“IF YOU BASE ANY DAY-TO-DAY DECISIONS AROUND CARING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, WINE SHOULD BE AN EXTENSION OF THAT”

“We’re most interested in good wine,” says chef James Lowe. It seems a fairly obvious statement. But when James talks about good wine and its importance, he doesn’t just mean good to drink. He means good for the environment, for producers and – in moderation, of course – for his customers. “We looked for the same philosophy in our wine makers as we have in our farmers,” he continues. “One of the things that comes up more often than not is that they see themselves as farmers – farmers who are very much part of their landscape and terroir. They want to continue producing good wines and they understand that there’s a link between the health of the land and soil and the wine.”

“If you are basing your day-to-day decisions around caring for the environment, which I believe we all should, then wine should be an extension of that,” argues Isabelle Legron, the sommelier at Elliot’s. Elliot’s wine list is entirely natural, meaning it’s organically farmed and produced without additives or processing agents. Isabelle chooses it not just because she thinks that added yeasts and sulphites tend to mute a wine’s flavour, but because it’s better for the environment to grow grapes organically.

But wine can be organic without being ‘natural’, says Bedales of Borough wine manager Angelo: “Organic means the grapes are grown without chemical products – pesticides, fertilisers and so on – whereas natural means organic and low or no intervention in the winemaking process.” Whereas natural is about flavour and the principle of “making wine that expresses the land, not the winemaker”, organic is about “the impact on the environment and the soil”. Without pesticides and other chemicals, soil sustains millions of bacterial organisms, as well as insects, herbs and flowers, which in turn sustain bees and birds. To remove these is to imperil not just the area’s biodiversity, but the long-term sustainability of the vines themselves. “If you kill everything off you won’t have any more life – and if there’s no life you can’t grow vines,” says Angelo simply.

Bedales does stock some natural wines – such as the all-natural, slightly funky, red-fruited Catherine & Pierre Breton Grolleau Val de Loire – but the majority are simply organic, such as the Blaufrankisch Horitschoner, produced by Franz Reinhard, who has been cultivating under strictly organic management since 2006. “It’s a medium-bodied red, easy drinking, not too powerful. This malbec from Chateau du Cèdre in Cahors,” says Angelo, picking up another bottle, “is natural, and is perfect for summer: high acidity, fresh and, because it’s natural, a quite specific acidity that makes it particularly good slightly chilled.”

“We’re not producing stuff to feed the planet, so I don’t understand how we can let wine producers pollute the waters, reduce biodiversity and damage the natural landscape,” Isabelle exclaims. Elliot’s’ natural wines include a Rio Rocca spèrgle produced in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. It’s the colour of honey, but not too forceful, with notes of orchard fruit. Isabelle strongly believes the large-scale, industrial growing of vines has become a “social drain”, thanks to vast monocultures devastating biodiversity and the threats posed by chemical run off. If we’re concerned about buying organic meat and vegetables, she argues, why do we stop at wine?

The culture of “working with the land and trusting it to repair itself” is a virtuous circle, says Toby Cartwright of Cartwright Brothers. “The less need there is for pesticides, the better the soil, the better the vine and grapes and the less need there is for intervention in the winemaking process.” The organic process has been used to rescue even old, diseased vineyards, says Toby, that “weren’t producing any grapes, and now they’re restored.” There’s not an abundance of fruit because the vines are old, but it is “excellent tasting”. Cartwright Brothers has a range of wines at a range of price points that fit the sustainability bill, from organic to full blown biodynamic and natural offerings. “A few years ago, a group of top sommeliers and masters of wine put taste to the test: they blind tasted 10 organic, biodynamic wines and 10 standard wines,” Toby smiles. “Nine of the 10 they chose as being the best were organic and biodynamic.”

“BEES HELP THE FARMERS BY POLLINATING PLANTS; TO ENCOURAGE THE BEES, FARMERS SET LAND ASIDE FOR REWILDING”

It’s been 25 years since The Lion King debuted on the big screen, burning the Circle of Life onto our brains and Mufasa’s death onto our retina. The latter I wish I could forget; the former is an earworm that rears its splendid, spine-tingling head every time I am reminded of sustainability and the natural world.

Of course, it’s been in my head all morning – because what are ecosystems but small, interlocking loops which together make up the path unwinding? Farmers rewilding parts of their land to encourage populations of pollinators and natural predators; gamekeepers managing moors to support populations of vulnerable ground nesting birds and other wildlife; foragers taking just enough to feed themselves or those restaurants and retailers they supply, leaving plenty for wildlife and birds. These things all find their place in the circle of life.

We’re part of it too – not just as fellow animals but in the choices we make regarding food and drink, which have such far-reaching consequences. Even something so seemingly simple as honey has the power to support the ecosystem, or to detract from it. “The role bees, in particular honeybees, play in the ecosystem in general is that they are great pollinators,” says Sam Wallis of From Field and Flower, “and when they can forage and pollinate wild species, that helps sustain the biodiversity of plants and trees.” Bees also help farmers of fruit and vegetables to produce naturally abundant crops, she continues, “so a lot of beekeepers keep hives on farmland and orchards – provided the crops are not treated with chemicals, which can mess up their senses and those of future generations.” Married with bees, the organic farmers who are trying to produce the best, seasonal produce can exist “in harmony with nature, rather than going against it.”

It is, quite literally, a virtuous circle. Bees help the farmers by pollinating the plants; the farmers, in an effort to encourage the bees, are setting land aside for rewilding. “Bees are busy, so they want to find the richest forage they can and mine it. A field of wildflowers will attract them” – generating biodiversity, a richer, more flavoursome honey for both bees and buyers, and more pollination for the farmer. It is, as a healthy ecosystem should be, a win-win. Problems arise when either the land or the bees themselves are exploited, either by monocropping or by the more “cynical” beekeepers, who harvest as much honey as they can and replace the bees’ natural, nutrient dense source of winter food with sugar syrup; a deeply unsustainable practice which affects the colony in the long run. “We have a producer who will not be able to supply us with heather honey this year because the rainy weather affected the heather flowering so badly, the bees have only just got enough for themselves this winter,” Sam laments. “It’s sad for us, because heather honey is delicious and popular, but it is the perfect example of how it should be – of beekeepers with a strong sense of values finding a balance with nature and putting the health of the hive first.”

