Seek out the Hoo Heddern at Rochester Farmers’ Market and step into a culinary laboratory guided by artist Cherry Truluck. Throughout the morning, Cherry will invite visitors to select ingredients from across the market—curious vegetables, unfamiliar cheeses, overlooked herbs, or beloved favourites—and combine them with the Heddern’s growing collection of hyperlocal base ingredients.
Together, these elements will become the raw material for a series of simple improvised dishes, prepared on the spot in the Heddern’s mobile kitchen. Thoughtful, inventive, and grounded in the landscape of the Hoo Peninsula, each snack or lunch dish will be unique: a fleeting collaboration between place, produce, and the people who gather there.
For those who wish to explore further, Cherry will also compose bespoke recipe cards to take home. Using the very ingredients you have chosen, she will craft a personalised dish you can recreate in your own kitchen – extending the market experience into an experiment in local, everyday creativity.
If you have ever paused at a stall, intrigued by a mysterious vegetable or a cheese you’ve never tasted, unsure how it might fit into your cooking, this is your moment. Cherry’s approach is equal parts culinary intuition and collaborative play, transforming unfamiliar ingredients into something both delicious and accessible.
Bring something to place on the shelves
Each stop along the peninsula adds another thread to the Heddern’s growing tapestry: a recipe rescued from a drawer, the smell of a childhood meal, a seed packet saved from a long‑gone allotment, a note about what once grew in the salt‑touched soil, or a catalogue that once lived in someone’s shed.
You’re welcome to share anything connected to food and the Hoo landscape:
- Stories of meals, marshes, gardens, and kitchens – written or just memories to share
- Favourite recipes — smudged, typed, or half‑remembered
- Ingredients grown, gathered, or simply loved
- Books, catalogues, clippings, foraging notes
- Memories of fishing, foraging, cooking, preserving, and feasting.
Every contribution will become part of a living, travelling portrait of what food means here and how it has shaped the peninsula, past and present.
Explore what the Heddern is carrying
Inside the Heddern, you’ll find a strange and beautiful mix of objects offered by neighbours across Hoo. You can open drawers, read the snippets people have left behind, browse recipes and notes, and trace patterns between the salt‑pans, gardens, mudflats, and kitchens that make this place unique.
The Hoo Heddern has been commissioned by Cement Fields and supported by Medway Council through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF).