Dumplings Nigel Slater: Eating Together

I've grown up with food that says home.

Dishes that mean a lot to me are part of who I am.

But while it's comfortable to stick with what you know, as a cook,

I want to explore new flavours.

I've no idea what this is, let alone how to cook it!

Hello, how are you? How are you?

So I'm going on a tour to meet home cooks all around Britain,

who are mad about their food...

-Lovely to meet you.

-"The mussels, go, quickly, go!"

..to find out what culinary secrets they can teach me.

I thought I'd cooked everything you could with banana.

Would you like to try?

Do you know, I'd love to have a go, actually.

This is my excuse to see what makes cultures within Britain tick

and to meet distant cousins of my favourite recipes.

This is just so beautiful.

Utterly, utterly enchanting.

Dishes that share the same basic idea, but with origins

and ingredients a long way from our shores.

My journey will take me around the world.

The beauty is - I won't even need a passport!

And as a thank you, I'm going to invite everyone I meet

to a meal that puts all their dishes on one table in a celebration

of what makes us different and what brings us together.

From dim sum to wontons and ravioli,

all over the world, people are taking delicious morsels of food

and wrapping them up in dough.

I want to uncover the secrets of these wonderful bite-sized gems

that make a huge impact around the world

but before I go anywhere, I want to cook some of my own

and there's none more delicious than the good old British dumpling.

Suet dumplings soak up the juice of a hearty stew to make

one of the most enjoyable parcels of food you could ever wish for.

You know I love stew.

Sometimes I think I actually only make it for the dumplings.

For the stew, brown some large cubes of meat.

I'm using beef. Then fry onions, carrots, celery and swede.

I'm aiming for the sort of stew I had with dumplings as a kid.

The dumpling has just gone out of fashion and it's such a shame.

I think people have stopped making them

because they're scared they can't make them as well as their granny. That's my theory anyway.

Once the veg has a nice gloss,

pop the meat back in with a spoonful of flour, some stock, seasoning,

and a couple of bay leaves, before topping up with red wine.

So get that up to the boil.

Put a lid on and you just let it putter away quietly

while you get on with other things.

And now the real reason I've made stew. It's for the dumplings.

Just not the same without those comforting little baubles of flour and fat.

I'm going to have 125g of plain flour,

a teaspoon full of salt,

a teaspoon full of baking powder.

Now to that, I need some fat.

Round about half the weight of fat to flour.

For these dumplings, I'm using dried suet,

so I need a drop of water to make a soft dough that will fluff up

like little clouds as they cook in the stew.

I love those classics, but I've got another recipe that I've been

working on that's really good fun, as well.

So these little dumplings are very slightly different.

Start with 70g of fine oatmeal and the same again of plain flour,

a teaspoon of baking powder and another of salt.

And instead of suet, I'm using 80g of butter.

Grating it cold will make it easy to rub into the mix.

Now what will bring these dumplings to life is a few fresh herbs.

I've got parsley, rosemary and thyme.

What I love about dumplings is their rough texture.

They soak up the gravy, they eke things out a little bit, they

make things go further and they are also utterly, totally comforting.

Whoa, have they come up! There's hardly room for these.

I'm going to tuck these in. Lid on.

Ten minutes and they'll be done.

Look at those. It's worth steaming up my glasses for.

Beef stew and dumplings. The classic and the oatmeal and herb.

Dumplings like these are undeniably old England

and there's nothing wrong with that.

But I'm keen to find out what modern Britain has to offer.

My first stop in my search for new ways of parcelling up flavours

is Lincolnshire.

I'm meeting a lady whose Gujarati-style cooking from her

ancestral home in Western India has become famous with her neighbours

since her arrival in England in 1972.

Nita, hello!

Hello, how are you?

I'm very well.

Good to see you.

Thank you, nice to be here.

What are you cooking?

We're making some wonderful fritters with yoghurt.

Aren't they fabulous?

Aren't they just!

I've always thought that I knew quite a bit about Indian

cooking, but, you know, I'm slowly realising that what I know is

actually Bangladeshi cooking and it's not Gujarati cooking.

If it's sort of in a nutshell, the essential difference is what?

Simplicity and the freshness.

