2012 round-up

Best new Brixton opening

There have been a few recent arrivals in Brixton which have garnered considerable press.  By contrast, the chocolatier Paul Wayne Gregory, trained in Paris and maker of the Queen’s 80^th birthday truffles, just turned up one day in a little sliver of a shop in Market Row. There are beautiful desserts, highly credible salted caramels and some superlative passion fruit ganache, all a five minute walk from our door.

Favourite new products

Following in the wake of the hipsters, I’ve been dutifully tromping through the optimistically named “Bermondsey Spa” most Saturday mornings, finding a new way to get turned around each time, but also discovering both some great new vendors, and outposts of Borough favourites (particularly Neals Yard Dairy and Mons Cheese) which are far less crowded than the originals. Three highlights:

Heather honey from the London Honey Company

Lots of India Pale Ales at the Kernel Brewery

Chicken from Fosse Meadows at The Butchery

Most enjoyable read

Notes from Madras, Colonel Wyvern (1878). Wyvern wrote for Englishwomen abroad and their native cooks, explaining how to prepare both Anglo-Indian and European foods.

Greatest recipe

Lamb pizza from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s Jerusalem. This may be no better than the fish cakes in spicy tomato sauce, or the hummus or stuffed peppers—all superlative. It gets the nod for perfectly recreating the soft, pliable dough of the lahmacun I ate in Istanbul last winter, and pairing it with a topping that is at once sweet with caramelised meat, crunchy with fresh herbs and sharp with pomegranate.

Best eating moment

A breakfast of chilaquiles—eggs, refried beans and tortilla chips covered with a cooked red salsa, garnished with sour cream, cotija cheese, avocado and coriander (cilantro)—at San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza Market, while watching the fog clear over the Bay Bridge.

Most memorable drink

Ruinart champagne at the Royal Opera House, just moments after receiving my engagement ring.

Sleeper hit

A custom mix of Formosa Lapsang Souchong and Higgins Breakfast tea from HR Higgins. We’ve been drinking their Creole Blend coffee for years; this is fast becoming the house tea: smoky, smooth and mouth-filling without being tannic.

Best evening out

A “Shambolic Sherry Tasting” put on by our local wine shop and held in a freezing upstairs room at the Dogstar pub. There were half a dozen non-sherry pours from natural wine importers, Les Caves de Pyrene, including a Savennières and a Jura chardonnay made in a vin jaune style, and quality nibbles aplenty. The sherries came thick and fast, and ranged from the merely very, very good to the absolutely exceptional (in the form of a rare Palo Cortado). We met a wine consultant working in Kazakhstan too, and heard all the gossip on the Brixton restaurant scene. And all for £7.50.

Kohlrabi slaw

I was in a particularly suggestible mood at the farmer’s market last Sunday. It not only felt like summer, with temperatures warm enough in mid morning to make long sleeves unnecessary, but it looked like it too. Tomatoes were finally the right colour, and at a price that encouraged over-buying. Berries were abundant as well, likewise broad beans, peppers, courgettes and cucumbers. Aubergines made their first appearance.

Kohlrabi wasn’t an obvious fit in a basket of  more Mediterranean ingredients, but it got a good talking up from one of the vendors, who compared its taste to radishes and affirmed it could be eaten raw, thinly sliced or grated. And at 70p apiece, it was hardly an expensive experiment.

Once home, a bit of reading confirmed my suspicion that kohlrabi takes well to all sorts of slaw-like treatments. The most popular approach seems to be to combine it with similar quantities of carrot and white or green cabbage in variations on a standard creamy, vinegar-based or mustardy coleslaw. (I think the last of these could be particularly good with an extra spoonful of caraway seeds.)  I was also intrigued by a recipe in which it substituted for celeriac in a remoulade. Another well-regarded combination drew on the kohlrabi’s similarity to daikon and dressed it with rice wine vinegar and sesame oil.

I ended up swapping it out for the green cabbage (hard, crinkly or soft) in a Mexican-inspired salad and served it as a topping for black bean tacos. Should summer be making more than a fleeting appearance in your parts, I’d imagine it would also pair well with spicy grilled meats.

Kohlrabi slaw

Total time: 15 minutes; Active time: 15 minutes

Serves 2 generously

Special equipment: mandoline with a julienne attachment

1 kohlrabi

½ bunch coriander

2-3 spring onions

1-2 fresh chillies (preferably red for colour contrast)

lime

salt

Set your mandoline blades to cut julienne slices.  (We used the middle of the 3 julienne blades, but any julienne width should do.)

