“SPICES EVOKE FOREIGN TASTES, SMELLS AND TRADITIONS. THEY ALLOW YOU TO TRAVEL WITHOUT LEAVING YOUR KITCHEN”

Image: Lauren McLean

In this series, I’ll be looking in depth at the many spices available at the Market. Each post will focus on a selection of spices – two, three, sometimes four. Some will be more obviously related than others, but there’ll always be logic to the grouping.

The series will look at where the spices originate, discuss their characteristics and look at classic and unusual flavour pairings. I will also highlight interesting ways the spices are used in cookery, by food writers, chefs and also producers around the Market, providing you with multiple ideas for your dinner. I’ll also finish with a recipe or two, which make the most of the spices featured that month.

Before the first post, though, we thought it sensible to cover a few general rules and themes. I’ll refer back to these over the course of the year.

What is a spice?

Ah, yes – the million-dollar question. Can it be that the crocus of saffron, the seeds of a coriander plant, a vanilla bean and the drupes, or stone fruit, of a pepper plant all sit under the same umbrella term?Well, yes. Though the reason for that is a little fuzzy.

It is instructive that in his Book of Spice, John O’Connell falls short of providing a single, clear definition of what spices are. He favours one by historian Jack Turner, in his Spice: The History of a Temptation. Namely: “A spice is not a herb, understood to mean the aromatic, herbaceous, green parts of the plant. Herbs are leafy, whereas spices are obtained from the other parts of the plant: bark, root, flower bud, gums and resins, seed, fruit or stigma.”

This highlights, helpfully, the difference between the very herbal fresh coriander and the very obviously spice-like seeds which derive from the same plant and are used across a variety of cuisines. But leaving the definition as ‘not a herb’ seems unsatisfactory.

O’Connell goes on to mention that “the story of spice is a global one”, and that this is important when defining spice. He cites food historian Andrew Dalby, who noted that spice is defined by “distant origin and long distance trade, as well as unique aroma”.

This provides a little more reason, and though it still doesn’t lead to the lawyerly definition that I’d like, it does add colour. Spices are exotic and often imported. They evoke foreign tastes, smells and traditions.

In short, spices let you travel without having to leave the comfort (or confines) of your kitchen.

Whole spice

You’ll only really travel, though, if the spices that you use are flavoursome. As a general rule, the best way to ensure this is to buy seeds, bark, beans and so on in their whole (albeit dried) form, and to prepare them for cooking yourself.

By and large, this means toasting and grinding the spice in question. Toasting (or roasting) a spice is simply the act of heating the required amount of spice to help warm and enliven the spice’s oils from their slumber. You can do this in a warm oven, or over a low heat. In each case, use a heavy-bottomed pan or cast-iron dish, and keep your eye and nose on the job. It’s easy to go from cold and unaffected spices to burnt ones if you get distracted (put that phone down).

Always decant your spices into a cold bowl or similar as soon as you have determined that they are ready, as if you leave them in the hot pan, they’ll carry on cooking. Then grind the spice using either a pestle and mortar, or a mechanical or electric grinder. If you’re using a pestle and mortar, and the eventual destination for your spices is a savoury one, then add a pinch of flaked sea salt to the mix as this provides extra abrasion.

If you’re on the lookout for a mechanical or electric spice grinder, I recommend turning away from most gadgets labelled ‘spice’, and instead look to coffee grinders. These tend to have a better ‘burr’, and are more robust than the spice alternatives. Just make sure you keep a separate one for your coffee.

Storage

It is not practical to prepare every spice yourself, however, so by all means buy pre-ground spices. Keep them in an air tight container (ideally they’ll have been supplied in one). Don’t leave them at the back of a cupboard and assume the spice will do its job years after you purchased them.

It’s a good idea to make a concerted effort to use up your pre-ground spices as soon as you can after buying them. One of the best ways of doing this is to buy relatively small quantities of spice. Don’t be duped by the per kilo price of 500g of cumin or turmeric. That’s a false economy; if you only use 50g of the spice bag over the course of three or four months, the rest is effectively sawdust.

I find 30-50g pots about right, and try to use them within six months of purchase (at the very latest). Their potency is much reduced after that time period.

Quality

As with most things in food, it’s worth buying the best spice you can afford – not least because you will need to use less if the spice you are using is of good quality, well toasted and recently ground. (Often the more expensive spices are better value.)

Easier said than done, you might scoff. Except, independently of this series, and independently of my role as a regular Borough Market contributor, I’m more than happy to recommend the Market’s spice specialist to you: Spice Mountain. Their spices are among the freshest and best sourced I’ve come across in retail, and they’ve a fantastic range. Worth seeking out.

“THE ONLY PART OF THE ORIGINAL RECIPE WE DON’T FOLLOW IS THAT SALT BE SPRINKLED ON WITH THE AID OF A FEATHER”

Images: Orlando Gili

It is a depressing feature of our pre-sliced, pre-packaged age that seeing the process and the people behind food is for most of us a luxury rather than an everyday experience. While for my grandparents watching food being made was entirely unremarkable, today I count myself lucky to have seen lumbering cows wait patiently to be milked; to have felt the warm fug of a milking parlour; to have watched the freshest of milk tense and tighten into a lumpy soup of curds and whey.

My role is to share what I’ve experienced with readers who don’t have the time or the access that I do. It’s what I’m in Somerset for: to see the cows and the cheesemakers behind Bath Soft Cheese Co, and to write about them. But as soon as I arrive at Park Farm in Kelston, I discover that my role here has been slightly – but delightfully – overthrown.

“He’s been milking them about 10 minutes,” a small, ringleted girl tells me authoritatively as I enter a long room overlooking the milking parlour. Sat on the first row of seats with her face glued to the window, the child doesn’t even turn around as she declares the farm worker to have milked “about 20 cows so far” – a fact her equally transfixed mother confirms. They’ve been sat here since the start of milking, spellbound by the sight of milk pumping through pipes, the farmhand carefully washing each udder before attaching the suction cups, the cows chewing contentedly.

