Borough Market, London

 Part of the pleasure of cooking is that primitive urge in all of us to sate our appetites, the other primitive urge I relish is the hunting and gathering aspect. I love to go to market and fill up my senses with all of the options of what to eat, what to make and what to (proverbially) bang over the head and drag home. This goes for lettuce as well as pork. This week I went to Borough Market in London. This is one of the cities oldest fresh markets and you can find anything(almost) that you desire for cooking and eating. The market is down under London Bridge on the South side. This place really gets heaving around lunchtime, especially on a Saturday. I like to go on Thursday or Friday but, I am a great shopper and can usually ignore the crowds. The great part of any market like this is the tasting and choosing and the inspiration as the ideas of what to do with each next delicious item pops into my head. I am often overwhelmed and I always try to edit myself. I come home with random items and half eaten treats but often with the inspiration for a new dish or a new ingredient to experiment with. This week, I went, ostensibly, to find veal scraps and bones to make veal stock. Veal stock is something that G has been wanting to make, inspired by one of his French cookbooks. They didn't have any. The butcher was friendly but, not fruitful. I asked about it and it seems pretty difficult to get. I had thought this, of all places, would be the place to find any weird thing you might want for cooking.

This is the flavor of the butcher shop.

 Never mind the stock, what else can I make? I wandered the market and tasted all of the cheeses on offer. I love you, Cheesus. I bought some bright green olives that are so tasty and the color is not your typical shade of, well, olive. They are so bright firm and briney that I just popped one in my mouth as I am writing, irresistible. I picked up some pork belly for Momofuku pork buns, that is in a brine right now. Next, some fresh unpasteurized butter with sea salt and my new friend, smoked garlic. Smoked garlic, you and I are embarking on a journey of new discoveries, we will become fast friends, I think. Smoked garlic, I can't wait to put you in, in...hmm, I still think our love is real. I might just bake you and spread you on bread.
After that, I moved on through the produce area, which is so beautiful, the mushroom table alone overwhelms and I will head back to market on Thursday to buy a truffle or maybe two for a pasta we are making. Oh, I started dreaming of truffle pasta. We had truffle pasta in Paris. We ate at a wonderful Italian restaurant somewhere on the Rive Gauche. I can't tell you where it is right now but, I did manage to find it on my rent-a-bike when I went for lunch later that week.

A perfect lunch in Paris, I couldn't wait to eat, it came covered in truffles, shaved, delicate...

When G took me to dinner there we were mid-dinner when he announced that is was Bogey's favorite Italian restaurant in Paris.
'How do you know that?'
'I had dinner with his wife here.'
'Lauren Bacall?'
'Yes'
'Um, how was she?'
'She was a nice older lady.' And that is about all I got out of him. Seriously.