“IT’S COMMON IN AN ORCHARD TO KEEP GROWTH RIGHT DOWN, BUT WE LET OURS GROW UP WITH BLUEBELLS AND PRIMROSES”

So, what exactly is a cobnut? That, says Charles Tebbutt, founder of Food & Forest, is probably the question most often asked of him and his colleagues when they’re manning their Borough Market stall. The simple answer, he continues, is that a cobnut is a just hazelnut. But it’s a hazelnut with a very strong sense of time and place.

Around the world there are many species of hazel tree, from which numerous nut cultivars have been developed over the centuries, each one adapted to the microclimate and soil of its native region and the culinary preferences of the local population. The cobnut is an English variety synonymous with the county of Kent, where Charles and his colleagues maintain a beautiful historic orchard.

“The reason so many are grown in Kent is to do with the climate – it’s the Garden of England, after all – though there are producers elsewhere,” Charles explains. But while cobnuts would once have been a common sight in the shops and markets of London, production has in recent decades fallen off a cliff. “The reason it’s not more commonly grown today is that the nut has a peculiar shape and a very tight husk which makes it quite difficult to process mechanically. This adds an extra stage to the processing that you don’t get with other varieties.”

It also doesn’t help that the orchard’s entire bounty of cobnuts needs to be picked by hand in a matter of days, making harvesting hugely labour intensive. “Every year at the start of September, we harvest all our nuts in about two weeks,” says Charles. “The reason we work so quickly is that if you leave cobnuts on the trees for much longer you start losing catastrophic amounts to squirrels, which can genuinely be the difference between the year’s crop making or losing money.”

The 130-year-old orchard, which is managed in partnership with Gillian Jones under license from the National Trust, is located in the countryside close to Sevenoaks, bordered by high woodland. Like everything else at Food & Forest, the cobnuts are grown using agroforestry – a method of farming that limits soil erosion and encourages biodiversity by combining the cultivation of trees with that of other plants or animals. “The common practice in an orchard is to keep growth right down, mowing it every month or so, but we let ours grow up with bluebells and primroses,” Charles explains. The team have also been experimenting with the use of poultry to keep pests at bay.

For the first three weeks of September, the cobnuts kernels are sold on Charles’s stall in their fresh state. “When they’re fresh, they’re super creamy, with a kind of milky sappiness to them,” he says. “They have a lightness which is not there in dried or roasted nuts. I really like them – I find them refreshing, with a distinctive taste – but they have such a short window.”

Once that window is closed, the stall sells its cobnuts in their dried and roasted forms. Dried cobnuts are sweet and crunchy, with less of the milkiness of the fresh nuts – and that natural sweetness is intensified even further by roasting. “Roasting them creates more layers of flavour, really bringing out their sweet notes. It makes them great for cooking. We sell roasted cobnuts to bakeries for their cookies, cakes and patisseries. I’ve known people make dukkah – a Middle Eastern condiment made with herbs, nut, and spices – which I found really interesting. One of the stallholders at Borough Market uses them in vegan salads and another makes a wonderful dish of cobnuts, lentils and butternut squash. Personally, I like a bowl of good Greek yoghurt and some great honey, with roasted cobnuts sprinkled on top.”

“WE DON’T WANT TO JUST PUSH A BUTTON ON A MACHINE FILLED WITH PRE-MIX; THERE IS NO CARE THERE”

Words: Olivier Favrel / Images: Kim Lightbody

You cannot accelerate. You cannot cut corners. You can only follow the process until it is ready. Bread is the food of life, and it’s a living thing, which is why the relationship between bread and baker is so important. You can’t start it and then do something else; you have to stay with it, feel it, observe to see how it reacts, and adjust your methods accordingly. An unhappy baker, a distracted baker, can’t make good bread.

Good bread begins with the raw ingredient, which is good flour. We use organic British flour from Shipton Mill in Gloucestershire. Organic means no pesticides or chemical fertilisers have been used on the wheat, which means the grain is stronger and more deeply rooted in the soil, as it isn’t dependent on chemicals to grow and fight against the weather. This results in more nutrients and more flavour. Yet organic grain is not fully consistent. It changes according to the weather and the soil, so every week we need to think: how does this flour work?

This is good for us, because to do the same thing every week would be boring. We don’t want to just push a button on a machine filled with pre-mix; there is no care there. We have to adapt the quantities, the speed of mixing, the time, the temperature of fermentation and baking. Flour itself doesn’t taste of much; it is the water and salt and the way you use the flour that brings flavour to it. Time is the most important ingredient.

Most industrially made bread is rushed, which means adding stabilisers, soya and preservatives to speed up the process. Reducing the mixing time to seven or eight minutes, which is standard in most factories, results in much stronger chains of gluten, which are harder for your body to break down and digest. We spend around half an hour mixing, then each bread will spend four to six hours fermenting, then another two to three hours fermenting once it’s been shaped. If it’s not ready, it’s not rushed.

Another thing that creates flavour is the crust. Some people think a thin crust is a sign of better bread – but a thick crust will keep the inside of the bread softer for longer. We create ours by opening a damper on the oven during the final minutes of the cooking time, which allows the humidity in the chamber to escape and the sugars in the bread to caramelise, creating more flavour in both the crumb and the crust.

I didn’t go into baking to get rich. I am not looking to steal money from people. Our bread is priced well for what it is: made by hand, over the course of 12 hours, by skilled, experienced bakers. A loaf of our bread will feed you for a week. It will keep your family full.

From Borough Market: The Knowledge with Angela Clutton (Hodder & Stoughton 2022)

“THERE ARE SEVERAL HARD CHEESES THAT I’M INCAPABLE OF LETTING GO OF. BEAUFORT IS ONE OF THOSE CHEESES”

At Borough Market, finding amazing cheese is really not an issue. Choosing precisely which of the dozens of amazing cheeses to buy is, on the other hand, a significant challenge.