The same principle of never taking more than nature needs to sustain itself is as true of foraging as it is beekeeping, Noel Fitzjohn of Fitz Fine Foods tells me. “With wild garlic, for example, which will be coming into season in the next couple of months, if I pick too large an area it will take a year to come back – sometimes more – whereas if I take a small amount in a big area, it will regenerate easily.” This is important not just for the plant itself, but for the health of the soil and the rest of the ecosystem. “When I pick rosehips and hedgerow berries, I never take more than 10 per cent of what’s there because they are so important for wildlife. It doesn’t sound like much, but it mounts up quickly when you consider how much each bush produces.” He too is grateful for the number of farmers rewilding and restoring and maintaining their hedgerows. Biodiversity benefits everyone and everything, including the farms themselves.

This is explicitly evident when it comes to agroforestry: the use of fruit trees in arable farming boost production, enriching and protecting the land in the process. “In East Anglia, where there are few hedges, farmers see it as normal for the topsoil to blow away periodically, but the trunks help decrease wind speed,” says Charles Tebbutt of Food & Forest. Meanwhile, the deep roots of the trees further reduce soil erosion, thereby retaining its stock of nutrients as well as adding to it via leaf litter come autumn. “Stephen Briggs, one of the leading proponents of agroforestry, talks a lot about the subsoil that cannot normally be accessed by arable crops,” he continues. “Because the tree roots go deeper, they suck up the phosphorous from the subsoil which is recycled when the leaves fall. This means the nutrients reach the topsoil without the need for excess fertiliser.” It’s good for the environment – less fertiliser is required, so there’s less run off and river pollution – as well as being conducive to larger yields.

The same message comes back time and again: producing food in harmony with nature is a win-win for everyone, while a mercenary, purely commercial approach to harvesting nature’s bounty will ultimately only ever be a lose-lose. “For us this is about working with small producers; family producers who see their work with bees as a partnership rather than something they just earn money from. Mass produced honey is adulterated – it’s easy to take for granted. But honey is precious,” Sam says passionately. For her, Noel, Charles and many other producers at the Market, the word bounty is key.

They take what’s in excess, so as not to disrupt – or in certain cases, to actively restore – the balance of nature. In contrast to the more faddish foragers, who can clear vast quantities of mushrooms, elderflower and the like, Noel is careful to ensure he leaves the lightest of footprints behind. Fungi in particular play an important ecological role, breaking down organic matter from plants and animals as well as serving as food for deer, rabbits, mice and insects. Knowing what to pick is perilously important, so this is inevitably the angle that gets the most attention. But knowing how much to pick – a knowledge borne of a long and initiate knowledge of nature, Noel explains – is important too.

For Noel and Sam, it’s about treading lightly. For Darren of Shellseekers Fish & Game, however, it’s about active management: culling those species which pose a genuine threat to the natural environment when in abundance and, through careful game keeping, ensuring that environment is maintained and secure. “We have a problem with deer in this country. There are no natural predators and while a lot of people stalk deer for sport, there aren’t enough doing it professionally.” What’s more, those in it for the thrill of the chase shoot stags rather than does, so the population can still easily explode. “If you have one stag and 40 females, you can have 80 more next year – and they are overrunning the place,” Darren explains, both in their own habitat and in ours. “Go into a woodland where there’s a deer problem and above head height it will be stripped completely. Eventually, there is no longer enough food to sustain the deer population, so they move onto farms and gardens.”

As if that wasn’t bad enough for both the woodland ecosystem and our farmers, in venturing into built up areas in search of food the deer will inevitably stray onto roads, posing a life-threatening risk to drivers and passengers. “We have a deer problem. Let’s eat our problems,” says Darren, who opposes bitterly the idea that any animal should be shot and then go to waste.

Natural ecosystems everywhere are under increasing threat. There is, in the words of Tim Rice, more to do than can ever be done in the way of sustaining them. But making sound, supportive decisions when it comes to our food choices seems an excellent way to start.

“TO ME, CORIANDER SCREAMS SOUTHEAST ASIA: THINK THAI GREEN CURRY, MALAYSIAN LAKSA OR VIETNAMESE PHO BROTH”

Image: Ed Smith

You’re either a lover or a hater. Of coriander, that is.

Most of us love the distinctive earthy, buttery, citrus, floral notes that are so synonymous with the foods of the Indian sub-continent and south-east Asia. But around 10-15 per cent of us are genetically predisposed to thinking it tastes like soap.

I’m afraid there’s very little I can do to improve things for those who think eating coriander (‘cilantro’) is like consciously swallowing fragrant bath water. Sorry about that. For everyone else, though, read on.

Storage

I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves with a bag of mostly unused coriander that’s turned in the blink of a fridge light, from meal lifting magic herb to brown, liquid mush. As always, I suggest you follow the wet towel approach to keep the herb fresh for as long as possible.

Perhaps more than any other herb, I’d say the best thing to do to get the most out of coriander is to use it liberally and often. To my mind, there’s little or nothing to be gained from trying to freeze or dry coriander. You could blitz it with olive oil to prolong the herb’s use, though that’ll turn black and unappealing soon enough.

Cooking tips

In most instances, it’s the leaves that you want; the stems are stringy and are not enjoyable to eat, though they do carry a lot of flavour (more on this below). If a recipe calls for fresh coriander, really you need to pick the leaves from the stems and then chop them or use whole as required, reserving the stems for another purpose.

