Discover London – before it's too late

Leadenhall Market

Some years ago, just as I was getting interested in photography, I took to going on Sunday morning photo safaris around London.

Some were to the more salubrious areas, some to where visitors mass and others still to streets and alleys that will not be likely to find themselves on the tourist trail.

Quite a few of these came as a result of an informal online photographic project: each week, the person organising it would set a place as a subject and those who wanted to participate would go, snap away and then share their efforts.

It was interesting to see how different people saw and approached the same subject, and it also provided an opportunity to discover parts of the city one might not otherwise ever come across.

I hadn’t thought about this for some time, but was reminded of it this morning by seeing #DiscoverLondon trending on Twitter.

‘Yes,’ I thought: ‘discover London before it’s too late.’

Falkirk Street, Hackney

There’s not been a time since I moved to London in 1988 that there hasn’t been construction work going on somewhere. But in recent years, in almost every direction, the skyline has become a forest of cranes as development and redevelopment have surged ahead.

Now I want to be clear that I have no aversion to modern architecture per se – I’ve enjoyed quite a few rambles with the camera amid the steel and glass, but what’s happening now is not the stuff of good or interesting new building.

Crypt window, Christ Church Spitalfields

This blog has previously touched on the boom in high-rise towers that are soaring above us. Some of them are interesting buildings. Some – and I am thinking particularly about the ‘Walkie Talkie’ – are simply hideous.

But even that is not the point. The gentrification of London – and it’s happening elsewhere too – is getting dangerously out of hand.

There’s a human cost to this: it’s a form of social ‘cleansing’ that has been discussed far and wide. The cost of housing long since became ridiculous – it’s now a question of

St George's Garden

needing to find over £400k for a home in the capital.

In September last year, it was reported that the average cost of a home in London was £515k. It’s £272k in the rest of Britain, which is hardly cheap.

Wages have not risen to the extent that most people can get a mortgage for three times their annual income that will buy them such a home. How mortgage lenders are, therefore, getting around this, I do not know, but it can hardly be sensible and sustainable.

Off Middlesex Street

There’s another aspect to the gentrification, though: it’s producing a city where character is disappearing as fast as the developers move in.

Denmark Street – our Tin Pan Alley – is earmarked for replacement with the anodyne. Norton Folgate, in the City, is under serious threat too. Soho is having its soul stripped out.

Many other areas are going the same way.

In Brixton just this last weekend, there was a demonstration against what’s happening there, with communities feeling that they’re being forced out by redevelopment and rising prices.

Change Alley

The situation is, however, complicated by

certain factors.

Broadway Market, just around the corner from me, has undergone a revolution in the last 12 years or so.

Moving into the area two decades ago, it was three quarters derelict, usually with hardly a soul around and not enough shops to buy the ingredients for a meaningful meal.

As illustrated previously, in a lengthy interview with one of the very few traders who had survived those desolate years, the growth of supermarkets had been a factor in that decay.

Pearly king at Covent Garden

A piece of local graffiti was memorable because it was accurate: “Broadway Market,” it declared: “not so much a sinking ship as a submarine.”

As the street started to revive, some locals complained. Yet apart from some dastardly dealings by local developer Roger Wratten by name rat by nature, it’s not been a case of losing much.

The street is always busy now – which also means it’s a bigger employer – is a darned sight more pleasant (even with the hipsters and more wheelie toys than Hamleys on a Saturday), and has enough of a range of independent shops that you can actually do most of your shopping there.

No, they’re not the same sort of shops, but since the majority of those who had abandoned the street for Tesco all those years ago had shown no sign of coming back, the shops are catering to a different, more middle-class market because that’s how they’ll survive as businesses.

Princelet Street

Those who complained that there shouldn’t have been any market on Saturdays, on the grounds of gentrification, never had any alternative plans to revitalise the street.

Similarly, you see something similar when dozens of people suddenly turn up to protest against a local pub shutting, having not bothered to give it any custom for years, if ever.

In other words, the issue is neither entirely straightforward nor bad per se.

But the problems don’t stop with regeneration. As has been seen across London, rising rents then further push the small independents out, to be replaced by franchises and chains.

Coronet Street

Think Leadenhall Market – a glorious building, tragically sanitised as hiked rents drove out the

likes of a fabulous fishmonger, a poulterer and a butcher.

Think Borough Market – revived to foodie heaven, but now becoming ever more a vastly over-priced stop on the tourist trail.

London is in danger of becoming simply a sort of theme park for those passing through.

So do #DiscoverLondon: look up above street level when you’re on foot: even Oxford Street is interesting when you gaze above the shop fronts. Look at the street art too – some of it can be fascinating and adds to some otherwise dour areas.