These look really good fun.

Do try some, please!

These are so good.

As well as these little fritters, Nita's promised to show me

another Gujarati speciality - the pea kachori.

It's an Indian recipe containing one of Lincolnshire's finest exports.

Aren't they gorgeous?

They're beautiful.

-You tell me when to stop.

-Yes. Please, thank you.

Whereas my dumplings were about comfort,

these little parcels are all about vibrancy.

Popping away nicely.

Peas, a little bit of ginger, a little bit of chilli.

A few mustard seeds.

-There's a lovely simplicity to this.

-Isn't it?

The funny thing, though, about -

not necessarily Gujarati cooking, but all Indian cooking -

I think some people are slightly put off by the idea

of that this is going to take a very, very long time,

but, in fact, once you actually start cooking,

it is amazingly quick.

And I think these days, the supermarkets, we have to give

credit to them, because the aisles do have a lot of the Indian

ingredients, but that wasn't the case when we came here 42 years ago.

The kachori dough is pretty much the same as my dumpling mix,

but with oil instead of suet.

We'll use this to wrap up the little balls of pea mixture.

This is fun, isn't it? It's like playing with Play-Doh or Plasticine when you're a child.

-It is, which I used to do.

-Yes.

This recipe's journey from India to Lincolnshire was not straightforward.

Nita's parents left India to set up a successful business in Uganda

before she was born. But in 1972, when she was just 15,

the country's dictator, Idi Amin,

ejected all Asians with the threat of execution.

Can I ask you about leaving Uganda?

Because everybody left at once, didn't they?

Yes, we were given 90 days to leave.

That's not very long.

No, not when you're running businesses

and trying to get out safely as well, it isn't long at all.

Kampala, for us, was a long distance - about 300 miles -

and on the way, there were several army stops

and then at one particular stop, they took my father away.

For how long, it's difficult to remember now - it seemed an eternity.

But he gave away all the money that we had

and the jewellery that we had, and, luckily, he was allowed to come out.

Sadly, we did lose some very dear friends

and there were lots and lots of people killed, um,

in Uganda at that time.

Once in Britain, Nita's family travelled to Lincolnshire to

start life from scratch.

Was there a welcome for you here?

Indeed, yes. There was a lot of excitement because we were the first

Ugandan Asians to come here to Lincolnshire.

The local people just decorated the house for us.

They really, really made us feel welcome.

So we'll start.

I like your little rolling pin.

Isn't it amazing?

How cool is that!

So what we need to do now is just put one of those in here

and cover the kachori up.

Just nice little pleats.

-Dare I have a go?

-Please do.

-Now that's about the size of it, right?

-Yes.

Now, this looked tricky, because you pulled.

-You know when you're making a pie and you're pinching it?

-Yes.

It's that sort.

I'm afraid I haven't done it as elegantly as you did.

You've done it beautifully. Well done.

The dough of English dumplings like mine soaked up flavour.

Here, it keeps it all in during cooking.

It's so, so good.

You should have a crunch.

I have got...

I have got crunch but I've also got that gorgeous pea mixture.

Another of Nita's speciality parcels is the samosa.

And helping make some is daughter Meera,

whose mum's cooking has inspired her to become a writer.

Tell me about your mum. I mean, she's very well known for her cooking.

Oh, my gosh, you can smell her cooking throughout the village

and you know, she cooks frequently

and in huge batches for community events all the time.

I'm kind of interested, sort of, how YOU learned to cook.

I really started to cook when I first went to university

and I realised that I couldn't make myself anything that I grew up with.

I rang her up whilst at university and said, "Can I have your recipes?"

And she said, "Darling, I've never written anything down before.

"If you want to learn how to cook, you have to come back home and watch me,"

and that's how I learned how to cook.

So - that's a neat little parcel.

They're a lot neater than any samosa I've ever made.

Would you like to try?

Um, do you know - I'd love to have a go, actually.

You need to fold that into a cone

and then pop in a teaspoon or two of the filling.

This samosa mix is lamb keema with peas and potatoes.

-OK, so you just... if you pinch the top closed...

-Yes.

There you go, and then just fold it over. Put some water on that bit.

Perfect.