Of course, your first thought at an instruction to ‘pick the leaves’ will, no doubt, be to ignore it, because life is too short. Yet unless you’re using huge quantities, it’s not really that time consuming, and is often quicker and more efficient than finding yourself picking through a tangle of stems later on (we’ve all been there).

Like basil, the leaves are delicate and don’t take direct heat very well, losing much of their impact when cooked, so you’ll find most recipes suggest adding the leaf at the end of the process/as a garnish.

As mentioned, though, the stems do have loads of flavour and are also happy in a hot pan. I tend to chop them finely and add to a stir fry or curry base at the same stage as onion, ginger, garlic and/or chilli. They’ll also provide depth to a chicken, beef or pork stock.

Classic uses

To me, coriander screams southeast Asia: think Thai green curry, which relies on this green herb, Malaysian laksa or Vietnamese pho broth, which makes use of the stems in the broth and the leaves as a vital garnish. In fact, think of pretty much anything Vietnamese: summer rolls, carrot and chicken salad, herby crepes and omelettes, banh mi baguettes. It’s an omnipresent, fresh, lifting staple.

You’ll also be familiar with coriander if you’ve travelled through central America. Mexican salsas often make the most of its floral presence, often (as in south-east Asia), matched with zesty, acidic lime juice.

While there’s great variety in the food of the Indian sub-continent, they’re often linked by the use of coriander through the cooking process and as a seasoning at the end. I can still taste a butter crab dish from a restaurant in Mumbai, to which just a sprinkle of coriander added the final, perfect, touch.

If you read the likes of Claudia Roden, Anissa Helou and Yotam Ottolenghi, you’ll know that coriander is a key ingredient in Middle Eastern cooking too. As with the cuisines mentioned above, that’s often as a garnish on a tagine, rice or grain-led dish. But it plays a major role, too, for example in schug, a hot pepper and coriander sauce from the Yemen.

On a similar theme, north African cooking relies on coriander for chermoula, a marinade used for fish, sea food and meat (most often: coriander, preserved lemon, garlic and paprika). Of course there are many more national dishes that take advantage of coriander, but the ones above stand out.

In terms of specific ingredient matches, how about carrots, quick fried pepper squid, crab, chicken and lemongrass, eggs, chorizo, chorizo and eggs, aubergine, yoghurt, lentils, avocado, lime, onions.

Coriander is, I think, the only herb of this series that I wouldn’t personally recommend in a dessert. Though I suspect there are some options out there (with mango?).

Market herb hero

There are a number of options for Borough’s biggest users of fresh coriander, not least among the Borough Market Kitchen’s hot food vendors such as Horn OK Please and Gujarati Rasoi (and, of course, all the greengrocers). However, my hero on this occasion is Borough Olives, which uses coriander to great effect alongside a few wonderful olives.

A recipe suggestion

My winter slaw takes inspiration from the flavours of Vietnamese and Thai cooking (coriander, lime, chilli and fish sauce), and matches them with the great British cabbage. It’s vibrant and quite punchy (particularly if you can get your hands on a Japanese black radish). You could partner this slaw with many things – not least a buffet or as padding to a baguette – but definitely consider some crunchy on the outside, fatty and unctuous elsewhere, roast pork belly.

See Ed’s recipe for coriander cabbage slaw.

“BOROUGH MARKET FEELS LIKE AN INDIAN BAZAAR, BUT ON STEROIDS – VERY CLEAN, VERY SORTED OUT, VERY PUMPED UP”

Interview: Ellie Costigan / Images: Christopher L Proctor

On her arrival in Britain in 1992, having been born and raised in Kolkata, India, Asma Khan couldn’t so much as boil an egg. It wasn’t until homesickness drove her to attempt to recreate the dishes of her homeland that she discovered cooking to be her true calling. Packing in a highly promising career in law, Asma began by setting up a supper club in her London home, before eventually opening her restaurant, Darjeeling Express, in Soho in 2017. She has made use of her growing profile to teach the British public about the distinctive but near-extinct food of her Mughal heritage, and she actively seeks to employ home cooks whose talents too often go overlooked by the industry. Asma came to Borough Market’s Demo Kitchen this year as part of our South Asian Spice Box residency, but her love of the Market goes way back.

What was your experience of food growing up?

I have a big family, and I grew up surrounded by food. This was in the days before cable, before the internet, when eating was the main entertainment. Food was central to everything: if there was a birthday, a wedding, a funeral, the first question was, what’s on the menu? At lunchtime we would talk about what we were going to have for dinner. At dinner, we would talk about how we would use the leftovers for breakfast. My mother owned a catering company, so even when food wasn’t being cooked for us there was always a feast being prepared in the kitchens.

How has your heritage influenced the menu at Darjeeling Express?

Kolkata is the city where I was born and spent most of my childhood, and the street food there was an integral part of my life – but so too was Mughlai food: a cooking tradition that dates back to medieval India. The kitchens of the Mughal sultans who ruled northern India introduced Persian, Arab and Turkish culinary influences, specifically in Bengal. My mother is Bengali and my father is of Mughlai descent. Spicy, tangy dishes with tamarind from Kolkata and layered, slow-cooked Mughlai meat dishes might seem like opposite ends of the spectrum, but for me they are both equally significant, which is why I have both Kolkata street food and Mughlai feasting dishes on my menu. I don’t differentiate between them.

You did a PhD in law before getting into food. How did that transformation come about?

As a girl in India, especially as a second daughter, you are not encouraged to cook. I was aware from a young age that I was a disappointment; that everyone in my family had hoped I would be a boy. Families often lament the birth of a second girl, because the backward traditions of dowries and extravagant weddings mean that they become a financial liability. I was the first girl in my family to do a PhD and my parents were very proud of me. It’s a very Asian thing – all Asian parents want their children to become doctors or lawyers! I loved law, but even while I was studying, I knew I would go into food. My husband is an academic and he couldn’t see why I would want to cook when I had studied law for so many years, so I had to keep it to myself. But when I completed my viva – the final oral examination of my PhD – I registered my food business that same night.