Postman's Park

Find out about some of the places where the photographs here were taken. Maybe even go and have a look at some of places they were taken in.

We have a fascinating city. So take a little time to discover beyond the bland and the corporate and the soulless.

And take any opportunity to look a little deeper, if you discover that an area is being scheduled for redevelopment.

Let’s all attempt to ensure that London – and all our cities and towns – are not rendered devoid

of any character by those who have no interest in them other than as money machines.

Look before it's all gone

And don’t forget that local businesses will only survive if we use them. Don’t go crying outside that pub or that butcher or that library when its shutters go up for the last time if you’ve never crossed the threshold in the past decade.

All photographs copyright.

• You can follow @londonerwalking, @SpitalfieldsT and @createstreets on Twitter to find out more about the city, its history, regeneration and development.

It's all in the game

Autumnal Hackney sunset

The weather has been so all over the place for the second year running that, according to some reports, English apples are only now appearing on supermarket shelves – a full three weeks later than normal.

But while the temperature may yet be clinging to levels that are unusual for October – and even producing an unwelcome mugginess – the days have shortened and, in London at any rate, a certain greyness has been the dominant theme of the last fortnight.

In the carpark at the back of Voluptuous Villas, the slender silver birches are yellowing fast, while leaves are starting to fall steadily.

That it is autumn then, can no longer be in doubt.

If apples and pears are now arriving – actually, I’ll let you into a little secret: English apples have been available on Broadway Market on a Saturday since early September – and if parsnips are but a frost away from adding their sweetness to our plates, then another thing is sure: the game season is upon us.

Back in June, when all anyone cared about was summer, given that spring had gone missing in inaction, a new book landed on my doormat.

Bruno Loubet’s Mange Tout offered a selection of recipes that perfectly fitted the long days and the rising temperatures.

As I mentioned here, the confited salmon with asparagus and green gazpacho is a delight and will be done again when the English asparagus pops its head above the soil next year.

But amid all the excitement over summer food, an autumn dish stood out for me from that early browsing: pigeon with cauliflower done two ways, and a blackberry sauce.

One of the delights with Bruno’s cooking is that, even when you haven’t heard of a dish or a food combination before, they always sound so completely natural.

It’s classic and modern all at once.

And so I’ve been waiting to try this one since we returned from France.

The first problem, however, was that Andy and Wild Game Co have disappeared from Broadway Market.

Not, I should say, of his own volition, but with various summer festivals offering him better seasonal business opportunities, it seems that the market managers said that he couldn’t take a break and then return in the autumn.

All of which is slightly annoying – not least since much game is seasonal. The pheasant season, for instance, only opened on 1 October.

Thankfully, Andy has been incredibly helpful, and we organised a way to get me a couple of bags of game. Most has gone in the freezer, although it won’t be staying there very long.

In many ways, last year was the breakthrough one when I finally learned how to cook some game decently, and I have no desire for that to be halted any time soon.

Anyway, the first dish was venison fillet, seared and served with roast veggies and some of the Balsamico drizzle that I swear by both for taste and making a dish look a bit more artful.

The veg in question were swede, carrot and sweet potato, roasted for 35-40 minutes at 200˚C (fan) with a few (drained and dried) tinned spuds thrown in late; all tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper and dried thyme – a wonderfully earthy background to the meat.

The second dish was pigeon.

Now Andy supplies me with pigeon breast – to be honest, my butchery skills are not that good that I’d particularly like to attack a bird myself: the breasts are small enough that you don’t want to risk losing any.

However, Bruno’s recipe calls for whole birds, the breasts of which are cut off, while the carcass is used to make a sauce.

Bruno also starts his sauce with a shallot and a parsnip, and since we haven’t yet had the first frost, I am avoiding parsnips until they’re really worth eating.

So I didn’t follow the instructions to the letter, in other words, but started with a mirepoix lite of shallot instead of onion, carrot and celery.

You soften those gently - the first opportunity to do this in one of the Le Creuset saucepans, and what a difference that makes – and then add booze.

Bruno's chicken – before cooking

Now Bruno recommends port and brandy. Again, you can improvise a little – a small bottle of red wine isn’t going to cost as much as port and it won’t insult the final dish. And a miniature of brandy is more than enough.

Reduce, reduce, reduce – and then add stock and reduce again. It’s pretty classic sauce stuff. Strain and add the blackberries to cook briefly before serving.

In the meantime, you bring some milk to a simmer, letting it infuse with a few caraway seeds, before cooking cauliflower florets until tender, then draining and blitzing. Add a drop or two of the milk if you need to for a smooth purée. This has the advantage that it can be made early and then warmed gently before serving.

