“GENERATIONS OF WOMEN IN MY FAMILY HAVE PERFECTED THE ART OF PREPARING AN EID FEAST WITH VERY LITTLE NOTICE”

Words: Shahnaz Ahsan

My sisters and I work with a synchronicity that comes from being raised by the same mother, in the same kitchen. We peel, chop, marinade and soak. One of us does the dishes while the others shape minced lamb into koftas. It’s almost midnight and we’re preparing for the feast that will be served tomorrow in celebration of Eid al Fitr.

Eid al Fitr is the Muslim festival that comes after the month-long fast known as Ramadan. Unlike holidays such as Christmas, which fall on the same date every year, the timing of Eid al Fitr changes according to the lunar calendar, meaning that the celebration can’t be confirmed until the crescent moon is sighted the night before. This adds a delicious level of unpredictability to the festive preparations – you never know until the last minute exactly when the holiday will be.

It also means that generations of women in my family – it’s women who have traditionally taken on most of the cooking – have perfected the art of preparing an Eid feast with very little notice. This is achieved through the magic combination of forward planning, flexibility and practice.

Banquet planning follows a regular pattern in our family. A couple of days before the end of Ramadan we agree on a menu, with input from all family members. Aromatic chicken korma cooked with ghee, coconut and yoghurt is a staple, as is pilau rice studded with cardamom, cinnamon and bay leaves. Next comes beef or lamb bhuna – sometimes both – depending on what the butchers have on offer. There is always a platter of succulent tandoori chicken, potato cutlets stuffed with spicy tuna or egg, and crunchy pakoras made with vegetables, fish or chicken. If we’re hosting a lot of guests, we’ll add in a kofta curry: balls of minced chicken or lamb baked in the oven then simmered in a thick, spicy sauce. There’s fish coated in turmeric and fried with onions, and countless vegetable dishes – chunks of aubergine in yoghurt sauce, cauliflower lightly spiced with green beans. For dessert we make shemai – sweet vermicelli pudding with whole milk, jewelled with sultanas and flaked almonds – and sometimes fat, juicy rounds of gulab jamun.

Then, once the menu has been confirmed, we divide our tasks. My father is given a list of what to buy. Staples such as basmati rice, ghee, cooking oil, onions, garlic and ginger are essential. Different cuts of meat and poultry from the butcher are carefully selected: whole chickens to be roasted; minced lamb for kebabs; beef on the bone for biryani or a deep, flavoursome bhuna.

Next come the tasks of peeling, chopping, marinating and soaking. Mountains of onions are liberated from their skins and left to soak in cold water to lessen the risk of teary eyes when chopping. The thin outer layer of the root ginger is rubbed off with a teaspoon. The heaps of garlic are peeled by hand, the papery casing sticking to our fingers. Although jars of garlic-ginger paste are now readily available, it doesn’t feel as though quite the same amount of labour, of love, has gone into the preparation.

The ingredients are prepped with flexibility in mind. Meat is marinated the day it’s bought, so if Eid is announced later than expected, the extra time only adds flavour to the final dishes. Jointed chickens are mixed with yoghurt, garlic, ginger, lemon juice, salt and aromatic whole spices including green cardamom, bay leaf and cassia bark, and left overnight for the korma. A side of salmon is coated with yoghurt, chilli, turmeric, garlic, ginger, lemon juice, tandoori powder and salt, ready to be roasted. Chicken breasts are marinated overnight too, ready to be coated in a thick chickpea batter and fried to make crunchy pakoras.

The third essential element in short-notice feast preparation is practice. At this stage in our lives, we all have areas we excel in and others we avoid. We each take the dishes we enjoy making the most. One sister takes on the desserts – a task I find far too finicky. Another claims the job of preparing the biryani, boiling mutton in an aromatic broth before layering with rice. I prepare the koftas, shaping each ball with one hand the way my mother taught me. There is a special kind of sociability in this late-night cooking, staying up until one or two in the morning, talking as we shape patties and fold samosa pastry. Sometimes my father will come into the kitchen to tell us not to stay up too late and to sneak a taste of what we’ve made. When we eventually collapse into bed, it is with the sweet satisfaction of knowing that it’s been a job well done – and the buzzing excitement of a day of festivities ahead.

“IT’S ABOUT BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER TO FIND FRIENDSHIP AND SUPPORT. THE FOOD ITSELF IS JUST ONE PART OF IT REALLY”

Words: Mark Riddaway / Images: Orlando Gili

On Sunday 3rd March, as Borough Market wound down at the end of the day and the last of the customers carried their bulging bags towards the exits, a small team of volunteers set off on their familiar route around the stalls, talking to familiar traders, fulfilling familiar routines. The only unfamiliar part of the whole venture was the day itself. Volunteers from the Plan Zheroes charity have been coming to Borough Market since 2014, but never on a Sunday.

For 10 highly fruitful years, Plan Zheroes has been collecting leftover food from the Market’s traders – food that’s on the edge of being unsaleable but is still good to eat. Rather than being thrown away, this food is taken to a collection point to be weighed and documented before being carried away by representatives from local charities, who use it to feed their service users. At no point does any money pass hands – just high-quality ingredients and a lot of goodwill.

“Essentially, we’ll support any charity that needs food,” says Chris Wilkie, one of the co-founders of Plan Zheroes. “Charities that support the homeless, the vulnerable, the elderly, the young.” Partly, the objective is to feed people who might otherwise go hungry, but there’s more to it than that – as well as providing much-needed fuel, good food, when shared, can be a conduit for human connection. “It’s all about communities. It’s about bringing people together in a social situation, helping vulnerable or lonely people find friendship and support. The food itself is just one part of it really.”

