’ black cardamom, the latter found more commonly in the Himalayas (Nepal, Bengal and Bhutan).

Green cardamom is the world’s third most expensive spice by weight (after saffron and vanilla), but it packs a heavy punch so you get rather a lot for your dollar. The flavour of green cardamom is intense, resinous, eucalyptus-like… and has spoilt many a pilau rice for eaters chowing down without looking. Nevertheless, fans will note that it has a unique quality that enhances both sweet and savoury dishes.

Cardamom is normally traded in whole pods. There is a wide variety of sizes (walk through a spice market in India and marvel at the different grades), the larger often being more powerful in aroma. But you can also buy cardamom seeds already removed from the pod and indeed, those same seeds ground to a powder (all are available at Spice Mountain). Though the ground form loses its flavour over time, it’s not the worst idea ever to have both whole and powder in your cupboard; Spice Mountain’s ground cardamom is remarkably good, and one of my most regularly dipped into pots.

Some Indian recipes require whole cardamom pods to be ground down; it’s necessary to use a good spice grinder for this, or have a particularly abrasive pestle and mortar technique.

Black cardamom has a similar if cooler aroma and flavour to its ‘true’ cousin. Most significantly, its flavour is smoky, because the blackness comes from the cardamom pod being dried over an open fire. As with green cardamom, depending on the recipe, you can use it whole, grind it whole (very finely), or grind the seeds only.

Culinary uses

Coriander is present in a huge number of cuisines. However, it usually sits quietly in the background, providing an earthy depth, while fresh herbs (its namesake) or other spices (cumin, cardamom, turmeric) take the plaudits. Which doesn’t mean it’s not vital, whether as an aromatic, whole in chutneys and brines, as a seasoning in a Mexican chilli or Indian curry paste. I think it’s particularly good when involved with rich beef stews (whether western, or something like a rendang or madras).

Cumin, on the other hand, hogs the limelight. As we know it is essential in Indian cooking, but some of its standout uses are elsewhere. Look for it sprinkled over Mexican-style grilled corn (butter, ground cumin, salt and lime zest and juice). Roasted roots like carrot and beetroot love it, and lamb and pork are big fans (think roast shoulder of lamb, or crisp pork belly seasoned with cumin and a squeeze of lemon juice). It’s even used as an aromatic to flavour liqueurs, like the German kummel.

How and where to use cardamom? The first things that come to mind are savoury dishes. For example, whole pods are tapped and dropped into rice dishes – both Indian and Persian – to impart aroma as the rice cooks. Ground cardamom is integral in many Indian spice mixes too. But perhaps things get more interesting when we move into sweeter treats. Apparently, 60 per cent of the world’s cardamom goes to Arab countries, where it plays an important part in the coffee ritual – that eucalyptus or menthol-like quality pairs beautifully with the bitterness of coffee beans. In fact, other cultures have tapped into the match too: across south-east Asia, cold, thick and sweet coffee syrup infused with cardamom and cinnamon is poured over bananas for breakfast and the Scandinavians have shown that there is no better flavour match than that of a strong coffee and an equally strongly spiced cardamom bun.

Market spice heroes

Tip of the hat to street food traders Gujarati Rasoi whose food makes use of all three of these spices, and also serves cumin-pimped rice as standard.

Perhaps more unexpectedly, I stumbled across the East London Liquor Company’s Batch No 2 gin, in which coriander seed is a dominant aromatic. It’s a beautiful, savoury gin and one worth taking home.

See Ed’s recipe for spiced yoghurt whole roast cauliflower.

“WE NEED TO FARM SUSTAINABLY AND NURTURE THE LAND IF WE’RE TO CONTINUE GROWING QUALITY PRODUCE”

Words: Clare Finney

It’s been four decades since David Deme’s local soil expert drew his probe out of the ground and declared Chegworth Valley “ideal for growing. Particularly fruit trees.” The then novice, now highly experienced farmer has more than made good on his land’s potential, with the current Kent farm comprising 300 acres of vegetables, salads, apples, pears and soft fruit.

The farm, produce from which is sold at the Chegworth Valley stall as Borough Market, has been chemical and pesticide-free since 2000, and David and his family intervene “as little as possible” by working with nature and cultivating plants with a natural resistance to pests and diseases. “If the land is good quality, the plants will be healthy,” says David. “We need to farm sustainably and nurture the land if we’re to continue growing quality produce.”

The theory sounds simple; the practice is anything but. “From deciding not to spray anymore, it was a steep learning curve,” recalls David. Fortunately, the sorts of farmers who turn to natural or organic approaches (Chegworth is not organic certified, but the approach is ‘natural’, meaning as low-intervention as possible) are more than happy to pool their collective knowledge in the pursuit of better farming.

Liquid seaweed and garlic can be used to ‘feed’ the trees, ensuring they’ve enough energy to flourish (don’t worry, your galas won’t taste of garlic), while pests are controlled by the introduction of beneficial insects and good old-fashioned farm management. “There’s a bit of red mite on our mini cucumbers at the moment,” David observes, “but they’re almost ready to harvest.” When they’re pulled out, the ground will be churned so the remaining roots are ploughed in, returning nitrogen and other nutrients back to the soil — and “when we take away the cucumbers and leaves and take out the irrigation pipes, we take away the problem.”

The next crop to be planted — a different crop, and one not susceptible to red spider mite — will thrive in the rich and rejuvenated soil. This practice is known as crop rotation and prior to the advent of industrial, chemical-led farming, was commonplace across Britain. Arguably, it’s the best way of maximising production while maintaining soil health. “We’re quite unusual, in the respect that we grow such a wide range of vegetables and fruit here — and we’re always harvesting, so we’re rotating all the time.”

