Farmer\u2019s markets are a very cheeky wheeze and we all know it. Their promise \u2013 getting back to peasants\u2019 basics of veg yanked from the ground \u2013 carries a hefty premium compared to supermarket food, which actual peasants have to buy. Indeed, supermarket food, from veg and fruit to eggs and cheese and bread, is generally two or three times cheaper and tastes just as good.<\/p>\n
But it seems that we are already in a world so dystopian that only the rich want \u2013 and can afford \u2013 soily spinach sold loose on a table. Certainly, the rich will queue for sorrel and strawberries, yoghurt and kimchi, raw milk, chicken and sourdough. Especially the sourdough. Carbs used to be bad, but now the queue outside places such as Lannan in Edinburgh is so long that the bakery has had to employ bouncers to control it.<\/p>\n
At the mouth of the Queens Park farmers\u2019 market in north-west London \u2013 one of the most Instagrammed north of the river \u2013 is Don\u2019t Tell Dad, a sprawling caf\u00e9 with sourdough loaves and circular candied hazelnut croissants. These generate queues along the pretty cobbled road that are so off-putting that I will only go when it\u2019s pouring with rain and nobody\u2019s out. The sourdough at Dusty Knuckle in Hackney has to be booked well in advance. Pastry and bread is the treat that leavens the purchase of greens; so very many greens.<\/p>\n
My thinking about markets has been shaped by travel. I have realised I hate foreign food markets. I always went because the internet said I had to and because the cosmopolitan middle-class milieu I inhabit has a reverence for local produce that is hard to override, even with cynicism and empty pockets.<\/p>\n
The worst of my life were the markets in Sicily and Jerusalem. Palermo left me traumatised; tourists are baited and mocked as they timorously look at this or that vendor\u2019s mound of veg. I came away with some tiny bag of exotic olives for \u20ac10 that should have cost \u20ac1, feeling a pathetic fool. I have even seen native Italian speakers ripped off in Sicilian markets. Sellers demand that customers speak the dialect or else face bald exploitation. It seems a bad sales strategy. And yet, so slavishly do we want what these scoundrels are selling \u2013 or rather what they represent \u2013 that it doesn\u2019t seem to do them much harm.<\/p>\n
Compared to the incomprehensible shouts of Mediterranean hawkers, the English farmers\u2019 market is, of course, a blessed relief. At least I speak the language and don\u2019t have to conjure the price of a third of a kilo of sardines while a greasy man is shouting at me. There is no shouting, no bargaining and no vernacular. Many of the people at the stalls aren\u2019t even English.<\/p>\n
The other great insult of the market, the sheer cost, has lessened over the past few years. Since the cost of living has shot up, the gap between the prices of greenery, eggs and fruit at the farmers\u2019 and the supermarket has narrowed. On my most recent visit to the former, I fell for a rather wilted bunch of coriander for \u00a32 (compared to 90p in Waitrose), and \u00a32 for a small bunch of spinach, but the strawberries \u2013 decking every table as far as the eye could see \u2013 were quite good value, at two punnets for \u00a35. These velvety strawbs were superior by far to Waitrose\u2019s best organic efforts at \u00a34 (an admittedly slightly heavier punnet).<\/p>\n
\nI have always found the idea of seasonal cooking imprisoning<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Then there are the health considerations. As I have got older, and pore over articles and videos about microplastics and forever chemicals, the farmers\u2019 market has a new appeal. If I buy my vegetables in brown paper bags and eat things that haven\u2019t been sprayed too much, perhaps they will be better for me.<\/p>\n
I have always found the idea of seasonal cooking imprisoning; surely one of the glories of late modern capitalism is that we have become free of nature\u2019s strictures, and can eat pineapple and avocado and coconuts all year round. Why should I limit myself to courgette and asparagus in spring, tomatoes in August and apples in autumn? Why go gaga over gooseberries for two weeks in June? It\u2019s like going to bed when the sun sets and getting up when it rises. No thank you.<\/p>\n
Seasonal veg remains of little interest to me (is there really a difference in taste between a Spanish courgette in January and a Kentish one in May?), but seasonal fruit, I now admit, is delicious, even if it\u2019s of the provincial English type. Once you accept the homegrown tastes of dark red stone-fruit after the exotica that our globalised palates are used to, you can begin to enjoy the fruits, if not the cost, of shopping at the farmers\u2019 market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Farmer\u2019s markets are a very cheeky wheeze and we all know it. Their promise \u2013 getting back to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3091],"tags":[51,2441,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-202754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-markets","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114721877101829945","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}