Cardiff Central Market

There has been a market in central Cardiff for over 800 years. However, the first covered market on the site near St John’s Church was established in 1835. Solomon Andrews, one of Cardiff’s leading Victorian entrepreneurs, had a new market built in 1884. It was completely destroyed by fire in 1885. Solomon fainted at the shock when he saw the destruction, but soon had it rebuilt.
The large indoor glass-roofed Victorian market that we know today, between St Mary and Trinity Street, was erected on the site in 1891. Designed by local engineer William Harpur and built by Andrew Handyside & Co. of Derby, it was solidly constructed from wrought iron and steel. The market was officially opened on 8th May 1891 by the Marchioness of Bute. A commemorative plaque hangs inside the Trinity Street entrance. The original design provided for 349 stalls of various sizes. Initially they were grouped according to trade, with non-food stalls confined to the upper balcony area.

The first stall you may have encountered in 1891, on your right as you entered the Trinity Street entrance, was Ashton’s Fishmongers. It is still there. Since 1973, the business has been run by the Adams family, a long-established family of fishmongers from Penarth. John James Adams was awarded an MBE in this year’s New Year’s Honours List for services to the fishing industry in south Wales. His son Nick Adams, a fifth-generation fishmonger, currently runs Ashton’s market stall.

Marks & Spencer opened one of their original penny bazaars in the market in 1895. Roche’s was a stall selling china for 70 years in the market, until Mr. Roche retired in 2004. Alan Griffiths, one of the butcher’s and chairman of the Cardiff Traders’ Association has said that, “People like to come into a market, they like personal service and friendly faces – that is something which lacks in supermarkets really.” The market has a long tradition, and is liked for its consistency as large areas of Cardiff have been redeveloped around it.

The building was refurbished between 1988 and 1991, and to help celebrate the Grade II listed building’s 120th anniversary this year the Trinity Street entrance has had its stonework washed and repaired.

Today, there are 73 stalls selling a wide range of items, with food and non-food stalls intermixed. You can buy meat, fruit and vegetables, cakes, vinyl records, pets, tools, leather bags, second-hand books and much more. There are several places to eat inside the market: The Bull Terrace café, the Gallery Café, Woody’s café and Celtic Corner for teas and coffees. There are eight butchers stall, five fruit and vegetable stalls, including Sullivan’s opposite Ashton’s, two delicatessens, two confectionary stalls, along with bread, and cake and cheese stalls.

Food on Film: Archipelago

I found Joanna Hogg’s Archipelago (2010), which has just been released on DVD, interested from a food perspective. The film concerns an unhappy family holidaying on Tresco, one of the Scilly Isles. The mother Patricia (Kate Fahy), son Edward (Tom Hiddleston) and daughter (Lydia Leonard) arrive at their holiday home, but the father never shows. They have employed Rose to cook for them throughout their two-week vacation. It’s a slowburing study of the rifts that divide the family.

Professional cook Amy Lloyd plays the part of Rose (she trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama before retraining as a chef), while several key scenes in the film revolve around food.

Rose obtains a pair of lobsters from a (real-life) fisherman. He is informative on identifying the sex of lobsters. Edward enters the kitchen while Rose is cooking them. Rose contrasts the torpid lobsters, which are put into cold water so they go into a coma before they boil, with lively ones she has cooked previously that tried to escape from the pan. It sounds like a commentary on the dysfunctional family.

After footage of a pheasant shoot, a (real-life) local turns up at the cottage with a brace for Rose. He is informative on pheasant plucking. Rose plucks and cooks the pheasant. However, Cynthia, who has ben berating her brother, bites some leadshot while eating the meal and storms from the dining room.

Things become even more stressful on a restaurant outing, when Cynthia returns her underdone guinea fowl, thinking it might be dangerous to eat. Everyone else wants to crawl under the table with embarrassment as the chef comes out and explains that the bird is correctly cooked and the meat should be pink.

The People's Supermarket

The “Ethical Chef” Deri Reed wants to set up a People’s Supermarket in Cardiff. Deri Reed has been working in the food industry for over ten years. He has gone from making baguettes in Carmarthen to working in a famous Vegetarian Restaurant in Cork. He returned to South Wales to set up his EthicalChef business in Cardiff. You may have seen his stall at the Riverside Farmers’ Market. The idea behind EthicalChef is to promote local food through cooking at markets and supper clubs.