The fruit trees are not rotated. They grow for many years, demanding only careful pruning and feeding to ensure a good crop each autumn. Both pruning and picking are important here. David commissioned special machines to work with the trees, and all the harvesting of the fruit, like everything else at Chegworth, is done by hand. David or his son Ben will go out and decide the size and colour of apple (or pear, tomato, cucumber and so on) that’s good to go, and instruct the pickers accordingly. “Unlike machines, which pick indiscriminately, this allows us to work with the plant. If it’s not ready we’ll leave it” — reducing waste while getting the most out of the land.

David receives regular deliveries of non-food ‘green waste’: a misleadingly named black fertiliser made up of household cuttings. “Hedge trimmings, fallen leaves, dead plant matter, grass and flower cuttings — all these are picked up and broken down and transported to us by the tonne. It’s very cheap to buy. It does the soil no end of good,” he continues — and, by extension, the plants. “There’s just no reason to be using serious chemicals,” David says conclusively. Sure, there may be the odd blemish on your cox’s orange pippin, but “it will taste all the better for it.”

“IF YOU GIVE THE FINEST PORK IN THE WORLD TO SOMEONE NOT IN LOVE WITH MAKING SAUSAGES, IT WON’T WORK”

Interview: Viel Richardson

Where did you discover a love of making sausages?

When I was a child, I was given The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency by John Seymour, and in there was a basic recipe for pork sausages. That was the first recipe I knew. From then on, something about the idea of making sausages appealed. It’s the simplicity, I think. English sausages are just pork, pork fat, herbs if you want them, and some form of breadcrumb. You need bread to absorb the fat and retain the flavours – if you just put pork into a skin, as soon as you cooked it all, the fat would run out. With the breadcrumbs, you have to get the best quality you can, as is true of every element if you want a great sausage.

How many different types of sausage do you make?

At any one time, I would say we have about 20 sausages available at Ginger Pig. Personally, I would sell around 12, but if you have people who love making sausages, they are not happy to keep making the same recipes all the time. My sausage makers keep dreaming up new ideas. Some can be very strange ideas, like: “It’s Wimbledon, why don’t we make a strawberry based sausage?” I generally let them experiment, and accept that out of every five recipes one will be a blazing success and two will be unmitigated disasters.

What is the key to making good sausages?

You need the right people. I have a guy in there at the moment called Josie who just loves making sausages. Not just the mechanics of it, but thinking of the recipes, trying new things. If you give the finest pork in the world, the best breadcrumbs and wonderful herbs to someone not in love with making sausages, it won’t work. Likewise, you can’t give someone who loves making sausages bad ingredients, because that won’t work either.

What is the starting point?

High quality, fresh meat. Pork arriving on Tuesday should be used up and sold by Saturday. It should arrive with the bone in and be prepared by the butcher. It is important that all the meat you are going to use is there – you don’t want to mix fresh pork with meat from an older delivery. You cut it into strips and remove the skin, leaving the fat, because good sausages need that fat.

How do you create the flavourings?

This is often the trickiest part of the whole process, because you need consistency. For example, sage in April is very different from sage in December; fresh herbs are very different from dried herbs. After coming up with a recipe, the real skill lies in scaling the recipe up. It is not simply a case of using more of everything, because ingredients behave differently in large volumes, so the proportions may have to change to get the same flavour profile. It takes experience and skill to get it right.

How do you go about combining it all?

My way of making sausages is dropping the unseasoned meat through a mincer to get a nice coarse texture. Then you mix in the herb blends, add the breadcrumbs, then run it through the mincer again on a lighter setting. This combines everything thoroughly without the texture becoming too fine.

What happens next?

The sausage meat is now ready for the casings. I tend to use English hog skins and for small sausages like chipolatas, I use lambs’ intestines.

Does the amount of filling you pack into a sausage matter?

It definitely does. I want a sausage that is well packed. You have to get this just right, though, because if you overstuff the skins they burst when you are making the links. A well-packed sausage cooks more evenly, looks much more appetising and tastes better. Personally, I have no issue with sausages bursting while cooking.

What is the best recipe you’ve come up with?

A few years ago I created what I called the ‘winter sausage’: belly of pork, bread rusk, garlic, juniper berries and grated orange rind. It is lovely with mash on a winter’s day. I still do make them, but only very occasionally and only in winter – this is definitely not a summer sausage.

“THERE’S AN INHERENT DISCIPLINE TO PRODUCING RAW MILK THAT YOU MAYBE DON’T GET IF YOU’RE PASTEURISING”

Interview: Ellie Costigan / Portrait: Orlando Gili

How did you come to be a cheesemonger?

After I finished my master’s, I followed my girlfriend to London. Eventually she said: “You’re not staying on my floor any more, get yourself a job.” I saw Neal’s Yard Dairy’s advert in the Ham and High, which said, “Do you like cheese?” and I thought, oh yeah, I love cheese!

I went down to the shop in Covent Garden and was totally shocked by how pungent the aroma was – it was very ammoniacal. But then I tried the cheeses. They were extraordinary. I’d never had anything like them. I thought I’d be there for a year, max, but I stayed for 10.

You’re not the only cheesemonger at Borough to have learnt their craft at Neal’s Yard Dairy. What it is about the institution that draws people in?