Cut off the protruding stems from the kohlrabi and peel off tough layer of outer skin. Slice into chunks that will run easily across the mandoline. Using the hand guard, cut the kohlrabi into julienne slices. Add to a bowl large enough for the slaw to be tossed and served.

Remove the largest stems from the coriander and roughly chop. Top and tail the spring onions and cut into thin slices. Add the coriander and the spring onions to the kohlrabi.

Deseed the chilli (depending on heat and tolerance) and finely chop. Add to slaw.

Season to taste with lime and salt and mix well. Allow a few minutes for the flavours to combine before serving.

September highlights

Six weeks on, I’m still waxing rhapsodic about my recent South East Asia trip. But there’s been lots of other shopping, cooking and eating going on. A few highlights:

Tomatoes

Some of our plants succumbed to root rot, a likely combination of months of bad weather and too few holes poked in the bottom of the industrial-size tomato tins which served as pots. But it’s still been a highly credible first crop; we should finish with upwards of 800 cherry tomatoes.

There have been salads and pizza toppings aplenty, as well as roast tomato sauces destined for the freezer. A fair number never make it out of the bowl on the table. For slightly deferred gratification, however, it’s been hard to beat slow-roasted tomatoes, sliced in half, tossed with a bit of olive oil, fresh thyme or oregano, bay leaves, salt and whole garlic cloves, and put in a low oven (100 C) for 2 hours, or until they are wrinkly but not entirely desiccated. They then go in the fridge topped up with more oil, perfect for sandwiches, pre-dinner drinks and tossing through pasta.

Pho @ Cafe East

Amongst the best bowls I’ve ever come across (the saté pho at Pho Dong-Huong in Paris’ Belleville remains a sentimental favourite, but it’s not completely echt) is served at a simple cafe situated in a Deptford parking lot, next to a bowling alley, multiplex and bingo parlour. Its unpromising location is perhaps less surprising when you learn that the surrounding area is home to lots of second-generation Vietnamese. I’m partial to the spicy broth; the rice noodle dishes are good here too.

Cafe East

100 Redriff Road

Surrey Quays Leisure Park

Tube: Surrey Quays or Canada Water

Closer to home

Just underneath the Brixton rec centre, a new meat and grocery shop has opened. Its Algerian-born owner is selling loose olives, lots of fresh North African pastries and French-branded groceries, and, most excitingly, making his own merguez. A rotisserie is set up outside, awaiting the arrival of British Gas.

And in the market(s) proper, the eating options just keep getting better. I’ve heard that a Beijing-style dumpling stand is on its way to Granville Arcade, and I’ve met the very excited British-Oaxacan family pushing to get their Market Row taqueria open by the end of the week.

Notwithstanding the rain, the stands at Sunday farmer’s market have been full of beautiful, cheap fruit and vegetables, the last few weeks of the courgettes, corn, tomatoes and berries overlapping with the arrival of apples, pears and pumpkins. And I can only imagine the weather must be good for beets, because the ones for sale right now are large enough to feed a Ukrainian family for at least a few days.

In the kitchen

It’s been simple—but good—eating around here: lots of stove-top pizza, tacos, grilled meats and salads. A notable success has been finding an aubergine dish that didn’t involve buckets of oil and was worth repeating. I’m not sure why it took me so long to look in the obvious place—one of the Moro cookbooks. This recipe began with the predictable steps of grilling and scooping out the flesh, but then called for sautéing the resultant mush with tomatoes, fresh coriander, cumin and cayenne until the water was cooked out, and the puree rich and caramelised. Perfect alongside grilled lamb kebabs, roasted peppers, flatbread and a tzatziki-like dip.

Gelato

We have no Michelin stars, very few, if any, tablecloths, and a severe shortage of bathrooms, but the Brixton food scene just gets better and better. There’s a Japanese place on the way, and today we met the eager, nervous owners of another likely June arrival, this one a burger joint featuring Ginger Pig meat. There’s a new bakery too, getting fresh and very credible baguettes every morning from a French guy a few miles away. The unassuming, but excellent Thai place, where I’ve had zingy larb-like salads and spicy stir-fried chicken with a fried egg and Thai basil, was just written up by the Guardian’s lead restaurant reviewer, Jay Rayner.