A supermarket run by local people is the next step for the EthicalChef. The inspiration was a Channel 4 television programme called "The People's Supermarket.” This showed how such a project was successfully established in London. Here’s a report on London’s People's Supermarket:

The People's Supermarket could provide a model for a similar project in Cardiff. Deri Reed is currently seeking people to help set up this new venture: http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=9be095933dfbf122ea8e0c622&id=b5a8c28b73&e=3f17707571

The People's Supermarket in London:
http://www.thepeoplessupermarket.org/about/our-mission/

The People’s Supermarket (Channel 4 TV Series):
http://www.channel4.com/4food/on-tv/the-peoples-supermarket-extras/about-the-peoples-supermarket

Community Gardens

A Community Garden is a single piece of land collectively cultivated by a group of people. Such gardens bring benefits in terms of local food security, a sense of community, education and connection to the environment, artistic expression, and health.

In Cardiff, Chapter Arts Centre has established a Community Garden, run by Canton Community Gardens. Food plants have been arranged with regard to their decorative effect, amongst existing trees and newly-planted apple trees, in borders around the front of the arts complex. A colourful array of plants, including brassica species and nasturtiums was achieved last year.

Earlier this year, purple-sprouting broccoli, in a bed running up to the main entrance, became ready to pick. Word was sent out over social networking sites, inviting local people to come and take a share. This is a novel concept. Certainly, there was some broccoli that could have been picked that went to seed. Maybe Chapter should put up suggested portion sizes for the communal bounty, so people don’t feel anxious about taking more than their fair share, and to discourage a minority who may excessively crop the plants. I predict this garden will become increasingly popular as more people contribute and benefit from it.

In its first year (2010), Chapter’s edible Community Garden was a winner in the Peoples Millions Big Lottery competition. The garden is set to expand in 2011. Designs for a “perennial edible landscape” have been draw up by Michele Fitzsimmons (ediblelandscaping.co.uk). These plans were approved by Cardiff Council in February. Gardening is underway. I’ll be blogging on progress, as I visit Chapter during the rest of this year.

Dartmoor Beer Diary

The beers I drank last week in Devon and Cornwall.

Dartmoor Brewery:

Jail Ale

IPA

(The Dartmoor Brewery in Princetown is a stone’s throw from the Dartmoor Prison, so it’s no surprise that its flagship award-winning beer is called Jail Ale).

Skinners Brewery (Truro, Cornwall):
Betty Stogs

St Austell Brewery (est. 1851):
Tribute
(Tribute is one of the region’s most popular beers; pale amber in colour and with malt and citrus notes).

Sharp’s Brewery (Rock, Cornwall):
Eden Pure Ale
(From the brewery more famous for Doom Bar, this recent gold-coloured beer is brewed in collaboration with the Eden Project)

Palmer’s Brewery (Bridport, Dorset):
Palmer’s Copper

Best pubs visited:

The Dartmoor Inn, Merrivale.
A 17th Century coaching inn, 1000 feet above sea level and on the open moor, by Merrivale Bridge and near the fascinating Merrivale prehistoric monuments site.

Plume of Feathers, Princetown.
A coaching inn since 1785 and across the road from the hotel (now Visitor Centre) where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Eden Project, Cornwall

Last week was our third visit to the Eden Project in Cornwall. We saw the site soon after it opened, again about five year’s ago, and returned during its 10th anniversary year. It’s probably my favourite visitor attraction in the UK and, not surprisingly, ecology and food plants are central to its vision.

There was major flooding over the winter, which destroyed the stage and ice rink area and inundated the low-lying restaurant between the biomes. Typically, rather than see this is an unmitigated disaster, Tim Smit and his team saw it as an opportunity to establish the bakery that they had always wanted, and put it at the heart of the project. It was back to basics – with long functional wooden refectory tables across the hall; along two of them apprentice bakers work to make loaves, pizza, croissants, and other food for sale. The Eden Bakery is a distinct feature, and the minimalism suits the place.

Restaurants and cafes in other parts of the site continue in the more traditional manner, while a stall sells tasty Tuscan Bean Stew and Catalan Fish Stew in the Mediterranean area.

You can see some of the food being grown in the GrowZone, a demonstration allotment that has expanded in recent years.

There was drama as we were walking around the Rainforest Biome. We heard a very loud cracking noise, and branches of a tree started to fall onto the path. On being informed of this, the staff went quickly into action; understandable as the tree in question was toxic - apparently being used for poison-tipped darts. The hot air balloon was launched within the biome, drastic pruning was undertaken, and the area reopened promptly.

The new rainforest lookout gives spectacular views down onto the trees. It’s very hot up there!

To help celebrate the Eden Project’s tenth anniversary, Cardiff-based NoFit State Circus will be performing a new show there in August.

www.edenproject.com