Radishes at Borough Market

The underground is warm and stuffy. People are huddled close and we can smell all cultures mingle together while more and more people get in and only a handful get out at the next station. Yes, we must be getting closer to our final destination. It’s still early on the Saturday morning and the crowds thin out a little once we leave the subway station and venture out onto the street. Fresh air!

The Entrance to Borough Market

We need to walk around the corner to find Borough market; slightly hidden away under a bridge and in an alcove with small letters telling us this is Borough market. But what a market it is! I had heard about Borough market of course and expected a nice market, but the amount of produce for sale here is amazing. How I would LOVE to have a market like that at our doorstep… Imagine the wonderful things we would able to make with all those gorgeous veggies, meats and fish.. Not to mention the spices, breads and other goodies for sale. It’s still fairly quiet at this time of day (I think we were there around 9.30-10 am) so we have a chance to walk around before the crowds descent on the market in full force.

Sunny and delicious breakfast at Roast

We were advised to have breakfast at Roast, right above the market, and that is certainly no mistake. I have delicious small pancakes with a rhubarb puree and fresh cream while Tom goes for the fried eggs and toast. The service is impeccable and maybe even a little bit too much for my taste. I like people to be polite but there is such a thing as overdoing it.. But still, I would rather have this then the dreadful service we can sometimes have at home. Roast is certainly not cheap but then again; nothing in London is really cheap so that is something you’ll have to accept when you come here! Although I do have to say that the dimsum at Princess Garden was actually really cheap considering the copious amounts of food we received, but ok…

Beautiful fish

To me there is no better shopping then on a good market. I love markets as they usually reveal the true nature of a city or a country. And obviously I am not talking about a touristic market where they only sell souvenirs. We’ve had our share of those too! Imagine the disappointment when you’re in Asia and after searching high and low, you find the fantastic market everyone was talking about, only to find out it has only souvenirs… People do find it strange that you want to go to a produce market… You can’t buy anything, so why go?? But to soak up the atmosphere of the place and to look at all the goods for sale, that is the just the ultimate experience for me. I’ll let the images do the rest of the talking!

Man selling noodles

Yummy big sausages!

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Chanterelle mushroom pie

I was so happy when we went to the farmer’s market in Amsterdam on saturday to find an entire stall filled with all sorts of mushrooms. Remember that in the supermarkets here you can only ever find button mushrooms, chestnut mushrooms and the occassional oyster mushroom and shiitake if you’re really lucky. But I had never even seen Chanterelles, let alone eaten them fresh, so I was quite excited when we found them in the market. They had other varieties of mushrooms as well that I had never seen before, but I couldn’t bring all of that with me ofcourse so had to do with just the chanterelles.

Fresh chanterelle at the Noordermarkt, Amsterdam

I wanted to make these as an appetizer for when my friend would come over for dinner tuesday and Olga had come with the suggestion of making them into a tart with puff pastry. Which reminded me I still had puff pastry in the freezer, so that would be perfect to make some quick appetizer for dinner. The main would be work enough so I didn’t want to spend more time in the kitchen then I had to.

Because I wanted to try out the flavors I made a little one in the afternoon with chestnut mushrooms and the cheese I bought and it was delicious. And it is really almost too simple to throw together and looks quite good and tastes fantastic. You can ofcourse use any kind of mushroom you want with this, but the chanterelles were very tasty. I actually made this three times now and the flavors get better everytime I make it, so just use your own taste to put whatever in that you like.

I used storebought puff pastry, but if you have anything leftover in the freezer from the Daring Bakers challenge you can certainly use that!

Storebought however, is especially quick since you don’t have anything to roll. In the Netherlands puff pastry is sold in little square packets with separate sheets about 10-15 cm square and already thin enough to use as it is. Ideal for these little pies.

The recipe gives approximates qty’s for 4 people

4 square sheets of puff pastry

200 gr chanterelle mushrooms

blue cheese. I used Castello Blue which is nice and creamy and melts beautifully, but you can add any kind you like

Pecorino. Because the Castello Blue is lovely but when warm looses some of it’s strength, I added a bit of grated pecorino on top just to pick it up a little. Ofcourse you can use parmezan or another hard and strong cheese.

Preheat the oven to 225°C.

Cut the chanterelles into manageable sizes. Keep in mind it needs to fit on top of the puff pastry and you don’t want huge chunks here but not too small either. In a bowl toss the mushrooms with olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.

Take the puff pastry (defrosted ofcourse) and put some of the mushrooms in the middle, making sure to leave the sides free. Don’t be too shy; you want to have a nice little pile of mushrooms there. They will decrease in size in the oven. Generously add little chunks of the blue cheese here and there. Make sure to have an even distribution of cheesy goodness there.

Put some eggwash on the sides of the puff pastry and fold it creatively in a little basket, so that the cheese stays in when it starts to melt. Plus the corners will become nice and crispy too. Pinch it tightly to make sure it stays put once heated.

Put the little pies in the oven for about 12 minutes on high, then bring the temperature down to 190 °C and bake for another 15 minutes until golden brown and crispy.

Tomato version

I also made a version with tomatoes for the simple fact that I did not have enough chanterelles left for the second pie (I had already made the pie two times before at that point, so they were gone… ) so I filled it up a bit with little pomodori tomatoes, which worked very well too. It’s a little less strong in taste and I prefer the flavors of the chanterelle only version, but ofcourse you could make endless variations with this. Maybe add a little fresh thyme to it (which I didn’t have in the studio when taking the photos) or mix the mushrooms or… well, just go wild.

I love it!! And apart from the time in the oven, it takes literally 5 minutes to assemble. Perfect!

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