“Children love it. Adults love it!” remarks Hugh Padfield, the fourth-generation owner of Park Farm, as we tiptoe back out of his new public viewing gallery. The cafe in the adjacent building looks over the make room, “so the public can see the whole thing – the grass, the cows, the people, the cheese – there is nothing hidden.” If you’re in Bath, or are headed that way soon, then my work here is done. You just need to pay the Padfields a visit. If you’re not, then sit comfortably and I shall continue.

The story of Park Farm as Hugh knows it began with his great-grandparents, who moved to Kelston in 1914 and established a traditional mixed farm here in the foothills of the Cotswolds. “My great-grandmother made cheese, next to what is now my parents’ house.” Hugh points to a beautiful stone house, up a track, tucked away from the main farm buildings. In 1990, his father, Graham, decided to resurrect the family’s cheesemaking tradition, which along with most of British farmhouse cheese production, had been seen off after the second world war. “During the war, and for a long time afterwards, you would sell your milk to the Milk Marketing Board and buy it back if you wanted to make cheeses. Most was made into ‘government cheddar’,” Hugh explains.

Inspired to start making cheese, Graham Padfield did some research, and found a letter written by Horatio Nelson’s father to the legendary sailor recommending a cream cheese from Bath. Emboldened by further reports that suggested soft cheese was prevalent across the southwest of England prior to the 20th century, he tracked down a recipe in an old grocer’s book and set to making it. “The only part of the original recipe we don’t follow is that salt be sprinkled on the young cheeses ‘with the aid of a feather’,” Hugh smiles. “I’m not sure how well that would go down with the Environmental Health officers.”

Fast-forward 20 years and the Padfields have developed a whole family of cheeses, garnering numerous awards in the process. They’ve moved production to a purpose-built cheese dairy and milking parlour, having outgrown the old outhouse in which Hugh’s great-grandmother once worked, and they now have 160 heads of cattle to their name. The Padfields are proud to embrace technologies that can improve their practice. A few minutes after meeting him, Hugh leads me into the farm’s small office to find Graham energetically engaged in an online tractor auction. “The numbers go up so fast!” he murmurs. This is farming for the 21st century – and yet, outside the office, away from the viewing galleries, computers and sizzling cheese toastie machine, it really could be 1914 again.

The pastures are unchanged. The farmhouses are unchanged. “The fields are still named things like Station Ground and Cherry Cottage,” Hugh says proudly. A few years ago, he found a photograph of his father as a baby, held by his grandfather with his great-grandfather standing by: “It was in the yard outside our house – and the first thing I saw was that the plank of wood leaning against the wall in that photo is still there,” he laughs. “At least, there is still a plank of wood leaning against that wall. Over all these years people have clearly thought it the perfect place to leave a spare plank.”

It’s a touching detail, and oddly reassuring. Though the last 50 years has seen a shift from manual to automated milking, from wicker baskets to plastic cheese moulds, from informed guesswork to collars that measure the temperature, movement and milk yield of an animal, some things have remained constant. The cheese at Park Farm is still made by hand; the cows are still pasture-fed for at least six months of the year; and if you have a plank of wood going spare, there is a handy place for you to leave it, just against that wall.

For all the social media and viewing galleries, tradition clearly matters to Hugh. It’s one of the reasons he farms organically. “I think one of the fun things about being organic is learning how to work with nature. We fix nitrogen in the soil by encouraging the growth of clover, we manage that growth so there isn’t so much clover as to upset the cows’ stomachs; we take non-chemical approaches to tackling weeds.” They use muck to fertilise the field rather than artificial fertiliser, and the cows receive medicine only when it’s really needed – they aren’t routinely dosed, as they might be in an intensive system. Welfare standards are high – 600 acres to graze, and fresh bedding to come home to after a day spent enjoying the pasture.

In short, conditions at Park Farm are ripe for the creation of farmhouse cheeses – and that’s before you get to the geographical advantages of southwest England. I experience these first-hand when I arrive: vertical rain followed by warm, glistening sunshine illuminating grass of a brilliant, rich shade of green. “The climate and landscape here are much the same as in northern France, where camembert and brie originate,” says Hugh. “There’s a wet climate, low, lush grasslands and strong traditions of dairy and cider.” Camembert and the soft cheeses made in these parts seem to have originated at about the same time, “around the 1790s”, Hugh explains, and a degree of copying between the two regions seems probable. “The type of cheese and the type of cider they make in northern France – the soft, fizzy type – are similar to that made here. In many respects Brittany, Île-de-France and Normandy have more in common with southwest England than they do Paris or Provence.”

Like many farmers in Somerset, Graham Padfield brews his own cider, using organic apples harvested at Park Farm every autumn. It’s this cider that washes the Merry Wyfe cheeses every day for four weeks, lending them their distinctive, pinky-orange rind. Entering the maturing rooms is like walking into a sunset, with scores of round cheeses in various states of blushing maturation. “I love the colour palette – and the smell,” breathes Hugh. “That’s the smell of the bacteria turning the cheese orange. The cider provides the nutrients that it grows on.” The taste is not nearly as strong as the pungent cider smell suggests. It is creamy and tangy, more sweet than vegetal. It’s no Wyfe of Bath – my personal favourite, which is brined then aged in a maturing room the size of a small church – but there’s no denying its superiority as a washed-rind cheese.

Park Farm’s cheesemaking rooms are much like the rest of the farm: homespun but high tech, relaxed but orderly. In one, three cheesemakers are sealing some Bath Blues with a warm palette knife – a technique that looks not unlike icing a cake. “The blue mould peaks after seven weeks, but the cheese itself will peak after 12 weeks, so you need to give the cheese a five-week head-start,” Hugh explains. “They’re sealing it to keep the air out.” After five weeks, the cheesemakers will stab each cheese with a pin 200 times, to allow the bacteria to ‘breathe’ and unfurl its blue-veined fingers along the cracks. That must be therapeutic, I suggest to the cheesemakers. “It is for the first five minutes. The next four hours – not so much,” one of the group grins.

Popular belief would have it that unpasteurised milk always makes for better cheese. The Padfields beg to differ – and you don’t need to take their word for it. In 2015 their Bath Blue cheese won Supreme Cheese at the World Cheese Awards, the highest possible accolade for any cheese. Neither this nor any of the other cheeses produced at Park Farm is made with raw milk – the milk here has to be pasteurised, as this is such a badger-intensive area. “The risks of TB are too high,” says Hugh, and they aren’t taking any chances.

