London’s world-famous produce market is launching a new three-week digital pop-up, Borough Market’s Festive Kitchen, to inspire and delight Londoners and food shoppers across the UK in the run up to Christmas. Festive Kitchen has been created to share one of Christmas’s greatest pleasures – family and friends gathering in the warmth of the kitchen to chat and prepare food. The specially constructed kitchen set1 will provide a cheerful, bustling backdrop to showcase Borough Market stallholders’ array of seasonal produce, along with meat, baking, vegetable, chocolate and floristry masterclasses from expert traders including Bread Ahead, Northfield Farm and Turnips. A stellar cast of chefs and food experts will be hosting cookalongs, sharing Christmas cookery tips and sparkling conversation – all streamed live from Borough Market’s Festive Kitchen on its Christmas Facebook channel.

Starting on 2nd December and running Wednesdays to Fridays throughout the month, the packed schedule of live streamed activities and events is designed to bring to life some of the Market traders’ exceptional ingredients and provide inspiration for festive recipes, Christmas food and drink selections.

Three charismatic hosts will each spend a week curating and compering the programme:

· Angela Clutton: food writer, presenter and author of the multi-award-winning cookbook The Vinegar Cupboard

· Bettina Campolucci Bordi: founder of Bettina’s Kitchen and an expert on plant-based cooking

· Edd Kimber: winner of the very first Great British Bake Off, author of three baking books and popular blog, The Boy Who Bakes

Headlining the show will be a series of live digital cookalongs on Wednesdays, with the week’s host, and Thursday evenings, with a guest chef, where Londoners can pre-order recipe produce boxes with ingredients hand-selected from the Market’s traders and have them delivered to their door in time to join in the fun at home. Recipe cards will be available for participants living outside London ahead of the cookalongs.

Two guest chefs cooking up a festive storm are: Ben Ebbrell, co-founder of the ground-breaking Sorted Food YouTube channel; Olia Hercules, whose cookbooks focus on Ukrainian and Caucasian cuisine.

Festive Kitchen highlights (all free of charge) will include:

· Masterclasses from Borough Market traders: Northfield Farm (meat), Turnips (fruit and veg), Bread Ahead (baking), Rabot 1745 (chocolate), The Gated Garden (floristry)

· Cooking demos from Borough Market Kitchen favourites: Mei Mei, Shuk and Juma

· The 12 Cheese pairings of Christmas featuring the Market’s cheese traders

· In Conversation: interviews with Calum Franklin, Anna Jones, Gizzi Erskine and Edible Histories (Borough Market’s latest book) author Mark Riddaway

· Christmas cookery surgeries with Romy Gill, Niki Webster and Ravneet Gill

· Friday friends: lively chats between stars of the food world such as: Ryan Chetiyawardana AKA Mr Lyan, Signe Johansen, Nina Parker, Alexandra Dudley, Ed Smith and Benjamina Ebuehi

To order recipe produce boxes, view Borough Market’s Christmas opening hours, or for latest schedule and details of how to participate in the festive programme visit https://www.christmas.boroughmarket.org.uk/. Full schedule can be found at https://www.christmas.boroughmarket.org.uk/festive-kitchen All live content will be streamed on www.facebook.com/watch/BoroughMarket

Kate Howell, Director of Development and Communications at Borough Market, said: “We know that Christmas will be different for many of us this year and we want to bring some special Borough Market cheer to the whole country with our trader tips and fantastic guests from the food world. The kitchen is the heart of the home at Christmas and with families and friends potentially having to stay apart, we want to encourage people to come together as a community online, have some fun and learn something new. We hope that these events streamed live from our Borough Market Festive Kitchen to kitchens across the UK will inspire people to get creative with their cooking and try different ingredients from our independent traders for their festive table.”

Christmas Trading Hours:

To make Christmas shopping as convenient as possible, Borough Market will be trading every day from 23rd November until Christmas Eve. And starting on 3rd December the Market will be offering late night shopping – staying open until 9pm on Thursdays and Fridays. Measures are in place to make open air shopping at the Market as safe and stress-free as possible.  Take away hot food is available from the Borough Market Kitchen traders but must be consumed off-site.

Ways to shop:

· Borough Market’s delivery and collection service, Borough Market Online, offers an alternative way for customers to access Market produce either by click and collect or via a doorstep drop delivery service, now extended for those within a 10-mile radius of the Market, allowing orders to be received without contact with couriers.

· Borough Market has also launched a carbon neutral postal delivery service for food lovers across the UK. Borough by Post means that high quality food and drink from some of the Market’s best loved traders is now available nationwide for a single delivery fee.

· For those shielding, a new telephone ordering service with a customer team on hand to help hand pick orders is available on: 020 7940 7900 and will operate Wednesday and Thursday (10am–5pm), Friday (10am–6pm), and Saturday: (8am–5pm). Deliveries are free and will go out the following morning.