Blackfriars Settlement in Southwark, a regular destination for Borough’s surplus food, is a good example. “We’ve been supporting them for a long time, and they provide a place where elderly people can go and have a nice lunch and meet and talk. Isolation is a huge problem, particularly in a big city like this, so places like that can be so important.” Other recipients, which number about 40 in total, include the St Mungo’s homelessness charity and the sheltered housing complex at Lucy Brown House.

The Plan Zheroes partnership with Borough Market began with just a single weekly collection; now, with the addition of Sundays, it’s up to five nights a week, meaning more people being fed and less food being thrown away. The new Sunday collection is a particularly important addition to the schedule – the Market closes every Monday, making the potential for surplus food even greater.

The aspiration of both Plan Zheroes and Borough Market is for all six trading days to eventually be covered, but ramping up takes time. “It takes a little while to bed in a new day,” says Chris. “The charities operate under really difficult circumstances. They’re staffed by volunteers. It takes a while for them to get into the habit of coming on a new day because they’ve got their set routines. Also, they have to pay congestion charge, and a lot have got old vehicles so have to pay the low emissions charge. That means it’s costing them more than £12 a time to come here. It’s a challenge, even though they need the food so much.”

Given the vagaries of the bounty – influenced by everything from the behaviour of the weather to the judgement of the traders, to the order in which the charities arrive at the site – none of the cooks receiving the food have the slightest clue what the day will bring, meaning that every delivery to their kitchens is like an episode of Ready, Steady, Cook. What they do know, though, is that the quality of the ingredients will not disappoint. “It’s food that the traders can’t sell tomorrow, but still it’s all top-quality food,” says Chris. “It’s all fine to eat, and most of it will be used the same day or the day after by the charities.”

Plan Zheroes in numbers

Over the past 10 years, the Borough Market partnership has:

— Saved 115 tonnes of food
— Created 270,000 meals
— Avoided 450 equivalent tonnes of CO₂ emissions

For the Market’s traders, the ideal is to create as little surplus as possible, but the idea that any surplus might be thrown away would break their hearts, hence the enthusiasm with which so many of them participate in the scheme. “Every food professional I’ve ever met hates to throw good food away,” says Chris. “They’ve spent time and money creating it, and they want it to be eaten and enjoyed. We’re keeping it out of landfill and we’re getting it to people instead.”

Plan Zheroes was founded by Chris, Maria Ana Neves and Lotti Henley, who passed away in 2021. “This was about the time of the financial crash back in 2008,” says Chris. “None of us had any experience of charity work, but we’d heard about a single mother living in Earl’s Court. She had three children and couldn’t afford to give each of them a hot meal every day, so they had to take it in turns. We’d also been reading about supermarkets throwing food away, and we just thought, this is just crazy. There’s this mother who can’t afford to feed her kids, and just down the road there’s a supermarket binning perfectly good food. So, let’s see if we can do something about it.”

The tragedy is that food poverty in this country is now even more widespread and acute than it was at the start of the Plan Zheroes story. “You know, there are more people going hungry in the UK today than there are living in the whole of London,” Chris continues. “Something like 13 million people are affected. Surplus food shouldn’t be seen as a solution to food poverty – it’s really a sticking plaster – but whatever we can do to help, we’ll do.”

The charity’s hands-on approach at Borough Market is an exception to the norm. Most of the team’s work around the UK is carried out through an online platform. Registered businesses that have surplus food post a notification on the platform. An alert goes out to charities in the local community, and those charities make the collection. “In most cases we never see the food,” says Chris. “We don’t collect it, we don’t store it, we don’t deliver it. All we do is we act as a broker between the businesses that have the food and the charities that need it.”

The source of this surplus food could be a cafe, a restaurant, a food shop, a hotel, a hospital, a school, an airline – even a chart-topping band. “Recently we’ve been helping a US charity called Musically Fed who provide food after rock concerts. So, The 1975 played The O2, they played in Glasgow, and we helped to distribute the leftover food from their rider.”

Somewhere out there, a charity’s service users got to eat Matty Healy’s dinner. The Borough Market partnership may lack quite the same star wattage, but it more than makes up for it in its volume, consistency and impact. Every week, day after day, people who need feeding, people who relish the opportunity to break bread together somewhere warm and welcoming, get the chance to enjoy food of the very highest quality. This happens because Borough’s traders and all the volunteers involved in the process are determined to make it happen, squaring the circle between those who have excess food and those who need it.

“If surplus food is being generated then the only good thing you can do is to give it to people,” says Chris, “and that’s what we try to do.”

“FOOD IS MADE TO BE SHARED – SOMETHING ABOUT THE HUMAN HEART SLIPS INTO PLACE WHEN YOU EAT TOGETHER”

Words: Mark Oakley / Images: Tom Bradley

It’s great to find myself as dean of a cathedral surrounded by food. Having grown up in Shropshire, I know something of the hard work and commitment of those who produce and sell our food. My neighbours were dairy and vegetable farmers, cheesemakers, butchers, honey farmers, bakers, or the owners of small businesses connected with them. There is a rather cruel saying: “Shropshire born, Shropshire bred – strong in the body, thick in the head.” In truth, it’s quite a good description of me. However, as I grew up, I learned so much about the lives of these hard-working people who often get forgotten when we rush around supermarkets or shove down a quick sandwich. To find myself a neighbour again to such people feels to me a bit like a homecoming,

I’m struck by how food is so often intimately connected with religion and spirituality. I think it may be to do with two truths. First, that food is made to be shared – something about the human heart slips into place when you sit down together and do exactly that. In my own Christian tradition, to share bread and wine shows both our uniqueness and our equality as we become ‘companions’, a word that literally means ‘those who break bread together’. Secondly, food is a great symbol of the future. We need it to live another day – to be strengthened to achieve things. Faith, too, asks us to be more loyal to the future than to the past. The bread we share in church is eaten to make us more hungry – hungry for goodness, justice and community.