Hmm. I think I need some practice!

Meera and Nita's samosas

and kachori are part of an Indian heritage that has travelled

through terror in Uganda to make a new home alongside English

favourites, having been embraced by their Lincolnshire neighbours.

I mean, this must mean a lot to you.

It means we belong here and it means peace of mind.

It's quite clear to me that some of this is about food.

Sharing food is life, and if you can share food with someone,

you've made a friend for life.

Nita's generosity of spirit is infectious.

And it's people like her that have helped open up the British menu

to include the dazzling array we see around us today.

Walk down any major high street

and you can take your pick from the tables of distant countries.

And since a recent boom in Eastern European shops,

I've found myself buying more and more delicacies from Poland.

You know, the great thing is,

if it wasn't for the thriving Polish community here,

I would never have even heard of these, let alone eaten them.

One man who's perfected the art of home-made Polish food is Rafael.

Trained as a ballroom dancer,

his passion for the food of his birthplace is so great that

when he moved here, he hung up his dance shoes

and opened a stall specialising in one particular Polish dish.

-Brought your shopping, then?

-A lot of shopping, yes.

Are these the little pierogi you're making?

Yes, we're going to make pierogi today.

Cos I love them, I have to say, absolutely adore them.

Pierogi - a Polish classic served as starter, main and even sweet -

their filling changes with the season and the region in Poland.

Rafael's going to show me some of his favourites -

potato with cottage cheese and mushroom with sauerkraut.

-Now you need THAT, don't you?

-Yes.

-Shall I put the rest in the fridge?

-Please do, yes, please.

So I'm going to open the flour now. So that's a kilo.

The dough mixture for pierogi

is basically the same as for Nita's kachori.

Flour, water and oil. It's the filling that's different.

Fried onions and boiled potatoes are essentials.

-I'll leave them there to cool down a bit.

-We'll leave them there and then we'll chill them.

How long have you been making these?

My passion for cooking started when I came here to England.

-When you came here?

-When I came here.

Whereas before, my mum and my grandma would cook for me,

so I wasn't that interested in cooking in that time.

Rafael's is a common story.

People leaving their country of birth often discover that

regional recipes and flavours can be a way of expressing

and preserving your identity.

But it's not always easy.

I'm just wondering, what sort of Polish food was here

when you first arrived?

It must have been slightly different.

There was not that many available.

At that time we would get parcels from Poland sent over by bus.

-Really?

-Yeah, we could have a little bag with sausages

and whatever your mum cooks for you.

Food that you miss.

Food that we miss.

Exactly, and now it's a little bit different because you can buy

them right on your doorstep so it's much, much easier.

This first pierogi stuffing is so simple.

Crumble some firm Polish cottage cheese and add to the boiled

potatoes and crisped onions with plenty of salt and pepper.

Mash until smooth.

The second filling uses an ingredient I'm really

excited about - sauerkraut.

-Sauerkraut.

-Sauerkraut.

-I love this stuff.

It's something you don't have anything similar to this taste in England.

We have pickled cabbage, but it's very different.

It's different. I never found anything, anything like it here.

After washing then boiling the sauerkraut with

a couple of bay leaves,

it's fried with some well-soaked dried mushrooms and their liquid.

So we've got a lot of mushrooms here, that brings back

the memories of when we were picking the mushrooms when we were young.

It's nice. So now we're going to have to fry it

and it will be about 20-25 minutes even.

Traditional Polish cooking uses a lot of seasoning,

including this seasoning sauce,

which is a sort of Polish Worcester sauce.

It smells like the woods on a damp autumn day.

Yeah, I love the smell and this smell brings me

back to my home during Christmas.

Because Christmas time, especially,

we make a lot of sauerkraut and mushroom.

If these are a Polish Christmas speciality,

then it's time for the wrapping,

and the secret to a really good pierogi is sealing it perfectly.

So what you do is take the cut out and stretch it a little bit

and then pinch it right on the top here and just stretch it like that.

So, no water, no egg?

No water, no egg, nothing, nothing.

-Can I have a go?

-Of course you can.

What gets me about these little parcels is, one - how much

they are like ravioli, except that it's a different dough...

-Different filling.