Your career began with supper clubs. How did you make the leap to opening your own restaurant?

I started by running supper clubs in my home in South Kensington. I borrowed £50 to buy a pot to cook in – everything else was my own. When I first started, I did it for charity. That way, if people came and didn’t like the food, they wouldn’t complain too much! It took the pressure off. But they went well, and eventually I began running the supper clubs regularly. It is a good way of doing it: you know how many people are coming, they’ve already paid, there is minimal waste. They come, they eat, they leave, and you wash up. But it was too much for my family – there were people in our home all the time.

A friend of a friend invited me to do a pop-up at the Sun and 13 Cantons pub in Soho. It was the best experience. I was working in the kitchen alongside chef Asha Pradhan. My team and I were cooking for the private dining room. It was a very steep learning curve. It was always me who would go downstairs to say sorry when we made mistakes – and we made a lot of mistakes. All the women working with me were – and still are – home cooks. I remember they said, “We should be wearing chef’s whites, like the professionals.” And I said, “Look at us, we are wearing our own clothes, we are serving just as many people as the pros, and what we are serving is just as good.” It was a turning point. Fay Maschler came to one of our pop-ups there and wrote a fantastic review. It changed everything.

The landlord at Kingly Court had been a guest at the pub and liked the food so much that he insisted on showing me this space. I said, “I love it, but I cannot afford it.” I had no capital. I never had any doubt that I would succeed, but I didn’t want to risk the roof over my son’s head by re-mortgaging the house. But he offered to waive the premium – anyone in the industry will know what that means. It meant I could do it.

Do you still have an all-female kitchen?

I do. The process by which this team got together was very organic. Some I have known for 15 years – they came to my house to help do the supper clubs, then followed me to the pop-up at the Soho pub and finally to the restaurant. The style of home cooking is very similar all over India – it is seasonal, the spicing is very layered, nothing is wasted. The women in my team understood the techniques and none of them cooked using measurements or written recipes, which is how I still cook now. We sing a lot. The kitchen can be very hot and sometimes claustrophobic, but when we sing together it brings peace. It makes us feel like we are a team. There is harmony. 

The British-Indian food scene must have changed a lot since you arrived here in the nineties…

When I arrived here the food was terrible. I remember going to an Indian restaurant in Cambridge with my husband, and being like, “Oh my gosh, what is this?” The ‘sag paneer’ was made with cottage cheese. The rice was multicoloured. I could not believe it. I was so shocked. But Indian food was the first ‘exotic’ food that British people experienced, and they have always loved it. People grew up going to their local curry house. I have to respect the people who set up those restaurants. They might have been winging it, it might not have been ‘real’ Indian food, but they transformed the palate of British people and introduced them to spices. I remember when fresh ginger came into supermarkets – the Asian community were queuing up to buy it. It seems unbelievable now that nobody here had heard of root ginger. These restaurants paved the way for people like me. I have to thank them.

Recently, several British-Indian female chefs have begun to rise in profile. What has sparked that?

You had Madhur Jaffrey, and then there was a desert. Until recently, you never had any Indian women cooking Indian food for Indians. A lot of credit should be given to the supper club scene, because it has allowed women to start cooking for the public, and many Asian women have made their journey from there – I’m one of them, but there are others and not just in London. But there’s still not anywhere near enough of us. We’re not able to get our message out, we need numbers.

Why do you think that British-Asian women are still underrepresented in kitchens?

We have these added layers of difficulty: our cultural baggage, our parents, our society. If you said, “I want to go and do a culinary course at Cordon Bleu,” our parents would say, “But you could do an architecture course for that money; the kitchen is not a space for you.” Very few Asian parents would be happy to let their daughters work the hours that you do in a restaurant, in a male-dominated kitchen. These are things no one talks about, but I am happy to talk about them because I need people to understand that we have a problem.

Restaurants are not doing the simple things that would open up the doors for women of colour. Sort out your rotas so that you are welcoming. Make it so she doesn’t have to be on the 1am bus home, full of drunk people. Have flexible working hours, do not make people work 70 hours a week, have a support system, have strong policies against bullying. There’s a lot of tension at service times, I understand, but there is no room for abuse, for racism and bigotry. There are too many apologists. You think a doctor doesn’t work under pressure? School teachers don’t work under pressure? Pilots landing their planes are not under pressure? But do you see them abusing people? Why has it been allowed for so long? It’s become part of a toxic culture in kitchens. We need to stop this.

How does Borough compare to the sorts of markets you were familiar with back home?

I love Borough Market. It feels like an Indian bazaar, but on steroids – very clean, very sorted out, very pumped up. It’s exciting. It’s very reminiscent of Kolkata for me, and I love going because of that. But in India we don’t have markets quite like Borough. My first time at Borough Market, I was just so amazed by all the stuff I didn’t recognise. I’ve been to the Market quite a lot and I love the fact that I still don’t know half the names of things. I am fascinated by all the colours and shapes. I’ve been friends with Ed Smith for years and the first time I came to the Market, I had to ask him to explain everything to me. I remember asking him what gooseberries are. In India, if you see a berry you don’t eat it, because you will die. They’re all poisonous.

All the fresh ingredients at your restaurant are British. How do you source quality produce locally without compromising your traditional recipes?