Sharing food is an essential part of our Easter celebrations. You won’t be surprised to know that my Shropshire roots mean that Easter for me has to have some Welsh spring lamb in it. I travel back to the county each Christmas to get my goose from the fields near where I was born (I love goose!), and I’m tempted to do the same for my Welsh lamb, as Wales is about six miles from where my grandmother (aged 102), who brought me up as a child, still lives. She always used to roast our Easter lamb simply with some garlic, served with leeks, homemade mint sauce, and roast potatoes – they were like little duvets inside, they were so fluffy. I’m a cheese lover, so some fresh goat’s cheese with some damson jelly rounded the meal off well.

My partner enjoys baking, so these days a lot of cakes emerge from the kitchen which I have to keep my hands off. At Easter, though, we always try to make a simnel cake. I tend to roll the balls of marzipan to represent the 11 disciples of Jesus (Judas gets missed out…). Together with a good cup of black tea, I find myself putting my feet up after a busy Easter day in church with a happy slice.

When I was a curate at the age of 24, I worked for a wonderful vicar in St John’s Wood. He had a tradition of opening a bottle of champagne after the Easter morning service and I have to admit that, following his early death at the age of 59, I tend to buy a bottle and do the same now to toast his memory and all the wonderful things he taught me. I have no time for religion that tries to be an example of power. I just try to remember those who have instead shown me the power of example.

This year I think I’m going to buy, or maybe make, some Easter paska to remember the people of Ukraine. Ukrainians love horseradish too, so maybe I’ll look out for some of that too – I like the way it perks up a dish. Other Easter treats for me include hot cross buns (of course!), babka, pulla from Finland, colomba di pasqua, Jamaican Easter spice cake, and capirotada from Mexico. The problem is that Holy Week and Easter are so busy I rarely get the chance to shop, never mind bake, but this year I’m determined that I’ll have a go at making at least one of these!

“DURING RAMADAN, ONE TRADITION INVOLVES CONSUMING THREE DATES AND A GLASS OF MILK AS A PRE-DAWN MEAL”

Words: Shahnaz Ahsan

“Dates are tasty,” says Syed Usman Shah, founder of Date Sultan. “But when they’re ethically sourced, they’re even tastier.”

Date Sultan is a social enterprise that imports premium dates from the Middle East. As well as supplying its customers with treats such as salted caramel-stuffed medjool dates, the company’s mission is to tackle modern slavery – a pervasive practice throughout much of the region’s agricultural sector. And Date Sultan’s peak sales season is just around the corner.

“For us, as Muslims, there is no Ramadan without dates,” he says, referring to the holy month observed by 1.8 billion Muslims across the globe, who fast from sunrise to sunset, avoiding any food or drink during daylight hours. Dates are among the foods that are traditionally eaten to break the fast each evening.

Born in Pakistan, Usman was just one month old when his parents moved the family to the UK. Now based in Newham, east London, Usman credits his parents with instilling a sense of community responsibility in him. Growing up, he witnessed them gifting dates to friends, family and neighbours during Ramadan – a common practice among Muslims.

When he travelled to different parts of the Middle East as a young adult, Usman was disturbed by the treatment of migrant workers – usually from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh – and their dire working conditions on date plantations. Resolving to find a fairer way of doing things, Usman set up Date Sultan and made ethical trade the cornerstone of his business. Today, the company has direct contracts with farmers in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Saudi Arabia, which means that Usman and his team can ensure fair wages are paid throughout the supply chain, regularly conducting audits and inspections without relying on any third parties.

While the roots of Usman’s business model are firmly embedded in his traditional upbringing, Date Sultan’s success was catapulted by the distinctly modern phenomenon of social media. One video Usman posted on TikTok garnered 500,000 views overnight. The next day, Usman says, “we didn’t have enough dates on hand to meet the orders”. The solution was to crowdfund. After raising £20,000 through community donations from over 100 people, Usman imported a 40-foot container filled with dates. The rest is history.

Usman’s love of experimentation has been a cornerstone of his company’s success. He began by pitting and stuffing medjool dates with almonds and pistachios and toying with new fillings. One evening during Ramadan, while preparing for iftar – the meal to break the fast – Usman stuffed some medjool dates with salted caramel. From his guests’ reactions, Usman knew he was onto a winner. Today, Date Sultan offers a wide range of innovative fillings, such as candied ginger and Lotus Biscoffy, as well as variety packs and single-origin date selections.

Of the many date varieties in existence, Usman’s own favourite – “a must for Ramadan” – is the grandly titled king jumbo ajwa: “It is said to be the variety most enjoyed by the Prophet Muhammad – and I can see why. It’s moreish and has natural flavour tones of caramel.” What makes it even more special is that it only grows in the city of Madinah, Saudi Arabia, known as “the city of the Prophet”.

Date Sultan offers a detailed rating system for the varieties on offer at the stall, scoring each one out of five on qualities such as sweetness and chewiness and offering detailed tasting notes. All this helps customers find the right date for the right job. For example, Usman’s favourite date-based recipe is sticky toffee pudding. “But – and it’s a BIG but – so many people make them with medjool dates,” he sighs. “Big mistake. It should be made with the mabroom date which literally tastes like toffee, but without any added sugar or preservatives.”