-Different filling, but also like the Japanese gyoza.

All little dumplings, whether fried, boiled or steamed.

-The whole world likes hidden treasure.

-Exactly.

This is where you find out if you've sealed the pierogi properly.

If not, they'll open up when they're put into boiling water

and the whole lot will turn to soup.

Once they float to the top, give them a few more seconds,

then they're done.

The topping is finely chopped dill with sour cream

and some of the crispy onions left over from the filling.

So they are ready to eat.

We've got cottage cheese and potato, the bright ones and the sauerkraut and mushroom pierogi.

It must be like a little kind of parcel from home.

Yeah, parcel from home with memories inside.

The flavour of these pierogi is uniquely Eastern European,

but I'm struck by how much they look like their Mediterranean cousins.

Cappuccino, ciabatta, gelato.

An espresso, please.

Food and drinks that can only mean I'm in Italy.

Except that I'm not. I'm in Bedford.

One fifth of the population of Bedford is Italian,

and if there's one thing they're famous for, it's their food.

I've come to this Italian bakery to meet Elisabetta.

-Hello.

-Pleased to meet you. I'm Liz.

Known locally as Liz, she moved here from Italy over 50 years ago

and now works in the family bakery, keeping the taste of home alive.

This is Chicho.

That is his son, Antony, I'll introduce you to my brother.

Salvatore - nice to meet you, Nigel.

Lovely to meet you.

This is my son. The main chef/decorator.

-Have you got the whole family in here?

-More or less, yeah!

I'm thinking, did you arrive here and think, isn't this wonderful?

-I didn't.

-You didn't?

No. I missed my food.

Where did you get that love of food from?

Er, obviously from my mother.

She used to do an awful lot of cooking.

Yes. And where did you learn your cooking from?

Back home, it's part of your life

and I remember my grandparents, they'd make their own breads,

they make their own pasta, sauces, that was in part of me anyway.

Bedford is such a hot spot for Italians because of the

brickworks that thrived here shortly after World War II.

Liz and Salvatore's father joined thousands of other Italians

looking for work when he brought his family here in the '60s.

Well, these are my parents - my mum and dad.

That's me and that's my brother, Salvatore. That's in 1962.

So what age are we talking about?

Well, I would've been 12 and my brother was 11.

With somebody at that age, who comes from somewhere where it's

nearly always sunny, where there is always wonderful food

and to arrive here, where things must have really been quite different.

They were. Like now, you can walk into a shop and you can get food that comes from Italy,

but in those days there wasn't.

In fact, I remember my grandmother send me

a parcel with some of the things she knew I liked.

And a lot of the times, I do home-made pasta still now, especially if one of my grandchild comes.

I just mix the dough for him and he gets on with it,

putting it through this little machine I've got at home.

Liz uses her home-made pasta to make ravioli -

parcels of Italian flavour, cooked using an old family recipe

that starts with a well of fine pasta flour.

I'm not going to use any measurement.

That's what my mum used to do.

She used to just put a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

Right. Now I need a little bit of salt.

-Ooh! That's quite... That's quite a lot.

-Yeah?

That's more than I put in it. OK.

Then goes the eggs. A drop of olive oil.

When I say a drop, OK - there's a bit more than one drop there.

Just like the Pierogi dough, the pasta is kneaded until smooth

and then it's on to the filling.

Liz is a stickler for the real thing, even mincing her own pork

and beef, which then go into a pan of sizzling garlic.

There you go.

Italian staples, celery and onion, with a bit of seasoning

and that cooks for ten minutes.

You transfer it to... cooling down a little bit

and I'll put it through the mincer again,

so it becomes almost like a paste.

So, really smooth filling, then?

Yeah. It becomes almost like a paste.

It's never occurred to me, actually,

how smooth and paste-like the filling of ravioli actually is.

-I hadn't clicked, and I think mine is too coarse and lumpy.

-Yeah.

Put the meat aside to sizzle.

In another pan, fry more onion, garlic and celery.

-So this is softening up a little bit.

-Yeah.

Going a little bit translucent, smelling good. Very fragrant.

Now I can add my passata pomodoro.

It's quite thick. I'm going to add a bit more water.