Mash up some juniper berries with salt and pepper, coat the pigeon breasts and leave them to absorb the flavours. The smell of doing all of this, incidentally, is wonderful.

Near the time, you reheat the purée, then slice the remaining florets as thinly as you can and dress.

Again, improvisation, since I didn’t have walnut oil. I used olive oil and, instead of red wine vinegar, some of my thicker raspberry vinegar, plus salt and red pepper.

To cook the pigeon is simple and a brief matter: just a couple of minutes a side in a hot pan with a drop of olive oil.

Now I have to point out, at this stage, that the picture in the book cannot be the real dish: the raw cauli, once dressed, is NOT going to appear as immaculately white. Hey ho – food porn is as generous with reality as the other sort.

But in taste terms there is nothing false.

This dish packs a wonderful punch. It is a superb combination of flavours and textures and, even if I couldn’t manage quite the studied informality of presentation as that photo suggested, it doesn’t look bad either.

Next up was Bruno’s roast chicken with a parsley, garlic butter stuffing.

Not a stuffing in the usual way, but one that is gently pushed between skin and flesh, meaning that the bird, in effect, self bastes. That was about as far as I stuck with that recipe, but again, wonderful tastes and aromas.

It’s a recipe that can also be used for a guinea fowl, apparently.

Which point keeps the game theme going.

It'’s not easy if you don’t have a specialist supplier or a local butcher that does it, but game is a wonderful meat. Well, lots of wonderful meats, to be rather more accurate.

If you’re worried about fat, then game is lean – and still absolutely bursting with flavour.

Indeed, a couple of weeks ago, we tried kangaroo for the first time: bought from the Exotic Meat Company (Gamston Wood Ostrich Farm) at Borough Market a few months ago, it was the result of a cull in Australia and had been frozen at source.

It was fillet and, as suggested above, as lean as anything. All I did was to bring it to room temperature and dry it off, and then sear it in a little olive oil, and serve with pretty standard veg on the side. Game really can be so easy and so quick.

And when flavour is so good and so strong, you don’t have to do a lot with it. It becomes a brilliant midweek meal.

There’s a moral to all this.

If you can, get hold of game in season and learn to cook and enjoy it. It’s plentiful on these islands, and there’s also plenty of variety.

And in spite of the UK’s history of deforestation and enclosure by the ruling elite – or maybe even also because of it – let’s not get caught up in a belief that game is only for them and not us.

As it is in France and many other places game should be for all of us. It’s great food – but not ‘posh’ food.

And before I forget to suggest it – get Bruno’s book.

Food finds for hot days

Tuna griddled, with salad, samphire and aïoli

Sitting in a cupboard in the kitchen, buried under various odds and ends – including the vast fork and tongs and stuff for outdoor cooking – is a cast iron Typhoon griddle pan.

I can’t remember exactly when we bought it, but it was one of those seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time purchases from one of the housing stores on Tottenham Court Road.

It was also, as well as my memory is able to recall, either early in my cooking days – or maybe even before them.

You’re not supposed to wash it, but merely to wipe it out and, if necessary, re-season with a dab of oil.

I have rarely used it. In fact, I certainly haven’t used it since we finally got the ceramic hob installed to replace the rusting old ones.

And to be frank, I don’t think I really I’d quite ‘got it’ before then.

So it’s been filling space and gathering dust.

But on Tuesday, a stroll up Broadway Market had produced two small tuna steaks – ideal for this weather – and as I contemplated exactly what I was going to do with them, the griddle pan sprang to mind.

One of the differences, since we bought it, is that I’ve got a little more used to cooking with cast iron – the increase of Le Creuset pots and pans bears testimony to this.

So I knew rather more about what it means to get the thing hot – not rapidly, but over a decent time – and then how it will hold the heat.

So, once heated, the tuna was placed on it for a minute, rotated 90˚ for a further minute and then turned over, and the same process applied.

While the lines were nicely symmetrical, they weren’t perhaps as dark as I’d have hoped for, but the fish itself was beautifully cooked; still moist, which is the difficult bit with tuna; it’s easy to dry out.

It was served with a salad of orange segments and pickled beetroot, a garnish of samphire, and some aïoli – the sort made of just garlic and salt.

You don’t need much salt – that’s the easiest mistake to make. I took a few cloves of quite fresh garlic, minced them and then used the mortar and pestle to blend in a little salt and mix to a paste.

It seems astonishing to realise just how much we are trapped culturally in ways of cooking and eating. As an aside, I’m not sure why it should be so surprising, but it remains so.