During Ramadan, which this year is expected to start around 10th March, one tradition involves consuming three dates and a glass of milk as a pre-dawn meal, setting up the body for a long day of fasting. Usman also recommends that ambara amber dates – a variety he says is a “nutritional powerhouse” – be soaked in a glass of water overnight and the liquid consumed the following morning as ‘an all-natural energy drink’.

While Ramadan is one of the busiest times for date sales, Usman believes that the fruit should be enjoyed all year around. According to an Islamic proverb, “a house with dates shall never go empty”. He also recalls a blessing made by one of the neighbours he gifted dates to as a child at his father’s behest. “May it rain dates from your hand,” the man told a young Usman. Many years of dedication and hard work later, it appears that his blessing was heard.

“I’VE BEEN AROUND MARKETS FOR SO LONG AND I’VE NEVER SEEN AN ‘& DAUGHTER’ SIGN. I’VE SEEN SO MANY ‘& SONS’”

Greengrocer Michael Hickson has been part of the Borough Market community for over two decades, working on the Elsey & Bent stand. After Elsey & Bent closed last year, Michael decided the time had come for him to run a business of his own, so pitched to take over the vacant space. His new venture, Hickson & Daughter, opened in February.

You’ve been at Borough Market for more than 20 years. What was it that first brought you here?

I was 17, and being a proper little adolescent, if you know what I mean. I was getting in a lot of trouble, causing all kinds of bother for my dad. My dad had a friend in the wholesale trade, and he said: “Do you want me to get Michael a job?” I came here to work for Elsey & Bent, and I didn’t look back from the moment I started. It was a complete eye-opener. I grew up round a council estate and fruit was a luxury for us. I’d never even seen an avocado before. I remember seeing raspberries on the stand for the first time and being: “Oh wow!” I knew what a raspberry was, obviously, but I’d never seen them in such quantities. I took to it straight away. I liked the whole aspect of talking to different people. I liked the whole aspect of designing the displays. It was right up my street.

Apparently, your family connections at Borough run deep…

I didn’t really know much about it when I started here, but a lot of my family history is here. All the men on my dad’s side had worked at the wholesale market at some point. I had great-uncles and great-grandads who’d been in the trade. My dad had worked up here as a boy and he used to say things like: “Oh, Great-Uncle Arthur had a heart attack right there on that spot!” Borough’s changed so much since those days. When I first got here, the retail had only just started and there was no hot food at all. It’s so different now.

Tell us about the name, Hickson & Daughter. Where did that come from?

So, I’m a separated father, and we have joint custody of our daughter, Millie. I have her four nights a week, and she’s such a massive part of my life. She’s my world. I just thought, I’ve been around markets for so long and I’ve never seen an ‘& Daughter’ sign. I’ve seen so many ‘& Sons’ everywhere. And it was it obvious to me: Millie’s only seven now but she’s going to be a massive part of this, and it’s about time we had an ‘& Daughter’ sign up there. Also, my father passed two years ago, and having that link to the Market through my dad, I wanted his family name up there as well. Hickson & Daughter was the perfect fit, really.

How would you sum up what Hickson & Daughter is all about?

We’re a proper traditional greengrocers. We’re expressing the history of this place as a fruit and veg market. It’s about being here for the community, for the locals. No bells and whistles, just proper high-quality produce, locally sourced whenever we can, set out on beautiful displays. It’s all about the display for me: my ethos is that we should always have the best display in the Market – and I believe we do!

As the seasons pass, will we see those displays changing dramatically?

Yes, a hundred percent. There’ll be one corner of the stand, right at the front – the main show – and that’ll be very seasonal, whatever time of year it is. At the moment it’s a bit harder, because there’s not really much about. The veg is pretty good, but the fruit side is a bit higgledy-piggledy. But as the seasons go on, it’ll have all the British berries, then the English plums, then the apples will arrive. I quite enjoy the English asparagus season – you can really get your teeth into that. You go all-in for a short six weeks and then it’s over before you know it. And obviously British people love their own produce, so they get really excited by British asparagus – it’s quite a passionate six weeks!

So, where are you sourcing all this produce from?

I try to get the seasonal stuff direct. I’ve just received some carrots and beetroot from Royal Oak Farm, who are an organic-based farm. That was my first order. And then some potatoes from a farm in Kent. As I go on, there’ll be, like, four, five, six items a month sourced direct from separate farms. It’s hard – I’m getting a lot of people saying no because they want to sell in larger quantities – but I’m getting there. For the rest, I didn’t want to be traipsing around, driving back and forth to wholesale markets, so I spoke to Grovers, the wholesalers based at Borough, and struck a deal with them for my day-to-day orders.

One of the big challenges with fresh produce is making sure as little as possible is wasted. How do you go about that?

Wasting anything is heartbreaking. I’ve seen companies who are just: “Pile it high, pile it high,” and I’ve witnessed how bad that can be. But it’s more than doable getting it perfect. I take great pride in getting the ordering right. The girls who work with me say that when I’m doing the list, I’m just in the zone. I want it to be perfect – what I order, the amount I order. When it comes to displays, there are ways of doing it: if you’re clever, you can make it look like it’s piled high without it actually being piled high, if that makes sense. And if anything is left over, we’re working with Plan Zheroes to find a good home for it.

What has the response been like so far?

