E5 BAKEHOUSE, LONDON FIELDS

artisan; sustainable; volunteer bakers;

railway arches; Hackney; community; sourdough; lost traditions; natural;

environmentally friendly; small; locally sourced; kitchen-table start-up;

hand-crafted. 

 

Most of today's on-trend foodie buzz words describe The E5 Bakehouse pretty accurately: in fact, many can be found on their website. It is no surprise, therefore, that the E5 bicycle-delivery-service has to pedal further and faster each day, spreading its range of excellent sourdough loaves to an ever increasing number of outlets. No wonder the queue for fresh bread stretches so far each morning, lured in by the smell fresh baking and the tang of sourdough.

And there are few better ways to while away a weekend (or weekday) morning than breakfasting in the small rough-and-ready café at the front of the bakery - or even sunning yourself on the pavement outside on a good day.  So alongside sleek i-pads or laptops are chunky slabs of toast (made from the fresh bread that steadily emerges from the ovens) slathered with home made jam - try a slice of their signature loaf, the Hackney Wild; alternatively, go for healthy bowls of muesli or granola.

Meanwhile, the bakery, which has been busy since the early hours, continues to bustle along behind the counter, hand-crafting artisan sourdough loaves from locally sourced and organic ingredients to feed the long line of bread lovers waiting patiently to be served.

BILLINGSGATE FISH MARKET AND THE SEAFOOD TRAINING SCHOOL

 

What is it about the English and fish?  Think about the great, ancient markets of London: Covent Garden and Smithfield, with their porters, bustle and banter, both have an air of romance about them, are part of the image of Englishness.  Not so Billingsgate.  Even in its "new" location, it crouches at the feet of the gleaming modern cathedrals of commerce that make up Canary Wharf, seemingly cast in the role of ugly sister. And Old Billingsgate  was  apparently "a place apart" with a very different set of traditions. 

 "That it was a place apart from the rest of London is not in doubt;

here, in an atmosphere of reeking fish, with fish-scales underfoot,
and a shallow lake of mud all around,
specific types and traditions had sprung up.

There were the 'wives' of Billingsgate

who dressed in strong stuff gowns and quilted petticoats;

called 'fish fags' they smoked small pipes of tobacco,
took snuff, drank gin and were known for their colourful language."
(From Peter Ackroyd: London: The Biography)

It is just after 5:30am.  Canary  Wharf is still; silent; office windows are glowing but empty. However, Billingsgate is bustling with activity, and it's been going full tilt here for several hours already.  The car park is full; anonymous, dripping white boxes are loaded into vans which disappear out of the gates onto the empty streets. A small group, bleary eyed, yawning and clearly unused to life at this hour), gathers to take the Catch of the Day Class run by the Billingsgate Seafood Training School.

First, a tour of the market, led by CJ Jackson, fish doyenne, Director of the Seafood Training Course and writer of such classics as Leith's Fish Bible (she is a former vice principal of Leith's) and The Billingsgate Market Cookbook; it is her hand clutching the monster lobster below. 

At first glance, Billingsgate is nothing like the great, glistening open air fish markets of Spain or Venice. This isn't about display, the gaudy arrangements designed to seduce the casual passing eye.  Rather, this is about shifting merchandise, the practical packaging and sale of goods in large quantities to specialist purchasers. However, the fish are sparkling fresh, each eye is translucent, every scale shines like a tiny jewel.  The whole place smells of the sea. And everywhere you turn there is a different shape or colour or size.

For a couple of hours we are bombarded with facts about Billingsgate (the largest inshore fish market in UK, with one of the widest selections of fish in the world), about fish in general (the difference between Canadian and British lobsters and how to grow eels), while dodging porters and trolleys and ice.  Weirdly, both George Orwell (in the 1930s) and the Kray twins (1950s) have worked at Billingsgate. 

By 8:00am, the market is over and it is time to climb upstairs for breakfast in the Cookery School - a spicy kedgeree.  Then it is on to learning knife skills, creating a fish stock for bouillabaisse, filleting flat and round fish and cooking. Even those most squeamish at the start are soon de-scaling and hoicking out guts insouciantly while sipping glasses of wine and comparing the neatness of knife work.


A Gurnard is first up for filleting

The team in action

The joys of working with squid




















Once the preparation is done, the cooking takes over and the resident chef demonstrates just how versatile fish can be - and how quick and easy each dish is to put together.  While she cooks, we watch over our bubbling vats of bouillabaisse.

Bouillabaisse in preparation



Plaice parcels stuffed with tomatoes and pesto ready to go into the oven

Baked Hake and chorizo

Grilled chilli mackerel





Our time is up. We have scraped, sliced, gouged, assembled and watched the experts in action.  All that is left is to enjoy the chilled rose, slurp our very own bouillabaisse and share personal triumphs and disasters - and above all to celebrate the wonders of fish.  Then, rather like the traders at the crack of dawn, we bag up our fish and head home.

