Roast and Borough Market

I just got back from a week and a half vacation with my grandparents in London and Zürich and after pots of fondue, slabs of delicious raclette, schnitzel, wurst, chocolate and so much cheese, I hurried to the farmer's market this morning and bought so many vegetables and steamed up the most flavorful broccoli, roasted some eggplant and snacked on grapes and felt somewhat cleansed after last week's epic eating.

Roast sits above Borough Market, and has a great view of everything. We sat near a window, but you can also choose a table with a view of their kitchen. They were also voted best breakfast by the Times. And you know you're in for a good time when the menu lists the sources/farms they buy from at the back of the menu:



We ordered some toast, which came with some homemade jam (gooseberry (most delicious), marmalade and strawberry) with a cylindrical mound of butter.



And when we came in, I saw POTS OF JAM sitting by the kitchen with the dates that they were made clearly marked on the sides. Our jam was about a day old.



Then we ORDERED.



Too afraid to order a side of award winning Cumberland sausage by myself, I asked my granpa if he wanted to share. He agreed. But we were so stuffed, that by the time we attacked our sausage side, we both ended up eating half a sausage each. My granma ordered some kippers, which looked like.......a prehistoric fossil. It might as well have been because it was like an archaeological dig through all the bones. They were a little strange tasting....



But my smoked trout and scrambled eggs were so DELICIOUS



When we were good and stuffed, we walked around the market, checking out fresh produce and cooked food, lots of salami and cheese. You can get full on samples alone in the market





AN OBSCENE BOUNTY!!!!







I nearly balked at the price of fava beans. Surely 4 pounds a pound for fava beans is completely and absolutely ridiculous since you need to shell them, then boil them, then you remove their skin after that. What you're left with is a delicious bean but you generate much more vegetable scrap for not much bean productivity. The price of artichokes was also a little questionable. BUT! from their leaves and forks at the end of them, you can tell that they are the real deal, and probably will taste spectacular, not like their friendlier looking but bitter tasting counterparts.



Then there was fresh fish and...horseshoe crabs? I wonder what it is like to eat a dinosaur.




Then I bought some gooseberry and elderflower jam



and some Damson yogurt made with raw milk



The USDA has outlawed unpasteurized milk in America. It is dumb, but also exciting if you can get your hands on illegal cheese, I'll bet it would be super tasty. I had some Illegal-in-America yogurt, which was lovely and delightful.

By the time I came across this, I could only bemoan the fact that I was too stuffed to eat, so I might have to...replicate a similar delicacy.....

So does this mean that there is bacon mixed into the baguette dough? Or bacon in the baguette? OR BOTH?!