Elsey & Bent had such a big regular customer base, and they’ve been really excited to see us opening. People remember me, people who live local. A lot of them have seen me growing up. They’ll come up and say: “I remember when you started at 17!” One guy was just beaming. He was like: “I can’t believe it. I’ve seen you go from that to this.” A lot of the older ones still call me Mikey – that’s my younger name. I feel like that might change now. I was always the boy on the stall. Now I’m the man!

“TRUE ROMANCE COMES FROM THE QUIET COMFORT OF KNOWING HOW AND WHY YOUR PARTNER ENJOYS A PARTICULAR DISH”

Words: Clare Finney

Another February, another flood of chocolate hearts, pink champagne and articles alternately rubbishing or revelling in the aphrodisiac qualities of oysters. Writing the ‘romance’ chapter of my book about food and love, Hungry Heart, I felt like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, ducking, dodging and weaving past the lethal cliches. 

The problem is, food and love are inextricable; not always, but often – even if it’s just that first hot drink of the day. Every morning my friend Emma needs strong coffee in a pale-yellow mug, and every morning her husband Rob makes it for her in the mug he meticulously washes up every evening. So demonstrative is this gesture of the depth of Rob’s affection, Emma’s dad referenced it in his speech at their wedding, noting what it said about his consistency and attention to detail.

Speaking to people within and outside the food world both for the book and since, I’ve been struck by the sheer variety of meals which, for someone somewhere, represent the height of romance. My best friend’s mum Angela shares a love of plane (yes, as in aeroplane) food with her husband John. “We get excited when the trolley comes. Then we go through our trays and say to each other: ‘Crackers – nice! Cheese – nice!’ while people are there with their bags of Pret and Wagamama’s. I don’t know why. I think it’s the togetherness of it,” she muses: the careful peeling back of the foil lid; the joint exclamations at the contents; and their ability to laugh at themselves.

Needless to say, none of the Borough Market traders I spoke to about food and romance referenced the meals you get on an aeroplane. Yet there are some common threads that run through the true food of love, whether it’s freshly prepared or in-flight. One of most obvious is realness – the quiet comfort of knowing your partner well enough to know how and why they enjoy a particular dish, and vice versa. I know this because for a long time, the opposite was true for me; there were countless nights out on which I would feign to like or dislike something in an effort to project the version of myself I thought my date would want.

I’ve chosen natural wine to prove I’m a foodie; suffered Pizza Hut to prove I’m not; faked a taste for foie gras, fruit cake, fermented cabbage, cask ale, cream cheese and caviar. In short, I’ve not always been ‘real’; and even before that lack of realness was evident in the relationship itself, it was evident in the meals we shared. By way of contrast, one of my favourite things to make for and enjoy with my boyfriend is Horlicks – and there is nothing cool, quirky or sexy about that.

So, when Cynthia Shanmugalingam of Rambutan says the food of love she shares with her husband is a chickpea salad with “whatever we have in the fridge”, I know hers is a real romance. “We make it all the time – like, maybe twice a week? – and it feels familiar,” she laughs. The pair, who married in Sri Lanka just weeks ago, fry chickpeas in cumin, coriander and chilli “then chop up whatever we have around, like cucumbers, herbs, pomegranate, red onion, persimmons, gem lettuce, radishes…” the list goes on. “It’s quick, easy and a good way to use up vegetables we bought in the market – and it feels like we’re looking after each other,” she says: another enduring theme when it comes to cooking, eating and love.

“I have been thinking about it so much lately,” says Marianna Kolokotroni of Oliveology. For her, the real food of love is just real food. “Food without unnecessary ingredients and health claims,” she says. Food of the kind she sources from Greece: artisanal olives, olive oils, honeys, nuts and cheese produced by real people in the same way they have been for centuries. “Food that keeps your body and mind healthy, but also brings you a lot of joy.” For Marianna, there is no love in food that does not nourish, emotionally as well as physically; and there also needs to be an abundance of love, as well as skill and time, in the way it is made.

The reason any of this matters is that meals are the fulcrum of the lives we share with the people we love – the steady beat to which our days, weeks, months and years play out. They’re the punctuation marks to life’s chaotic sentences. When I ask David Lockwood, director of Neal’s Yard Dairy, to describe a romantic meal, he tells me he’d buy coffee from Monmouth, smoked trout pâté from Oak & Smoke, seedy sourdough from Karaway Bakery and Appleby’s butter from Neal’s Yard, and make a long and lazy breakfast: “the kind of breakfast that gives you the chance to be comfortable together and to not worry. It’s cosy and warm.”

“I don’t think of myself as really such a romantic guy – but who knows, maybe I am?” he says – and I think maybe he is. I’ve found most people are, when they stop to think about what they eat with their loved ones. Because to understand the value of that first cup of coffee in the morning, of the comfortable routine of a regular, nourishing dish, of the pure happiness brought by a breakfast of good bread and butter, is to understand the value not just of meals, but of all that food can signify: simple pleasures, time spent together, the change in seasons, human ingenuity, discovery, familiarity, and love.

Clare Finney is the author of Hungry Heart: A Story of Food & Love (Quarto)

“IT’S IN THE REALLY DIFFICULT TIMES THAT YOU SEE HOW MUCH THIS PLACE MEANS TO PEOPLE”

Images: Sim Canetty-Clarke, John Holdship

“The history of this place makes you feel so small,” says Adrian Bunnis. “You only have to go into the boardroom and look at how many people’s names are up on the wall to see how far back it goes. It’s a reminder of how important it is that we hand it on in good shape to the next generation.”

In January, Adrian stepped down from the board of the charitable trust that runs Borough Market after four years as its chair and a total of 13 years as a trustee. And while the sheer scale of the Market’s history makes his time here seem the mere blink of an eye, there’s no questioning the significance of his contribution.