But perhaps the most exciting development took place on Wednesday, when a very serious gelato maker started churning out a product that already deserves whatever superlatives might be used to describe it. The dozen or so flavours currently on offer are classic, conservative even—hazelnut, strawberry, zuppa inglese—but are made with a perfectionist’s eye for ingredients and balance. The fruit is fresh and seasonal, the pistachio from Bronte in Sicily. Even the cones don’t taste like an afterthought.

Giovanni, the owner, server and gelato-maker, looks delighted, if a bit surprised, by the local response. And apparently Jay Rayner has already been by.

I’m guessing that I live a bit closer than Jay, just a four minute stroll up the road. All the better, as I think Giovanni and I will be seeing a lot of one another.

Lab G (Laboratorio Artigianale del Buon Gelato)

Granville Arcade, Brixton

Late morning until 17:30 Su-W; late morning until 10 pm Th-Sa

Spring planning

For a few hours this morning, it was spring. The sun was warm on my shoulders, and I doubted the wisdom of having worn a jacket. At the market, there was forced rhubarb, the stalks still thin, but now more gently priced. I brought home a kilo, along with a sweet, fudgy-textured goats cheese and a small bag of wild garlic leaves. The weather was not so assured as to push the planned beef stew off the dinner menu, but it too got a lift, with handfuls of fresh thyme, olives and orange peel.

By mid-afternoon the skies were grey and threatening. According to the forecast, we won’t be seeing the sun for a while. But if March in England is a study in inconstancy, it does provide lots of opportunities for planning and anticipation. Here are some of the things that have made it onto the long-list:

Artichokes

Perhaps this will be the year that I finally figure out how to cook them. This seems like my sort of recipe.

Chicken and White Wine Stew with Gremolata

Books for Cooks, the too-popular for its own good shop off Portobello Road, publishes occasional compilations of favourite recipes made in their test kitchen cum café. This recipe from Annie Bell’s Living and Eating was their top choice in Volume 6. The switch from red wine to white, and the inclusion of lots of herbs and lemon, sounds like a perfect update to more wintery braises.

Sorrel

Our local farmer’s market is selling some lovely-looking leaves, young and soft enough to eat raw. I’m thinking of using it in a goats cheese spread like the one we made a few weeks ago with wild garlic. (We used a rindless, spreadable cheese, loosened up with a splash of milk, packed it into a small crock and served it with toast.) I’m excited, too, by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s suggestions for combining it with eggs, or in place of watercress in a warm new potato salad.

Lemon cake

Other than rhubarb, there won’t be much local fruit until the strawberries start appearing in June. But lemons have a brightness that seems right for this time of year, and I’ve been meaning to find a simply, citrusy cake to add to my repertoire. I could be swayed by this polenta one from the River Cafe. But a moist, sticky one—maybe made with olive oil?—would also be a welcome find.

A Swiss chard tart

Savoury tarts, whether with puff pastry, a pizza-like dough or short crust, freeform or in a fluted tin, are something that I eat rather than cook. They’ll be a number of steps to this one, from buying a tart case (or individual ones?), to revisiting rolling-out pastry. As for potential recipe sources, I don’t see any reason to look beyond Clotilde’s blog, which provides a choice of tart garnished with squash seeds, a hand-formed pie and a strudel made with filo pastry and goats cheese. Perhaps the perfect make-ahead brunch dish?

Bonnes Addresses Brixton

Coming back to London after a few days vacation in Paris was unsurprisingly difficult. Part of it, of course, was that returning home also meant returning to work, to commuting and to all the rushing and hassle that was virtually absent from our Paris stay. But I had also become re-accustomed to the convenience and proximity of things I consider important to my daily quality of life: bakeries, a butcher, vegetable stands and a cheese shop, a convivial local café, a knowledgeable wine merchant and some interesting places to eat out. In my old Paris neighborhood, which we visited again over the August Bank Holiday, each of these was represented with a choice and quality that usually made it unnecessary to venture outside a 10-minute radius.

Brixton doesn’t yet provide all of these amenities. Top-quality meat is still a tube journey away, as is a full selection of cheese and an independent wine merchant. Though there’s wonderful bread, it can’t be bought after work or on a Sunday. But, fortuitously, my return to the neighbourhood has coincided with the opening of some food-related businesses which aren’t merely local, but genuinely good. (And if you don’t believe me, the New York Times is on the trail too.)