That they still manage to create highly characterful cheeses stems in part from their technique of batch-pasteurising at a lower temperature than usual, which “slightly caramelises the milk sugars,” says Hugh. “It’s gentler on the milk than flash pasteurisation, which heats the milk to a much higher temperature for a shorter time. Our way, you get more homemade, creamy flavours.” The result is delicious – rich, buttery, almost clotted cream-like. The starters they use are also designed to mitigate the loss of the milk’s naturally-occurring bacteria. “One of the things I am keen to point out is how carefully we select the cultures we inoculate our cheese with, some of which replicate the bacteria you’d find in raw milk. This gives it so much flavour.”

The Padfields use calf-based rennet to coagulate the milk in all but two of their cheeses, in recognition of the ancient origins of cheesemaking (“It is up there with berries and meat as one of our earliest food sources”), and the fact that the beef industry and the dairy industry are unavoidably linked. “Farmers know that the dairy industry could not exist without the beef industry. Cows have calves, half of those are boys, those boys go to become beef.” The use of rennet is, he says, a natural part of that cycle, and it tastes better. “All rennets have a slight tendency towards bitterness, but vegetarian rennet is particularly bitter,” Hugh continues. “I know farmers who use vegetarian rennet when they supply supermarkets, but use traditional rennet when entering their cheese into awards.” That said, the subtle sweetness of Wyfe of Bath and Merry Wyfe is enough to mask the bitterness of vegetarian rennet, enabling Bath Soft Cheese to cater to vegetarians to some degree.

Once set, the curds are stirred or cut to release the whey and achieve the desired consistency and texture. To retain moisture, soft cheese needs larger curds; to lose moisture, hard cheese demands smaller ones. The size of these, and the point at which the mixture is poured into moulds is down to the cheesemaker, who will make a judgement call according to the look and feel of the curds and the type of cheese they’re making. “The skill of the cheesemaker is vital,” says Hugh. There is no probe or gauge to match it. It is experience and observation that enables him to say when the mixtures have sufficiently coagulated.

Watching them in action (they’re making Bath Soft Cheese when I’m there, and the curds and whey slop gently against the side of the buckets as they stir) is more mesmeric than mechanical, despite the incredible level of precision the process needs. In the maturing rooms, cheeses are stacked, turned, brushed or washed by hand, and sit on wooden shelves which propagate and sustain the friendly yeast cultures that live on the rinds.

The silence is palpable. You can almost hear the bacteria: fermenting, growing, spreading, uniting milk, time and provenance. “There are billions of bacteria here in each cheese. They are living things,” says Hugh, proudly. In the maturation rooms he breaks an immature Bath Soft Cheese in half, and shares some with me. “As a young cheese it is salty, a bit creamy, but chalkier,” he muses as he chews. Later on, we have a cheeseboard in the cafe and taste the same cheese again, several weeks older. “Now there are notes of slow-cooked mushrooms, bright lemons and garlic. It’s so different,” he exclaims. Ripe, rich and squidgy, it cries out for sourdough, which the cafe provides with characteristic generosity.

On the table next to us, another family have sat down to watch the cheesemakers. “There’s something about understanding from an early age just where your food comes from. Humans don’t like surprises,” says Hugh. Part of the vehemence of movements like extreme veganism comes from a feeling of being “duped”, he continues – “the sense of the food industry keeping things from us. That’s why we’ve been so keen on people visiting.” Tomorrow, Hugh will take a group of primary school children around the farm – something he’s been doing increasingly since he found his son’s school’s ‘field to fork’ trip entailed going to their local supermarket. He’s still not worked out how to answer the “where do calves come from” question – “I think I’ll leave that one for the teachers or parents!” he grins – but he doesn’t shy away from the kids’ other queries. “We want people to challenge us. We want people to ask questions. We want people to come and see.”

“THE LONG, TUBULAR, INKY-BLACK RAZOR CLAMS ARE KNOWN IN SCOTLAND AS ‘SPOOTS’ DUE TO THEIR SPOUT-LIKE APPEARANCE.”

Palourde

These pretty, marble-shelled clams at Furness Fish Markets come to the Market fresh from Cornwall. They’re the perfect all-rounder, being medium in size and somewhere between meaty cherrystones and sweet littlenecks in flavour. Given their propensity for quick-cooking, they’re great for spaghetti vongole, cooked simply with, garlic, white wine, black pepper and a glug of good olive oil.

Vernis

These smooth shelled, polished-looking bivalves (‘vernis’ being French for ‘varnish’) are among the largest clams available at the Market. At Furness Fish Markets, they are sourced from the south of France, and they’re said to be a favourite among customers. On the pricier side, but well worth it for their superlative taste and texture. Four between two people should be plenty.

Cherrystone

Cherrystone clams – named after the Virginian town where they were first found – are often the stars of east coast America’s most famous dish, clam chowder. At Richard Haward’s Oysters they hail from Essex, and are available to take away or simply slurp raw on the spot, dressed with naught but a squeeze of fresh lemon – the best way to appreciate their texture and sweet-salty, caramel-like flavour.

Razor

The long, tubular, inky-black clams at Furness Fish Markets – known in Scotland as ‘spoots’ due to their spout-like appearance – are as fresh as you can get, short of plucking them from the Shetland shore yourself. And while terrifying in both name and appearance, they’re delicious and incredibly simple to cook. Try steaming them whole and serving with saffron mayo and crusty bread.

Quahog

Part of the hard shell family along with cherrystones and teeny-tiny littleneck clams, these bivalve molluscs are mildly sweet in flavour. Hand-picked by the fishermen at Poole Harbour in Dorset and brought to Shellseekers Fish & Game, strict regulations in terms of minimum size and acceptable fishing methods make these tasty shellfish a good sustainable option.