Adrian, a highly experienced surveyor and property executive, was first recruited to the charity’s Board in 2011. At the time, the trust was submerged in a complex and highly disruptive infrastructure project involving the overhead railway lines that loom over the Market, and his professional expertise was of great value in the board’s knotty dealings with Network Rail. “I came in wearing my surveyor’s hat and initially that’s all I focused on, to be honest, because that’s what I knew,” he explains.

Since then, and particularly since taking over as chair at the start of 2020, his focus has broadened significantly, as has his understanding of the Market’s unique ecosystem. “It’s a very complicated situation,” he says. “When I came on board, it took me years to get my head around it all. There are dozens of very different traders, and they all have different priorities, different perspectives on what the Market should be and what it is they want to get out of their time here. Then on top of that there’s a fantastic community that we’re a small part of, and all those people have got a view too. This place is very important to a lot of very different people. Balancing all that is a real challenge.”

Adrian’s leadership of the Board began just weeks before the onset of the first Covid lockdown, which required rapid action to shore up the Market’s finances, support ailing businesses and provide the local community with safe access to essential ingredients. Within the same highly pressurised period, it also became apparent that the Market’s governance structures needed a rapid overhaul. “The governance framework we were working to dated from when this was a wholesale market, and it wasn’t fit for purpose when it came to how we work now,” says Adrian. “Updating that was just something that needed to be done, so we commissioned a full independent review. It wasn’t easy, but I do believe that out of it has come a solid bedrock that has allowed the board to now get on and think about the future.”

The shape that future takes will to a large extent be determined by two significant documents produced by the board during Adrian’s tenure: the Borough Market Food Policy and the 2030 Strategy. The first of these, published in 2022, sets out in simple terms the fundamental principles that will inform the Market’s approach to food in years to come, covering topics such as quality, accessibility, and social, economic and environmental sustainability. In the past, people both inside and outside the Market had their own implicit understanding of what Borough Market food should be; in future, it will be there in black and white, in a way that can be properly tested and explained. It’s an important step for Borough, and one that Adrian believes will have an influence well beyond SE1: “Every time we mention our Food Policy to other big-city markets around the world, they immediately say: ‘Could you send us a copy?’”  

The second document, the 2030 Strategy, recently made public after a lengthy period of consultation involving hundreds of stakeholders, clarifies what the charity’s purpose should be, summarises its ambitions in five key areas – food, place, voice, sustainability, and equity, diversity and inclusion – and sets out some of the more detailed commitments and initiatives required to achieve them. It acts as a roadmap for the Market for the remainder of the decade and leaves Shane Holland, Adrian’s successor as chair, and the rest of the Board with a clear sense of direction. “As I hang up my metaphorical Borough Market boots, I think I leave it standing in pretty good stead,” says Adrian. “There are a lot of challenges to face, but the trust is well equipped to confront them.”

He leaves here a changed man: “I’m much fussier now about what I eat, and I have much more of an appreciation about where it comes from – the impact on the planet, the welfare of the animals, the whole sustainability piece.” He also walks away with a deep admiration for a community asset whose importance shone through most vividly at the hardest of times. “Every time the place was in difficulties – the Network Rail project, the awful events of the London Bridge terror attack, the Covid pandemic – one of the things I noticed was the speed with which people stepped up and helped get it back on its feet again,” he says. “It’s at times like those that you see how much this place means to people. You see the lengths they’re prepared to go to in order to protect it. That’s why the responsibility of the trustees is such a significant one.”

“GOOD FOOD IS FAR MORE THAN JUST CALORIES. IT’S ABOUT LOVE AND CONNECTION AND A SENSE OF PLACE”

Images: Sim Canetty-Clarke, John Holdship, RED Agency

Shane Holland and Claire Pritchard have both been trustees of Borough Market for several years, volunteering their time to help lead the charitable trust that runs the Market. At the start of 2024, Shane took over as chair of the board, with Claire stepping up into the vice chair’s role.

You’ve both devoted your lives to working in food. What are the roots of your interest?

Shane: I grew up in a food and farming country, on the clifftops of Cornwall. We weren’t farmers, but many of the people we knew were. We were surrounded by good food. We went fishing, we went crabbing, we grew vegetables – that’s just what you did. It was only when I moved to London that I suddenly realised I’d been eating amazing food, because it was only then that I discovered what bad food was! Good food is far more than just calories. It’s about love and connection and a sense of place. Throughout my career in food, I’ve always aspired to that sense of connection and meaning. It’s my belief that everyone should have access to good food – the kind of food that makes us smile.

Claire: I grew up in the New Forest, but my parents were from Southampton, and they both grew up in post-war prefabs with very little money and not very good food. When they moved, my dad got himself two allotments and turned our garden into a soft fruit production. My mum taught herself to cook really well. Everything was made from scratch in our house – everything, even the custard cremes! We always ate round the table – seven of us, sometimes nine of us, every night, mostly well behaved, sometimes a bit unruly and passionate. I always saw food as something that brings joy and happiness. The reason I did my degrees in food and hospitality was that I wanted to work in places that bring that kind of pleasure.

What do you do for a living and how does it inform your approach at Borough Market?

Shane: I do a number of things, but all very much interlinked. I head up the Slow Food movement in the UK. I also sit on its international board for advocacy, thinking about our food systems within the UK context but also in a global context. How can we have better food systems that work for people rather than against people? How can we tackle issues around things like land sovereignty and climate change? I have the great privilege of guest lecturing at a number of universities. I also support independent businesses on food sourcing. Everything I do, including being a trustee here, relates to social justice and food access. Why can’t we all have good food? Why can’t we have local food systems? Why can’t we have short supply systems?