Emma Young knows a lot about Borough and even more about picking the perfect cheese to match your tastes, your mood, your recipe or your drink. Before becoming an author and cheese consultant and building a loyal social media following as The Cheese Explorer, Emma ingested a huge amount of knowledge (and even more French cheese) while working at the Market’s Mons Cheesemongers stall. Her debut book, The Cheese Wheel, lends her expert eye to the task of choosing and pairing cheese. To mark its launch on 17^th August, she has kindly put together her suggestions for a perfect Borough Market cheeseboard. Ask her again tomorrow and the list would no doubt be different!

Mozzarella di bufala Campana, Italy

The Parma Ham & Mozzarella Stand

During the summer, my consumption of mozzarella di bufala increases dramatically. Although I eat it all year round, it becomes a fridge staple in the warmer months as its refreshing, saline and milky qualities are not only fabulous to eat alone, but also to pair with tomatoes or simply a drizzle of olive oil.

Beaufort, France

Mons Cheesemongers

My fridge mainly consists of soft cheeses at any given moment. However, there are several hard cheeses which I adore and which, as soon as I taste them, I am incapable of letting go of. Beaufort is one of those cheeses. Alongside a savoury, umami guise, this Alpine cheese’s characteristic sweetness gives a further dimension and draws me in every time.

Torta de Barros, Spain

Brindisa

This is slightly more niche. A style of cheese that I wish for wider representation is the ‘torta’ style from Spain and Portugal. These are soft, typically washed-rind cheeses which use a vegetal coagulant from a cardoon (a thistle, like an artichoke). This coagulant creates an extra-gooey texture, resulting in an eating method that demands decapitation and spooning.

St Jude, UK

Neal’s Yard Dairy

This is just the most glorious of cheeses and whole heartedly one of my favourite British cheeses, full stop. Made in Suffolk, its rich milk and sometimes fudgy, sometimes feathered texture allow for not only a fabulous flavour but also a wonderful textural sensation.

Roquefort, France

Mons Cheesemongers

Yes, this is a strong cheese seen more frequently in the cooler months, but roquefort straight out of the fridge on a hot day is incredibly cooling and refreshing. Its spicy kick wakes you up too when you’re in a summery daze.

The Cheese Wheel by Emma Young (Ebury Press, £14.99)

“WHERE THERE ARE MAJOR TRAVEL ROUTES LIKE LONDON BRIDGE, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE THIRSTY TRAVELLERS EAGER FOR A BEER”

Words: Mark Riddaway

In the prologue to his boisterous Canterbury Tale of adultery, mistaken identity and flatulence, Chaucer’s well-oiled miller asks his audience for their indulgence: “If that I misspeke or say / Wite it the ale of Southwark, I you pray.” Or, in other words: if I can’t talk properly, blame the Borough beer.

Southwark has been closely associated with beer for the entire thousand-year span of Borough Market’s history – with boozing and food shopping having thrived here for very similar reasons. For centuries, London Bridge was the only route into the capital from the south, meaning that Borough High Street was a vital thoroughfare, especially after the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170 turned Canterbury into a major pilgrimage site. Where there are major travel routes, there will always be commercial opportunities – hence the evolution of the market – and there will always be thirsty travellers eager for a beer.

The Tabard, which was established at the foot of the bridge in 1307 and played host to the pilgrims in Chaucer’s novel, was the most famous of the area’s pubs. But it was far from alone. John Stow, in his Survey of London (1598), reels off a long list of those near the high street, many of which had been there for centuries: “From thence towards London Bridge, on the same side, be many fair inns, for receipt of travellers, by these signs, the Spurre, Christopher, Bull, Queene’s Head, Tabarde, George, Hart, Kinge’s Head, etc.” The St Christopher, the George and the Old King’s Head are still trading with the same names today.

Hopped up

During the medieval period, the ales consumed in the area’s pubs differed from modern beers in a fundamental way: it contained no hops. The simplest brews were made from grain and hot water, fermented with wild yeasts. Spices could be thrown in to add a bit of zing, but hops – those magical, flavour-packed flowers blessed with a bitter edge and exceptional preservative properties – were frowned upon despite their widespread adoption by continental brewers. In fact, they were frowned upon specifically because of their widespread adoption by foreigners: a clear sign to any proud Englishman that there must be something iffy about them.

Most pubs brewed their own ale, but Borough was also home to dozens of commercial breweries, and these were among the first in Britain to popularise the use of hops. By the 15th century, Dutch brewers had begun to build a significant presence in the area, making their delicious hopped beer (in the parlance of the time, beer contained hops, ale didn’t). This was the perfect place for them to settle: a frontier town, free from the strictures of the Worshipful Company of Brewers, which had built a stranglehold in the City of London and was working tirelessly to protect the interests of its hop-averse members.

The ale lobby did its best to convince drinkers that foreign beers were hallucinogenic, poisonous or fattening (in his Dietary of 1542, Andrew Boorde insisted, a little rudely, that “Dutch beer does make a man fat, and does inflate the belly, as it does appear by the Dutch men’s faces and bellies”), but the fact that English ale spoiled in a matter of days while continental brews tasted lovely and lasted for months soon made the commercial case for the adoption of hops pretty overwhelming. Kent, with its perfect weather conditions, soon became one of the world’s great centres for hop growers, and the brewers of Southwark their biggest customers.

Laying Anchor

Southwark’s most famous brewery, the Anchor, was established in 1616 by a London clothworker called James Monger, on land next to the Globe Theatre. The brewhouse passed down through the generations, but the family eventually became too grand and noble to be associated with so base a business, so it was sold in 1729 to its long-serving manager, Ralph Thrale.

