The Artisan Bagel East London Is Waiting For

If you already found it next to hopeless to graze through all the must eats of London Fields on a single Saturday, from Banhmi11 Vietnamese baguettes at Broadway Market to Lucky Chip burgers and Home Slice Pizza at Netil Market, your life just got a lot more complicated: The not-to-be-missed bagels at e5 Bakehouse, Ben MacKinnon‘s exceptional bread bakery under the railway arches beside London Fields station, are only baked on Saturday afternoons. And good as those bagels are when carried home for toasting at the next day’s Sunday brunch, topped with a schmear of creamed cheese and draped with fat-glistening Scottish smoked salmon, they are at their pristine best when consumed plain and hot – not more than 5 minutes and 5 metres from the e5 Bakehouse’s ovens.

The name “e5″ may come from the bakery’s Hackney postcode but I take it to mean “eat within five”. [Read more...]

rude health porridge is no cruel gruel

rude health organic porridgeWhen Camilla Barnard named her organic cereals company rude health she was likely evoking wholesome, happy breakfast bowls as opposed to the cruel gruels forced upon defenseless pupils by pitiless schoolmasters. That’s the message I took from the recyclable cardboard box for her daily oats and its jolly photo of a girl’s legs in pink wellies doing scissors kicks in a field of tall grass. This is no one’s image of British boarding school. [Read more...]

My first – and last – pizza made with mozzarella from British buffaloes

pizza with fresh British buffalo mozzarellaMy new discovery at the Islington Farmers’ Market this past Sunday was organic British mozzarella di bufala from Higher Alham Farm, Shepton Mallet, Somerset. The suggestion of buffalo mozzarella from Cheddar cheese country appealed to me. Hadn’t Chris Arnot written good things about Higher Alham in the Independent? I decided to try the UK mozza atop my weekly homemade Margherita pizza and enhance my organic/local sourcing credentials. My iPhone calculated a distance of 202km between Islington and Shepton Mallet, whereas the route from Islington to Caserta, Italy covered 2,017 km. My net savings: 1,128 food miles. [Read more...]