Bellantoni

First was the pizza, now we have pasta too, another tiny, unprepossessing joint delivering seriously impressive food. Six days a week, Dario Bellantoni turns out a few pans of deceptively simple vegetable lasagnas, some homemade fruit tarts and plates of antipasti. Fresh pasta can be made to order with a few hours notice. His little brother shows up to bus tables and make coffee on Thursday evenings, the one night the market arcade stays open late. A gelato machine is on the way, due to arrive from his mother in Italy later this month. (His mother’s influence can also be seen in the frequent appearance of red cabbage, popular in Italy’s formerly Austrian and Yugoslav territories, and in an occasional, strudel, tender and flaky.)

I’d come just for the lasagna, but welcome, banter and little extras make me feel like I’m being fed by a (very talented) friend.

Federation Coffee

London’s Antipodean population has done much to raise the standards of local coffee provision, bringing with them flat whites, well-sourced beans and an admirable blend of precision and laid-back charm. The latest outpost for their talents is another daytime-only spot in Granville Arcade. Service is switched-on and friendly, cakes and homely and well-priced (the blueberry friand and anything with streusel are particularly recommended) and the coffee—small batches roasted just off Brick Lane— the best for miles around.

Lido Cafe

Brockwell Park is an easy 20-minute stroll away from the centre of Brixton. While lacking the pulling power of more famous parks north of the river, it does boast views of the City of London, a walled garden, greenhouses (on which more soon) and a rambling historic house. Its most unusual feature, though, is a 1930s outdoor swimming pool, or lido. Recent restoration work added a poolside café. It’s far better than it needs to be, with an interesting list of drinks (including grüner veltliner by the glass and a lovely Champagne-style Cornish cider) and good brunch options. On a bright day, when the sun glints off the pool, the world feels, for a moment, practically perfect.

And without forgetting:

A &C Continental Grocers

I’m embarrassed to discover that I’ve never written about this long-established favourite. It deserves at least one blog post all its own.

Wild Caper

There’s a bit of an identity crisis going on here, but the bread, particularly the rustic sourdough cafone, and the German-style seeded rye, remains unimpeachable.

Brixton Farmers’ Market

In a neighborhood where people of different ethnicity and income level often shop in separate locations, the Sunday market provides a bit of common ground. The pumpkins and apples are multiplying each week now, though the last beans and berries are still lingering on. My favourite? The orange-yolked eggs sold by a perpetually-sunburned Pole.

Les Meilleurs Legumes du Paris (The Best Vegetables in Paris)

Sometimes I get a bit tired of visitors to Paris waxing rhapsodic about the fruits and vegetables found in the city’s markets. True, at nearly every one (and there are upwards of 75 held each week), good—even spectacular produce—is easy to find. And there’s little doubt that even the most rumpled vendors often possess a decorator’s gift for arrangement. Excepting such seasonal specialities as white asparagus or morels, prices are often very low too.

What can be disappointing is the conformity. Even the appealingly dirt-speckled carrots at my favourite stand are bought wholesale from the Rungis market, just like their counterparts all over town. And while heritage varietals of tomatoes and potatoes have become increasingly commonplace at British and American farmers’ markets, the supply system for Paris’ markets ensures high standards but (relatively limited) selection. Only two markets—both organic and high-end—have from-the-farm producers, known as “maraichers” or “producteurs.”

Perhaps Parisians get their fill of field-to-table food during their long summer holidays in the countryside. Or maybe, despite the obvious discernment of many market customers, they don’t attach the same importance as their food-conscious Anglophone counterparts to cutting out the middleman, or to meeting the person who harvested their food. It could even be—and here I tread very carefully into the realm of total bullshit—that contemporary French identity has retained some kind of cultural connection with the land (terroir), thus obviating the necessity of “reclaiming” it through a middle-class affectation for expensive, wormy apples.

I suspect that Rungis, the heir to the historic central market at Les Halles, will continue to be the “stomach of Paris” for many years to come. But Joël Thiébault’s produce, grown just 7 kilometres from the Eiffel Tower and sold weekly to some of the city’s best restaurants, has developed the same kind of cult status as Anne-Marie Cantin’s unpasteurised cheese, or Hugo Desnoyer’s meat. And in a city like Paris, that’s not faint praise.

