The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 23

THE GUARDIAN Saturday September 3 1988 CHOICES: POOD AND DRINK 23 Shrewsbury for a shrewd selection Veronica Horwell celebrates rustic plenty in the last of her series on markets of the world glasses, wine books, gift packs, and so on. Eat it with a portion, carelessly weighed, of that medieval bishops' dish, fried carp. Buy some tarhonya, a primitive grain-shaped pasta, to solidify your soups. A barrow like a cart for a festival of The Green Man is pushed by, piled with parsnips and carrots, their leaves feathering and splaying out in display: always a celebration here, that cornucopia expansiveness. Couples are carrying purchases between them in the preferred local heavy-duty bag, a cut-down fertiliser sack with rope handles.

First goes in a navvy's load of aubergines and peppers, then about 10 pounds of tomatoes, then a light top dressing of say, two dozen eggs. Why leave bounty uneaten to rot If you drop a water-melon and it smashes, never mind; help yourself to another free of charge, they'll only spoil. My fingers are pink-tipped with dipping into punnets of sloshy raspberries. Blemished and almost over-ripe soft fruits, damsons and plums, are about to turn themselves into brandies in their boxes; two swaggering moustachioed boys are snitching squishy apricots. A faint sourness in the air suggests vinification is beginning, but in fact it derives from the white-tiled salad stalls along one side where cabbage is fermenting in buckets next to tubs of dilled cucumbers and pickled shallots.

They keep the real liquor shelves of strong drink including imported vodka and a white Tokay with the richness of sherry behind a counter near the centre, flanked by an honour guard of fierce old morning's oyster mushrooms, miry ring mushrooms, puff-balls and orange forest fungi, weighed out 10 expensive grammes at a time and set down on certificates of innocence issued by the mushroom inspector. His stand has identifying books and warning posters, and specimens classified into lethal, merely horrid, and delicious (but his every sample looks equally sullen, shedding spores and earth and bugs on to its plastic tray). He's not on duty daily; some mornings an exuberant young man instead puts in place jars of early walnuts in honey or hand-pressed sunflower oil that take up the golden light falling from the tall windows of the nave. This must be the prime position for a small output most of the rest of the garden folk are on upturned crates in a sort of vestry out back, offering gooseberries from an old pottery bowl, pinches of poppy seed in twists of paper, and the first of the unshucked maize, still-flexible leaves just peeled back, silken tassels dangling, fourpence a cob. Fresh as this, they surprise; the colour is bright and the shapes extravagant.

The same seller has a few beans spread on newspaper, so few they seem precious. The area is village fete-like. They delight in the irregular round here, in thick-skinned pumpkins encouraged to inventive wartiness. Around the corner is a row of gourd booths with not a symmetrical vegetable available. They dry, crudely decorate, and varnish their prize freaks, and hang them up as a weird exhibition.

It isn't simply the allusion to Night of blocking the market alleys to stock up the kitchen pepper mills for the year. It's not used by the half-ounce here but by the half-pound, and it's bought by the armful. Be generous, the marketmen say. Have another string, have six, don't waste anything so good that the earth offers you. Winter will come soon enough.

holders and potted into plastic bags. Above, the stands are vertically striped in red and ochre with both kinds of paprika. Threaded in garlands and dried until wrinkled, they give off an autumnal smell: not hot as you might guess, but mellow. When autumn actually arrives, you have to push past the queues and paprika leis The outer row is also the source of paprika. Long, young pods in immature sallow yellows are coming in, with an occasional one aged to vermilion, sold to eat raw.

Men are wandering around nibbling them from the point up. There are the small, round peppers, too, shiny as billiard balls, sent rolling across trays by the stall countrywomen selling posies of rosemary. It rained steadily yesterday. helpfully soaking the warm leaf-mould and pine needles out of town, so today women from the wooded hills east of Budapest have brought in by bus the Tanners Fine Wine list (sales by the case). 90 oases ofinteili- gently chosen wines and finely distilled wisdom, devotes much oi its space to France, witn seri ous nods in other directions, and a special enthusiasm for Australia.

Naturally there are stunning ports (back to 1955) and sherries (including the excellent Hidalgo range) with a useful selection of half-bottles in all sections. The tasting of French wines Tanners arranged for me included, in whites, Domaine de Rieux 1987 (2.89), the Grassa family's Vin de Pays des Cotes de Gascogne about which I wrote recently: dry. refresh ingly acid, with a slight prickle of gas, very clean ana wen made. Mengtou-Salon, Le Petit Clos 1986, Jean-Max Roger (5.58) revealed, in its elegant balance, why this wine is so popular as a cheaper alternative to neighbouring Sancerre. There was nothing elegant about the big, sweaty nose of the Jurancon Sec, Domaine Cauhape" 1987 (5.82) but the palate was rewardinely com plex, with ripe fruit and balanc ing acidity, ukely to oe even better in a few months' time.

