Fans of the fabulous Borough Market will love new book, The Knowledge, which comes out at the end of this month (£27, Hodder & Stoughton). Written by award-winning food writer, Angela Clutton, it is a celebration of the market’s traders. As any regular will know, the Borough stall holders bring vast insight into where their produce comes from, what makes it special and – above all – how to get the very best from it back home in the kitchen. Angela’s book brings this knowledge together in one brilliant tome. It features 80 new recipes that are inspired by the traders’ expertise, alongside in-depth features on specific traders and visual step-by-step guides to preparing ingredients. Here, Angela shares just one of the delicious and indulgent recipes, perfectly suited to autumnal hibernating. She says: “Camembert is really just one of many soft cheeses that would work well for this. Whatever cheese you choose nestles within a whole loaf and is then baked for tearing and sharing, its flavours layered up with garlic, mushrooms, honey and wine.”
Ingredients
1 round baking cheese such as camembert (about 250–300g) | 1 round sourdough or cob loaf | 1 garlic clove | 30g butter | 25g small girolle mushrooms | ½ tsp herbes de Provence | 2 tsp honey | 50ml white wine or vermouth
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 170C fan/190C/375F/gas mark 5.
2. Cut the top rind off the cheese. Then cut the top off the loaf and pull out enough of the crumb inside that the cheese can sit comfortably in the loaf. (There are plenty of things you can do with the bread left over. Blitz into crumbs and freeze).
3. Peel the garlic and cut into slivers. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a low-medium heat. Cook the mushrooms until just softening, then add the garlic slivers and stir in the herbes de Provence. Take off the heat and stir in the honey and the wine. Mix well and season lightly.
4. Sit the loaf on a large piece of foil on a baking tray. Spoon the mushroom mix over the top of the cheese, then spoon the rest of the juices over, allowing some to go over the outside of the bread too. Push at the garlic pieces so they sink into the cheese a little. Wrap loosely in the foil and bake for 20 minutes. Increase the oven temperature to 190C fan/210C/410F/gas mark 6, open the parcel up just enough to reveal the cheese, and return to the oven for another 5 minutes to finish off.
5. Cut or tear the loaf into wedges and serve immediately while the cheese is still meltingly hot.