Thrale’s son Henry, who inherited the Anchor in 1758, was a good friend of Samuel Johnson, who lived with him and his wife Hester (according to James Boswell, “a lady of lively talents, improved by education”) and helped them to become regular fixtures on the London literary scene. When he wasn’t hobnobbing with famous people, chasing after women of ill repute or bribing the Gordon rioters with beer and meat to stop them tearing down his brewery, Henry Thrale was busy turning the Anchor into a major commercial success. After his death in 1781, the business was put up for sale, with Johnson acting as one of the executors. On being asked his opinion as to the value of the property, he replied: “Sir, we are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.”

That potentiality was realised by a consortium led by David Barclay, one of the founding fathers of the banking dynasty that bore his name, and hence a specialist in avaricious dreams. With some serious money behind it, the Barclay Perkins & Co brewery grew at a rapid pace. In 1782, the Anchor’s annual output was 85,700 barrels. By 1809 it had passed 260,000 barrels, making it the largest brewery in the world. In 1832, a devastating fire ripped through the site – but the rebuilt factory was an industrial marvel, and by 1867 it was turning out a staggering 423,444 barrels. Edward Walford, writing in 1878, describes a vast complex whose “operations are to be seen in the utmost perfection, and on the most magnificent scale”. He finds himself a little overwhelmed by the steam engines, coolers, pumps, cogs, conveyors and vast copper boilers. The storerooms are “almost interminable”, containing 200 vats, each with an average capacity of 30,000 gallons. The brewery’s stables, he writes, can accommodate 200 dray horses.

Such was its epic scale, the Anchor became a regular stop for luminaries such as Otto von Bismarck and Napoleon III. One VIP who would regret dropping by was Marshal Haynau, an Austrian general notorious for his ill treatment of women. When Haynau paid a visit in September 1850, word quickly got around the principled and heavily muscled draymen that a vicious woman-flogger was on site, and an angry crowd began to gather. The marshal was knocked down with a bail of straw, stripped of his clothes and roundly beaten by the workers, who were joined by porters from Borough Market. According to a contemporary report in the Spectator, Haynau “was surrounded, pelted, struck with every available missile, and even dragged along by his moustache, which offered ample facilities to his assailants from its excessive length, it reaching nearly down to his shoulders”. He eventually found refuge in the George pub, where he hid in a locked room until the police arrived.

Barclay Perkins may have dominated the Southwark beer trade, but plenty of smaller breweries thrived in its shadow: Courage near Tower Bridge (confusingly also known as the Anchor Brewery, as if one wasn’t enough), founded in 1787; the Black Eagle Brewery, later known as Noakes & Co, founded in 1697 at White’s Grounds; Jenner’s on Southwark Bridge Road and many, many more.

Factored in

The presence of all these brewers turned Southwark into a major centre for the hop trade. The area was a magnet for factors (the middlemen who sold the growers’ hops) and merchants, who acted on behalf of the breweries. Any factoring company worth its salt had a fancy showroom in Southwark, where samples could be inspected. The biggest of the merchants was Wigan’s, which had vast warehouses on Southwark Street (and, apparently, a very handy cricket team).

Ironically, the one local building that just about everyone would associate with hops, the magnificent Hop Exchange, had less to do with the trade than the name suggests. Opened in 1867, it was built by speculators who hoped to cash in by providing a trading floor and offices for hop factors and merchants. But the businesses it needed to attract were mostly quite happy in their own buildings. In the end, most of the space ended up being rented out to an entirely random assortment of unrelated occupants.

The hop trade was eventually killed by a combination of war and economics. Several of Southwark’s hop warehouses were suffered bomb damage during the Second World War, and their replacements were built in Paddock Wood, Kent, rather than Borough. Hop factors then found themselves out of work after the establishment of the Hops Marketing Board, which centralised the trade. Finally, the use of hop pellets and concentrates, a surge in international competition and the growing popularity of lager combined to slash demand for Kentish hops.

A heady brew

Southwark’s brewers found themselves in a similar state of decline. Barclay Perkins, long past its peak, merged with Courage in 1955. The great Anchor brewery was demolished in 1981, the Courage brewing operation having moved to Reading. As the industry became concentrated in the hands of a few creatively moribund megacorporations, and kegs of bland, fizzy lager replaced barrels of real ales in the nation’s pub, British beer seemed set for the slops tray of history.

Over the past decade or two, there has been a Lazarus-like revival in the sector. Pioneers such as Borough Market’s Utobeer and The Rake bar helped create a growing demand for craft beers (and were doing so before the expression ‘craft beers’ even existed) and new breweries began to spring up in the railway arches and old industrial buildings of Southwark. In 2007 there were just 10 breweries in the whole of London, now there a well over 100, at least a dozen of which are in Southwark, home to the famous Bermondsey beer mile. Even Borough Market got in on the act, tapping into the expertise of its stallholders and contributors to create several annual runs of its own Borough Market Beer, including a damson porter and an earl grey saison, all of them made with hops grown in the Market Hall.

If there’s a bit of misspeaking going on around these parts, there’s a good chance that the ale of Southwark is once again to blame. And while such overindulgence isn’t to be encouraged, at least it’s historically appropriate.

Mark Riddaway is the author of Borough Market: Edible Histories, available now in paperback

“IF YOU LIGHT A FIRE AND START COOKING OVER IT, PEOPLE INSTINCTIVELY COME AND SIT NEXT TO YOU. IT’S IN OUR MAKEUP”

Interview: Mark Riddaway / Portrait: Neil White

James Whetlor started his cooking career at The Eagle, the legendary gastropub in Farringdon, before returning to his home county of Devon to work as a chef at River Cottage. He went on to found Cabrito Goat Meat, which takes kid goats that would otherwise be euthanised by the dairy industry and raises them within a network of high-welfare farms to supply meat to butchers and restaurants. James is also a whiz with a barbecue. His new book, The DIY BBQ Cook Book, provides instructions and recipes for creating your own barbecue from upcycled scrap and inexpensive building materials.