I’m grateful for what London is. We are in the greatest city in the world when it comes to food. There is so much amazing produce, and I saw that first at Borough – I don’t use any vegetables that are flown in, and that’s because I was so impressed by the markets. Okra packed in India would arrive jet-lagged in my kitchen. I don’t want to cook a jet-lagged okra. I’d rather cook something fresh and vibrant. I’m not trying to do fusion – it’s the same flavours and spicing, I just swap the vegetables. We did a Bengali dish, but substituted the beans for broad beans and made it with British asparagus. No one could tell the difference. I have a recipe in my book that’s made with courgette instead of the Indian vegetable turai, which is very similar to courgette in texture, but smaller. I am grateful to this soil, to this land and city, which has allowed me to flourish and create these dishes. If I don’t use the produce of this land, what’s the point?

Does this approach chime with Indian food culture?

When I lived in India, you only got what was in season. There were dishes that were made at the beginning of the season, and others that were made at the end of the season when there was a glut – mass pickling, lots of stuff being preserved. I grew up this way. I’m amazed when I go to Indian restaurants and see out-of-season vegetables. It’s so bad. There is no need: there are always ingredients in this country that are in season and they are awesome. They taste incredible. I don’t make a song and dance about it, but I still think restaurants could do a lot more to reduce their carbon footprint. We create minimal waste. We buy small quantities and I know it hasn’t been flown in, wrapped in clingfilm. Our produce arrives in sacks covered in soil. And we love that.

Will you be passing the baton of Mughlai cooking to your children?

I have two sons and I am teaching my older one. My younger one is absolutely not interested in cooking – in fact, he’s not a big fan of Indian food at all. My older one will probably go into food after his studies. He has an incredible palate. He is what I was at his age, he tastes everything. He understands. He can tell me when I have under-spiced. We take him very seriously – if he says, “I think this needs a bit of salt,” I will add the salt without tasting again. I have so much faith in him. He’s brilliant, he gets it and understands the recipes completely. I’m very proud of both my sons.

What do you feel is your biggest achievement?

For me, my own success doesn’t matter. I am very happy with the attention, but I’m most delighted about that generation of Asians who will see that someone has succeeded by going down this route. That’s really important. And their children will see that you can follow a dream. There is nothing as beautiful as knowing what your calling is and then being able to follow it. Food is the dream of so many Asian people, but they are sitting as accountants, as doctors, as lawyers, just to please society and because of family pressures. And in their heart, they’re cooking. I think this should change. It can change.

“YOUR MEAL WILL ALWAYS BE BEST OF YOU FOCUS ON HIGH-WELFARE ANIMALS AND SEASONAL FRUIT AND VEGETABLES”

The Christmas turkey has a strange reputation in the UK. For a significant proportion of households, turkey is The Thing to have as a centrepiece on The Big Day. And yet, so many of us claim to fear the cooking process and feel (at best) ambivalent about the eating experience. “Takes too long”, “it’s dry and tasteless” and “there’s no room or time for the best bits – the trimmings”: all are common complaints.

It doesn’t need to be this way. Your meal will always taste best if you focus on high-welfare animals and seasonal fruit and vegetables. You will enjoy both the cooking and eating of the turkey far more if you can buy a slow-grown heritage breed turkey, such as those you will find at Wyndham House Poultry, Ginger Pig and Northfield Farm. They are almost totally different animals to the intensively farmed Broad-breasted White (there’s much more to be read on how the modern industrialised turkey came to be in Mark Riddaway’s Borough Market: Edible Histories).

At the bottom of this pages, you’ll find links to my Christmas dinner recipes, but before we get to the practice, let’s deal with the theory. When it comes to creating the perfect Christmas dinner, I suggest you bear in mind these five points:

Thoughtful sourcing

Source a high-welfare, slow-grown heritage breed turkey.

Minimal stress

Don’t panic about cooking the bird, nor assume that it’ll take all day – just follow the instructions I’ve set out here.

Restraint with the sides

Plan only a couple of ‘star sides’, such as my carrot and sprout recipes, one of which is virtually hands-free, the other easily prepared in advance. Beyond them, keep things straightforward: cranberry sauce and bread sauce, stuffing balls, roast potatoes, gravy.

Well-prepared spuds

For the potatoes, the most important steps are: a) par-boil the potatoes a day earlier in salted water with some garlic and a few sprigs of rosemary, drain, rough-up, leave to cool, then refrigerate overnight; and b) when you roast them, do so in a shallow-sided tray in which the potatoes sit with plenty of space around them.

Plenty of rest

Rest the bird for at least an hour – it won’t be cold! – and cut the breasts from the carcass before slicing across them. Both steps are helpful for ensuring tender, succulent meat.

“I THINK FOOD HAS ALWAYS BEEN IMPORTANT TO ME, EVEN IF I DIDN’T NECESSARILY REALISE IT AT THE TIME”

Interview: Viel Richardson / Image: Christopher L Proctor

1. I have been trading here with Richard Bramble Collection for 20 years now – since the very beginning of the retail market. At the time, I was creating a series of paintings of Michelin starred chefs, which I published in a book along with their signature recipes. I was at Nico Ladenis’s restaurant Chez Nico when Fred Foster from Turnips came in, delivering vegetables. He liked my work and said that they were starting a market at Borough and he thought the customers would be interested in my food work. I’ve been here ever since.

2. I try to really capture the essence of an ingredient. I thoroughly research every subject. If I’m painting a fish, I use the knowledge I’ve gained from fishing and diving. Along with truly understanding how a fish moves, my skill in the graphic aspect is to capture the colours of, for example, an iridescent, silvery fish. I am trying to create something that is evocative of the spirit of that fish. At a food festival, one of my john dory dinner plates was once dive-bombed by a seagull. Quite a compliment. And the plate didn’t break!

3. Family holidays were spent in the Hebrides or Dorset, cooking what you foraged or caught. Looking back, this is where my passion for ingredients and cooking comes from. It also developed my fascination with our native wildlife.

4. When I started, you never saw a monkfish with a head on because they can be very dangerous when caught, so the heads were usually cut off straight away at sea. Les Salisbury from Furness Fish Markets brought in a complete one for me so I could paint it. Now you’ll often see them display a whole monkfish. It’s a great attraction!

