BOROUGH MARKET: THE KNOWLEDGE BY ANGELA CLUTTON An introduction

June 2021. That’s when I had the first ‘proper’ conversations with the Borough Market team about working on a new cookbook. Sure, there had been rumblings and ideas and hopes before that. But nothing concrete. Nothing that was a clear idea of what the book would be, and when.

The ‘what’ was complicated – in the best way possible – by Ed Smith having already worked on a Market cookbook only a few years before. Cunningly titled The Borough Market Cookbook it was as definitive as that sounded. His was a smash and encapsulated brilliantly the breadth of the Borough’s past, present and even future. ‘Mine’ had to set out to do something different.

The ‘when’ was publication in October 2022, only 16 months from initial planning. Bookmaking timescales meant it was going to print July 2022. So let’s call that a clear year. It was the type of tight timescale that can only be achieved by a team at the top of their game and with huge respect for each other. Every cookbook is a team effort, and this one more than most. Kate Howell, then the Market’s Director of Communications and Engagement, was the book’s engine. Claire Ford, who I’d had the joy of working with over many years of the Cookbook Club (and who many of you reading this will know) was charged with steering our direction. She mapped and planned every aspect. Together we set out to be ambitious in the breadth of what we covered, and how we communicated it.

We knew that our book was to be more than just a cookbook. It is structured by trader families: fishmongers, butchers, greengrocers, fruiterers, dairy and bakery. With a couple of store cupboard chapters woven through because we couldn’t possibly miss out the glory of olive oils, teas and more. We wanted each of these chapters to delve behind the stalls and tell the stories not just of the traders, but of the produce they are so rightly proud of. Who’s the best storyteller the Market family has for doing exactly that? Step forward Clare Finney, who interviewed the traders and then used their voices to create the features.

My autumn 2021 was a whirlwind of recipe planning, developing, cooking, testing, writing. We photographed half the book in October 2021, and the rest the following April. The shoot days were a whirl of creativity, with Kim Lightbody behind the lens. Included in the recipes here are orange blossom doughnuts that I will forever remember Kim moving around the floor of the studio, chasing the perfect shaft of light. Just as she chased the light on the many days we spent at the Market, photographing traders in action.

Every step of all this was, of course, backed up by the publishers Hodder & Stoughton. I always felt that their team of Liz Gough, Issy Gonzalez-Prendercast and Liv Nightingall simply wanted us to make the best book we could. I think we did.