“BILL STAYS AS TRUE TO THE SPIRIT OF ALPINE CHEESE AS IS POSSIBLE WITHIN THE URBAN ENVIRONS OF SE1”

“I suppose the name is a bit of a pun,” Bill Oglethorpe grins, “on me being hard pressed to make cheese in Bermondsey.” It’s not a feat to be sniffed at, for all that Bill’s cheese is deeply aromatic. Though there are at least a handful of cheesemakers based in London today, back when Bill set up Kappacasein in a converted railway arch in Bermondsey in 2000, he was something of a pioneer.

Bermondsey Hard Pressed was the first cheese he made, using a 100-year-old copper vat he brought over from Switzerland. A hard, alpine-style cheese modelled on L’Etivaz (Bill spent months working with veteran cheesemakers in the eponymous town before establishing Kappacasein), its long maturation time of 12 to 18 months – ”though I do get impatient sometimes, at 11 months,” he confesses – makes it well suited to the low, steady temperatures of the arch: even if “an alpage in the mountains in June, with a pasture full of wild flowers that have never been cultivated, would really be the ideal”.

Still, the arch was here, and it was available. What’s more, being in London Bill’s cheese are but a 10-minute bike ride away from his point of sale. He has his own retail stall at the Market, so he can sell his cheeses as well as melt them over potatoes and sourdough toast at his famous street food joint on Stoney Street. Where L’Etivaz was traditionally made to keep for a long time and be transported over long distances, Bill has no such problem. Nevertheless, he insists on staying as true to the spirit of alpine cheese as it is possible to do within the sprawling urban environs of SE1.

“In the Alps, of course, the cheesemakers go from one room, the milking parlour, to the next, the dairy,” he says, “but there is still a wait time to allow the milk to mature.” Here in London, this essential ‘wait time’ takes place not in stasis, but in the back of Bill’s specially adapted van. “We put the starter in when we collect the milk from the farm in Kent,” he says. “The milk is still warm from the cow, so the ripening takes place on the way back to Bermondsey. By the time it gets here, it’s ready.” A little bit of heat, to bring it up to 33C, some activated calves’ rennet, and “the acidification can start”.

Hard pressed isn’t just a pun, it is also a classification of cheese. “You have un-pressed – cheeses that are drained – semi-pressed, and hard-pressed cheeses.” By pressing and heating, he continues, you reduce the percentage of moisture in the cheese. “That means it can age for longer,” Bill explains, “because it is drier and more stable.” The press Kappacasein uses – a big, heavy thing, also hailing from Etivaz – is a hard taskmaster, as Bill has come to realise increasingly. “We’ve been making some of our wheels too small, and as a result I think we were over-pressing. The system is built for big cheeses, so we’ve started making ours bigger, so they can withstand the weight and reach the right texture.”

Another change Bill is instigating this year, inspired by L’Etivaz, is to only make his Bermondsey Hard Pressed in summer. “In Etivaz the cheese is made between May and October, when all of the herds are grazing on the wild, uncultivated pastures of the mountain side.” There are no mountains at Commonwork Organic Farms in Kent of course, but there are pastures with wild grasses, and for as long as is possible the cows are grazed outdoors. “The taste of the milk, and the cheese, is so much better for it,” says Bill. “I’ve been reading a lot about Buddhism recently, and one of their key principles is that change happens all the time and one should embrace it.” How better to put this philosophy into practise than to work with the seasons to further refine what is already the ultimate expression of positive change: aged, alpine-style, Bermondsey-made cheese.

“MASSAMAN ARRIVED IN SOUTHERN THAILAND FROM PERSIA, TRAILING EXOTIC AROMAS REDOLENT OF WESTERN ASIA”

Illustration: Ed Smith

According to Thai food guru David Thompson, the perfect massaman (or mussaman) curry should be sweet, sour and salty – a holy trinity of virtues that makes devotees sigh with longing when they’ve finished their bowls.

The most complex of all Thai curries, massaman was once ranked by a global travel website as the single most delicious food on the planet. Legend holds that it arrived in southern Thailand from Persia in the 16th century, trailing exotic aromas redolent of western Asia, notably cardamom. And in deference to its Muslim heritage it is never made with pork; beef or chicken, cooked until butter-soft in a rich, thick and deftly spiced coconut sauce, are stars of the bowl.

Massaman is said to be the most time-consuming Thai curry; a long list of ingredients must be carefully prepared from scratch to yield invigorating flavours. Most southern Thai families have their own beloved massaman recipe passed down through generations, says Worawan Kamann, co-founder of Borough Market Kitchen’s Thai street food stall Khanom Krok. “But there are a lot of things that go into it, so it’s not something that’s cooked every day,” she says.

Born in Bangkok, Worawan was taught to make the stall’s chicken massaman with potatoes and peanuts by her grandmother. “She was an amazing cook right into her nineties,” Worawan recalls. “We would spend the whole day cooking it, shredding the coconut and doing all the preparation.”

And this, as ever, is the secret. Khanom Krok’s comforting massaman is made with love and care. Worawan has zero tolerance of short cuts, such as cooking the chicken and sauce separately then bunging them together to serve. This crime against massaman is prevalent in the UK, she sighs. “I stick to the way I learned as a child. I cook my chicken in the spicy sauce, so it sucks up all the flavours.”

The perfect balance of sweet and sour needs judicious application of palm sugar and tamarind juice, and a light hand with the chilli paste. “Massaman is not supposed to be very spicy,” Worawan says. “It’s meant to be quite a mild curry. That’s the traditional way.”

Spices

Dried spices are heavily roasted in a pan or wok and then used sparingly to impart an elusive fragrance. Cardamom is a stalwart, but other spices might include cinnamon, star anise, cloves, coriander seeds or cumin seeds.

Coconut

Coconut milk or cream or both, traditionally made by hand, forms the ballast of the rich sauce. First, it’s simmered in a pan or wok until it begins to separate or ‘crack’.

Chilli paste

A puree of chillies, garlic, shallots and other aromatics is cooked off in the boiling coconut along with the toasted spices, to smooth away their rough edges.

Seasonings

Palm sugar is added for sweetness, and tamarind (at the end) for a sprightly sour kick.

Meat

Chicken or beef pieces are slowly simmered until they reach the sweet spot between falling apart and undercooked.

Vegetables

Starchy vegetables are vital: white radish, potato or sweet potato.