5. I trained as a painter, so working with ceramics was not a planned path. It came about when a number of chefs asked me to create plate designs for their restaurants. I made a plate with an aubergine design for Gordon Ramsay’s first restaurant, Aubergine. That led to the start of my ingredients collection on ceramics.

6. The lines I have created and the way I have worked with the different pieces – the table mats, textiles and boards – often developed here on the stall, from talking to customers.

7. I have always painted and drawn. I think food has always been important to me too, even if I didn’t realise it at the time. I would go out fishing or gathering a few mushrooms. It was nothing fancy and it felt like a really natural thing to do. Looking back, I can see how that played into what I’m doing today.

8. Art and cooking are both creative processes; hand-eye coordination activities, underlined by feeling and knowledge. Combining the two worlds has been a natural process for me. When I see fresh and interesting ingredients sold by my fellow traders at the Market, it inspires me to paint them and experiment with them in my cooking.

9. Most of my work is done with pen and ink and watercolour. I then create a screen print from the originals using 12 or more colours, which is applied to the porcelain and fired into the glaze. Most ceramics are printed using only four colours; using 12 or more means the colours in the ceramics are often even closer to what I was trying to achieve than the originals.

10. The great thing about working with ceramics and textiles is that I’m creating affordable pieces of art for everyone; art that people use and interact with. I love the sense of community at the Market. I love talking to people about the piece they are buying, the significance, if it is for their kitchen or a gift. I can add an inscription to the piece while they wait – a name, a date, or a message – which makes the interaction even more unique. That connection is not something many artists get. A conversation with a customer or collector at the Market can be the highlight of my day.

“THE RACLETTE IS AGED FOR TWO TO THREE MONTHS BEFORE BEING EXPOSED TO COLD SMOKE FROM LOCALLY SOURCED WOOD”

To you and I and the majority of people reading this at their work desks or in a snatched break from the daily grind, the life of a Swiss cheesemaker sounds idyllic. Crisp mountain air, a deep silence punctuated only by the lowing of soft-eyed cows and jingle of bells; wild herbs on the breeze and the rich, unctuous aroma of maturing cheeses and sweet, fermenting milk. What’s not to like? Well, not much, acknowledges Marcello, the manager of Jumi Cheese’s Borough Market stall – but there is one small, universal challenge that even cheesemakers occasionally have to face.

Boredom. Yes, believe it or not, making cheese can be quite repetitive “and quite solitary,” Marcello continues. Now in his fifties, Herr Glauser – a cousin of Jumi founders Jürg Wyss and Mike Glauser – has been making cheese since he was 19 years old in the Swiss valleys where his family lives. But it’s his restlessness, manifested in experimentation with different recipes, that lies behind many of Jumi’s best products: Belper Knolle, Blue Brain and, now, a series of raclette recipes that transform this ancient staple of mountain cuisine.

Based on Glauser’s signature raclette recipe, but with the addition of a few weeks’ smoking, this is to our minds the most approachable of Jumi’s numerous unusual raclette varieties. As with all their cheeses, each litre of milk that makes up this semi-hard sensation comes from simmental cows: indigenous to the region, grazed only on fresh grass in summer and, come winter, homemade hay.

One of the reasons Jurg and Mike founded Jumi cheese in the first place was to support the small, family-run farms and dairies which were being undercut by industrial-scale producers. Every morning Herr Glauser receives a delivery of local milk which, being unpasteurised and unhomogenised, retains all the character of its locale and seasonality.

Once set and moulded into the square shape he favours (it is “more handy” for placing on the grill, Marcello explains) the raclette is aged for two to three months before being exposed to cold smoke from locally sourced wood. “It’s all about seizing the right moment,” Jurg and Mike have said, “which isn’t as easy as it may sound.”

Perhaps, on reflection, being a cheesemaker isn’t as easy as we might think. Perhaps we’re better leaving the making of cheese to those whose families have been doing this for generations, and stick to what we do best: buying raclette by the chunk, grilling and scraping it off onto bread, potatoes and gherkins, then savouring the salty, smoky, gooey, quintessentially Alpine taste.

“LOOKING AT A PIG’S HEAD,THERE DOESN’T SEEM TO BE MUCH YOU’D WANT TO EAT. AND YET THE BOUNTY IN A PIG’S HEAD IS WELL KNOWN”

It would be blinkered to say that the history of offal eating should be split BF and AF (Before Fergus and After Fergus), but it’s not that far from the truth.

The sensibilities of Fergus Henderson and his St John restaurant have had a huge impact on British (and indeed western) gastronomy, and the effect of his ‘nose to tail’ ethos is more obvious today than ever before. So many restaurants, chefs, writers and cooks espouse the importance of treating animals with respect and using every part of them that a chef coming out to say “we don’t bother with all that” would now seem extraordinary.

Of course, nose to tail encompasses all types of offal in all types of animals. But the subjects of this month’s post are, specifically, those bits at a pig’s extremities: the nose (and head), the tail and the trotters. What do they taste like, are they really worth eating, and if so, how should we cook them? Don’t they taste a bit dirty? And where’s the meat anyway?

Pigs’ heads

Looking at a pig’s head – or even your own – there doesn’t seem to be much that you’d want to eat. I mean, quite literally, why would you want to do that? And yet the bounty in a pig’s head is well known.

In particular, and least controversially, this treasure comes in the shape of cheeks and jowls. Cheeks are a powerful, constantly used muscle, so if you extract them there’s plenty to chow down on. It’s necessary to cook cheeks slowly – braised for a few hours – so that the collagen and sinew breaks down into beautiful, flavoursome gelatine. The jowls are good, too, particularly if cooked confit, and then fried – they’ve a quality that’s somewhere between fat and meat, and ultimately a bit like a grown-up pork scratching. Which is fine by me.