Macon-Clesse 1986, Guillemot (5.91) could rival many Pouil-ly-Fuisses at twice the price: a lean, well-balanced wine with an attractively almondy palate. The reds include Tanners Claret (3.36), a delicious non-vintage Bordeaux from Peter Sichel of Ch Palmer, richly fruity and elegant drinking now. Their Aniou Kouge, Do maine des Rochelles 1986 (4.83) had a grassy cabernet franc nose and youthfully juicy palate, mercifully lower in acidity than many Loire Cabernets. In contrast, en Font-uuunem, Cotes de Bouts 1983 (another Sichel wine 5.35) was classic and classy Bordeaux, deep rusty red, with concentrated mature fruit on both nose and palate. Tne Rhone provided two stunning examples: Chateau-neuf-du-Pape, Domaine du Vieux Telegraph 1984 (6.89), lighter than Brunier's previous style and thus splendid drinking now as well as for some years to come, with ripe fruit a good structure and an appealing spicy finish; and the enormous Crozes-Hermitage, Domaine de Thalabert 1985, Jaboulet Ain (6.34), its red tinged with black, the fragrance shouting plums and raspberries, complemented on the palate by tannin and tremendous length a wine to enjoy in ten years' time, but irresistible now.

Tanners shops: Shrewsbury, 26 Wyle Cop (HQ), tel (0743) 232400; 39 Mytton Oak Road; and 72 Mardol. Bridgnorth: 36 High Street Hereford: 4 St Peter's Square. Welshpool: the Old Brewery, Brook street freshly-ground black pepper, generous handful of parsley chopped finely 6 spring onions with the green tops, sliced 3 tablespoons homemade mayon- aisse or sour cream, or Greek yoghurt Have ready the wine vinegar, oils, garlic and seasoning made up into a dressing in a large bowl. Stir in the sliced red onion rings and leave them to marinade while the potatoes are cooking. Boil the potatoes in their skins until just tender.

Slice the potatoes while warm and add them to the vinaigrette and onions. Mix thoroughly and let the warm spuds soak up the flavour. When cool, add the spring onions, parsley and mayonnaisse or alternatives. Mix again and serve. new and classic ways of serving salmon Don't wrinkle your and flavour nasturtiums gfflEE) Aileen Hall ON THE train to Shrewsbury to visit Tanners the wine merchants, I got in the mood with one of Ellis Peters's "medieval whodunnits" (the cover's description), since her setting is the local abbey and surrounding countryside.

One of Tanners staff, seeing my book, commented that Ellis Peters is a customer of theirs: the wise lady obviously researches her wines as thoroughly as her books. A Dickens novel would have been equally appropriate. In 1858, staying a few doors up from Tanners in Wyle Cop, he wrote to a Mend, "From the windows I can look all down the hill and slantwise at the crookedest black and white houses, all of many shapes except straight shapes." Wyle Cop still looks like that, and inside No 26 tnere are impressive beams, irregular floors, and a cellar which floods when the river rises. But although Tanners is a solid family business, it survives on more than tradition. A computer speeds orders on their way, many within the liberal free-delivery area (for a case or more), stretching from Harlech to Cheltenham and from Oldham to Cardiff.

Among the firm's most exciting new developments is the opening of two Wine Markets, at Wyle Cop and Bridgnorth, with a third promised in Hereford next spring. They combine attractive wooden shelving with a display of over 800 wines, all annotated with clear tasting notes and suggested maturity; several bottles open for tasting; and discounted prices from 1.59 for Navarra red or white intended to rival high street chains and wine warehouses. There is also a wide range of handsome Richard Tanner: a business built on more than tradition Colin Spencer AS ALAD made with new waxy potatoes is one of the great summer dishes. Make the dish with a variety like Pink Fir Apple, KipQer, Aura, Ratte or Maris Peer. This is my luxurious version.

