FOOD Deborah Ross

HONESTLY, I just could not believe it when I read that The Spectator is going to bring back proper poetry. Because that's what I am mainly — a poet! Truly, I am. People who know about food do tend to be spectacularly poetical, actually. Look at Kipling, who spent all day making those exceedingly good cakes and still had the energy to write not only 'If, but also the Just So Stories, which I think remains the definitive guide to cooking pasta. As it happens, I have even written a little sonnet in Mr Kipling's honour. It goes, 'Shall I compare thee to a Cherry Bakewell? No, I can't be arsed.' The end.

Hang on, hang on. Call myself a proper poet? It doesn't rhyme or scan or anything. It's rubbish. It's as bad as the stuff done by that dreadful man eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee cummings, who, apart from anything else, was obviously surprised by a mouse just as he was signing his first effort. I'll have another go. 'Shall I compare thee to a Cher- ry Bakewell? No, I can't be arsed. Still, I love your French Fondant Fancies. And your Treacle Lattice Tarts.' The end.

Perfect! If you are interested in acquiring my latest anthology, I can let you have a copy for the special Spectator price of £678. How- ever, this is not as expensive as it sounds because it comes with a free copy of How to Eat by Denisella Ross which, strangely, is proving almost impossible to shift.

Actually, I was a bit naughty this week. I should have been working full out on my lat- est epic — 'Ode to an Individual Deep- Filled Bramley Pie' — but come Sunday morning I desperately needed a break. So off I went to the farmers' market in Isling- ton. Farmers' markets? These are totally brilliant things, promoted by the Country- side Alliance as part of its campaign for `honest food' as opposed to 'dishonest food', which, I guess, includes those nasty carrots that come to the door saying they want to read the gas meter and then proceed to nick your purse from the mantelpiece. I saw a photofit of one of these on Crimewatch once and, the next day, tried to make a citizen's arrest in Tesco. It was that carrot, I know it was. And everyone was very grateful. I even seemed to win this lovely holiday in a nice, White padded room where they dressed me in a nice white shirt with ties at the back. Vivienne Westwood? I expect so. I'm still waiting for the reward money, though.

What is a farmers' market? Well, it's what it says it is. It's farmers who come into town to market their own produce. Farmers, it seems, can be marvellously decent. If you refuse to go to them — for obvious reasons, Including the fact that they many their first cousins and have spooky children with multi- ple heads — then, yes, they will come to you. It's very good for farmers, who get to sell direct to the public (there are no middle- men, so the farmer takes the full retail price). Plus, they get to do it in a place where cus- tomers are concentrated in time and space, unlike at the lonely farm-gate. It is good for the customer, too. The produce is much fresher than at the supermarket. Farms pro- viding London markets, for example, must come from within 100 miles of the M25. (So no spraying with preservatives.) Nothing is wrapped in plastic, so you can touch and smell before you buy. As everything in the market is grown or produced by the seller (no one is allowed to sell on behalf of oth- ers), the farmer can tell you how something is grown, how best to cook it and so on. Based on an American idea, farmers' mar- kets have taken off explosively in this country — from one in Bath in 1998 to about 300 today, with several in London. That's possi- bly about as explosive as these things get.

The one in Islington (every Sunday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.) is squeezed between the chi-chi antiques market that is Camden Pas- sage and all those smart shops selling Alessi Wine- Stoppers at £567 a go for all those peculiar people who can open a bottle of wine and stop. There is a tip-top Islington woman buying eggs. 'It's so nice to get eggs without a datemark on,' she says. 'It always gets in the way when I'm doing art with Tilly.' I think this a bit rude, actually. Think how long it takes to train chickens to write dates on their eggs. And for what? To get slagged off by someone who doesn't have the sense to, if not send Tilly to boarding school, then at least sit her in front of a video for weeks on end. Oops. I feel another poem coming on:

Artwork with eggs?

Whatever next?

Playing Ludo?

I'd rather be dead.

What can you get at a farmers' market? Well, at this one, it is eggs, cheese, cream, Kent strawberries, unsprayed apples and pears, cabbages, beetroot, carrots (plus lots of other veg), bread, meat, honey, flowers, crabs and lobsters caught in Cromer the day before. It is extremely popular and very crowded, even though the market is dimin- ished this week because, as I hear one farmer say to another, 'The lamb lady couldn't make it. She's got shingles.' I talk to Charlie Pen- darves, who owns an 80-acre smallholding in Somerset, and is here today selling hand- carved ham, bacon, eggs and the wonderful, golden-crusted meat pies his missus makes every Saturday night. Doesn't she ever get fed up? 'She bloody hates it. But she knows that in this business, you do it or you lose it.' `Do you come every week?' Oh yes. It's vital. If I don't come here, I'm in trouble.'

I try some of his ham. It's melt-in-the- mouth gorgeous. He serves one of his regu- lar customers, an ex-colonel type with spi- dery-veined cheeks, who says, 'When I was a boy, bacon smelled of something. You'd put some on and the whole street would smell it. Now? Nothing. Why is that?' Mr Pendarves says it's because to cure meat properly you have to immerse it in brine for a good few weeks, then smoke it. But meat for super- markets? It's injected with brine, to speed up the process. 'They can do in eight days what it takes me a month to do.' At what cost? `Complete loss of flavour. You know all that white froth that comes out in the pan when you fry bacon? That's injected brine.' I buy some of his bacon, which, he assures me, will not produce that white froth. It does not.

On to Richard Beard, who keeps 150 milking goats on 30 acres near Rochester, Kent, and makes the most fantastic goats'- milk yogurts and goats'-cheese logs — plain, with garlic, thyme, parsley, coriander, but not Battenberg, which is a shame, but you can't have everything. He's up for a British Cheese Award, actually. He'll know shortly whether he has won or not. If he has, I ask, will he have to make a speech? And will it go: 'I would like to thank all my goats, but particularly Hetty, Betty, Letty . . . Lenny, Benny and Jenny .. . Beardy, Weirdy and Deirdre?' No,' he says.

I move on to buy some apples from an apple grower. 'Look,' says the apple grower. `They've got warts on. They aren't perfect, but they taste superb. A supermarket wouldn't touch them. But are we perfect? No. Imagine if we were farmed by supermar- kets. We'd be a strange old race.'

Anyway, in short, Deb went to market, bought tons and it was all scrumptious. (The apples did taste superb.) Farmers' markets truly are brilliant. But now? Back to work, I suppose.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high through azure skies When all at once I saw a crowd Of Individual Deep-Filled Bramley Pies...

For a national list of UK farmers' markets send an SAE to the National Association of Farmers' Markets, South Vaults, Green Park Station, Green Park Road, Bath BA1 1JS, or visit wwwfarmersmarkets.net.