Claire: My day job is running a development agency in Greenwich, and food is a big part of our work. We work with about 200 food businesses on things like sourcing, sustainability and waste reduction. We also provide adult learning courses, cooking courses and cookery clubs, and we run a couple of markets. In addition to that, I’m the advisor to the Mayor of London on food policy, a role I’ve had for 15 years under three different mayors. Like Shane, I believe that if there was greater equity in the food system, we could all afford to have high-quality, sustainable, healthy food that’s good for the planet, for people, for our environment. We’re both looking at similar things, but Shane has that national and global perspective, while I mainly work within the smaller systems of a local borough.

What does being a trustee of the Market involve and why do you volunteer to do it?

Shane: Why do I do it? There’s a really easy answer: because it matters. Borough matters. If we want these things that we value in our communities, someone has to fill this role, and I’m happy to take that responsibility. We’re not involved in day-to-day operations – that’s down to the CEO and the staff – but we help steer the ship alongside the CEO. Every trustee’s job is to improve the organisation. If we’re doing that job properly, every time you come to the Market it should feel just a bit better than the last time you were here. But you shouldn’t necessarily be able to see why that’s happened. You should just sense it in the air. If that’s happening, we’ve done our job well.

Claire: What I’ve really enjoyed over the past few years has been the focus on developing the Market’s first-ever Food Policy, which Shane and I led on. I’ve been delighted by how that policy has evolved, what it’s saying and what it’s going to do for the Market in the years to come – we’re really proud of it. Things like that take a lot of work, but we knew that would be the case when we joined. Being a trustee here is quite an involved job, certainly more so than most trustee roles. The reason it’s so complex is that it’s a small organisation with a huge impact. There are so many stakeholders – the businesses, the staff, our neighbours, but then all the other people who’ve got a view of it, including the millions of people who visit each year.

So, where is the Market currently headed?

Claire: I feel that our 2030 Strategy really sets a pathway. It sets out an approach, a belief system. It’s about how we make sure we’re responsive to our local community, responsive to London. It’s about how we go about being a sustainable market, an accessible market, a diverse market, a good employer, an incubator of really good businesses. We need to take that strategy forward, and we need to do so while also being conscious of potential changes to the legal, political and social landscape we’re operating in. It’s a balance of taking the strategy forward while understanding that there’ll be external things that will be happening to us that we’ll have to respond to. We have so much work to do, but I believe we now have a really brilliant framework to work within.

Shane: For this to work, it’s important that we have a shared vision – and I really think that we do. We have a shared vision that we have the best market in the world and we need to make it even better. I think the questions that every trustee should ask themselves are: What is it that we need to do today to make this thing relevant tomorrow and even more relevant the day after? Who is the Market for? And how are we actually reaching those people?

What advice would you give to someone’s who’s shopping at Borough?

Shane: Talk to the traders. They’re the real experts. People often ask: “What’s your favourite stall?” But really the question should be: “What is it you want to eat today?” I don’t tend to want to eat the same food every single day, so that means I buy from different traders, and to really understand what they’re selling I need to ask them about it. Sometimes a trader’s products are exceptionally good on that particular day – they may have a highly seasonal product which only they sell. It’s by speaking to the traders that you get that real insight and find those real gems.

Claire: Exactly that: take your time and talk to the traders. And if you haven’t got time, watch the Instagram reels!

“MY SENSES ARE TRANSPORTED TO THE MELLOW AROMA OF THE SOUTH CHINA SEA AIR, RICH WITH TOASTED BELACAN”

Words: Jeremy Pang / Images: RED Agency

Tradition, the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, supposedly makes my job of writing about Lunar New Year an easy one. Each year, families gather with a tableful of symbolic dishes to bring in the New Year full of prosperity, health, longevity and a general abundance of all things good. There might be dumplings and spring rolls folded in the shape of gold ingots or bouillons, signifying wealth; whole steamed fish, a symbol of abundance; oranges, seen as basketsful of good fortune; nian gao (the new year cake), an augury of a more prosperous future.

I’ve often found it a little perplexing that so many of these New Year dishes symbolise enhanced wealth over everything else – our exhausting yearning for money seems to override the very humble nature of Asian food. And so, I approached a few trusted Borough Market vendors whose families celebrate the Lunar New Year to ask a slightly thought-provoking question: if they had the power to add new symbolic dishes to the celebration, what would they choose and what positivity and fortune would it bring to the feast?

Salina from Joli, Borough Market’s Peranakan (Chinese Malaysian) street food stand, would put her beef rendang on every celebratory table. It would be, she says, a “symbol of tranquillity”. Only Salina herself knows how many chillies are in that curry paste, and yet I took one bite at 10am and couldn’t stop eating it. She’s right: it’s magical. Joli’s rendang deserves to be a part of any Lunar New Year feast.

As a New Year gift to you all, Salina Khairunnisa has let me divulge part of her secret. Her rendang sauce recipe includes garlic, red chilli, shallots, lemongrass, galangal, fragrant lime leaves and freshly grated coconut (rather than desiccated). Plus a special kitchen built just to roast off the belacan (Malaysian shrimp paste) so her neighbours don’t shout at her about the pungent cooking smell! All of this is slow cooked to perfection, with just enough sauce to mop up with some coconut rice.

For her contribution, Worawan Kamann from Raya, a specialist Southeast Asian grocery store on the corner of the Market, suggests an ingredient rather than a dish. Worawan developed a childhood love of coriander root. She believes it is and always will be the road to a simple, wholesome life; an ingredient that should never carelessly be discarded or taken for granted as it holds so much precious flavour for most Thai cooking.