Gourmet Potato Salad (Serves 6) 2'AlblllOOg new small potatoes (see above), 2 red onions, sliced thinly 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 cloves garlic, crushed sea salt and Wines of Westhorpe for more wine value TASTING CASES Eight selections (12 bottles in each) from the value for money wines of probably the two fastest growing UK wine sources: Bulgaria and Hungary. Bulgarian Case the 5 new Country wine blends, and 7 varietals 22.90 Top Bulgarian Case the outstanding new Plovdiv, Reserve range. Premiums, Controlirans, and 2 sparklers 32.90 Hungarian Caw 7 standard varietals, 4 vintages, and the Tokaji Aszjt 5 Puttonjos 27.90 TokajiCase Hungary's famousliqueur wine: 2 Szamorodni's, and 3, 4, and 5 Putmyos Asvis (SOd bottles) 42.90 Dry Whites Case the dry Bulgarian Mehana.5 Bulgarian varietals including the oaky Khan Krum, and 2 of the new coll fermented Hungarian varietals 24.90 Medium ant) Sweet Whites Case -2 Mehanas, Bulgarian Riesling and 2 Country blends, 3 standard Hungarian varietals, 2 special vintages, and 2 Tokaiis 27.40 Reds Case Hungary' Merfor, 9 Bulgarians from (He standard Cabernet (handling red in the UK) upwards, and 2 vintage Hungarians i 30.90 Budget Case Bulgaria's Mehanas, Riesling, and Country blends, with 2 Hungarians 21.20 Prices include VAT nd delivery (UK nnlnUnd)fbrofdenof5ormorecses, under 5 cues freight 3 per order, 10 cua lea c.i i rue. Full Ilit from: of Westhorpe. Unit 112, 'rark Avenue csurx) ouwwn rnx, Mium LU3 3nc.

I el! oxw jycuiv. I.WL rl II DTSTOE, the dark-baked bricks of the Budapest mar ket make it seem a great and sober Calvinist church. Inside, it's a hall as might be depicted in one of those mythical-historical-pastoral canvases from the late days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Fancy iron balustrades border galleries from which some booted Imperial official ought to be reviewing the bras-sicas; the rafters are meant for the hanging of banners. None of it is in the high gilt of its prime, but it is majestic still.

Descending one of the staircases (they're too grand just to go down) I can smell broiled sausage, roast pork. I meet a fine dead pig at the staircase foot set out very resnectfuUv on clean brown paper on a pull-along trolley, his balletic pettitoes peeking out arranged as formally as a tribal sacrifice. Veal is on sale, and beef so coarsely-grained it could be labelled Ox, but shops along the aisles are mostly horizontally striped red and white, like folk-woven tablecloths, with porcine products: unrendered lard in pale slabs; cheeks for hamming up into Bath chaps; cracklings and scratchings, puffy and crunchy and sold by the kilo; boiled bacons streaked with meat. Whatever deficits the coun try's supply system may have, what's here is rough plenty. Not perfection, not primeurs, but the amplitude of pig-killing day.

Have another plateful of ribs, don't stint yourself. If the sues give out there will be some fat geese, like the one hanging from the poultryman's hook, plucked but white and plump as a duvet next to a curvaceous fowl. Cut a thick slice of the dense bread with your clasp-knife, drawing the blade towards you with a circular, sawing stroke. Sampling restaurants' Grace fitatnta Drew Smith ICHARD Stein, in his excellent English Seafood Cookery, just pub lished in Penguin, states: "The less you have to cook salmon the better." At his Seafood Res taurant at Padstow, Cornwall, he has gone as far as serving sashimi. But he has also worked on marinades.

Stein suggests two: one of groundnut oil, ginger, pink peppercorns, zest of lime and half a teaspoon of salt The other is a five-minute marination in the juice of a citrus fruit, to be served with a mayonnaise mixed with cream and garnished with chives. Other restaurants follow the theme. Lucie Skipwith at Cob- bett's in Botley, Southampton, marinates salmon for five minutes in olive oil with lime, coriander and basil, served with a tomato sorbet The best known of all the modern marinations is Raymond Blanc's widely-imitated tartare of salmon. The use of dill along with lemon to cure the fish is akin to gravlax. The salmon is then diced and mixed with sour cream, mustard, more lemon and pepper.

At Chez moi in London, Rich ard Walton has been serving a I found the best lead of a heart from the West hand. The winning line is to go up with the ace in dummy, cross to the ace of diamonds and then enter dummy with the king of spades in order to discard a heart loser on the king of diamonds. One diamond ruff in the closed hand is enough to establish dummy's suit, and South then cashes the ace of spades and the ace of clubs before ruffing a club in dummy. He now leads the established ten of diamonds, discarding the last heart from the South hand, and he has 12 tricks; the defence make one trump trick, but nothing else. Strangely, very few declarers made more than II tricks.