A third-generation farmer, Thiébault reputedly cultivates up to 1500 varieties of vegetables and herbs (a bit of fruit is grown in high summer). About 100 of them are sold at his weekly market stand in the tony 16th arrondissment. Arriving mid-morning this past Saturday my choices including flowering chives, five varieties of carrots and three of beets, heaps of compact lettuces and herbs which I could not identify by sight or smell. Prices are curiously low. At 70 centimes apiece, salads cost no more than the half-rotten ones sold at the far end of my market; choosing with care, it’s possible to assemble a week’s worth of vegetables for about 10 euros.

It was only by exercising extreme restraint that I managed to come home with just two varieties of herbs, a head of lettuce, bunches of golf ball-sized new onions and radishes, waxy salad potatoes, a multicolour array of carrots and an enormous candy-striped beet. In the past 36 hours, the carrots and radishes have been eaten as crudités, with the remainder of the carrots braised with some of the onions and herbs. More of the herbs were chopped into an egg salad, and the lettuce, tossed with a simple vinaigrette, anchored a oozing disk of milky goats cheese.

I have some work to do in perfecting the salad du chevre chaud, but the other dishes—while both exceptionally simple—are ready to be shared. And while great produce will make these simple preparations shine, a trip to Paris is not required. (Though it may be for some of Cantin’s legendary unpasteurised cheese.)

Herbed Egg Salad (adapted from Amanda Hesser)

In this recipe from her first book, The Cook and the Gardener, Hesser deconstructs the classic egg salad, serving it over greens dressed with heavy cream, mustard, tarragon, chervil and chives. I put the dish back together again, substituting good store-bought mayonnaise for the cream, omitting the mustard (which appears in small quantities in French mayonnaise) and using good quantities of fresh chervil and thyme. Served slightly warm, alongside a hunk of coarse bread and some peppery radishes, it was both rich and sprightly.

Total time 15 minutes; Active time 5 minutes
Serves 2

4 eggs
1 tablespoon or more good mayonnaise
At least 5 healthy sprigs chervil
1-2 sprigs fresh, leafy thyme (don’t use it if it has begun to dry out or become gritty)

Boil the eggs until they are moulleux (creamy in the centre, but no longer oozing). Chop the herbs finely. Peel the eggs and crush coarsely, mixing through the mayonnaise. Add the herbs and season well with salt and pepper.

Braised Young Carrots and Onions (adapted from Mark Bittman)

New York Times food writer Mark Bittman is currently spending a few months here in Paris. Last week he wrote about braising some carrots purchased at his local market with shallots, tarragon and a bit of butter. It was, he concluded, “an amazing dish, almost but not quite too sweet, simple, easy, and honest.” I swapped the shallots for new onions and the tarragon for chervil (which subtly echoes tarragon’s aniseed notes). Since I had some mild, homemade chicken stock, I used that instead of water.

Bittman’s original post didn’t include a precise recipe. Saturday night I made the dish just for myself and drank wine instead of watching the clock. So please take quantities and timing as approximate only. But while I like the vegetables soft, the one really important thing is to get the liquid to reduce into a sweet glaze.

Total time: 45 minutes; Active time: 10 minutes

Serves 2

Tasty carrots, enough to feed two amply
About 2/3 the quantity of new onions
A generous sprinkling of chervil
1 tbsp of butter
A few tablespoons of gentle stock (or water)

Cut the carrots into bite-sized batons. If any of the onions are bigger than a golf ball, cut them in half. Place the vegetables in a heavy-bottomed pot or lidded sauté pan, add the butter and a bit of liquid. If you’d like, include some of the chervil now. Season, cover and cook on a gentle heat, checking liquid levels occasionally, until the vegetables are soft (particularly the onions), but not falling apart. If needed, you can add extra liquid in very small quantities. If there is extra stock in the pan at the end of cooking, reduce it for several minutes on a medium heat, or until the vegetables are lightly glazed. Adjust seasoning, add the reserved chervil and serve warm, perhaps alongside roasted chicken.

Ail Nouveau (New Garlic)

It's a truism that markets change with the seasons. In Paris these days, the winter citrus has (finally) departed, to be replaced with artichokes and fresh peas. Both will be with us for some time, giving me ample opportunity to contemplate whether I feel more confident of sucess with the former, and whether I care to veer off the tried-and-true path of a minty soup with the latter. With the more fleeting spring produce such as fresh almonds, nespole (loquat) and gariguettes, there's little room for such indecision. Leave the city for two weekends and they're gone.