Toppings

To finish, massaman might be showered with deep fried shallots and toasted peanuts for extra tastiness and crunch.

“AS LONDON GREW IN SIZE, THE BEDLAM ON BOROUGH HIGH STREET BEGAN TO AROUSE OPPOSITION WITHIN THE CORRIDORS OF POWER”

Borough Market began with a bridge. For hundreds of years, London was a small walled metropolis on the north bank of the Thames. Its southern neighbour, Southwark, was an altogether different place – a frontier settlement where different rules applied; a town of pubs and prostitutes, hawkers and hucksters, craftsmen and criminals. The only link between the two – in fact the only route into the City of London from anywhere south of the river – was London Bridge.

First constructed around 990AD, the bridge grew in importance as the city expanded. At its peak, it was a colourful, chaotic landmark – a far cry from today’s grey concrete slab. In fact, the word ‘bridge’ barely does justice to this heaving mass of people, animals and rickety buildings, which was more of a municipality in its own right than a mere river crossing – imagine a small but lively provincial town, all piled up to vertiginous heights in a condensed space and elevated on legs.

The road we now know as Borough High Street was the vital artery joining London to the ports and towns of the south. And as with any major access route anywhere in the world, the bridge, and the road that ran up to it, acted like a magnet for people wishing to sell things to travellers, especially after the murder of Thomas a Becket in 1170 turned Canterbury into a popular pilgrimage site. The presence of such commercial potential kicked off an epic struggle between authorities determined to regulate and tax the market and hordes of small traders who wanted to make as much money as possible with the least possible interference. This fight continued for centuries, enacted through the rather tedious medium of impenetrable paperwork.

The medieval market

For a long time, there were two legitimate marketplaces around Borough. The smaller of these started in the grounds of St Thomas’ Hospital, located at the southern entrance to London Bridge. In 1215, following a disastrous fire, the hospital moved to a new location on what is now St Thomas’ Street, on land that was then part of the manor of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the market, which specialised in corn, was transferred to the doors of the new site. This market opened three days a week – Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

A larger market, selling a wider range of produce and trading on Wednesdays and Fridays, found a home along the busy main highway near the foot of the bridge in the area known as the Guildable Manor, which was administered by the crown. Both markets caused constant irritation to the authorities across the river by providing stiff competition to the City of London’s own traders. In the 1270s the City forbade its citizens to go to Southwark to buy “corn, cattle, or other merchandise there”. It also banned traders from setting up on the bridge itself and clamped down on “regratresses” who bought bread in Southwark and resold it for a profit in the City.

But the City’s biggest problem with Southwark wasn’t its markets. The vagaries of the legal system at the time meant that any felon committing a crime in London could, in the words of a petition presented to the King in 1327, “stealthily flee to Southwark openly where no bailiff of the City can attach them”. Frustrated by seeing known criminals blowing raspberries at them from across the river, the City constantly lobbied the crown to hand over its rights to the Guildable Manor. In 1406, Henry IV finally granted London the right to arrest criminals found in Southwark and at the same time granted “assay and assize of bread, wine, and ale and other victuals and of any other things belonging to the clerk of the market of the King’s household”. Borough’s market had, to all intents and purposes, become an extension of London.

The residents of Southwark were far from happy about this encroachment of City types into their town, so fought hard to overturn the new grants, but further charters in 1444 and 1462 cemented the influence of London over the Guildable Manor and added the right to hold a three day fair every September. Southwark Fair would go on to become one of the biggest and most riotous events in London’s calendar.

In April 1550, for a price of just over £1,000 (£647 for the land, £333 for the liberties and £25 for expenses), Edward VI ended for good any debate about who ran Borough by selling Southwark to the City. In the same charter, it was agreed that the Guildable Manor market could extend to four days a week, adding Monday and Saturday to the schedule.

Organised chaos

The Southwark of the 16th and 17th centuries was a hive of activity – partly a busy commercial district, where leather, felt, pottery and soap were crafted and sold, partly a giant travel terminus, and partly a seething maelstrom of licentious behaviour, packed full of pubs, brothels and theatres. Londoners flocked across the river to let off steam – think Kavos or Ibiza, but with fewer foam parties and more Shakespeare – while farmers trundled in from the countryside with herds of cattle and sacks of grain, seeking to make a living on the heaving high street.

Out of this chaos, the City did its utmost to create some kind of order, with limited success. Traders were supervised by bailiffs and constables who together enforced price controls, inspected goods and collected fees. A weighing beam was situated next to the pillory in the middle of the high street, and it was here that sacks of grain were weighed in public before being put on display. Towards the end of the 16th century, a market house was built at this location to keep the grain safe from the elements.

The authorities faced a constant battle to prevent the road from being completely blocked by sprawling stalls and wandering livestock. One set of rules from the 16th century required that traders set up their stalls in a fixed sequence, no more than a yard from the drainage channel running down the street, with the fishsellers closest to the bridge, followed by the butchers, the poulterers from the countryside, the oatmeal makers, the fruiterers and herb sellers, then finally the local bakers and poulterers. A further set of ordinances from 1624 proved similarly rigorous, but with the traders lined up in a different order and with the further proviso that fishwives be forced to stay on their feet – in the face of growing chaos, bureaucratic fiddling seemed to be the main weapon in the authorities’ arsenal.

Butchers were a particular source of drama. In the days before refrigeration, the best way of transporting and storing meat was in the form of a whole living animal, but a live ox or goat can cause considerably more mayhem than a French-trimmed rack of lamb. One of the 1624 ordinances attempted to force butchers to stop entering local shops or slaughter houses with oxen, bullocks or cows “that are so wild, that they will not enter but run away (as often it happeneth)”. In 1676, the churchwardens of St Saviour’s ordered the construction of a series of posts to keep out the wandering livestock.

Unlicensed trading was a huge problem for the sheriffs, with many a rogue trader selling bread or fish on the sly outside of the defined marketplaces. Pubs – of which there were a vast number – were some of the worst culprits, causing the City authorities to complain in 1522 that “almost every inn holder within the said Borough kepyth market”.