Neal’s Yard Dairy takes what it does really seriously. It’s an innovative company, and it’s doing something really interesting. They introduced the public to a broader swathe of cheeses, made on a small scale, that can be really variable from day to day, instead of every batch tasting the same – I think it’s that natural variation that particularly interests people who have come out of Neal’s Yard. We’re all fascinated by it.

At Borough Cheese Company, you sell a small selection of ‘iconic’ European cheeses. What was the thinking there?

My friend Jason, who also worked at Neal’s Yard, went to the Jura Mountains to buy some comté and asked me if I wanted to sell it with him. This was the very early stages of the retail market at Borough Market and we saw an exciting commercial possibility here, so we left our jobs and carried on importing comté. After that, the addition of each cheese happened very organically. The second one we started selling was mont d’Or, a seasonal cheese from the same region of France, Franche-Comté. After that came tome St Antoine. We had the hard, the soft, and the tome was something in between. The gouda came fairly recently, from our friends Betty and Martin Koster, who sell Dutch cheeses in Amsterdam. Then the latest addition was the feta from Tastanas creamery in Lesbos. We wanted something for the summer months, when the heaviness of comté might not be attractive to some people – though I don’t mind it! But we’ll never expand beyond what we’re capable of looking after to a very high standard.

What qualities do you look for in a cheese?

Firstly, I have to love it. More technically, I look for cheeses that have a length of flavour – ones that have a good initial impact that lingers in the mouth. If you’re not left with a satisfying aftertaste, that is not the cheese I’m after. There are also various specific things you look for with each cheese. Take comté: you should be able to bend it. If you tried bending a sample of cheddar it would just snap immediately. The reason you can bend good comté is that acidification happens at a point in the process that means you do not lose as much calcium as you would otherwise, which gives it this tensile strength. If you can’t bend it, it means the make was too acidic.

With the feta, we tried a number of examples. We stayed in a monastery where it was being made by nuns. It would have been great to have bought from them, but they only made about four tonnes a year and the cheese was a bit short in flavour, a bit tight in texture – it had none of the soft, open-rangy flavours we got from the feta we eventually went for.

Is it difficult to discover producers who have found that balance between scale and quality?

I recently tried some stilton made by a guy in his kitchen, produced from the milk of a herd of eight cows. It was delicious. I asked him, “How can I buy some of this?” And he said, “You can’t. That’s not what I want to do.” To be able to sell it, his kitchen would have to be regulated, he would have to deal with all the admin, he would maybe have to employ someone else. It got me thinking about the sliding scale that exists between enabling something to be sold commercially and losing the romanticism that drew you to the cheese in the first place. I think the cheese cooperatives in the Franche-Comté have found a good way of working around it.

How do those cooperatives work?

Each cheese producer – or ‘fruitière’, as they’re known in the region – works with the surrounding dairy farmers in their village. Even very small producers are making, say, 10 wheels of comté a day. They’re three feet across and 35 kilos, and they need to be matured before they are ready to sell, so where are they going to put them all? Each fruitière has a contract with an ‘affineur’ – a cheese maturer – who picks them up. The three French cheeses we sell come through Marcel Petite, an affineur who we visit every five weeks. He matures everything in an old fort, which was built in the 1880s.

There has been a boom in farmhouse cheese production in recent years. Is British cheese culture catching up with the rest of Europe – in terms of production, but also in our respect for and interest in artisanal cheeses?

It’s a big question. You have to look at the history of what’s gone on over here in the last 100 years or so. Because of industrialisation and the growth of the railways – so the ability to transport your milk as liquid rather than having to turn it into cheese – a lot of milk ended up being taken away from cheesemaking. The world wars and the rationing period consolidated cheesemaking around recipes that keep their integrity for longer, so low-moisture cheeses like cheddar. Then the last 40 years have seen the growth of supermarkets and the demand for scale and convenience. You can understand why that convenience element was attractive, but it’s to the detriment of the small farmhouse cheesemaker.

Having said that, Neal’s Yard Dairy has been going for 30 years and has helped to raise the profile of British farmhouse cheeses such that if you go to any deli in America worth its salt, they’ll have heard of Montgomery cheddar or Colston Basset stilton. That’s an incredible thing. So, it’s not all doom and gloom. Borough Market has been an amazing platform for regional cheeses and the sort of stuff I sell: quality products. Markets have a really fundamental role to play in encouraging the production of small-scale foodstuffs, whether that be bread, beer or cheese, and celebrating their variability, rather than what a supermarket does which is to say, “No, I want it to be exactly the same as last week.” There needs to be an ongoing change in cultural attitudes, which is not going to happen overnight and hasn’t happened definitively.

So, do you think cheese is undervalued?

The biggest ongoing discussion I have had over the years is about price: “I can get this in a supermarket and it’s this price.” Of course you can, but it’s going to be much younger, the quality isn’t going to be anywhere near the same, and you don’t have me looking after it and sharing it with you at its best. it’s important that people understand that.

The value of milk is a problem, too. The last figures I read, they reckoned the average cost of producing milk was about 25p a litre. The price paid to the farmer was about 22p a litre. It’s shocking. Every year you look at the figures and there are fewer dairy farmers than the year before. We have to value it more.

In the USA, Australia and New Zealand, for example, the use of raw milk is effectively banned. What are the arguments in raw milk’s favour?