 

BROADWAY MARKET

The "Broad Way" is the wide thoroughfare down which in the 1600s East Anglian herders drove flocks of sheep from their final grazing lands at London Fields to Slaughter Lane (the Brick Lane abattoir) to feed the city of London. A market and a pub sprang up where the route crosses the Regent's Park Canal: the pub is The Cat and Mutton ("cat" is an old word for "barge", though others say it is a corruption of "cattle"); the market is Broadway Market, one of the oldest chartered markets in London.  To underline the agricultural origins of the area, Sheep Lane still runs parallel to the Broadway.

After flourishing for centuries, Broadway Market fell into disrepair in the 1980s; unloved and unlovely, it was considered ripe for re-development by Hackney Council at the start of this century. Plans to demolish parts of the street were met with protests and resistance, documented in Emily James' film, The Battle for Broadway Market, and by a determination to save this ancient London institution.

 Today's vibrant Saturday Market started as a community action project in 2004 to raise funds for local schools, the St Joseph's Hospice and other charities, as well as to regenerate the area in response to the threat of re-development.  It caught the wave of the changing demographic in east London, and it is flocks of young professionals, dressed in their finest weekend gear, that now stroll from London Fields to the Cat and Mutton.

In keeping with tradition, it is still a food market, though now rather more eclectic, artisanal and organic than the old fruit and veg stalls. The olive oil stall above gives an insight into the new market, as does the Vietnamese ca phe stall beyond.

While by no means a hard and fast rule, the canal end of the market is the place for vintage clothing rails, old vinyl, prints and books.  The London Fields end usually starts with the juice stall and meanders through a range of food stalls offering locally sourced and produced food as well as cooked dishes from around the globe.

The success of the new market has meant discussion of plans to extend its area and perhaps to open on Sundays as well. If there are protests now they are about the gentrification of the area. 

The shops that line Broadway Market are also well worth exploring. There are plenty of bars and cafes on either side of the stalls to rehydrate or relax after the exertions of Friday night and Saturday morning. Designer clothes shops jostle with an excellent bookshop; Fin and Flounder sells very good fish and The Buen Ayre Restaurant specialises in Argentinian beef. And F Cooke's eel and pie shop (est: 1900 and now run by Fred's grandson, Bob), all green tiles and marble surfaces, stands as a reminder of former days while also doing a roaring trade with the new inhabitants of Broadway Market.

EL CELLER DE CAN ROCA, GIRONA, and JORDI ROCA'S ROCAMBOLESC GELATERIA

Girona is a much under-rated city, known more, perhaps, as a Ryanair hub and stag-do venue (and yes, it has at least one Irish-themed pub) than a destination in its own right.  Many visitors go straight from arrivals to Barcelona rather than venturing into Girona itself to discover the quiet streets of the picturesque mediaeval old town, complete with its cathedral, university and an impressive market laden with fresh produce.

The elevation of the Roca Brothers' restaurant El Celler de Can Roca to the world number one slot may well change all that, of course. The Rocas weave together magical dishes that celebrate and re-invent simple, iconic local ingredients such as olive, artichoke and prawn.  Each dish is as remarkable for the imagination at work as for its technical expertise, a masterly combination of the arts and sciences of cooking, with a sprinkle of fun thrown in for good measure (eg: white asparagus and truffle viennetta).


Amuse bouche - flavours of the world

Artichoke

Prawn with head juice, seawater, seaweeds and plankton

Sole with garlic, parsley and lemon

However, if you don't feel like frittering away your complete life savings on one, long, magical sitting, Jordi Roca's side enterprise gives a flavour of the Roca approach. The Rocambolesc Gelateria is a Willy Wonka style, fantasy ice-cream "factory" just over the bridge from the old town with pipes, dials, buttons and gadgets everywhere, and bright red and white spirals flying off in all directions. Even adults regress into excitable kids when they enter this brightly lit store. 

Rocambolesc is a bit like an old-fashioned ice-cream cart (the original idea was for just such a cart trundling through the city) which has been transformed into a quirky store.  Jordi has developed a wide range of ice creams and sorbets, made only from natural ingredients; six are always freshly churned and on tap. The colours and flavours are intense, and there's a selection of whacky toppings (fresh fruit, popping candy) to add as the whim takes you.

There's also a real old-fashioned candy floss machine ready to whirl into action if the rich, creamy gelati aren't enough of a sweetness hit to get you through siesta time.  To rediscover your inner Roald Dahl, head for Girona now.

Rocambolesc
50, Carrer de Santa Clara,
Girona.