Death and rebirth

As London grew in size and importance and London Bridge became ever more critical as a trade route into the City, the semi-organised bedlam on Borough High Street began to arouse significant opposition within the corridors of power. The location of the market house right in the middle of the road certainly didn’t help – imagine a busy warehouse being constructed across the middle lanes of the M1 – and numerous representations were made to have it removed. In 1676 these were rendered irrelevant when a huge fire swept through the area, taking the market house with it.

This alone did little to ease congestion, and the City, while enjoying healthy revenues from the market, eventually decided that these were considerably outweighed by the dampening effect on business of having the only southern route into the centre completely blocked by bullocks. In 1754 a bill went before parliament declaring that as “the market obstructs much trade and commerce”, it would have to cease trading by 25th March 1756 and that thenceforth “no person shall use any stall, trussel, block, or other stand, or expose to sale upon such stands peas, beans, herbs, victuals or other commodities.”

At the same time, residents of Southwark were petitioning to be allowed to start a new market, independent of the City, away from the high street. A second act passed through parliament declaring that “for the convenience and accommodation of the public” the parishioners of St Saviour’s could acquire land away from the main road and set up a market of their own, and that this market would “be and remain an estate for the use and benefit of the said parish for ever”. Through its status as a charitable trust, it remains inexorably linked to the parish to this day.

The act also declared that “no provisions except hay or straw” could be sold within 1,000 yards of the new market. With this local monopoly in their favour, the parishioners quickly raised £6,000 by selling annuities to interested citizens – over £1 million in today’s money – and bought an area called The Triangle. Within two years, the parishioners returned to parliament for permission to raise a further £2,000 to enlarge the site and build a market house.

In February 1756 advertisements were placed stating that a “commodious place for a market is now preparing on the backside of Three Crown Court on the west side of the high street of the Borough and will be ready by the 25th March next for the reception of all country carriages and others bringing any kind of provisions to the said market”. Borough Market as we now know it was up and running.

The wholesale era

For a century or so, the all new Borough Market remained busy and popular but, set back from the road, it was essentially fairly parochial in character, selling a large range of everyday produce in relatively small quantities. It was during the 19th century that all this changed, with the Market rapidly expanding to become an institution of national significance, devoted solely to the fruit and vegetable wholesale trade. The main engines of this transformation were the urbanisation of south London and the arrival of the railway – as the population boomed, the growing demand for a wholesale market with excellent transport links meant that Borough Market was perfectly placed to benefit. As business flourished, the Market took over the land that forms the Green Market, then later bought and demolished the buildings on Winchester Walk to make way for what is now Jubilee Place.

In 1862, as part of the South Eastern Railway company’s project to extend its lines from London Bridge to Cannon Street and Charing Cross, a railway viaduct was constructed through the middle of the market, bringing noise, soot and disruption, but adding to the accessibility of the Market. The need to widen the railway line in 1897 brought more disruption, as well as the sad demise of the Market’s magnificent but short-lived glass and iron domed roof, which had brought a touch of Crystal Palace glamour to Borough.

In 1906, the Market’s constitution was changed, placing its management in the hands of 21 voluntary trustees, drawn from the local community. The Market grew still further in the early 1930s, when the old Three Crown Square – a once prosperous residential piazza that had become a series of ramshackle warehouses – was demolished. The same development project, which cost £50,000, saw the creation of the Market’s famous art deco entrance and the construction of its office building.

At its peak, the wholesale market was a place of furious activity, responsible for feeding millions of people around the southeast. As one 1950s market guidebook put it, “one only has to pay an early morning visit to see what a veritable hive of industry such a concentrated area actually is, and what a highly important and essential service is given in order that a vast population served shall have its daily requirements so efficiently met.”

In 1933, it is estimated that 1,750,000 bushels of fruit and vegetables were sold at Borough. In the mid-1930s, 188 pitching stands were let to 81 different wholesale companies in the covered central area of the market, with a further 203 stands in the uncovered periphery manned by farmers from the Home Counties. Hundreds of porters were employed directly by the trustees to carry produce to and from the stalls, with trading taking place all through the night, and continuing long into the following day.

The renaissance

Borough Market’s days as a vital wholesale hub were ended in part by the construction of the huge New Covent Garden market in Vauxhall in the 1970s, but mainly by the relentless growth of the supermarkets which, by killing off independent greengrocers, destroyed the entire ecosystem in which fruit and vegetable wholesaling had thrived. The decline was swift and sad.

Borough Market’s current incarnation has its roots in the revival of interest in artisan foods which took shape in the 1990s. When the likes of Neal’s Yard Dairy and Brindisa – pioneering food businesses which had moved into the area’s empty warehouses – joined with fruit and veg wholesalers Turnips to host special retail events for the public at their respective premises and around the Market, their instant popularity presaged a new direction. Though initially reluctant, the Market’s trustees were eventually persuaded that a specialist retail market could offer a brighter future.

Thanks in part to the encouragement of these traders, Henrietta Green was asked to hold a three-day Food Lovers’ Fair at the Market in November 1998, which gathered together some of the best food producers in Britain as part of the annual Southwark Festival. The event, which was officially opened by the Two Fat Ladies, was a roaring success, with many traders selling out within hours.

This clear evidence of its potential led to a decision to hold a regular retail market at Borough on the third Saturday of every month, with British traders joined by those offering produce from around Europe and the world. This soon became a weekly affair, its popularity bolstered by the endorsement of just about every chef in the country. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, it was a genuine international institution – probably the most famous food market in the country. It is now open six days a week, and its activities have broadened considerably, but that sense of excitement has never dissipated. Many of the traders who started the Market’s modern boom are still here, still playing their part in its gradual evolution. The bridge that began it all is still there too, of course; still bringing customers over from the City – thankfully now unencumbered by fear of prosecution for the medieval crime of shopping in Southwark.

“SOME OF THESE RECIPES HAVE BEEN IN THE FAMILY FOR CLOSE TO 500 YEARS AND ARE STILL KEPT SECRET”

Interview: Viel Richardson / Image: Tom Bradley

1. My family has always made chutneys. I didn’t really make them as a child, but when I was a bit older I started making them for myself and for friends and work colleagues who liked them. The first time I made them for a wider audience was when I made canapés and snacks for the wedding of one of my daughters.