One important change that’s happened over here in the last 30 years is the establishment of the Specialist Cheesemakers Association. One of its functions is to gather people together to think about raw milk: what’s happening with it, how safe is it? I think some of the conclusions would surprise people. With good systems of manufacturing and hygiene, there’s nothing inherently dangerous in raw milk – and the benefits in terms of flavour are huge, which in turn can stimulate interest in cheese. In fact, there’s an inherent discipline to producing raw milk that you maybe don’t get if you’re pasteurising: why bother being so scrupulous about things if at the end of the day you’re going to pasteurise the hell out of it. Raw milk is great, you just need a system where you have total trust in the procedures and processing.

Do you think the treatment of animals in the industrial dairy sector is a problem?

I think the dairy industry has lots of questions to answer, not least about animal husbandry. In some of these big dairies, they’re taking 50 litres a day per animal. There are only so many milkings they can endure before they’ve had it. That is not good. Nor is the amount of land we are using to grow cereals to feed those animals. I’m not an agro-economist, but I think we need to strike some kind of balance between growing enough to make a successful business, and gearing it to the local economy.

One of the problems is supermarkets – these massive leviathons that need constant feeding. Imagine the infrastructural difficulty in trying to supply this cavernous appetite via smallholdings. They just cannot do it, they’re not geared up for it. Which is why I think Borough is so important. It offers a template for a way of retailing that’s outside the norm. People will say, “Well, look at the average protein intake of the individual – it’s gone up thanks to supermarkets, and nutrition is much better.” That’s a very good thing, obviously, but there’s got to be some middle ground.

On a lighter note, is a 12-month aged comté the perfect cheese?

I do like that creaminess and the nutty flavours you get. Over the last few years, I have noticed a trend for people wanting older comté. In my opinion, a lot of older cheeses can have a very strong impact, but without much complexity – it’s a hotness, like a spice, the range of flavour is lost and the mouthfeel less sophisticated. But these are just trends: we have to stick to our guns and believe in what we do.

Are you still as in love with cheese as ever?

I’m a cheese nut. By 11 o’ clock I think, where is the cheese?! I’ve got to have some, now. I never get bored of it. Every day is just a new day to eat cheese.

“THERE HAVE BEEN TIMES WHEN THINGS HAVE BEEN DIFFICULT, BUT HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE, LOOKING OUT FOR ME”

Interviews: Viel Richardson / Image: Christopher L Proctor

Maria on Mike

I have known Mike since my late teens, so we have been friends for a long time. I remember when I first saw him walking past the cafe and up the street. He had long hair then, so you can see things have changed a bit!

Ours is a deep friendship, one where we can be completely relaxed in each other’s company. There have been times when things have been difficult in my life, but he has always been there, ready to give support without question, looking out for me. When my parents had passed and the cafe moved to a small space next to the Southwark Tavern, Mike came up and said he would paint it for me to help with the setting up. I didn’t have to ask. There are other times when he has just said something encouraging when I have been down. We also make each other laugh a lot.

Mike knows so much about art and music, but he has a way of talking which is not overbearing or patronising. I find it very comfortable, listening to him talk about subjects that I don’t know a great deal about, but find fascinating. It is also really nice to spend time talking to someone with expertise that is completely different from food.

Sometimes we go to his place and he plays the piano, which I find very moving. The first time I heard him play, it really affected me. I was crying one minute and laughing the next. It was lovely.

My favourite painting of his is a view from Park Street. In it are my parents, standing outside our old cafe, looking towards the Market. That obviously means a great deal to me. That cafe was our home, it was where I grew up as a child. In the painting it is very much alive, and you can feel the atmosphere of the street. It is a very positive picture, full of sunshine.

Mike spends a lot of time in the Market. I think he is inspired by the buildings, the atmosphere, the people, and also the memories of people and places that were once here and have now moved on. Over the years, the pair of us have gone through a lot together and as part of the community. Those emotional attachments and shared history are still here, and they form a big part of our friendship.

Mike on Maria

When I first moved into my home next to the Market, which was a wholesale fruit and veg market in those days, I remember Maria and her sisters playing in the street right outside my front door. I remember going into her parents’ cafe and getting to know the family. The cafe was very much a key part of the community in an understated way, as all really good cafes are.

Maria is just this bubbling font of positive energy. She works incredibly hard running her cafe and setting the tone of the place. Maria’s is not just a place to eat; the customers and staff have created a community here. That is something that cannot be faked – it is a spirit that comes from being part of the history of the Market. Even though the location has changed a couple of times, what Maria is doing now is exactly what her parents achieved with the original cafe. It is unique and unlike anything else that has been in the Market over all that time. Maria brings a continuity that very few people are able to offer.

I speak to so many people for whom a visit to Maria’s Market Cafe is as much a reason for coming to Borough Market as their favourite stall. Sitting here waiting for their meal to be called out is something they have come to love. There is no standing on ceremony here; there is an honesty about the place, which is very appealing.

My favourite dish is the egg and chips. It doesn’t sound much, but you would be surprised how many people get it wrong. And of course, there is no substitute for one of her mugs of tea.

“THE BELL SHAPE OF THE LORD LONDON MIGHT BAFFLE A FEW WHEN IT COMES TO CUTTING ETIQUETTE”

Interview & illustration: Ed Smith

At Alsop & Walker, Lord London is our best-selling white bloom cheese. It is made using the mould of a Spanish cheese called ‘tetilla’, which means nipple – though it’s probably more like a bell shape at first glance. My business partner Nic had lived in Spain for a while, so he and his wife wanted to try making tetilla, which I wasn’t familiar with. He brought some back, and to be honest I didn’t really like it. But I did like the shape, so we decided to make a variation that was more to our taste.