I had a difficult decision on this board, dealt by South with East-West vulnerable. North 4AK5 VAK762 1098 53 West East 72 86 954 VQJ109 J6543 A2 AJ96 K10842 South QJ10943 88 KQ7 Q7 OI i of where nasturtium flowers are pressed down into a quart bottle. To a quart of vinegar he adds eight well-bruised shallots, six cloves, a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of cayenne, which is all boiled for 10 minutes then poured over the flowers and left for a month. Heath strains this liquid, then bottles it adding only a little soya sauce. More recent recipes than the 18th century ones use rather more ingredients for pickling the seeds.

This is Dorothy Hartley's method from Food in England: "Gather and put them in cold water and salt for three days; then make a pickle of some white wine vinegar, shallot, horseradish, pepper, salt, cloves, mace and nutmeg quartered; put in your seeds and stop them close; they are cooked as capers." Ambrose Heath also brines the seeds for three days, then packs them into jars with layers of tarragon leaves and grated horseradish. He then boils his white vinegar with shallots, salt peppercorns, mace and nutmeg and strains it over the seeds. A salad of lettuce or other leaves with a dozen or so variegated nasturtium flowers looks spectacular and tastes marvellous. You can now buy both flowers and leaves in the salad sections of some chain stores. All Souls lanterns which rattles me, they are scary growths, louts of tne allotment bred to perversity, the obverse of selection for beauty and fruitfulness.

scooped out, filled with a poached egg, covered with smoked salmon and each layer washed with a little mayonnaise, tomato ketchup and cognac. The use of an emulsified sauce is also seen in the other most popular of restaurant dishes, gravlax with a dill and mustard sauce. Salmon is no stranger to strong saucing. The Japanese always serve sashimi with a little green cone of wasabi, a powerful horseradish. Salmon features prominently on most sashimi boards in London restaurants.

But it seems that however delicious, quite small quantities are sufficient if the fish is raw; if it is overcooked, it seems possible to eat large amounts innocuously. It is tempting to believe the palate is making some nutritional judgment Either way, it is said that most people cannot tell the difference between wild and farmed salmon when it is smoked. Even the Pinneys at the famous Butley Oxford Oys-terage in Suffolk used frozen, from Ireland. Seafood Restaurant Riverside, Padstow, Cornwall, (0841) 532485. Cobbett's, 15 The Square, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire, (04892) 2068.

Chez Moi, 1 Addison Avenue, Lon don wn, 01-603 8267. Hand sel's, 22 Stafford Street Edinburgh, (031 225) 5521. Alfonso's, 19-21 Station Hill Parade, Cookham, Berkshire, (06285) 25775. Le Gavroche. 43 Upper Brook Street London wi, 01-403 0881.

Butley Ortord Oysterage, Market Hill, Or-ford, Suffolk, (0394) 450277. Consumers' Association. All correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to The Editor. The Good Food Guide. Freenost, 2Marylebone Road, London NW1 1YN.

Buffet or silver service menus; full entertainment packages for 12-300 passengers. All-weather boats, fully heated in winter. 01-2610592 KITCHEN TlllBlllM.tHttWI Wlftflu you HH Bnd good tood and ftitnfy aanrict InllnMa wmwttip-Mpiihnwlbyour nwiynguttn) also ate the nasturtium leaves, while the unopened buds and the young seeds were pickled. Both Gerard and, a little later, John Evelyn carry on the more ancient concept of plant humours; thus Gerard talks of Indian Cress as tempering the coldness of lettuce and purslane. Fifty years later Evelyn calls it moderately hot and aromatic, saying that it will purge the brain and quicken the torpid spirit Most of all he stresses that the flowers are an effective agent for expunging that cruel enemy, scurvy.

Nasturtium pickling is mentioned by Hannah Glasse and Eliza Acton. Both are rather perfunctory in their method, throwing the seeds into brine or vinegar with whatever spices you care to add. Neither mention eating the leaves or flowers as a salad. A cookery book of the 1890s redresses the balance slightly by giving a recipe for a sauce made from the flowers: "Put the full-blown flowers into a quart bottle with a minced shallot or two and fill up the bottle with cold scalded vinegar. Let it stand for two months, then rub it all through a sieve, bottle off, seasoning with cayenne and salt to taste." (Pickles and Preserves; Queen Cookery Books).