It’s obvious that there are reasons that certain types of diet grow up in any country/culture – largely because of climate ands, from that, what grows locally.

But globalisation has had a massive impact on this in the UK, where we no longer have to think just in terms of what is available at any given time of the year.

That, however, has downsides. First, the flavour is never as good if something is flown half way around the world after being picked.

And second, there are a variety of environmental consequences – and this is without mentioning food miles.

Take just three products.

Asparagus grown in Peru for export is using so much water that it is draining wells that are used by local people.

Fine beans grown in Kenya take a staggering four litres of potable water to produce a single fine bean in Kenya, which is quite some cost. Thanks to John Walker for his excellent work on this.

And then there’s quinoa, the ‘miracle grain’ so beloved of trendy eaters. Grown in Peru and Bolivia (experiments to grow it have have, thus far, failed), Joanna Blythman reports that export has pushed up domestic prices to customers in those countries for whom it is a staple of their diet.

None of these are what ‘the global market’ is supposed to do, and all illustrate unintended consequences.

Given the general state of British food, it’s perhaps hardly surprising that:

a) people are out of touch with seasonal eating in this part of the world; and are

b) so ready to look elsewhere.

Add to this, of course, the rise to high levels of dominance of the food chain and grocery retail by a remarkably small number of big businesses, and you have a situation where it can feel difficult to take back control.

Sussex Fish

It’s easier if you have some space to grow some of your own food – even just a few herbs in a window box can make a difference.

It’s easier if you have local, independent shops that sell a variety of quality produce – and it’s helped if those are open at hours that fit in with the standard working day.

This is happening increasingly in the UK, as it does in France – particularly among younger businesses.

It does mean effort on our part – and an element of that comes in investing in the time to think about what we want to eat, and to plan.

But it is also becoming easier as more people create more young food businesses, producing more quality produce, and more markets appear to sell it.

At Borough Market the other day, I found a ‘new’ fish stall – Sussex Fish. They’ve been moved around quite a bit over the three years they’ve been at the market, which is why, on the rare occasions I’m down there, I’ve missed them.

Fresh, lovely fish – and the provenance is clear too. So for instance, the cod that I bought is sustainable, since it comes from the Channel.

This offered a delightful range of fresh fish, but also something as quirky as smoked bass. And why not, indeed?

Discovery of the trip, however, was Cannon & Cannon Fine Foods, with produce artisan British charcuterie, ethically and sustainably produced. Now this is seriously classy food.

Cod, Dorset coppa, lettuce, asparagus and dressing

Some Dorset coppa I bought as part of a three-for-a-tenner deal was utterly delightful, the air-dried pork loin is a joy and there’s still some air-dried venison to come. The company hopes to be launching an online shop soon.

I was served by a charming young man called Fabio, who observed that, as an Italian, he’d been skeptical at first, but was now a firm believer in this excellent British produce.

We’ve always been able to produce good meat; what’s been added in recent years are the skills to make that into fine charcuterie.

One of the specific things that I’d been on the lookout for was late-season asparagus and, sure enough, I found some.

And before leaving the flat, I’d pulled a small jar of chicken stock out of the freezer to defrost.

What I had in mind was a version of a French dish from Rick Stein’s Seafood Odyssey.

First, salt your cod fillet and leave for 20-30 minutes.

Take your stock, add a clove or two of garlic and some tarragon, and reduce.

Strain and allow to cool a little before whisking in olive oil and wine vinegar to taste.

Then pre-heat your grill to high.

Rinse your cod and pat dry. Place on a lightly oiled baking tray and lightly brush the fish with oil. Pop under the grill for approximately 10-12 minutes, until it's golden.

Top the fish with some prosciutto – or in this case, Dorset coppa – and give it another couple of minutes under the grill.

In the meantime, boil some asparagus spears and quarter some lettuces.

Serve the fish, topped with charcuterie, alongside lettuce and asparagus, drizzled with the dressing.

Simple and zingy and fresh. Perfect for these sweltering days.

Remember to love your local market

Radishes, Paris style.

With The Other Half away for the weekend, following his beloved Castleford Tigers to Perpignan for their league game against the Catalan Dragons – an act of great personal sacrifice on his part – the opportunity presented itself for personal culinary indulgence.

And with a few days to eat nothing but exactly what I want, a Friday evening visit to Borough Market was the perfect way to get the weekend up and running.

This itself seemed apt, coming as it did just days into Love Your Local Market Fortnight: a time to promote real food and real producers; food that looks and tastes like proper food, and is sold by people, often, who produce it themselves, and certainly care about it.