The moulds we use are the same as for the Spanish cheese – we bought them from a Spanish supplier – but the shape is the only similarity. Our cheese is far more exciting on the palate. On the outside, it has a white bloom similar to a brie or camembert. Inside, it’s a similar texture to a brie, though taste-wise it’s a cross between the two. It’s neither one nor the other. In fact, I’d say it’s unique.

The milk, a mixture of friesian and guernsey, comes predominately from three farms local to us in East Sussex. Because the guernsey milk is so rich, our acidification process is quite slow, which results in complex, layered flavours coming through. The fresh milk goes in the vat and is inoculated with various bacteria and yeasts. Quite quickly, the milk splits into curds and whey – the curd is what becomes cheese. When we cut the curds, we salt them, then push them into the tetilla moulds. These are basically stacked on top of each other within a cheese vat, which helps to press the curds. We monitor the pH of the cheeses continually for about 24 hours while they are being pressed. During that time, they lose a little moisture, develop acidity and become firmer, and when they’re at our desired level of acidity, we turn them out of the moulds and stack them on shelves in the maturing room.

After about seven days we start to see white mould growing on the cheese. Two to three weeks later they’ll be ready to wrap. The cheese will carry on maturing, getting softer and softer over another two months. We tend to make around 300 Lord Londons in every batch, as we have 320 moulds. The bell shape of the Lord London might baffle a few when it comes to cutting etiquette. The shape certainly creates a new angle to the great debate of whether or not it’s polite to cut the nose off a wedge of cheese! But for the record, I tend to cut slices from the cheese as if I was cutting a cake – from the point of the bell, straight down the middle.

“TO CALL IT A CHEDDAR SEEMS ALMOST AN INJUSTICE WHEN ONE CONSIDERS THE PAUCITY OF GOOD CHEDDARS IN SUPERMARKETS”

Image: Ed Smith

It was 1983 when the Reades first clapped eyes on the roofless, derelict farm that would become their home: a battered yet beautiful place on the Isle of Mull, off the west coast of Scotland. They’d noticed on previous visits that the islanders didn’t have their own local milk supply. “Milk came by ship or freight to the shops on the island. There was no serious producer,” recalls Chris Reade, who moved there with her husband Jeff and young sons Garth and Brendan. Once the Reades got Sgriob-Ruadh or ‘red furrow’ farm up, roofed and running, however, that started to change, thanks to their growing herd of bounteous British fresians, which were eventually followed by a colourful mix of brown Swiss, Swedish and Norwegian red breeds.

Fast forward to the present day and the Mullochs, as the islanders are known, continue to enjoy the fruit of the Reades’ labour – albeit no longer in liquid format. Milk now being readily available, the family has focused their attention entirely on the production of cheese. In doing so, the Reades have developed one of the most remarkable raw milk cheeses in Scotland, if not in all the British Isles: Isle of Mull cheddar.

To call it a cheddar seems almost an injustice when one considers the paucity of good cheddars available in supermarkets. But if anything could restore the name cheddar to its former glory, it is this richly mature, robust number – as far removed from industrially produced cheddar as the Isle of Mull is from our harried, smoke-chocked capital.

“Each batch is very different,” says Phil, a cheesemonger on Neal’s Yard Dairy’s busy shop floor in Borough. “Sometimes it has a lovely spikiness to it – that tingling feeling at the back of your throat. Sometimes it is citrusy or almost boozy. It depends what the cows have been eating” – a characteristic confirmed by the now fully mature Brendan Reade, who’s since taken over the farm’s day to day running. “Our cheese is completely a result of where the cows have grazed on a given day. Every time they go to a different field, the cheese will taste slightly different.”

“One batch we tried had a slight chive taste to it – as if the cows had found some wild onions,” Phil recalls. “The one we have at the moment is quite mild, but it still has that slight spikiness to it.”

Isle of Mull cheddar is neither pasteurised nor coloured – two practices common in industrial-sized cheesemakers. The summer batches are creamily yellow, thanks to the wild grasses and flowers the cows graze on, while the winter cheeses are paler on account of the hay.

During milking, the fresh milk is transferred directly from parlour to cheesemaking vat, still warm from the udders. “It’s exciting to be making cheese in September and be selling it next June,” Chris Reade enthuses. Occasionally, in particularly mature wheels, fine blue veins will thread their way sporadically through the cheese paste – but this is a flavoursome asset, rather than disadvantage. She’s spent more than three decades making cheese with her family, but Chris still loves the big reveal, when the cheese is unwrapped and cut open. “Opening up the cloth, cutting through and not knowing what’s going to be there, it’s so exciting. It’s magic, to me.” It’s magic to Phil, too, for whom the Isle of Mull is “a truly unique cheddar”. If you’re having a toastie, he recommends adding a bit of raclette-style cheese to the mix, to make it stretch a bit. For his part, though, he prefers it on a cheeseboard, “just as it is.”

“THE ARBROATH SMOKIE IS TO THE HADDOCK WHAT PROSCIUTTO CRUDO IS TO THE LEG OF A PIG: THE ULTIMATE IN FLAVOUR”

Images: Tom Bradley

Soaring costs, squeezed margins, social, environmental and political upheaval: these are testing times for all of us, but particularly small-scale food producers. Their traditions may be time-honoured, their practices perfected over generations, but when scale and consistency are too often valued over craftmanship, even those within easy reach of rich, global markets have had to modernise to keep up.

Not all of them, though. Certainly not Alex Spink and Sons, supplier of Arbroath Smokies to Borough Market’s Oak & Smoke. Tucked down a seaside street in Arbroath on the east coast of Scotland, their fish house looks and feels a million miles away from modernity. To enter the Spink smoking room – a murky yet strangely comforting place, redolent with woodchip and haddock – is to travel back in time not just to 1972, when Alex Spink senior decided to smoke fish rather than go to sea with his father, but to 15th century Scotland. “This is at a slightly bigger scale, but the smoking methods we’re using here have not changed really in hundreds of years,” says our host, Gary, as he builds the fire and tightens the string on the haddock fillets he prepared earlier.

Popular legend has it that in the wee village of Auchmithie, next to Arbroath, a fire broke out in a store where some salted haddocks were hanging up for preservation. Sifting through the soot and ashes to see what they could salvage, the villagers discovered the bronzed and burnished fish – and so, they say, ‘smokies’ were born. Historical fact, alas, affords no such colour: the practice was almost certainly brought over by the Nordic settlers who arrived regularly on this stretch of coast. There are striking similarities between the smoking habits of medieval Scotland and medieval Scandinavia. The name Spink – like many common to the area – has Nordic roots.

Alex Spink senior has retired, but his son, Alex junior, currently on his way back from the fish market, is keeping the family business going. Gary is not a Spink; he has, though, been working with the family since he was 14, so he’s pretty immersed in the business – particularly the smoking side of things. The haddock he’s tying now were salted three days ago, “for four or five hours – it really depends” and hung last night to firm up still further. Though the rule with fresh fish is the fresher the better (most of Alex junior’s haul will go to their fresh fish counter in their local shops), the reverse is true of smoking. “If a fish is too fresh when we try to hang it up and smoke it, it will fall off.”

This doesn’t often happen, but when it does, the lost fish, known as ‘droppers’, quickly find a happy home: “The best time to eat a smokie is straight after it’s come off the fire,” grins Gary. As he checks the string that ties the paired haddock fillets together (one hangs either side of the metal stick) he puts a pinch of salt around their tails to tighten them still further. He’s been here since 5am. It’s now 7am. The fish will go on the fire soon, and be off by 9am so the courier can collect them at noon and carry them off to restaurants and retailers. “They need to be cool enough to pack, but we want them to be as fresh as possible,” he says. Though there are several smokehouses in Arbroath, Alex Spink and Sons is one of the few to smoke every day, “so our smokies are some of the juiciest and freshest there are”.

“It takes a while to get the timings. Sometimes you can say it will take an hour and a half, but if there’s a fair bit of wind it will make the fire hotter so they smoke quicker. Likewise, if the fish are smaller. The weather, the size of the fish and the freshness of the fish all play a part in the timing,” says Gary, who developed the instincts and experience needed for his craft by spending several years observing his predecessor at work.

The fire lit and crackling, he returns briefly to his colleagues in the main processing area. Alex junior has returned from the market, so there are several boxes of fish to unload, unpack and fillet, destined either for smoking or for selling fresh at Spink’s local shops, where, in a display of perversity typical of people whose place of living has become bound up with a certain foodstuff, smokies don’t sell particularly well.

The filleting is all done by hand. “There are filleting machines, but they don’t work with smokies. You have to fillet, keep the backbone, and get the head off, but with minimum meat loss. Then you have to clean them.” Gary gestures toward his colleague, Ron, and the whirring brushing machine he is operating, the only piece of mechanisation I’ve seen outside the company office. In the cold, clear running water and Ron’s careful hands, each fish takes around six seconds. After this, the cleaned, filleted fish are packed into containers of dry salt to reduce the moisture, harden the skin and add flavour. The quantity of salt and timing of the immersion depends on the weight of the fish: another complicating factor in what, for all its seeming simplicity, is clearly a remarkably refined process. Part way through the salting, fish of equal size will be paired and tied together by the tail using ‘thrums’: locally produced jute string, once a by-product of Angus’s many spinning mills. Then, once salting’s complete they’ll be washed and hung on rails or sticks to dry.

Every step of this process has been enshrined in EU regulation since 2004, when the Arbroath smokie achieved protected status, a development that made a huge difference to every smokehouse in the area authorised to produce this succulent, salty speciality. Only those operating within a five mile radius of Arbroath can produce smokies – the town having been the epicentre of production since the late 19th century when the fishing families of Auchmithie moved there for its superior harbour and housing prospects – and the haddock must, bar exceptional circumstances, come from Scottish waters. “The Arbroath smokie has been described as being to the humble haddock what prosciutto crudo is to the hind leg of a pig,” the relevant regulation states. “It is the ultimate in flavour that can be achieved from the original article, and the secret, as with prosciutto, lies in the cure which gives the smokie its delicious taste combining the subtle tang of smoke with the sweet, delicate flesh of the haddock.”

For this reason, it cannot be mechanised. “Many have tried, but it just doesn’t work,” says Gary. As the specification itself notes, smoking over an open fire “imparts a succulence and flavour that cannot be matched by similar products smoked in mechanical kilns”. By this point the fire is ready, its fuel of hardwood fully ablaze in what is still called ‘the barrel’, though the Spinks’ operation has long outgrown the whisky barrels their ancestors favoured. This makes no difference, Gary observes: “After so much use, the barrels wouldn’t have imparted any whisky flavour.” It’s the fresh hardwood that gives the smoke it’s taste, a mix of cedar and oak. “Some people have tried to use old broken-up palettes and other rubbish, but you can’t do that. The smoke is the flavour, so you need to use quality wood.”