You’re clearly a man who loves cooking outdoors over fire. What’s the appeal?

The main thing that comes to mind is a Michael Pollan quote about how no one ever comes in and huddles around a microwave. There’s something deeply primal about cooking over fire. If you light a fire and start cooking over it, people instinctively come and sit next to you. That’s simply part of our makeup.

Also, cooking on a barbecue, you get flavours and textures that you just can’t with gas or electric. Boil up some purple sprouting broccoli on a hob and it’s delicious, but shove it on a barbecue and you get all the flavour of the broccoli plus the extra smoke and the charred edges and the rough textures. If you put some chicken in a tandoori marinade and then roast it in the oven, it’ll taste perfectly good, but it won’t have those seared edges and amazing variations in flavour and texture.

Finally, it’s enforced relaxation, because you can’t really leave it alone. If your life is as busy as mine, with two kids and work, having an enforced period where all you can do is basically sit in the garden watching something cook, that’s really good.

The DIY BBQ Cook Book explores how a barbecue can be conjured up from anything from a pile of breeze blocks to the drum of a washing machine. Are you a particularly practical man?

Not really. The first line of the book is: “I can’t put up a shelf.” That’s absolutely true. And the point is that you don’t have to have any real skills – just a bit of problem-solving and a certain amount of brute force. The book was born of my daughter’s sixth birthday. She wanted a party on the beach. I looked at my Big Green Egg barbecue and thought, I’m not lugging that all the way down. Instead, I picked up this washing machine drum that I’d smashed out of a broken washing machine. I took one of the grills from the Egg and laid it on top, and thought, I’ll give that a go. It was such a success I began to I wonder what else I could knock up.

All you need for a barbecue is somewhere to put the fire, a grill over the top, and something to hold it all in place. Eight breeze blocks, a bit of chicken wire and a paving slab, and you’ve got yourself something that will cook a whole lamb leg perfectly. A proper tandoor costs about £400 to buy, but you can buy three flowerpots and a bag of sand and make yourself a tandoor for £50.

BARBECUE, BOROUGH STYLE

You’ll find high-quality, high-welfare meat and poultry at Ginger Pig, Northfield Farm, Wild Beef and Wyndham House Poultry. For whole fresh fish, head to Shellseekers Fish & Game or Furness Fish Markets. Hickson & Daughter and Stark’s Fruiterers will handle the seasonal veg. Spice Mountain is a treasure trove of spices for your marinades and rubs, while Pimento Hill, De La Grenade, Arabica, Raya and Fitz Fine Foods between them offer a wide range of seasonings and sauces.

Does that approach of making something out of very little take us closer to the roots of American barbecue culture than a super-sophisticated outdoor oven costing hundreds of pounds?

I think it’s important with barbecue culture that we acknowledge where it’s from. I built a breeze-block smoker for the book, and I was very conscious that this technique of cooking – dig trenches, fill them with coals, splay the pigs out on top of iron poles and hang them over the trenches – is directly lifted from the Virginia tobacco plantations of the 16th, 17th century in America. That whole style of cooking came from enslaved Black people who had been stolen from Senegambia and brought across the Atlantic. These enslaved people kept part of their culture alive to such a degree that it seeped into US food. If you’ve ever seen Gone With The Wind, they have those amazing parties, all that amazing food, but who do you think cooked all the food? It was enslaved Black people using techniques we still use today and now celebrate as American barbecue culture.

In the book, you write in depth about the roots of US barbecue, but your recipes take in many other culinary influences, from Moroccan to Ethiopian, to Indian. What was behind that choice?

I love brisket and pork butts and sticky sauces and chicken wings and all that classic American stuff, but there are other parts of the world where people have been cooking over fire for longer than the USA has existed. According to the World Health Organisation, over half the population of the world still cooks over wood or charcoal every day. British barbecuing has come a long way in the past 10 years, and as we do with most things we’ve pointed our antennae towards America, but there’s much more diversity in barbecuing than we’re sometimes led to believe.

Let’s talk ingredients. What difference does the quality of meat make when you’re cooking on a barbecue?

A massive difference. If you’re eating rubbish meat from animals that have not been fed the best diets and not had the most exercise, it won’t have the flavour, the texture, the fat content. Sure, you can cover a lot of shortfalls in meat quality by covering it in a lot of sauce or smoking the hell out of it so it tastes of something other than the product, but that’s not the way I think. I learnt to cook at The Eagle. They might as well have tattooed it onto your skull: buy the best products you can and don’t mess with them. For ethical reasons, we should obviously be supporting higher-welfare, better-cared-for animals that come from a good supply chain that cares about its standards, but the meat tastes better too.

So, how should be go about sourcing meat?

In an ideal world, you should know the name of the farmer who produced your meat. I appreciate that for many people that isn’t very easy to do, but within a few miles of you there’s probably a very good butcher who does know the name of the farmer – and that’s good enough. The other thing that people underestimate about butchers is you can walk in there with questions. You can say: “I’ve got these people coming, I’ve got this to cook on, I quite fancy it tasting like this.” Your butcher will go: “Well, here are your options.” They know food, and they’ve made it their job to know food.

What’s the secret when it comes to barbecuing fish?

The trick is ‘hot’. I would always recommend people cook whole fish, because it will inherently hold itself together better than a fillet. Make sure it’s properly oiled, make sure it’s properly seasoned, and then cook it like you would a steak. I think that’s the way to think about it. Get the barbecue really, really hot, drop it on, and then whatever you do don’t fiddle with it. If you leave it alone, the skin won’t stick and you’ll get those little ridges where the grills are, and loads of nice little burnt crispy bits that give you lots of different flavours and textures. When you turn it, get your spoon or spatula under the top ridge of the fish and flip it over its belly. That way you, it should hold together. You’ll know it’s done once its eyes go white.

