The Menu: The market is always in season for fine produce and a sense of community

Grower Caroline Robinson, stallholder and farmers’ market stalwart. Picture: Sean Monaghan

I went to Douglas farmers’ market last Saturday for the first time in ages. I’ve had to don my Florence Nightingale outfit in recent years to care for a family member, Saturday becoming my rostered day, so it was a joy to return to what has always been a treasured experience.

My children were practically reared in farmers’ markets, Douglas, in particular. We’d head down at 10am every Saturday and do the bulk of the week’s grocery shopping, for fresh fruit and vegetables, free range pork, chicken, fish, milk, cheeses, eggs, breads, baked goods, and some random deli delicacies.

And it wasn’t just the fine produce that drew us weekly, in fair weather or foul.

Farmer’s markets are hugely social affairs, offering the kind of interaction and sense of community you will never, ever get in a sterile supermarket. You come to know other regulars, and stallholders have become good friends.

With shopping done, young ‘uns and I would plonk down on a freezer box or crate behind a stall to shoot the breeze with its owner while I supped a Golden Bean coffee and the kids became as one with Marcus Hodder’s Yum Gelato ice cream.

Neither is conversation always idle chitchat. Markets served as my university of Irish food. I’ve come away with more insights, knowledge, and stories, and discovered more fine foodstuffs then I’d ever do in a lifetime of doom-scrolling online. The market is a font of unvarnished truth; social media is so often little more than varnish, surface sheen with zero substance.

I know, I’ve heard it a thousand times, “farmers’ markets are too expensive!” Well, yes and no. First of all, when shopping in the supermarket, do you pause by the veg section for coffees and cake? 

When you reach frozen foods, do you also buy a couple of piping hot pizzas for ravenous offspring? Maybe you pause by tinned goods to scoff oysters or a fine fresh salad? Maybe you’re gasping by the time you hit the cleaning products so you slake your thirst with freshly squeezed juice or kombucha? 

At the tills, do you grab a delicious newly baked chocolate cake — far superior to anything you’d ever get in a supermarket — as a Saturday night treat?

Markets increasingly feature hot food stalls serving truly tempting fare and I, for one, am a huge fan. But many shoppers make the mistake of conflating their market grocery bill with money spent on also eating at the market. Either eat before you go to the market, or indulge yourself, but know that it is not part of your shopping bill.

Then there is quality. I have never yet come across fresh produce, meat, fish, dairy or eggs in a supermarket to match the quality of that in markets — I’m happy to pay the difference for something I actually put inside my body. And paying the producer directly ensures a better chance that they will make a proper living, able to return again the following week.

In other words, I am playing my part in enabling a local circular food economy, which benefits us all.

The real problem is that consumers still don’t appreciate the true cost of food. Supermarket prices are estimated to be about two-fifths of the actual cost when you factor in below-cost selling, subsidies, and food production’s impact on the environment and health. Large processors and retailers make all the profits, yet small producers and consumers soak up all the additional costs.

Irish growers continue to get the shittiest end of the agricultural stick and one less welcome change registered in recent times at all markets is the marked decline in growers selling their own produce. According to Caroline Robinson, a stalwart of the Coal Quay farmers’ market for decades, “these days, you’re only doing vegetables if you’re desperate”.

It is a deeply alarming sentiment when even the department of agriculture is waking up to the precarious state of our native horticulture sector and our over-reliance on inferior imported produce.

To revive the sector, we need growers of all sizes and farmers’ markets have always offered small growers the best reward for their efforts.

So, the next time you’re at a farmer’s market, enjoy that coffee, relish that pizza, but do also seek out and support the actual farmers as well.

Easy on the eye

Sean Monahan’s second book, The Irish Market Cookbook (Published by Two Hats Pizza), features more of his excellent food photography.

It is an homage to some of the finest produce to be found at markets around the country, and the people who make it.

In addition, the wonderful images complement cracking original recipes that cast familiar fare in a new light, on the plate and in the belly.

• Instagram: @Irish_marketcookbook

Today’s special

One of the most divine eating experiences at the Douglas farmers’ market was from Chilean food and wine writer Fran Jara’s La Latina stall.

Combining her culinary heritage with superb Irish produce in an exquisite empanada (€8), the delicious hand-worked pastry housed Castletownbere prawns and Macroom buffalo mozzarella. And her divine tres leches cake, a sponge soaked in sweet milk, dulce de leche, and Swiss meringue, is a sin I’d gladly do time for!

• Instagram: @lalatina.ie