Basil and oregano are followed by a sweet little family secret,

to take the edge off the tomato.

One teaspoon of sugar. There you go.

A little bit of sugar does make a lot of difference.

Liz puts the cooled meat back through the mincer before

mixing in Parmesan with a couple of eggs and some fresh parsley.

Finally, true to the recipe passed on from her mum,

a spoonful of the rich tomato sauce.

Liz, the photograph - is that Mum?

That is, yeah. She's passed away two years now.

And she still watches you cook?

Yeah. She's obviously watching over me.

Make sure I just still keep up the home cooking.

She was lovely. She was the best mother.

I miss her.

Recipes are just lists of ingredients,

but for Liz, taste is a powerful reminder of her heritage.

Now that her family is firmly rooted in Bedford, cooking is a wonderful

way for her to pass on that heritage to her grandchildren, like Kaylun.

-He's good.

-He's good, isn't he?

-Is that the first time you done it, Kaylun?

-Yeah.

It is, isn't it? That's very good.

That's it, now gently lift that off. And out comes your ravioli.

Little pillows of joy.

A little bit of sauce, a little bit of Parmesan cheese

and there's your ravioli.

So this is the moment I get to taste it?

That is the beautiful moment!

What do you think of it?

This is how I want my ravioli to be.

You know what to do now.

Thank you. I do.

Thank you, too. Really. Family effort.

It's lovely to see that Liz's home-made ravioli keeps

a little bit of Italy alive in Bedford for her and her family.

And like the other recipes I've seen in the last few days, they've

also helped bring a whole world of cooking to the rest of Britain.

From pierogi to samosas, kachori and ravioli,

everything I've seen has been about packaging up not just flavours,

but also memories and heritage.

It's made me think that I want to take a couple of ingredients that mean a lot to me

and wrap them up inside...well, inside a little parcel.

These apple and stilton dumplings with red onion chutney take

inspiration from my friends' recipes

and use some of Britain's best ingredients.

So I'm making a stuffing.

And I'm starting with apple - these are Coxes. Classic British apple.

I don't want these apples to brown,

so I want to squeeze a bit of lemon juice in.

Apples have a habit of sticking to the pan,

so I'm going to put in just a little drop of water.

Pop the lid on.

Now, while the apples fluff up, I want to make a chutney.

Put finely sliced red onion into a heavy pan with

a squeeze of lemon and a dash of white wine vinegar to set

the beautiful pink of the onions.

Then just a teaspoon of sugar, a few cloves,

and half a stick of cinnamon.

Heat that for ten minutes.

Now, the apple doesn't take long. Soon as it's fluffy,

just put it in a bowl to cool a little bit.

Now, instead of making my own dough, I've got some shop-bought

all-butter puff pastry.

Now, when Liz put her pasta through that machine, it was really thin.

Well, I'm trying to emulate that, really.

Now, I want to give my guests something very, very British as a thank you.

Things that they've given me from their countries.

The ideas and the inspiration.

This dish is as much theirs as it is mine.

Now, I could just put the tops on, but I've a better idea.

Blue cheese is something we do so well in Britain.

You know, if you think about this, it's just a reconstruction of a Ploughman's lunch.

You've got the apple, you've got the cheese, and, instead of bread,

you've got some lovely crisp pastry.

I'm going to seal these exactly like my mum used to seal her pasties -

with a finger and thumb. Terribly old-fashioned.

Rather sweet way of doing it.

Finally, a quick brush of egg, a hole in the top of each,

and a scattering of peppery nigella seeds.

Then, into the oven, 200 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Now, there's lemon juice and vinegar in there

and a little bit of sugar, and I'm just going to add a little

bit more sweetness in the form of these sultanas.

I'm just going to leave those to plump up for about 30 minutes.

They look ready.

Stilton and apple dumplings with onion and sultana chutney.

These parcels are a taste of Britain, old and new.

A combination of flavours of my youth with a multicultural now.

I can't wait to share them.

-Hello.

-Wow, that looks amazing!

Each of their little parcels wrapped up a bit of what they loved.

And mine do, too.

Bon appetit. THEY LAUGH

Can I just say - thank you so much for having us here.

We've really enjoyed it.