Given The Other Half's tastes, the menus for such a weekend are easy: seafood and offal. Although not together. Obviously.

It started, on Friday evening, with scallops, pan fried briefly, with canellini beans, chili and lamb's lettuce. River Café Two Easy is the bible for these weekends.

Other purchases included asparagus, plum tomatoes, Jersey Royals and the first English strawberries of the year.

Borough was busy with, as ever, a combination of tourists and bright young things enjoying the start of the weekend.

The market prides itself – and rightly so – on being twinned with the legendary La Boqueria in Barcelona. The tragedy is that the London prices mitigate against everyone being able to use it. In that wonderful market off La Rambla, you'll see little old ladies carefully picking out produce. Not here, sadly.

Where good food in many parts of the Continent is available to all and considered a birthright, there is much more of a class divide in the UK, as with so much else.

Much the same can be said of Broadway Market, although not to quite the same extent: I know that I'm not the only local who shops there, although first thing on a Saturday morning, I'm always convinced that half the 'hipsters' sitting outside cafes with coffee have come straight from Hoxton nightspots with nary an encounter with sleep.

And on Saturday morning, it was straight to Matthew to see what offal he had, with a lovely piece of lamb's liver, thinly sliced, going into the bag.

Next up, fish.

Unfortunately, Vicki had nothing that I wanted, so Fin & Founder had to do the business. I bought a Dover sole and a squid.

"Shall I fillet it?" said the young man of the sole. I demurred. He seemed surprised and offered to at least trim the fins. I demurred again. He almost begged to be allowed to rinse it. I allowed him to do so.

My refusal to let him do anything with the squid appeared even more shocking. "It can make a mess," he offered rather lamely.

"Oh not if you do it properly," I returned, adding that I enjoy doing it - and that it's easy. I left with squid and sole intact in the face of someone who appeared to have the love of knife work that would have delighted a mohel.

Selection vegetables in Barcelona.

I understand that this is part and parcel of the Fin and Founder routine; that it's their way of 'adding value' (and thus helping justify their prices).

And of course there's also an expectation that many customers will lack the skills to prep fish.
Requiring no cutting at all, I also bought a handful of the season's first samphire.

Back at Mark's Ash Green Organics, which is increasingly becoming my go-to greengrocer, fine beans, a courgette, oranges and rhubarb were added to the mix.

The simplicity of approach continued with Saturday lunch. Jerseys were scraped and boiled, to be served with briefly boiled asparagus (four minutes – they were quite thick), and four slices of the liver, pan fried in a very little olive oil.

A 'gravy' was made by melting a teaspoon of redcurrant jelly into the meat juices while it briefly rested.

The only other things required are salt, pepper and good butter.

For evening, it was back to River Café and a recipe I'd tried before.

Take your squid, clean it and thinly slice.

Then take a courgette and cut it into matchsticks.

Octopus in Venice.

Previously, I'd made the mistake of grating the squash far too finely and it all but disappeared. This time, I just used a razor-sharp paring knife and cut it up that way. Salt these for about 15 minutes, then rinse and dry.

This is a very, very quick cook, so it's best to be a bit cheffy and prep all the ingredients first.

Thinly slice as much chili as takes your fancy. Thinly slice a clove of garlic. Juice and zest some lemon.

Get a pan good and hot, add a generous splash of olive oil and, when it's really hot, pop in the squid.

Stir briefly and then add the chili and a grind or two of black pepper.

Stir again, give it all a couple of minutes, then add the courgette and the garlic. Let it cook through – it doesn't take long – and add the lemon. Stir once, twice – and it's ready to serve.

The original recipe serves this with spaghetti, but I opted instead for some good, fresh baguette. It needs little or no added salt.

And it is a feast.

Sunday went a bit off piste in terms of plans, so I saved the sole for Monday and managed, incredibly, to do the best filleting job I've ever managed (it was quite large) and then grill the fillets and serve them with Jerseys and asparagus and fine beans to welcome home The Other Half.

Good food should be a birthright for all of us. And good markets, where you can get good, seasonal produce, should be available for everyone.

Fortunately, many places do still have them – and they're not the rather 'posh' ones like Borough or even Broadway.

Tomatoes in Collioure – I dream of them.

So make sure you love your own local market – you know it's worth it.

And now a tiny 'fession.

Earlier in this piece, I mentioned tourists at Borough. Well, I like to photograph markets too – both at home and abroad.

Markets are wonderful places. So instead of a couple of shots of liver or scallops on a plate, I decided to illustrate this piece with a very few, varied shots.

I hope you enjoy.

And perhaps more to the point – enjoy your own local markets.