It’s not all about the protein though, is it? Unsurprisingly, as a former River Cottage chef, you take veg very seriously.

The seasonal stuff is just fantastic, right? Buy the best seasonal veg you can, stick it on the barbecue, a squeeze of lemon, a bit of salt, and eat it – amazing. For the book, we did some photography at Trill Farm Garden in Devon. They’ve got five acres, it’s all organic, and honestly, it is unbelievable what they achieve in that space. It was the end of August, so almost the perfect time to be barbecuing, and I had a load of their hispi cabbage, a load of leeks, a load of tomatoes. It all went on this massive barbecue that I’d built. Veg doesn’t require the tending and the prep and the cooking time that meat demands. Maybe trim it a little bit, marinate it and cook it for a few minutes. I was just cutting them in half, dipping them in olive oil, and throwing them on the fire. They were coming back charred and succulent and juicy. Just make sure your veg is properly seasoned, and you’ll have something genuinely fantastic in a matter of minutes.

“IT FEELS LIKE WE HAVE ALLIES EVERYWHERE AND THAT’S WHAT MATTERS MOST. WE CAN JUST BE OURSELVES, ALL THE TIME”

Interview: Mark Riddaway

The Cider House is Borough Market’s specialist cider and perry bar, offering drinks on draft and bottles of every kind, to drink at the Market or take home. Most of the ciders are English, but the increasingly wide world of cidermaking is strongly represented, with brews from Scotland, Wales, the United States, France, Ukraine, and anywhere else that apple mulch is turned into beautiful booze. And it’s not just The Cider House’s range of bottles that is colourfully diverse, as the stall’s co-managers Aimee and James can attest.

We’re speaking during Pride month. Why is that of particular importance to you at The Cider House?

Aimee: A lot of us in the business, me included, are part of the LGBTQ+ community. I’ve worked in the drinks industry for a while now and it can be hard, because traditionally it’s been very straight, very white, very cis male. But drinks are for everybody. Cider is for everybody. When I got the job here, one of the reasons I was instantly very into it was that I knew I could just be who I am, without having to compromise or change, without having to fit into a mold.

James: I think because we’re so diverse – across the range of ethnicities, and across the LGBTQ+ community, myself being trans and gay – we’re able to offer an inclusive face for people who want to try new things but might feel a little intimidated. We’re able to put the message out there that there’s much more to cider than just a pint of Strongbow in a pub and that the people behind the fine cider movement are as diverse as the drink itself. We want everyone to feel comfortable – customers and staff alike.

It’s easy to presume that in years gone by the cider world would have felt quite blokey and conservative. Is that changing?

James: It has changed a lot in the past five years or so. I feel like we’re at the beginning of an upswing similar to one that craft beer went through about 10 years ago. Craft beer became this huge, diverse, inclusive market, where before it had been quite a blokey thing; now the same is happening with cider. It’s no longer just something that men in Somerset make. It’s a huge industry that employs people of all genders, all ethnicities, all sexualities. We have ciders made by people in the queer community, by women, by men, the whole range. Anyone can make cider, anyone can enjoy cider, and that’s what we want to showcase at The Cider House.

Beyond your stall, does Borough Market feel like an inclusive place to you?

Aimee: Everybody’s so lovely here. It’s weird, because we’re all part of Borough Market, but we’re all in separate businesses. And even though we’re all doing different things, somehow we’re all really similar. There’s this real sense of togetherness. It feels like we have allies everywhere – the traders, the management, the lovely security team – and that’s what matters most. We can just be ourselves, all the time, which is the reason I love working here so much.

James: I have to say, when I first got the job here, I was a little wary of what the Market community would be like, but I felt comfortable straight away. Then the first time I saw the Pride flags go up and the posters saying this a place for everybody, it made me feel even more at home in my workspace. Sometimes being LGBTQ+ can feel a little isolating. When the people in your workspace, the place you spend most of your days, are so open about their support, that’s a huge thing.

For all the progress that has been made, intolerance still thrives in our society. Do you ever experience it yourselves?

James: I haven’t found direct prejudice towards my sexuality or gender in public places. It’s more on social media these days. People find it easier to say mean things when they’re not saying it to your face. They like to hide behind their screens. It’s definitely on social media that the biggest amount of progress still needs to be made.

Aimee: I made a Pride post for our Instagram, and because the Market team collaborated with me on it, it reached a lot of people. We had a lot of amazing comments, but we did have a nasty comment from someone. Borough Market instantly hid it, which was great. They were like: “No, we’re not having that. Gone.” When you surround yourself with people who are so supportive, you forget that intolerance still exists, but it does, and it probably always will. It’s just about being louder than them. It’s about inclusivity being louder than intolerance.

It’s London Pride on 1st July. What will you be doing to mark the occasion?

James: I’m going to pop over after my shift. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s great to celebrate who we are, unapologetically. That’s the whole point of Pride, I think.

Aimee: At The Cider House, we try to be as proud as we can every single month of the year, but this is a time when we can be really visible, feel really accepted, and celebrate how far we’ve come. On that Saturday, it’ll be like we’re having our own little Pride parade. Given how slowly people walk through the Market on a Saturday, it’s basically always a parade!

“LEAF SALADS ARE A NO-NO: AS REFRESHING AS A BIG PLATE OF GREENS MIGHT SEEM, THEY WILT AS SOON AS YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE”

When I was a child, I loved Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books, but it wasn’t the escapades with smugglers and kidnappers that I gobbled up with the most enthusiasm, it was the descriptions of food and in particular, the picnics – fat tomato sandwiches, boiled eggs, buttery homemade shortbread, ginger beer and always, always “a screw of salt” to bring the food to life.

I couldn’t imagine anything better than sitting among the grass with friends, eating such a feast. And I still feel the same way today. In this blustery, rainy country, there is something so joyous about eating outdoors – and for the keen cook, there’s a delicious challenge in working out how to create the perfect spread.

The test, of course, is working out what foods can withstand the multiple trials of being taken on a long journey; thrown about in a bag or hamper; sitting out in sun for hours; and/or being sat on by small children. For this reason, leaf salads are a no-no: as refreshing as a big plate of greens might seem, they wilt as soon as you leave the house. Instead, pack chunky crudités like carrot sticks or celery with homemade dips, or boxes of roasted veg. Dressings should be carried separately and mixed in just before you eat.

Sandwiches are a picnic mainstay, though they can be a bit soggy by the time you’ve found the perfect spot with shade/sun/proximity to pub. I love stuffed picnic loaves, partly because they’re very robust, but also because they are such fun to make. Simply take a big round loaf, slice off the lid, and hollow out the inside. Then stuff it with layers of your favourite ingredients, like cheese, olives and ham (this is a brilliant use for all those delicious antipasti sold at Borough Market). Put the lid back on top and squash down for a few hours with some heavy tins, before taking to the picnic and slicing for everyone to enjoy.

There are picnic fanatics who spend days designing their dream al fresco menu. Victorian cookery writer Mrs Beeton wrote that for her ideal picnic, one should prepare “a joint of cold roast beef, a joint of cold boiled beef, two ribs of lamb, two shoulders of lamb, four roast fowls, two roast ducks, one ham, one tongue” – plus stewed fruit, biscuits, fruit turnovers, “four dozen cheesecakes” and a plum pudding. But I’m a firm believer that you should keep picnic food simple, and delicious; after all, your plans could so easily be ruined by the not-so-great British weather.

Simplicity is especially important when it comes to dessert, by which point I find most people just want a quick dose of sugar before they go off to play frisbee. I like to fill some glass jars with a sort of deconstructed cheesecake: layers of sweetened cream cheese, a quick coulis and fruit with crumbled brownies or cookies bought from one of Borough’s bakery stalls.

Re-using old jars is just one of the ways you can make your picnic as environmentally friendly as possible. Avoid paper plates and plastic knives and forks if you can – a picnic feels better with proper plates and cutlery anyway, even if you don’t have a posh hamper. Beeswax wraps are a smart re-usable alternative to clingfilm, and it’s also worth planning foods that don’t need too much disposable wrapping. I like to make a filo pastry and salmon pie in a tin that I can take to the picnic in the tin itself (just cover the top with another tin base or a tea towel).

A delicious homemade drink turns a good picnic into a great one. In June and July, try putting the under-appreciated British gooseberry to good use in a refreshing gooseberry lemonade, or make homemade iced tea, a drink that can be customised for the grown-ups with a splash of gin, which never goes amiss. But avoid packing anything too alcoholic – think thirst-quenching rather than something that will give you a hangover by 3pm. After all, if you’re lucky and the sun is shining, you might be out picnicking for hours. That’s what the Famous Five would have done.

“INTERVIEWS WITH BAKERS, BUTCHERS AND CHEESEMAKERS, EXPOSED ME TO THE PASSIONS THAT DRIVE PEOPLE TO MAKE FOOD”

People who have done both will occasionally remark that writing a book is akin to having a baby. I’m yet to experience motherhood so am not best placed to judge, though I will accept that creating a book renders you similarly incapable of thinking or talking about anything else for quite a while.

Where the two definitely differ, however, is in their inception. Unlike a child, there is rarely one clear point in which a book is conceived. They are instead an accumulation and distillation of moments and experiences, some of which feel important at the time, many of which only appear so in retrospect. Like my dad scrambling eggs in the microwave or my briefly dating a man who drank Huel because he was “too busy to chew”.

Working with Borough Market, however, has been one of those experiences that I knew all along to be formative. It is where my food writing career began and where it continues. It is where the seeds of my new book, Hungry Heart, were sown.

From my first trader interview (with Hayleigh from So Chocolicious, I think) to my most recent field trip to the Arbroath smokehouse that supplies Oak & Smoke, the Market has rooted me firmly in its values of community, largesse and sustainability. When I first started working on Market Life magazine in 2012, I was still recovering from the eating disorders that had sabotaged much of my teenage years. It was Borough, its traders and their produce that taught me how food represents so much more than flavour and calories; that a good meal in company of good people sustains our minds and relationships as much – if not more than – it does our bodies.

Interviews with cheesemakers, bakers and butchers exposed me to the passions that drive people to make food and drink. To talk to any of these hard-working individuals, who slog away for hours on end, often while most of us are sleeping, is to receive a lesson in life, love and philosophy – be that the curiously intense relationship a baker has with their starter, the mindfulness of cutting and stacking cheese curds, or the respect owed to an Iberico ham leg, expertly cured.

The most philosophical of all the producers I interviewed at the Market was – perhaps unsurprisingly – a French baker, Olivier Favrel of Olivier’s Bakery, whose bakery in Bermondsey I was fortunate enough to visit. I write about that visit in Hungry Heart, about the huge sacks of flour, the ovens, the scent of freshly baked boules, pains au levain and baguettes, of course – and how the one style of bread Olivier refuses to bake is the roll. “Bread is for sharing,” he said. “If you pay attention at dinner or lunch, you will feel a little difference when people pass each other the bread – more than passing the salad, or the salt and pepper. There’s a connection there: in the bread being touched, broken and shared around. There’s no love in an individual roll.”

Indeed, the relationship between bread and love runs deep. I devote a whole chapter to it, during which I recall eating a basket of bread in Paris with my best friend, Lizzie. We’d barely eaten all day and, scraping the last of the butter onto our final pieces of bread, I felt in practice what I’d only known before in theory: that to break bread with friends doesn’t just mean to eat with them. It means to chew over thoughts and experiences. It means to partake in a tradition that transcends countries and cultures, that represents civilisation, conviviality and hope.

The baguette is the quintessence of France and French hospitality. It’s something the French pride themselves on. It connects them – quite literally, in the queue for the boulangerie every morning, and more poetically through the act of sharing. If all Olivier wanted was to make money, he would make rolls, for which he could charge a lot more per unit – but he is content not making much money. He told me he feels rich enough in his wife, young twins, Oscar and Ophelia, and in his customers; and he is constantly struck by the power of baking to bring them joy.   

It was also Borough that taught me the importance of process to food and drink – to its production, of course, but also to its consumption. At one point I interviewed a director at Neal’s Yard Dairy, who told me that day by day the team at the company’s Bermondsey headquarters and maturing rooms take turns to cook lunch, then sit down and feast together at the long wooden table occupying the centre of the room. It was vital to how they worked, he said: on a practical level, by boosting communication between different departments, but on a personal level too, by ensuring each employee feels valued and can foster meaningful friendships. The Market is full of such examples of companies and communities forged and reinforced through good food.

A simple lunch lovingly prepared and enjoyed with others cannot compare with a supermarket sandwich eaten alone over your keyboard. A chocolate truffle handmade with Ghanaian cocoa sourced from farmers who can invest in their community will inspire more mindful eating than a Twix between calls. At Borough – and beyond – I learned to slow down and consider food not as fuel but as a fulcrum: the steady, sumptuous beat to which our days, weeks, months and years play out. To understand the value of that precious first cup of tea in the morning, or of plump, perfect ravioli bursting with beetroot, is to understand the value not just of meals, but of all that meals signify: time spent together, the change in seasons, human ingenuity, discovery, familiarity and simple pleasures.

Hungry Heart is not just my story: far from it. There are interviews with friends, food psychologists, anthropologists, even a kitchen designer. I speak to fellow food writers and friends of the Market, like Diana Henry, Bee Wilson and Polly Toynbee; I speak to chefs like Jeremy Lee, and I speak to traders. My story – of my grandparents’ hotel kitchen, my parents’ divorce and the dinners my newly single dad scrambled together with love and a microwave, my parents remarrying and our forging new families around old kitchen tables, my eating disorders and my recovery – is simply the thread that connects this wealth of other stories and creates what is hopefully a universal tale.

As our relationship towards what, when and where we eat becomes ever-more complicated, the time feels ripe to cut through the clutter and ask how food shapes our love for other people and ourselves. Many of the answers can be found at Borough Market.

Hungry Heart: a story of food and love, by Clare Finney (Quarto)

“WE’VE GONE WITH ESTONIAN BEER OVER BELGIAN – A DECISION AS SEEMINGLY ARBITRARY AS MOST EUROVISION VOTING”

Next Saturday, a load of charismatic and talented individuals from all over Europe will gather in an arena filled with noise and colour to share with a happy crowd the best their countries have to offer. So, just another day at Borough Market, that most lively and European of marketplaces.

Elsewhere, it’s also the Eurovision Song Contest.

If you’re planning to watch the festivities unfold from the Liverpool Arena, our highly cosmopolitan traders can offer an appropriately diverse range of party food: cheeses, cured meats, breads, sweets and enough high-quality booze to get even the most reticent of watchers dancing along to German glam metal.

Here’s our shopping list: 18 products from 18 countries whose singers will be performing this week.

If you want to be a completist, there are plenty of other Eurovision nations whose food can be found at Borough – Icelandic halibut or Norwegian fjord trout from Shellseekers, a Cypriot halloumi salad from Gourmet Goat, the Georgian khmeli suneli spice blend from Spice Mountain – but here we’ve focused on more obvious options for a sofa-based party.

The most glaring omission from our roundup is probably a premium Belgian beer, which Utobeer provides by the bucketful. We’ve gone with Estonian beer instead – a decision as seemingly arbitrary and potentially unfair as most Eurovision voting.

AUSTRALIA

Kilikanoon Killerman’s Run cabernet sauvignon from Cartwright Brothers Vintners

It’s questionable why Australia has a place at Eurovision, but this Clare Valley red makes it all worthwhile. Cassis and tobacco leaf aromas carry through to the palate, with a touch of smoky oak.

AUSTRIA

Kaminwurzen from Alpine Deli

‘Chimney sausages’ from South Tyrol, the mountainous border region between Italy and Austria. Gently smoked over beech wood and air-dried for four weeks, they’re perfect TV-watching food. No cutlery needed.

CROATIA

Kozlović Malvazija white wine from Taste Croatia

A crisp, zesty, mineral-rich white wine produced by the Kozlović family in the Valle valley, in the Istria region of Croatia, an underappreciated winemaking heartland.

DENMARK

Gravadlax from Shellseekers Fish & Game

A Nordic classic made with salmon from the Faroe Islands. But the Faroe Islands aren’t in Eurovision, we hear you say. True. But the archipelago is part of the Kingdom of Denmark – so it still counts.

ESTONIA

Põhjala beers from Utobeer

A range of consistently excellent beers created in Tallinn, Estonia at a brewery founded in 2011 by four local beer enthusiasts. Easy to drink, but not – to a non-Estonian – quite so easy to say.

FRANCE

Camembert Fribois from Une Normande a Londres

This gooey, full-flavoured, raw milk camembert is made in Saint-Loup de Fribois, Normandy. A cheese as salty and enjoyable as Graham Norton’s commentary.

GERMANY

Pretzels from Artisan Foods

Germany consistently underperforms at Eurovision comparative to its size and influence, but its pretzels are born winners. These big pillowy bows are both soft and salty. Perfect with a beer.

GREECE

Amfissa green olives from Oliveology

Exceptional handpicked olives from the Atrapos Farm, an organic and biodynamic farm in central Greece, pickled with herbs. Firm, green flesh; fresh, bright taste.  