It is possibly this recipe, or one like it which inspired Ambrose Heath in Good Jams, Preserves and Pickles (1917) "Fall, balanced wine, tinged with oak" "Elegant, with long "Unmistakably CUNE" From CUNE, a range of very fine wines including the incomparable Imperial Reservas and Gran Reservas. af nose at Colin Spencer THE NASTURTIUM, an annual easily grown from seed in the garden or window box, is both attractive and edible. The whole plant can be eaten its flowers and leaves in salads, and its seeds, when pickled, as a traditional alterna tive to capers. It is a native of Mexico and South America and is not men tioned in the early herbals or in tne later pseuao-scienunc pharmacopoeia of Nicholas Culpeper (1649). But John Gerard, the Elizabethan physician who looked after Lord Burghley's gardens, refers to it in his earlier herbal (1597) as Indian Cress.

Gerard writes that the seeds came from the West Indies into Spain and thence to France and Flanders, some people believe, he says that the plant must be related to convolvulus or bindweed because of the tangled way it grows, yet Gerard is sure it must be a cress because of its smell and flavour. It is because of this strongly individual aspect its sharp pep pery taste, tnat it now snares its name with the genus nasturtium, which comes from the fusion of two Latin words, nasus and tortus, meaning a sharp smell which wrinkles the nose up. However, it has nothing to do with watercress (Nasturtium officinale) or with horseradish (Nasturtium armoracia) but belongs instead with a subsection of the large geranium family. The Elizabethans loved their exciting new plant. The gardeners enjoyed its lurid flowers and added them to the flowers they were already eating violets, primroses, borage, cowslips, elder and broom.

They Tandoori Vegetarian Restaurant FULLY LICENSED FULLY AIR CONDITIONED 501 Green Lwwb Harringay London IMiAL Tel: 01-348 6500 01-3401160 Highly recommended by top food guides LOTUS-GARDENS 25701dBrompton Road London SW5 Telephone: 01-370 4450 SPECIALISTS IN PEKING CUISINE variation for 15 years. There are crucial differences, however. Walton's version binds the raw salmon with egg yolks, capers and olive oil, as in a mayonnaise. If cream sauces with salmon seem over-rich, with smoked salmon the smokiness can infiltrate the sauce and almost slake its richness. John Radford at Hansel's in Edinburgh uses this technique.

He makes a sauce of white wine, vinegar, chopped shallots (poached not sweated) and saffron, reduced by half, to which he adds crayfish tails or a crayfish stock, then reduces with cream and mounts up again with butter. This sauce is smeared over the ordinary fillet of salmon and covered with a layer of smoked salmon and a dice of crunchy vegetables. At Alfonso's in Cookbam, Berkshire, smoked salmon is served hot with red peppers an idea obviously developed from the early days of nouvelle cuisine when smoked salmon was used like gastronomic brown paper to wrap up terrines. The classical inclination is to offset smoked salmon with equally rich cream and herb mousses in variations of roulades. Rusk-style croutons smeared with cream cheese and topped with salmon are frequent canapes.

Le uavrocne in London serves ouefs a la Careme almost as insignia of its classicism the artichoke hearts South West North East (Mrs Flint) (Mrs Markus) 3S NB 4S(1) NB NB NB (1) I was conscious that my partner's pre-empt could be extremely weak at favourable vulnerability, but I could not resist raising to game. Faced with a blind lead, West started with the five of hearts. Honor played the hand courageously. She won with the ace hearts, cashed a second top heart and ruffed a heart high. A trump to the ace was followed by a second high heart ruff, establishing dummy's fifth heart for a club discard.

The nine of trumps to dummy's king, and the established heart were followed by a diamond to the king, and the five of spades remained in dummy as an entry for a second diamond lead. Honor thereby managed to make 11 tricks, and plus-450 gave us an excellent match-point score on the board. The annual Richard Lederer competition will be very special this year as several teams on their way to Venice for the World Bridge Championships have been invited to take part Spectators are welcome at the Young Chelsea Club. 32 Barkston Gardens, London SW 5, on October 1-2. Rixi Markus Tricks for the taking II jSip a I Rixi Markus PLAYED with Honor Flint in J.the 1988 Cino del Duca pairs championship and we had a great first session, scoring over 62 per cent On the second day, however, I succumbed to an overpowering heatwave, and although we still won a prize as the second-best ladies pair, it was all a little disappointing after such an encouraging start.

We were lucky on the following board, when our opponent failed to take advantage of the favourable lie of the cards. North 4K7S3 VA54 10874 9 West QJ10 V832 QJ5 Q1083 East 9 VKJ109 9632 7642 South A8642 V76 A AKJS South became the declarer in the obvious contract of 4S, and fiant mjm.