Borough Market - if it isn't temptation I don't know what is

Went to Borough Market for lunch today, since the sun was out, it was gorgeously warm, and I wanted to tempt myself into eating after what Gwyneth told me.

First – a note on strawberries. My shop-bought raspberries and blueberries from sainsburys are wonderful but their strawberries…. I had to chuck them out the other day, as they just weren’t ripening and were pretty solid. The taste was also like cardboard! (Though they’re not actually in-season at the moment, so it’s to be expected).
 I got to my favourite produce stall first, run by a guy called Jock Stark, (one of the few places they don’t charge “designer” prices for fruit & veggies!) I’ve bought stuff - like peppers - from him before and it’s always been cheap but delicious. One of the funny things I love about him is that his hands are filthy – on anyone else in London, you’d wonder where he’d been, but the dirt is from all the soil on the potatoes, etc, and really gives off that fresh-off-the-farm vibe!

Guess what? Lo and behold, there were punnets piled high with the nicest, biggest, glossiest looking strawberries you’ve ever seen. They were a beautiful crimson red. Of course, being Borough Market, there were free samples everywhere, so I decided to see if they were as good as they looked.
One word – heaven. Compared to the Sainsbury failures, these were just like the ones you get in Devon during peak time, and evoked images of clotted cream and sunny picnics. As soon as I tasted that sample I was hooked – felt my eyes light up as my hand quickly whipped out the money straight away! (Only four pounds for three punnets stuffed to the brim too, bargain!)

Of course, I’d come to Borough Market to get myself to eat lunch, not to buy strawberries for tomorrow’s breakfast. Initially I’d planned to buy freshly made, wild-boar stuffed tortelloni from La Tua pasta, but after last night’s craving had been fulfilled I didn’t fancy it anymore. So that I didn’t use this as an excuse to not eat anything for lunch, I quickly walked up to the closest stall and picked the first thing off the list – beef, harissa paste and rocket in a roll. The servers were lovely and their banter distracted me from the heaps of oil sizzling on the hot plates!
I’d seen big queues here on Saturday before, (when the market is packed with tourists), and watched people walk away with their rolls crammed full. Mine, however, was sparse, and a bit of a ripoff at 4.80 for something that was mainly bread and harissa paste. I was disappointed by the bread to meat ratio, and seeing people walk away from other stalls with crusty french bread rather than my bog-standard dough made me feel a little cheated. (Probably just my guilt trying to stop me from eating the damned sandwich though). Ignoring the bread, taste wise the harissa paste was nice and spicy, and the meat was good but there just wasn’t enough of it.

Surprisingly, although feeling daunted by the sheer size of the roll, (it was easily four times the size of one of my normal sandwiches), I wolfed it down SUPER fast, and actually felt more hungry afterwards! The sunny weather and gorgeous food in the market made me forget about my body image (hurray), and I actually went on the hunt for cake instead of fleeing. I wandered around for two hours, slowly working up the courage to actually buy something, and when I began lingering at stalls was given free samples left right and centre – people were so generous – I got given free slices, not slithers or cubes, but massive slices to sample stuff. I sampled goats milk ice cream, chatted with a load of the super friendly stall owners, and tried frantically to decide on a stall to buy my brownie from (they were all made differently from each other, and there were over 6 different stalls selling them!) Eventually I settled on the Bread Ahead bakery’s brownies, as the man there was wonderfully friendly and had given me a free sample easily the size of half a shop-bought brownie, (how’s that for generosity), so I felt I owed him my custom.

Verdict – light but stodgy, chocolatey yet not too heavy, moist but not wet – it seemed to be one thing then another in the mouth, surprisingly different with each bite, and I packaged it up to take home for dinner.
Update: after eating the entire thing over a period of several hours I now feel very sick. Ooops. Though that might be due to the fact I can still smell the Walton Farms syrup (see next post for review)

I nearly bought my brownie from another stall (though I hadn’t tried it), which featured the most ginormous stacks of chocolate, raspberry or crème-filled meringues, dangerously teetering on the edge of the counter, and piles of Turkish delight spilling out of various jars. My eye was caught, however, by a strange looking cake that looked to be incredibly dense on the palate, which I’d never heard of before – a “Lamington”. The trader grabbed a piece and whipped off a large chunk for me to try, (again very generous!), proclaiming it to be an Australian favourite. I was surprised by the feather like weight of the cake, as it looked all the world to be uber heavy.
And how wrong I was. Biting into that Lamington was like eating a cloud, it was so delicate, super light and fluffy, almost impossibly so.

What was it? A Victoria sponge slightly tasting of vanilla, with a thin layer of jam through the middle, coated in chocolate and rolled in coconut shavings. The beautiful thing was that the extra additions to the cake had been done in such a way that they had merged with it in a transition that meant none of the light texture was lost – pure bliss. If I hadn’t bought the brownie, that would’ve been in my bag instead. As Borough Market is only open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I know what my lunch is tomorrow. Lamington calls for me! ;]