IRELAND

Gubbeen from Neal’s Yard Dairy

“Bouncy, unctuous and smooth” is how Neal’s Yard Dairy describes this beautiful brine-washed cheese from County Cork. Throw in “cheesy” and you’d have a perfect description of most Eurovision songs too.

ISRAEL

Babka from Shuk

As sweet and satisfying as a 12-point score, these braided Israeli-style bakes are filled with rich hazelnut and dark, sticky chocolate.

ITALY

Red Cow parmesan from Bianca Mora

The finest Parmigiano Reggiano, made from the milk of Vacche Rosse cattle. Has won more Slow Food awards over the years than fiddle-infused Irish ballads have won Eurovision. And that’s a lot.

NETHERLANDS

Oude Beemster Gouda from Borough Cheese Company

The Dutchest of Dutch cheeses. Not only is it the platonic ideal of a buttery, fudgy, crystal-flecked gouda, the defining cheese of the Netherlands, it’s also orange. 

PORTUGAL

Pinhais sardines in olive oil, ‘millésime’ edition, from The Tinned Fish Market

Like a UK entry that doesn’t completely tank, the millésime (‘vintage’) version of these Portuguese sardines isn’t something you’ll see every year – only when the fat ratio and size of the fish are up to scratch.

SPAIN

El Artesano Raúl Valcarce bittersweet figs from Brindisa

These green figs are picked while still firm, then marinated in vinegar, sugar and spices. A delicious accompaniment to a plate of hard cheeses and cured meats. As bittersweet as a Julio Iglesias croon.

SWEDEN

Brännland Claim Iscider from The Cider House

If Sweden win on Saturday – and they’re favourites to do so – this is the drink to toast their victory. It’s the cider equivalent of an ice wine, made after the winter cold has intensified the sweetness of the apples.

SWITZERLAND

Young Emmental from Jumi Cheese

Elastic in texture, mild but complex in flavour and marked by large holes. Probably the most recognisably Swiss foodstuff and a potential winner of whatever the cheese equivalent of Eurovision might be.

UK

Melton Mowbray pork pie from Mrs Kings Pork Pies

An east Midlands classic that’s been produced in Melton Mowbray under the Mrs Kings name since the 1853 edition of Eurovision, won by a controversially up-tempo waltz from the Austrian Empire.

“BACK IN THE 1950S CHICKEN WAS STILL CONSIDERED A LUXURY MEAT, LARGELY RESERVED FOR THE TABLES OF THE WEALTHY”

Image: Jenna Roberts (@JennaFifi)

When Edward VII came to the throne in 1902, a Lincolnshire farmer decided to honour the new monarch by giving his name to a new breed of potato – the King Edward – which went on to become one of the great staples of British cookery, a source of some of the very best roasties you’ll ever eat. Half a century later, his great-granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II had a similarly indirect influence upon British cuisine when her coronation inspired the creation of one of the nation’s most misunderstood sandwich fillings: coronation chicken.

That such an auspicious occasion should result in so seemingly prosaic a dish was, in a way, entirely fitting. The Queen’s coronation ceremony took place on 2nd June 1953, and despite being a triumphant affair, the events of that day carried a distinct air of post-war austerity. The official banquet at Buckingham Palace involved a restrained four-course meal – a starter of chicken consommé, a main course of filet de boeuf mascotte (fillet of beef with artichokes, cocotte potatoes and truffle), a salad, and a simple dessert of mango ice cream.

To put this in context, at James II’s coronation in 1685 the first course alone consisted of 46 different dishes, brought into Westminster Hall by a procession of 73 people, including three on horseback. At Henry VI’s coronation in 1429, the menu included boars’ heads “in castles armed with gold”, a roasted peacock that had been painstakingly stuffed back into its own skin and feathers, a fritter “like the sun”, and a jelly illustrated with “the writing and musical notation of Te Deum Laudamus”. Henry himself was still a month short of his eighth birthday and would probably have been perfectly happy with a nice cake.

Coronation chicken was invented not for the main banquet, as is often stated, but for a lunchtime function attended by several hundred foreign dignitaries who were in London for the celebrations. The dish tends to be attributed to the celebrity florist, interior designer and general domestic goddess Constance Spry, who was responsible for the flower arrangements at the coronation, and its recipe was published for the first time in 1956 in The Constance Spry Cookery Book – a vast, 1,000-plus-page masterpiece of 1950s home economics. In reality, coronation chicken (like most of the dishes in Spry’s book) was created by the florist’s friend and close collaborator Rosemary Hume. Hume was a respected chef who had founded the L’Ecole du Petit Cordon Bleu cookery school in Victoria in 1933. In 1946 Hume and Spry joined forces to open a domestic science school in Winkfield Place, Berkshire, and when the college’s students were asked to cater for the coronation lunch, Hume set about inventing a new dish for them to serve.

These days, we expect coronation chicken to be a vivid yellow gloop, sweet with sultanas and lumps of fruit and spicy with curry sauce. But Hume’s original dish, as is to be expected from a woman who trained in Paris under the classical culinary master Henri-Paul Pellaprat, was very different to the oozing sandwich filling that would come to take its name. This was a subtle, creamy concoction, delicate in flavour and created with not a single sultana in sight. It was designed to be served with a rice salad rather than splodged between slices of bread.

Most of what you need to recreate Hume’s version can be bought at Borough Market. It all begins with the chicken, of course, which back in the 1950s was still considered a luxury meat, largely reserved for the tables of the wealthy. You’ll be able to buy suitably regal, slow-growing breeds at any of the Market’s butchers, all of them packed with the deep flavours such birds were valued for in the days before battery cages, high-protein feeds and intensive drug regimes turned chicken into a cheap, bland and ethically questionable staple. 

Exactly what the Queen thought of coronation chicken was not a matter of public record. One thing is certain, though: it’s an easier dish to produce at home than re-stuffed peacock.

Mark Riddaway is the author of Borough Market: Edible Histories (Hodder & Stoughton)