Marylebone Farmers' Market

Borough Market is one of our favorite places in London, for shopping early on a Saturday morning before the crowds arrive.  It's not a farmer's market, although some of the stalls represent single producers.  Others are importing their fruit and veg from all over.  For a real farmers' market, there is the Sunday market at Marylebone High Street, featuring, among others, the Izzard (of Cambridgeshire) stall of fresh greens.  In two trips so far, I've failed to take any other pictures here, alas.

This Saturday we missed Borough Market, so we shopped for the week at Marylebone (the market runs at civilized hours from 10 am to 2 pm).  We had our eyes on things for a cod recipe, and on wood pigeon, that we'd seen before.  So for Sunday night, we managed to accumulate the ingredients for cod and endive with blood orange sauce, a recipe sent to us from our friends at Arbutus.

For the cod
4 pieces of cod, 160g per piece
100g butter
100ml olive oil


For the chicory
2 chicory, split lengthways
1 orange zest and juice
50g butter
splash of olive oil
5 juniper berries, crushed
sprig of thyme
salt and pepper
50ml water
knob of butter

A fishmonger from Kent sold us a nice piece of cod. But endive is not a farmer product, so we had to buy some imported endive (aka chicory) from the Marylebone Waitrose, which is much fancier than our Bloomsbury Waitrose (more and better fish and meat, for example). Meanwhile, split the endive in half lengthwise,  and sauté in olive oil and butter until nicely browned.  Then add the other ingredients: (except the butter) and bring to the boil.  Bake in a 130 degree (C) oven for about 35-40 minutes, until the endive is soft. (As usual, our oven takes a bit longer.)   Take the endive out, and boil down the juice. Close to the finish, prepare the fish:  heat butter and olive oil in a "non-stick" pan (aka our Le Creuset casserole), with some chopped garlic, and sauté gently, basting frequently.  The fish should be a nice golden brown: Squeeze the lemon juice over the fish, and serve together with the endive and its reduced juices, enriched with butter, on the side.   The orange flavoring with the garlic and butter was very delicious, and the fish was tender and moist.  Bravo, Arbutus! Thanks for the recipe. Tonight was for the wood pigeon.  We'd had our eyes on these particular small birds for some time, but it seems that they are always in season, so there was no rush.  One of Hopkinson's recipes calls for preparing them with Little Gem lettuce and fresh peas, which are not yet in season.  But on Sunday, we decided to purchase some boneless pigeon breasts anyway, and find a recipe later.   From ITV came an excellent one for pigeon breast with Savoy cabbage and lentils.  We had bought a  cabbage at the market, and we had Le Puy lentils in our cupboard. The recipe was actually much more complex and we couldn't make the whole thing -- lacking, for example, Madeira and port.  But here is what we did. For the lentils, we sauteed some onion, garlic, and carrot, added the lentils, covered with water, and simmered with some thyme sprigs for about 40 minutes.  Meanwhile, we sautéed about 100 grams of smoked streaky bacon from the Ginger Pig: And we shredded the Savoy cabbage, wilted it for a few minutes in some olive oil, then added some water almost to cover and simmered covered for about 5-8 minutes.  To the cooked bacon, we added a couple of tablespoons of honey,

and some wine vinegar, and then we combined them with the cabbage. Meanwhile, we made a sauce by reducing some red wine with chopped mushrooms and shallots, then added some prepared beef stock we'd bought at Waitrose.  The actual recipe wanted us to make a stock from the pigeon carcasses, but we'd forfeited this opportunity by buying only the breasts.  The sauce is then finished with butter. Finally, the breasts are sautéed for a couple of minutes on each side.  They plump up nicely. Finally assembly: on the platter, pile the lentils on one side, the cabbage with bacon on the other, and top the cabbage with the sliced pigeon breast.  The vegetables were sweet and savory at the same time (all that honey); the pigeon was gamey, a little like liver, but tender. And the flavors all melted together brilliantly.

Excellent with a bottle of Corbieres merlot. (And plenty of leftover for cold pigeon salad.  If we were really on top of the game, we'd make deep fried soft boiled eggs a la Glasshouse.  But we won't.)

Tune in next time for adventures in wine shopping in London.