Donning thick gloves, Gary lifts the fish-laden sticks and places them above the fierce, flickering fire. “It’s a nice, calm day without wind” he observes wryly – we’re there a week after Storm Dennis’s ‘visit’ – “but these aren’t the biggest fish, so they should take about 90 minutes.” He shuts the heavy wooden lid, another minor and fairly meaningless update on the hessian sacks historically used to trap the smoke. “Sacks are hard to source and wood is just as good. Solid but breathable,” Gary continues. Because one side of the fire is hotter than the other (“No idea why; it’s always been that way”) he’ll need to turn them about half way through the process. He sets his phone alarm and returns to the fish prep room, where Alex junior is unloading salmon: thick, pink sides, from farms in Shetland and Norway that prioritise sustainability. While Gary slices them up, we retire to the office to chat with the two Alexes: Alex senior has arrived, here to take a break from retirement by filleting fish and filling us in on his life’s work.

Forty-two years ago, when he started the business, Arbroath was still a bustling harbour, with most of the town employed directly or indirectly by the fishing trade. His father was one of them: a fisherman who in Arbroath’s heyday was “catching fish like they’d never caught before”. This was the mid-1970s, Alex senior continues. “The pair trawl had started: two boats, pulling one net between them, which dragged along the bottom and caught all sorts of fish” – a method even more damaging than the one-boat trawler. “After two or three years, the fish got very scarce – and that was the beginning of the end, really.” Trade moved to Aberdeen, and then, when that harbour fell too, to Peterhead and Shetland. Meanwhile young Alex senior had spurned the family boat in favour of fishmongery and smoking – first for another merchant, then using his father’s steadily diminishing haul.

The draconian quotas introduced by the UK and EU decimated Scotland’s fishing towns, but did have a significant upside. “There are more fish now than there ever were. At one point we were having to import fish from Iceland to sell. There were no fish at all out there,” he says. Now he’s handing his business on, confident in the knowledge that Alex junior, Gary and the rest of his former colleagues will be secure in its employ. “There is a future in it now – otherwise I’d never have encouraged Alex,” he says soberly. “There are fewer boats, but they are better boats, and the fishermen are investing in it.” Not all are sustainably minded, and Alex junior is careful to buy from those certified by the Marine Stewardship Council, but there is “a lot more confidence in the industry”. That, together with the EU protected name status, has sown hope among fish merchants here in Abroath.

Gary pokes his head round the door. “The smokies are coming off the fire now, if you’d like to watch,” he announces. We follow eagerly, hoping there’ll be a dropper or two, our appetites having been stoked further by the Spinks’ description of eating them “straight off the barrel, when the flesh is juicy and moist and still warm”. In the fug of the smoking room, Gary lifts the barrel’s heavy wooden lid and disappears briefly into a billow of smoke before emerging triumphantly with a rail of smokies. Burnished by the fire, their skin sizzles slightly as he sets them down: “Sometimes I take the temperature, but I’m mainly looking for colour, and whether the skin moves.” He knows these are ready because their skins are coppery, dry and taut. Now it’s the salmon’s turn to enter the smoker: hot smoking requires more heat from the fire, so they follow the smokies, which fare best on its first, less intense flames. Gary makes toward the trays of pink fillets and, as he does so, a single solitary smokie starts to fall. He catches it just in time and, setting it before us, deftly removes the main bone so the skin splits and reveals its steaming white bounty. We fall upon it and, using our fingers, peel off jagged lumps of the flesh. It is delectable: creamy and barely-cooked, with a lingering hint of oaky smoke that complements its innate sweetness. It is like an apple eaten straight from the tree, a pea podded and popped onto your tongue. It is past and present, time and place, all in one mouthful.

“IF THIS WAS HAPPENING ON LAND, WHERE PEOPLE COULD SEE THE HAVOC THEY CAUSE, THEY’D STOP IT IMMEDIATELY”

Images: Orlando Gili

“Sometimes it is like looking under your bed for a pair of socks, the visibility’s that poor. If the tide is strong it’s so gloomy, you can end up bumping into things.” Other times, expert scallop diver Darren Brown of Shellseekers Fish & Game can spend a full hour and 40 minutes picking what some have likened to solid gold coins off the floor. “It’s a gamble,” he shrugs, checking his watch and putting his foot down, in a van chockful of gadgets and gizmos. Time and tide wait for no man – not even an ex-marine who, when he isn’t diving, is either line fishing or stalking deer and rabbits on Dartmoor; and with a slight kerfuffle over a hole in Darren’s dry-suit this morning (conclusion: it’s fine – “and if it isn’t I’ll know about it soon enough”) the race is on.

We pull up at the docks: the brooding grey arm of the Isle of Portland on one side, the steely grey of Weymouth bay ahead. It’s a formidable looking place, not helped by gloomy skies and the knowledge that, just out of sight on the island, lies one of Britain’s most notorious prisons. Darren’s boat is moored in the old naval base at the foot of the island, “so really I’ve come full circle. This is the base where I served as a marine. It is a bit weird, coming back here,” he acknowledges. “I walked out in 1997.” After 20 years of supplying fish and game to his stall at Borough Market, hunting and fishing have become “a way of life” for him.

“It’s what I do,” he explains, loading a trailer with baskets, his suit and his fins (“Not flippers. Flipper is a dolphin, darling,” he corrects) and setting off to the mooring. Every morning is early, to catch the tide and some scallops or sea bass, and every night a late one, after an evening spent stalking the moors. Darren’s not complaining. “I have turned my passions and interests into a business,” he says – and it’s a successful one, too, in spite of some serious setbacks.