Bringing us back to more traditional Lunar New Year chitchat, Erchen Chang from the Bao Borough restaurant wonders why bao hasn’t been given the same importance as noodles and whole fish in the long list of auspicious foods traditionally found at a feast. She tells me about the true symbolic nature of a bao – “the ultimate full purse of prosperity” – which certainly helps explain the success of the Bao collective since its inception in 2012! Erchen’s symbolic dish of choice would be her Bao Borough favourite: steamed gua bao filled with soy-braised pork belly, coriander and peanut powder, topped with fermented mustard greens which also signify long life – a dish that is bound to fill anyone’s food purse with pure joy.

Something I talk about a lot in my latest book, Simple Family Feasts, is that finding a balance in flavour, texture and colour is the key to cooking the perfect Asian feast. And this iconic London food market has a knack of bringing the best of the world’s food and traditions together in one place for us to enjoy. Strolling through the Market, my senses are immediately transported back to Asia. From the mellowed-out aroma of the thick South China Sea air, rich with toasted belacan, to the vibrant basketfuls of mangosteens and green papaya, you can find everything you need right here. The distinctive link between the local British produce and these unique Asian food stalls seamlessly combines the best of all cultures and makes it so easy to find the right ingredients to balance out your Lunar New Year feast. Pick up a slab of pork belly for a melt-in-the-mouth slow braise at Ginger Pig, slide across to Furness Fish Markets for your whole steamed fish and some seafood to add a savoury bite and some real colour to the meal, stopping by Raya to get some crunch from a freshly made som tam before heading home.

Since Salina from Joli joined the Borough Market family, she has not only kept visitors to the Market well fed but has also introduced a Chinese lion dance performance for a Lunar New Year show. Come and join in the festivities, traditional and new alike, on 10th February 2024 and share our humble, simple yet festive celebrations in the most tranquil, delicious ways. There are woks full of food, and baskets full of bao waiting for you too – so long as the lion doesn’t get to them before you do! Whatever you decide to eat or cook, I wish you all a happy, prosperous, and most of all, relaxed, Lunar New Year.

“EVEN A TIME OF RESTRAINT FROM GOURMET INDULGENCES NEEDN’T BE A TIME FOR RESTRAINT WHEN IT COMES TO FLAVOUR”

Words: Gurdeep Loyal / Image: Rachel Phipps

As the celebrated aphorism goes: “Everything in moderation, including moderation”. After the indulgent marathon that is December, late winter is as good a time as any to sincerely commit to a little temperance. My own intentions at the start of every year are always to dial up on healthful food and drink, while taking a period of abstinence from alcohol (for as long as my willpower allows). But even a time of restraint from gourmet indulgences needn’t be a time for restraint when it comes to flavour. With zesty citrus fruits, winter berries and earthy beets all in peak season at Borough Market, a new year re-set also has the potential to offer up tastebud acrobatics, particularly when transformed into non-alcoholic shrubs, kefir shakes and other delicious elixirs.

Botanical non-alcoholic shrubs

A shrub is an intensely flavoured non-alcoholic cordial made by extracting flavour from fruits, herbs and spices with vinegar and sugar. I like to base mine on a raw, live organic cider vinegar, like Willy’s Cider Vinegar with Honey from Northfield Farm. Shrubs are highly versatile drinks, open to whatever combination of ingredients are in season. At this time of year, I’ll mix juicy citrussy fruits with a floral botanical and a warming spice. The tart, earthy flavour of dried hibiscus from Tea2You and the woodiness of cinnamon from Spice Mountain work wonderfully together, the cider vinegar drawing out their complementary aromatics. Blood orange or tangerine juice works well alongside these flavours, but for something a little unusual, look out for huge ombre-red pomelos, which have a berried citrussy flavour that’s a little like pink grapefruit, only zestier and sweeter.

Red pomelo, hibiscus & cinnamon shrub

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Zingy honey sodas

It’s easy to transform an ordinary fruit soda into something more exciting by making a zingy booster as an add-in. A punchy vinegar booster, sweetened with From Field & Flower’s manuka honey, can be added to any soda, but is especially delicious with rhubarb and tropical fruit drinks. Ginger is a good addition, but to mix things up, try galangal from Raya – another rhizome that has a sweeter, sharper, more citrussy flavour, which is wonderful combined with the zesty floral notes of lemongrass.

Lemongrass, galangal & manuka honey soda

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Kefir shakes & lassis

Hook & Son’s sharp, tangy, grass-fed kefir is great for turning into healthful shakes or Indian-style lassis, combined with tropical fruits, spices and a little something to sweeten the mix. Thai mangos from Raya are perfect to contrast with the bite of the kefir – with a little saffron and cardamon from Spice Mountain to amplify the bright sunshine flavours. A holy basil ripple – also known as ‘tulsi’ – is great to swirl through. This herb has been a staple in Southeast Asia for centuries, bringing a sweet, herbal, anise-like flavour to the tropical lassi. Bee pollen, sold in jars at From Field and Flower, has a pleasant resiny taste and also provides some crunch!

Mango & bee pollen kefir lassi with a tulsi holy basil swirl

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Juice shots

Tart, fruity redcurrants, sold in carboard punnets at Borough Market, are a delicious addition to juices and healthy shots at this time of year. They have a strong berry flavour that complements the earthier notes of fresh turmeric root. A little black pepper adds a kick of heat to give your juice shot some extra fire!

Redcurrant, beetroot, turmeric & black pepper juice shot

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