Dinner that Day - Borough Market

I guess we should leave the house?

The sun was high and ripe, fair-weather only good for slumbering.  But we took the tube to London Bridge and crossed the grey fume-filled street to Borough Market - a veritable oasis for food lovers.  Passing the late afternoon diners jostling for a table at Brindisa on the first corner, Spanish waiters in dazzling white and sweating beads, calmly deciphering seating.  Looking to the left, trickling cold ice beds laden with the days catch; oysters fresh for tasting with shallotts and red wine vinegar, just a teaspoon to curdle its flesh before funneling.  Fresh flowers with food, as soft peonies and wild rose bunches sit idly in water buckets at the florist next to the French larder.  Staff in breton stripes, serving sips of Chateau such and such with tasters of their best foie gras on artisan baguettes and slithers of magret de canard.

Further along, breathing in the paprika rich fumes from chorizo sizzling in olive oil tainted with its rich orange, together with roasted peppers and rocket in a warm floury bun which hits the "late lunch" spot.  Then like cartoon-scent calling us across for a cuppa at Monmouth coffee house, treading its creaky wooden boards feels like walking onto set; styled into a giant farm crate.

Borough Market has grown so big with a Farmer's market in its far reaches, rustic pile-ups of veg and fruit, keenly I grab handfuls of organic watercress and spuds and a few others for dinner.  Onto meats, spring lamb is the best and there isn't much else that is better than Welsh, as french trimmed racks lay by Scottish haunches of beef and Norfolk game in a cooler.

To open with a platter - watercress plainly tossed with olive oil and seasoned, lightly fried magret de canard, artisienne baguette, a small block of west country cheddar cheese, grapes, radish and baby plum tomatoes, jamon iberico (pata negra), pate and butter of course :)  It is very English "bread and butter".

 Main tray-baked-lamb-with-aubergines-tomatoes:

The only addition I make to the recipe, just before roasting, is to add slithers of anchovies (packed in sea salt) between the bones.

It felt like a special day for food - though I don't think we had space for dessert that day as we sat back and watched the sky turn onto midnight.

"Appetite" - painting a few months later on midnight blue.