Truro Farmers’ Market celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2024 and has announced the release of a special recipe book to celebrate the milestone. 

Creating Truro Farmers Market – The Cookbook has been a year-long team effort, with local chef Todd Studley devising affordable and approachable dishes charting the course of the seasons at market, while taking inspiration from food cultures around the globe. 

According to Porthleven chef Jude Kereama, who wrote the foreword for the book, the recipes “eminently suit the Cornish lifestyle, with a focus on outdoor cooking over live fire, ideas for enjoying the very freshest fish, and nourishing comfort food for those months of long, windswept walks on empty beaches.” 

Copies will be for sale from tonight and throughout December at The BIG Christmas Market on Lemon Quay, alongside a seasonal food calendar, and can also be ordered online.  The market was formed in 1999 as a cooperative of local producers, and continues to go from strength to strength and is regularly listed as one of the best local food markets in the country.  

The stories of the market stallholders – farmers, growers, bakers, fishermen and many others – are told by writer Lucy Cornes of Cornwall Content, who has worked closely with the market for many years. 

Photography by market coordinator Stewart Girvan celebrates Todd’s down-to-earth cooking, while vividly bringing into focus the people behind the produce.  

“Working so closely with the stallholders every week, I know the hard graft that goes on behind the scenes,” said Stewart. “This book captures the community spirit and passion for great Cornish produce which exists at the market, and we had a lot of fun making it.  As official photographer I got to sample first-hand all of Todd’s delicious dishes, and I can vouch for everything being super-tasty!”  

Featured stallholders include David Buscombe of The Cornish Mill and Bakehouse, who leads four generations in baking sweet and savoury treats using flour milled on the family farm; Nick Dymond of St Piran’s Pork, where regenerative farming methods are improving soil health and producing nutrient-rich food; and Chris Bean of day boat Lady Hamilton, who has been launching from Helford for over 50 years and supplies the market exclusively with supremely fresh fish.  

“As much as we wanted this to be a useful recipe book which rarely spends too long on the shelf, we also wanted to do justice to the local food heroes at the grassroots of Cornwall’s culinary culture,” said Lucy.