But while I consider myself relatively in tune with these comings and goings, I was nonetheless surprised--and, I must admit, charmed--to discover the first of the new garlic a few weeks ago. When I first found it, at the wonderful but achingly slow produce stand outside the covered market, it was tiny and somewhat lumpy, its umbilicus shooting straight into the air. Inside the cloves were crisp and barely formed, many no bigger than my finger. They tasted mild and sweet, almost milky.

Ten days later, when I went back for more, I found that both the bulb and the individual cloves inside had nearly doubled in size. The skin, though still relatively thick and moist, had begun to dehydrate, while the flavour had grown slightly more assertive.

For once, I'm not wasting any time. Fresh garlic is everpresent in my meals these days (breakfast excluded). There have been lovely soups, including a poshed-up leek and potato redolent with garlic and homemade chicken stock, and this fantastic fennel dish. The recipe, which I adapted from Molly Stevens' All About Braising, is a somewhat more elaborate version of an old favourite from one of the early Moro cookbooks. This one uses the same technique of a thorough saute, followed by a long, slow aromatic bath. Here, though, the fennel is matched with garlic, olives, a bit of anchovy and fresh thyme for a taste that is is rich, round and almost silky.

This will be well worth returning to even once the fresh garlic is all dried up, either alongside some grilled fish, as I ate it, or as a part of an antipasti spread including grilled peppers, salumi and some crostini. But for the moment, I've moved onto another new garlic discovery: wild garlic leaves. So if you find yourself sitting on the Paris metro next to a young woman who smells ever so slightly, if not unpleasantly, like a southern Italian nonna fresh out of the kitchen, do be sure to say hello. And for the rest of you, not Paris-bound anytime soon, hints for getting that garlic smell off my hands would be very much appreciated.


Fennel Braised with Thyme and Black Olives

Serves 2

Total time: 90 minutes; Active time: 20 minutes


1 large fennel bulb

scant 1/4 cup of mild but tasty black olives (I used some purpley Kalamatas)
3 cloves fresh garlic (or 1 of the older stuff)

2 anchovy fillets

1 tsp fresh thyme

splash dry white wine or vermouth

1/4-1/3 cup chicken or vegetable stock

Cut off the inedible top piece of the fennel (reserving fronds, if attached), slice a sliver off the bottom and cut bulb into large, long slivers. You'll get 8-12 depending on the size of the bulb. Heat a film of oil on a medium heat in a deep, wide pan (ideally one with a lid) and add as much fennel as fits easily. Saute without disturbing for up to 5 minutes, then turn and repeat until you have lots of carmelised patches and the slices have softened and begun to turn golden. If necessary, remove and repeat with the remaining slices. Salt and pepper each batch.

While you're waiting, pit and half the olives, strip the thyme from its stems, clean the anchovies (if necessary) and chop the garlic. In a small frying pan placed over a low heat, melt the anchovies, thyme and fennel seeds, using a wooden spoon to break up any pieces. Add the wine and boil until reduced by half, about 2 minutes. Spoon any additional cooked fennel back into the main pan, top with olives, the anchovy paste and pour over the stock.

Cover the pan with a lid or foil and bring to a low simmer. Using a diffuser if necessary to control the heat, cook very gently until the fennel has collapsed and gives no resistance to a knife point--at least 1 hour. Adjust seasoning, top with fennel fronds, if using, and serve warm or at room temperature.

I've written this for a Bookmarked Recipes' blogging event. Take a look at other contributor's recipes here.

April in Paris

It appears that spring and I have chosen the same time to arrive in Paris. In the three weeks I have been living on rue St Bernard, not a drop of rain has fallen. The mornings have almost invariably been chilly and bright, the afternoons warm enough to make a sweater superfluous, with the daylight lingering far longer that I could have imagined possible. The park across from my office is a riot of green, splattered liberally with white and pink blossoms.

While the market still has some hoary old cabbage, the signs of printemps are undeniable here as well. Year-round crops have shed the heavy layers of winter: the leeks, newly-dug, are barely wider than my finger, the carrots not yet stubby, the garlic moister, milder, its cloves not yet fully separated.