Of course, scallop fishing isn’t easy – at least, not the way Darren does it. Hand-diving only accounts for two per cent of scallops sold in Britain. Most of the scallops you’ll see in the shops will have been dredged, using what are effectively large metal rakes to scrape scallops – and inevitably, a load of other wildlife – off the seafloor.

“If this was on land, where people could see the havoc they cause, they’d stop it immediately. It’s like the moon down there after they’ve been at it. Everything is upside down, there’s no life at all.” It could take years to grow back, “if it ever does”. But attitudes are slowly changing. Here in Dorset, Darren’s vociferous campaigns against dredging have helped in getting it banned from several areas along the Jurassic Coast.

We board the Maddy Moo: still wet and shining from the deep clean she’s received this morning from Jeff Parish, Darren’s able seaman. “You should have seen her last night,” he grins when we comment on her shipshape appearance “after a seven-hour sea bass fishing trip”. They’d met with limited success on the trip: “Those bloody netters, they scoop them all up,” Jeff complains. Like the dredgers scouring the seabed, the trawler boats are the antithesis of the sustainable, man-versus-fish tactic of rod and line fishing. “You can be the best fisherman in the world, but you can’t catch fish if there aren’t any there to be caught.”

Today, though, Darren is hopeful as we chug gently out of the harbour. On the small black screen in the cabin the outline of the sea bed appears in green squiggles, including a huge naval boat sunk deliberately during the first world war to block the harbour entrance and defend it against German submarines. We slip over it easily, and are released into the grey-green plains of the English Channel. The cliffs are cragged and menacing but, as we come to a stop for Darren to slip into the water, the sea slapping the sides of our little boat is slack and peaceful. We’re at the sweet spot: the gap between tides.

Slip is an understatement. With air cylinders, 32 pounds of weights around his waist and several baskets for collecting scallops, Darren’s entrance into the lolling sea is anything but slow. Even his suit is heavy: a thick, black skin of rubber. On his back, Darren is carrying my entire weight in tank, oxygen and mixed gases. “I’ll be working on 40 per cent oxygen today, which is twice as much oxygen as is in the air. That reduces my exposure to nitrogen which, if it becomes saturated in your blood and doesn’t have a chance to escape as you come up, gives you the bends. It is amazing isn’t it,” he says, fingering his mouthpiece, “that I am reliant on this little bit of rubber to keep me alive.”

In the pocket of his suit, Darren carries a flare. “I’ve been lost at sea for seven hours before. I’m not letting that happen again,” he says grimly. Tied to his belt are the net bags he will fill with scallops then send to the surface, by attaching them to what is effectively an inflatable balloon. He’ll have an hour, he reckons, before the flood of the tide kicks. “I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager. I could go round after someone less experienced and pick up twice as many as they have done. You get what you call the eye, for scallops.” Even while picking up one unwitting shellfish off the sea floor, Darren has one eye scanning the seabed for his next find. A flicker of movement; the flash of an orange frill; even just a slight indentation in the sand can denote a piece of buried treasure.

While Darren is in the deep, Jeff will be manning the boat, keeping his eyes peeled for the inflatable balloons that denote a fresh bag of scallops, and winching them up onto deck with the aid of a small crane.

“I’m going to jump over here captain,” Darren shouts, heaving the cylinders onto his back and diving into the water with surprising ease, if not all that much elegance. Jeff heads to the driver’s seat, ready to guide the boat toward his first find. “When the bag comes up I have to judge which way it’s going to float, and be downwind of it. There is no tide at the moment, so it all hangs on the breeze.” One thing you notice when you spend time with seafarers is how much information they can glean from their environment: the look of the sky, the sound of the sea – even the feel of the winds.

Jeff’s been fishing for as long as he can remember, though he has only recently started making a living from it. “I love the buzz of it,” he explains. As we chat, a red balloon appears about 50 metres away from us, and Jeff starts nudging the boat towards it, reading the wind all the while. Lining the crane up with the bobbing balloon is no mean feat. It appears static, but it’s moving rapidly across the surface and Jeff has to make an informed guess on its speed and distance. He leans over, hooks it to the crane and pulls it on board.

It’s overflowing: scallops, some weedy, some barnacled, all beautiful, spill out across the deck of the ship and Jeff starts sifting and sorting. All the scallops must be graded by size before they can be landed: the statutory minimum size for a king scallop is 100mm, and for a queen it is 40mm. Any smaller than that and they’re to be chucked back into the water, in order that they can continue to grow.

This is the other problem with dredging. Where Jeff and – when he resurfaces – Darren can measure each shell there and then, the dredgers have no such option. While the mesh collector bag attached to the dredge is designed to prevent the collection of undersized scallops, it is inevitable that some get caught up inside. These tiddlers are, eventually, returned to the waters – but there is some doubt over whether they can survive the experience of being dredged.

By this point two more balloons have popped up onto the surface – and not before time. “See that? There is a bit of flood kicking in already. He won’t be long now,” Jeff observes, scanning the surface. Eventually he resurfaces: his face triumphant against the steely grey of the water, and we make our way over to him. “There were absolutely stacks down there!” he puffs as Jeff leans down, seizes him by the back of his suit, and hauls him over the side.

Together, the fishermen gather up the last bag of scallops, and start sorting – largely by sight, but using a ruler to check those they’re unsure of. As the Maddy Moo makes her way back to shore, Jeff continues sorting, sending the undersized scallops flying gaily over the side. “Until next year!” I shout silently, as the little shells soar through the air and plop daintily into the sea, in the boat’s wake. In the meantime, we’ve a market to get to – and, as is tradition after a hard day’s work on the water, a swift half to drink.