2. After the wedding, my new son-in-law Timothy said: “This food is amazing. You should be offering it to the wider public.” He used to come to Borough Market and brought me here to see the Market. He was the one who encouraged me to apply for a stall. That was in November 2000. Timothy is no longer with us, but we see the success of our stall, Temptings, as part of his legacy.

3. I was raised in the Punjab, and my family owned a lot of land. Hunting was a big part of life, and they would make meat pickles called ‘achar’ from wild boar, venison and chicken using old family recipes. Some of these have been in the family for close to 500 years and are still kept secret.

4. I use some spice blends that have been developed by my family and are not widely available. This is one of the things that make my pickles and chutneys unique. Another thing is the traditional methods I use.

5. On my first day here I had no idea what to expect, so I brought 11 jars of chicken achar. An Irish gentleman came to the stall and bought six of them after tasting a sample. I sold all the bottles in a couple of hours, so I spent the rest of the day just talking to customers. That gentleman still comes over from Ireland and buys things from the stall every Christmas.

6. From the beginning, the public reaction was extremely positive. I have to say it took me a little by surprise how quickly things grew. I never had to advertise, it was all word of mouth. I had to install a professional kitchen in my home to meet the demand. It was very hard, but I made everything myself. I still do today.

7. This is a real labour of love. For example, the meats achars will take me three days to make in batches of four bottles, so it is not large-scale production. There are always some chutneys or pickles in some stage of production at home. The whole process is very labour intensive. But I think it is worth it – the time and care I take is reflected in the tastes and textures.

8. I love experimenting and creating new chutneys. The achars are old family recipes, which I sometimes adapt a little, but the chutneys are my creations. The only chutney recipe I took from my grandmother was one using pomegranate. All the others I create myself.

9. In the Punjab there is a real mix of religions and cultures and each one has its own culinary identity. Even within each family, there are differences in the way we make a particular chutney, both in the spices and methods used. So the products we sell are really personal. You won’t find them anywhere else.

10. This is all about my connection with my customers – I love talking to them. I have several who have been buying from me since we started and many others who have been coming to the stall for years. You build wonderful relationships here. Temptings is a passion – that is the only way I can describe it. It is not about making money or paying the mortgage, it is about the ingredients, making the products and talking to my customers. I really do love all of it.

“MUSIC MAY BE THE FOOD OF LOVE, BUT IT WON’T KEEP YOU GOING WHEN YOU’VE GOT A WORK OF GENIUS TO WRITE BEFORE FRIDAY”

Let’s start with a bold statement: William Shakespeare shopped at Borough Market. The greatest playwright ever to have penned a line in the English language, the writer of some of the most sublime poetry ever published, the most talented man ever spotted wearing a pair of tights, bought his bread and vegetables and a nice bit of mackerel right here in SE1.

Okay, so we have no actual evidence of this – no documents or diary entries or archaeological proof – but since when did an absence of proof stop anyone from speculating wildly about this most galactically famous yet frustratingly opaque of individuals? Despite his words being so embedded into our culture that we use his phrasing on a daily basis without even realising it, we actually know very little about the minutiae of Shakespeare’s life. Most of the documentary evidence we have has been painstakingly pieced together from tiny details in very boring official paperwork relating to taxes and contracts and legal cases – and none of it mentions where he shopped.

What we do know for certain is that around the turn of the 17th century, William Shakespeare moved to Bankside. And the reason we know is that he happened to be a tax dodger. On 6th October 1599, the Bard of Avon’s name appeared on a list of delinquents in the Lord Treasurer’s accounts, having failed to pay a ‘subsidy’ of 13s 4d levied on his holdings in Bishopsgate.

A note in the margin suggests that the playwright had moved to “Surrey”, the county of which Bankside was a part. Exactly a year later, a further set of accounts show the tax bill still outstanding, with a note stating “Episcopo Wintonensi” – the arrears had been passed to the Bishop of Winchester, the authority responsible for Bankside. As far as the taxman was concerned, Shakespeare was now a resident of Southwark.

This would certainly fit neatly with one of the other facts we know about him. In 1599, several members of the Lord Chamberlain’s theatre company, including Shakespeare, agreed a 31-year lease on a plot of land in Southwark upon which a brand new theatre would be quickly built – the Globe, the most famed of the many playhouses that sprang up in the area during this period. For the next few years Shakespeare would both live and work on Bankside, a period which encompassed perhaps the most extraordinary burst of creative accomplishment in British history. Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, Twelfth Night and Measure for Measure all flowed from his busy quill and were introduced to the world by the banks of the Thames.

As well as writing these immortal works, Shakespeare remained a jobbing actor for the theatre company, appearing in his own plays and those of other writers – in 1603 he was listed as the “Principal Tragedian” in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus: His Fall. He would also have taken much of the responsibility for the staging of his masterpieces – there was no such job as ‘director’ at the time – and the day to day running of the company, of which he was a senior partner.

He was, it’s fair to say, a busy man. And while music may be the food of love, it won’t keep you going when you’ve got lines to learn, actors to organise and a heart-breaking work of staggering genius to write before Friday. For that, you need actual food, and the place where the people of Bankside bought most of their food at the start of the 17th century was Borough Market.

In the early 1600s Borough Market wasn’t the well organised, nicely contained place we know today. Before it relocated to its current home in 1756, it sprawled along Borough High Street. Traders consisted mainly of farmers from Kent, Surrey and Sussex, who arrived from the countryside with grain, vegetables and livestock, and sold their wares alongside local bakers, poulterers and fishwives. This crowded, chaotic market, which ran four days a week, stretched for hundreds of metres down the highway – a regular carnival of noise and smell.

Butchers brought their meat to market both whole and very much alive, so irritable goats and wandering cattle were a constant menace. Not that Shakespeare would have been much of a beef eater. “Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man has,” says Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, “but I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.” He would, though, have shopped here. As a resident of Bankside, he had few other choices.

In truth we have very little idea precisely what Shakespeare ate to fuel his outpouring of genius – food crops up frequently in his work, but then so did pretty much everything, and it’s easy to read too much into his lines. We do know that he had a penchant for buying a little too much – in 1598 the playwright found himself in trouble with the authorities for hoarding 80 bushels of grain during a food shortage.