 

H FORMAN & SON - THE OLDEST SALMON SMOKERY IN LONDON

Among the many businesses displaced by the arrival of the Olympic Park is the Forman and Field Salmon Smokery - the oldest such smokery in London.  Now, a newly built salmon-shaped and salmon-coloured building, created courtesy of Seb Coe and his Committee, sits glowing resplendently on the banks of the River Lea, across the water from the main Stadium, under the foundations of which lies the earlier site of Forman and Field. 



This is not the first journey in the life of the company, however. Harry (Aaron) Forman left the Ukraine at the start of the last century in search of a new life. He brought with him well-honed knowledge and skills, starting his eponymous fish smokery in Stepney in 1905 to serve the Jewish communities settled in the East End.  The business was transformed by the discovery of fresh salmon from Scotland, rapid delivery made possible by the burgeoning train links. The leap in quality was profound: compare salt cod with the fresh variety and you get the idea. Suddenly, there was no need for the very heavy smoking that had been used to disguise the effects of the lengthy salting that preserved salmon imported (a costly and time-consuming journey) from the east, and a new style of smoked salmon was born.

H Forman and Sons, as it has become with the passing of the generations, has gone from strength to strength, growing and relocating to Ridley Road, Dalston and then to Hackney Wick and the Hackney Marshes before its most recent move to Fish Island. The fame of the distinctive London Cure (much lighter in both salt and smoke) has spread beyond the Jewish East End diaspora and onto the finest tables in  the land.

The business has stayed in the Forman family throughout; pride in hard-earned family traditions and the pursuit of high quality shines through in the firm, lightly salted and smoked salmon, descendants of the Odessa fish on which Aaron learnt his craft. Lance Forman (great-grandson of Harry) now runs the company which is continuing to grow and evolve. The new building has added a restaurant (which champions English food and drink), bar and art gallery, but nothing gets in the way of the core business. Even in today's highly mechanised world, much of the work here is still done by hand, including the painstaking removal of the pin bones.Every so often, Forman and Field runs Open Days and visitors can watch the transformation of fresh fish into high quality smoked salmon.  See film of the whole procedure here. The skills that arrived from the east with Aaron all those years ago are flourishing almost unchanged, as salmon are filleted, salted overnight and then smoked. The "factory" is silent as there are virtually no mechanised stages to the process: it is almost all done by hand in the good old-fashioned way.

But attention to detail remains the key; "smoking" is carefully managed with wood quality and temperature controlled to give off the right amount of smoke for perfect flavour and moisture; even packaging is still done by hand, a final check that each separate piece of fish is perfect.

And perfection brings its own rewards, as the latest Forman and Field press release reveals:

"We are delighted to have had our “London Cure” smoked salmon specially selected to be enjoyed at the Coronation Festival at Buckingham Palace this July.   
Being served in the form of a ‘paupiette’; a smoked salmon parcel, Buckingham Palace describes H Forman & Son, as ‘London’s Finest Smokery’.  
Why thank you ma’am.  We are most honoured. 

A starter fit for a Queen."

 

BOUCHON FOURCHETTE, HACKNEY

 

For some reason I am unwilling to try this place. I've passed it a number of times and know there is a general buzz around it, but somehow I just don't fancy it. So what's stopping me? Is it:

     1) its location in the unlovely end of Mare St (by the way there is no lovely end, whatever Foxtons may tell you);    
     2) the fear that it is the kind of place where you perch on a vintage (read rickety) chair, are served a plate of organic quinoa by a waiter with several piercings; you leave clutching a large bill, sporting several splinters in your butt, all for the pleasure of that edgy east London experience;
     3) the orange signage?

Well, I expect it's all of the above but especially 3) the orange signage - it's inexplicable or maybe a worrying symptom of colour synaesthesia, but when my lunch date suggests Bouchon Fourchette, I dig in my heels.  Can't we go to Lardo down the road? Or surely there's somewhere nice in Victoria Park Village? At this she thrusts her iphone in my face and yelps, "even Fay Maschler likes it." I relent.

Fay, of course, is not wrong. It's charming. The chef worked with Alain Ducasse and the menu offers French home cooking par excellence. For lunch we can choose between omelettes, croque monsieur, sausages with Puy lentils, chicken with a wild mushroom sauce all served with frites and a glass of wine at a price of £7.99.  We read that Fay had followed her meal with a Café Gourmand (coffee with 3 mini desserts) and we follow slavishly, sharing a mini crème caramel and a chocolate liegeois slice with a couple of wafers. Everything is well sourced, delicious and fresh.

Once established, this will be the kind of place that you have to sell your first born child to gain a reservation, so go now. Oh, and our charming French waiter had a nose ring just in case you had forgotten you were in east London.