What else is there? Well, believe it or not, ears are good to chew on. Either braised or boiled first, then sliced and fried until crisp. Or, as the Chinese do, boiled, sliced finely, chilled and then marinated in spicy oils. It’s a textural thing.

Pig’s tongues are decent, so long as the outer membrane is peeled from them. Lots more thoughts on tongues will be presented in my next post, so we’ll leave it there for now, save to say that the tongue is also often included in pig head charcuterie – in brawn (more below), and also Bath chaps, the classic English ham made from rolling a jowl, cheek and tongue (if you pick the lucky side). The Ginger Pig sometimes sells jowl ham.

Speaking of charcuterie, it could be argued that some of the best things you can do with a pig’s head involve curing. There’s guanciale, of course: cured and air dried jowl, used by Italians in their pasta dishes. Coppa di testa is a ham made, like brawn, from the whole head. You might find some at the Parma Ham and Mozzarella Stand.

If you’re intrigued but think all of the above sounds like a bit of an effort (or a bit gross), one of the most rewarding things to do is to request a whole pig’s head, split in half, then braise this in the oven with a bit of wine. A few hours later and you’ve crisp crackling, succulent and tender flesh, and an amazing gravy. It’s more like a pork roast than a pig’s head at this point. See Henderson’s Nose to Tail Eating book for more.

Tails

“OK, I get there’s something to enjoy in a pig’s head. But surely there’s nothing to the tail?”

Amazingly, you’d be wrong to assume that’s the case. The funny, curly tails are surprisingly joyous to eat. Braise and the bread them (as with so many types of offal) and these crispy lengths are one of the better things you could nibble on. Again, Fergus Henderson should be the first port of call for a recipe. He suggests the longer the tail the better.

But there are other places to look – cooks from the American Deep South have enjoyed this part of the pig for ages, and many Caribbean recipes exist for split pea and pig tail soups. I can imagine the tails add a porky, savoury note, plus a natural gelatine to the soup.

Trotters

The Chinese and south-east Asians have long been better than us at making the most of a pig’s feet. Typical and very tasty options include red braised pig’s trotters (sugar, soy, Sichuan pepper, star anise), which are sticky and gelatinous and you need to be happy with gnawing around bones and cartilage, but I rather love it. Have a read of Fuchsia Dunlop for more on this.

Eastern cuisine is also well versed in using trotters in broths and stocks. Vietnamese pho is nothing without a trotter to add both its flavour and a certain, appealing viscosity (because of the collagen content).

Over here, Pierre Koffmann made trotters famous, with his much copied stuffed pig’s trotter – an absolutely classic dish at his restaurant La Tante Claire, later eulogised by Marco Pierre White and other Koffmann-trained chefs. The trotter is painstakingly deboned, then stuffed with a pork and morel mousse, before being served with the richest of gravy.

I’ve eaten the Koffmann version and it’s remarkable – if exceedingly rich. I also had to recreate it at catering college. Efficiently removing the bone while keeping the skin intact is one of the harder things I did. Koffmann takes just over a minute when doing a presentation. I hate to think how long it took me.

It seems appropriate to head back to St John to round things up. Trotters are celebrated there too, not least in a trotter pie – very little bite on the loose meat filling, but maximum flavour – and also the restaurant’s famed trotter ‘gear’. No gravy stands up to it, once you’ve tried.

Making brawn

Roasting or deep-frying a tail would’ve been the adventurous thing; and de-boning then stuffing a trotter the ultimate test of skill and patience. However, using the whole of a head (plus a trotter for luck) to make brawn, seemed the most appropriate way to approach this stage of the Offal Project.

Brawn is a set terrine comprising meat picked from a boiled pig’s head (and sometimes trotters too), held together by gelatinous stock made during the cooking process (the trotter helps achieve that quality). I really love it. It looks dramatic and is as tasty as any form of soft charcuterie you’ll come across; superb with some toasted sourdough and sharp pickles. It’s also incredibly cheap to make (expect to pay around a fiver for the head, £1 for some herbs and onions, and that’s about it).

That said, there are a few steps to go through when making it, so it’s a bit of an effort, if not actually hands-on laborious.

Pig’s heads are fairly easy to get hold of at the Market, but don’t expect to just happen upon them when walking past The Ginger Pig, Northfield Farm or Rhug Farm. Contacting one of those butchers in advance ought to guarantee success.

Admittedly, it’s quite an alarming thing to look down at a pig’s head that’s looking back at you. Particularly if you’ve a mild hangover. You do need to look at it though, not least because it’s necessary to give it a good wash, shave it, and clean wax and grime out of the ears. After that, find a pot that’s large enough to simmer the whole thing (we’re talking 8-10 litre volume, if not more), leave it to bubble for 3-4 hours, pick the meat from the trotter and head, mix in some chopped tarragon and leave to cool in a terrine overnight, using the gelatinous stock as a setting agent.

As mentioned, glorious on toast with pickles, and a bit of a talking point. You could dip cubes of it in flour, egg and breadcrumbs too, then deep fry, for dreamy (or, for some, nightmarish?) pig’s head nuggets.

Read Ed’s recipe for brawn

“SOMEONE WHO WORKED HERE A CENTURY AGO WOULD STILL RECOGNISE THE ARBROATH SMOKIES WE PRODUCE TODAY”

Interview: Viel Richardson

One of the defining products of your Oak & Smoke stall is the Arbroath smokie. What exactly is it?

A type of hot smoked haddock. Arbroath smokies have EU protected status, meaning that only haddock smoked using traditional methods within a five-mile radius of Arbroath can use the name.

Where did the process originate from?