That original statement, then – William Shakespeare shopped at Borough Market – is about as detailed as it gets. Anything more would be silly speculation. Still, it’s not a bad celebrity endorsement, is it?

“TURKISH COFFEE TRADITIONALLY USES BEANS FROM ETHIOPIA AND YEMEN, WHICH WERE PART OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE”

Interview & illustration: Ed Smith

My wife Cimen is Turkish. Her family are established olive growers in northern Turkey. At The Turkish Deli, we specialise in Gemlik olives, which take the name of the area. They are brined and dried in various different styles, though all are rich in flavour. We also sell handmade Turkish delights and make our own meze and baklava. As well as all that we offer Turkish coffee, which is very different to western-style coffee.

The methodology is so specific, it has UNESCO protection. Each coffee is brewed in a pot called a cezve, which is typically made from copper or brass. They are flat-bottomed, taper in the middle then open up again towards the top, and have a long handle, as originally they would have been used over an open fire.

The first step is to grind the coffee beans. Turkish coffee traditionally uses beans from Ethiopia and Yemen, which were part of the Ottoman Empire. I buy green Ethiopian beans (because of the war in Yemen we can’t import from there) and have a small hot air roaster in the shop, which can roast up to a kilogram at a time. We probably roast between two and six kilos a day. We have a special grinder to turn those beans into fine grinds – nearly like flour – which requires special plates and constant cleaning and calibration.

We then add a specific measure of cold water and coffee into the cezve – 100g water to eight grams of coffee – sugar, and sometimes a flavouring, according to the customer’s taste and custom, and then place it over a heat to warm slowly. There’s an initial stir to help blend the coffee, then the cezve is left for a bit before being stirred once more. You’re looking to achieve a crema on the coffee, and then to remove it from the heat just before it comes to the boil. At this point we take the cezve off the heat, give it a swirl, then decant into a cup in one continuous pour.

The customer has to wait for another two or three minutes for the coffee grinds to settle and sink to the bottom, then they can enjoy the drink while chatting, with a piece of Turkish delight or baklava on the side – it’s about companionship, friendship and socialising.

“I’D WAGER A CROCK OF SOUR CABBAGE THAT THE MAJORITY OF BRITS HARNESS BARELY 50 PER CENT OF A PICKLE’S POTENTIAL”

Image: Regula Ysewijn

Britain has long been a nation of pickles and picklers: of plum or apple chutney, of piccalilli and onion relish, of Opies walnuts and the ever dependable Branston. Moreover, through the 2010s we were repeatedly told that lacto-fermentation is now A Thing here, which surely means that for some it actually is? (well, at least in the keenest of foodie and lifestyle circles).

A hit of tart and sour with our food is well established, then. Yet I’d wager a crock of sour cabbage that the vast majority of Brits harness barely 50 per cent of a pickle’s potential, because we tend to deploy ours only in the context of a cold meal. Pickles go on the table when there’s a ploughman’s-style spread, they’re spooned next to pork pies and slices of ham, and they’re a key part of the best cheese sandwiches. But hot British food? Other than Lancashire hotpot with pickled cabbage, I can hardly think of an example. Which is in stark contrast to many other countries, where pickled or fermented vegetables are key condiments – or even ingredients – in their cuisine, whether the dish is served hot or cold.

In German and eastern European cooking, finely shredded then fermented cabbage (sauerkraut) is ever-present. It might be warmed with onions and apples and served next to wurst or kielbasa, but is frequently even more integral. Look, for example, at the Polish dish bigos, which is a hearty and inherently warming hunter’s stew involving slow-cooked meats (venison, pork or boar) and smoked sausage – but mostly it’s braised sauerkraut. We should also admire dumplings such as Polish pierogi and Siberian pelmeni, whose fillings might include a smattering of sour cabbage alongside ground pork or mushrooms. More decadently, friend of the Market Alissa Timoshkina notes in her book Salt & Time: Recipes from a Russian Kitchen that a classic winter dish in her homeland would be goose or duck stuffed with braised sauerkraut and slow-cooked.

No doubt such dishes evolved because fermentation was essential to ensure vegetables were available all year round. But in our age of refrigeration and rapid freight travel, they appeal (to me at least) because of the marriage of sour with savoury; it’s a combination that ensures a plate of food will be layered and stimulating from the first bite to the last, vital if food is to be about joy as well as fuel. It has been suggested that central and eastern Europe’s fermenting culture stems from Asia, via the Mongol empire. Certainly, by opening our tastebuds to places even further east, we can learn more about the potential of matching sour foods to warm savoury ones.

In the southern part of the Asian continent, Indian pickles (achar) provide a vivid and enlivening counterpoint to rich and spiced foods. On a Saturday, you can do no better than visit Mrs Sandhu’s Temptings stall at the Market and try and buy her pickles and chutneys. They are a perfect match, obviously, for spiced dishes, but I think they make plainer meals fly too: a simple lamb chop, fillet of white fish, poached chicken, pretty much any vegetable that can be roasted or creamed. On that note, see also the burst of flavour that Borough Market Kitchen trader Mei Mei’s acar brings to a Malaysian poached chicken rice dish.

This brings me to the point of the piece, which is that while ‘authenticity’ is an appealing concept, there is also room, I think, for the fusion of ideas, techniques and flavours, purely on the basis that it can result in great tasting food. One very simple way of doing that would be to take ferments and pickles and use them, in the spirit of the global cuisines they derive from, to enliven British dishes and cooked ingredients. And you don’t need to do the pickling and fermenting yourself; superb sour condiments can be found around the Market. Your first stop should be Northfield Farm, where you can buy pickles from the London-based fermentation company Eaten Alive. Their kimchis suit Korean-style dishes of course – kimchi fried rice, seafood stews – and the pink smoked sauerkraut matches a German sausage marvellously. But beyond the obvious, try using them to add oomph to meat and two veg meals (bavette or onglet and chips, for example), whenever you have a fried egg or omelette, or (in particular) see how their incredible layered flavours quickly enhance broths and grain dishes.