New season salt-marsh lamb appeared just in time for Easter, painfully expensive and stupendously good, the texture melting, the flavour delicate and haunting. I’ve not yet tackled the artichokes, but one gentleman I saw was not even waiting for home and a pan of boiling water, content to tear off the still-supple leaves and eat them for a mid-morning snack.

And then there are the gariguettes. Slender and slightly elongated, these celebrated early-season strawberries lure the passer-by with an elegant fragrance reminiscent of fraise du bois (wild strawberries). Another factor in their status is the fact that they are non-remontante, each bush yielding only one batch of berries. And the taste? Slightly soft and yielding, sweet yet complex, perfectly accented with a dollop or two of crème fraiche but in no way lacking without.

I’m thrilled to be in London for a few days, but I’m really hoping that this blink-and-you-miss-it berry will still be there when I get back.

On food shopping

Last year, my time spent scouring the winter sales landed me the following bargains. At Harvey Nicks, London's answer to Barney's, I scored a can of mispriced Ortiz ventresca tuna. Liberty's, the quirky, classy, designer haven, yielded up a bottle of Oliviers & Co. sherry vinegar. My final visit, to the vast expanses of Selfridges, forced an impulse buy. A bespoke bag of my favourite jelly beans (the banana, peanut butter and watermelon flavours, all underrepresented in the standard mixes) was the only thing that kept me from bursting into tears in the middle of women's sportswear.

Simultaneously in search of luxury (thank you, grandma) and bargains (thank you, mom), and with a backside somewhat larger than the rest of my size 0 self, I am not a very successful clothing shopper. So while I await the arrival of J.Crew in London and attempt a new jogging regimen (once prodigious, it has been replaced in recent years by an equally prodigious cheese-eating regimen), my consumer impulses invariably send me in the direction of the nearest food or wine retailer.

Here at least, I am rarely thwarted. With an Aladdin's cave of a European deli just down the road, a job on the city's best Parisian-style food shopping street and the possibility of a weekly sojourn to the justifiably renowned Borough Market, I've ample opportunity to pay homage to both maternal influences. In the last two days alone, our larder has gained the following:

• 2 creamy crottin du chevre, sold by a charming, if incomprehensible, purveyor at Borough
• delicate, slightly scraggly new season rhubarb, which was stewed with a handful of frozen raspberries (we give this the elegant moniker pink goo)
• very dirty, sweet-smelling dwarf parsnips
• a bargain bowlful of blood oranges, which I hope are bloodier than their plain-as-as-navel exteriors suggest
• a bag of the city's best truffles, only slightly irregular
• my first ever dried beans, bought with pocket change and used to make this
• two slices of fantastically succulent bresaola, the ideal complement to a not-so-small glass of amontillado
• a bottle of lush, lemony Vermentino, which paired with anchovy and rosemary-topped hake (did I mention the intimidatingly tattooed local fishmonger?) to make the best high-low meal of the weekend

I happened upon hake, and Sophie Grigson's fantastic recipe for it, this fall. Without question, this is the best fish dish I've ever made.

Hake with Anchovies and Rosemary (adapted from Fish to serve 2)

Total time: 45 minutes; Active time: 15 minutes

1-2 cleaned hake (heads left on, please), totalling about 1 1/2 pounds; 5 anchovy fillets, rinsed if salt-packed; 3-4 tbsp olive oil; 2 cloves garlic; 3-4 full sprigs fresh rosemary; 1 handful bread crumbs, ideally fresh and coarse; lemon; salt and pepper

Heat the oven to 350. Place the cleaned fish snugly in a lightly-oiled, oven and broiler-proof dish. Stick at least 1 rosemary sprig inside the cavity(ies). While the oven heats, gently heat olive oil, chop the anchovies and fry gently. When they have nearly melted (3-5 minutes), add the garlic, coarsely chopped, frying for another minute before removing from the heat. Pour this mixture over the fish, reserving a bit for the insides. Chop the remaining rosemary, mix with the bread crumbs and place on top, trying to cover the surface area fully. (Concentrate on the area surrounding the backbone, not the cavity.) Sprinkle with salt and pepper and place in oven. The fish will likely take about 30 minutes to cook through and colour; you may choose to baste mid-way through with the excess oil in the pan. If the fish feels done but the crumbs have not yet browned, place the dish briefly (2-3 minutes max) under the broiler.

This is difficult to serve neatly. In my experience, it's preferable to portion it directly from the dish, adding lemon juice and additional salt and pepper to taste.