It all started in Auchmithie, a small fishing village a few miles north of Arbroath, whose population had originally settled there from Scandinavia. The women would salt the fish then smoke them in barrels with fires at the bottom, while trapping the smoke under layers of hessian sacking. In the early 1900s, some of the community began moving to Arbroath and the fish they produced became known as the Arbroath smokie. In the days before refrigeration, this was an important method of preservation. Salting removed a lot of the moisture where the bacteria gathered, and smoking killed the bacteria that were still present. The combination of the two processes allowed the fish to be stored for longer.

Walk us through the process.

The fish are covered in salt, then pairs of them are tied together by the tail and hung up for about 24 hours. To smoke them, these pairs of fish are draped over metal rods that have been laid across the open top of a whisky barrel that’s had its top section cut off, with a fire burning inside.

The fires are built using a combination of beech and oak wood. The fire burns initially for between 60 and 90 minutes, with a wet hemp cloth draped over the whisky barrel. Wetting it stops the hemp from catching alight and traps most of the heat, creating a very hot, moist environment. Once the required temperature has been reached, the wet hemp is removed, the metal rods with the tied fish hanging over them are placed over the top of the barrel, then the cloth is draped back over them. The hanging fish are very close to the heat source, so they are being smoked at a very high temperature. Quite often, in fact, some of the fish will be licked by the flames of the fire. The high heat slightly crisps the outside while the high humidity keeps the flesh moist. This is what gives the smokie that wonderful, almost creamy texture and deep smoky flavour that you cannot find anywhere else.

Do you use whisky barrels for all your smoking?

No, we also smoke in a traditional smokehouse, which is designed to recreate the environment of the barrel, producing that hot, damp environment. It means that you can smoke more fish each time, although still a lot less than the huge commercial smokeries. Which method we use will depend on how many fish we need to smoke, but both the smokehouse and the barrels are in use.

Does the type of barrel used have an effect?

Not really, if the barrel imparts any flavour, it is negligible. Most of the flavour is coming from the wood used to create the fire and the tar around the sides of the barrels and the smokehouse. Our smokehouse is over 100 years old and there are several inches of accumulated tar from decades of smoking fish.

How is this different from other commercial hot smoking methods?

For almost all the hot smoked fish you buy from supermarkets, the producers will use smoking ovens. In these, 90 per cent of the heat source is typically from electricity. They will then put in some wood kindling at the bottom of the oven to smoulder and impart some smoke flavour to the fish. This is different from the traditional way, with that hot, intense smoke really impregnating the fish. Electric smoking ovens cannot recreate the environment of a whisky barrel or smokehouse.

Do you smoke other fish?

Because the smokies were so popular, we started smoking other fish in the smokehouse and found that oily fish tended to work best. We do hot smoked salmon, trout and mackerel. We also cold smoke salmon.

How does that differ from hot smoking?

The crucial differences are the temperature of the smoke and the fact that the fish is kept away from the heat source. Despite the name, the smoke does not have to be cold, just a lot cooler than that used for hot smoking.

Do you use a different smokehouse for the cold fish?

No, we don’t. We use the same smokehouse with the beech and oak fire as we do for the smokies. We will generally do the cold smoking once the smokies have finished and been removed. The smoke is sent along what is essentially a horizontal chimney, designed to cool it down as it goes. The smoke then fills a second chamber where the salmon is laid out on trays. Because of the absence of heat, cold smoking takes a lot longer – somewhere between 12 and 24 hours, depending on how much salmon is in the chamber.

Do you use any preservatives?

No chemicals of any kind are used. The only preservatives are salt and smoke. We get all our fish fresh – the haddock for the smokies has to be caught in the north Atlantic. They are then salted before going straight into the barrels or the smokehouse. Our fish is not frozen at any point.

So, your production methods are just a continuation of a very traditional process?

Very little has changed, because very little needs to. Over the generations, smokers have continued honing their skills, but someone who worked here a century ago would recognise the Arbroath smokies we produce today.

“IT WAS LIKE WANDERING INTO THE CAVERN CLUB IN 1962 AND THINKING THAT THE LOCAL BAND SOUNDED PRETTY GOOD”

Image: Orlando Gili

The best eating experience of my life (and, therefore, possibly the best experience, full stop) arose through a golden combination of chutzpah, libido and luck. As a young man whose lack of breeding and meagre knowledge of food were offset by a bloody-minded will to impress a young woman, I decided that what she and I absolutely needed to do was eat at a properly posh restaurant, just to see what it was like. After interrogating a guidebook, I picked out a place called La Tante Claire and booked a table. What I didn’t know was that Pierre Koffmann’s place, then at its 1990s peak, was not just a posh restaurant but an era-defining one, and that our guileless joy at eating there was akin to wandering into The Cavern Club in 1962 and thinking that the local band sounded pretty good.

The whole evening was completely mind-blowing, only slightly tainted when, as I passed through the bar, a jowly man demanded I tell him where the toilets were, his brusque approach revealing that, stuffed into a cheap suit, I looked not like the urbane epicurean of my imagination but a junior staff member, possibly a cloakroom attendant. The most memorable thing presented to me all night (apart from the bill, which I cleared from my credit card about five years later) was a plate of scallops with squid ink, a Koffmann signature, which I thought sounded like the starter a person who knew about these things would go for, even though I’d never eaten a scallop and had no idea that squid ink was food. Simple but achingly pretty, firm but yielding, sweet but deeply savoury, it immediately superseded a chicken tikka roll from Tooting Bec as my favourite dish of all time. 

It was also probably my first real glimpse of how a plate of food can transcend its apparent simplicity when exceptional produce is involved. I may still look more like a cloakroom attendant than a sophisticated gastronome, and I will never be able to cook like Pierre Koffmann, but what I – and anyone else – can do is pick up some scallops from Shellseekers Fish & Game, hand-dived just a day or two earlier from a Devon bay, then fry them with slightly terrified care. And by using raw materials at least as good as anything the Frenchman had to work with, I can, right there in my kitchen, do justice to some tiny fraction of that special memory.