A Taste of Northumberland The Hairy Bikers' Comfort Food

We've travelled the world and eaten everywhere from roadside bars to

restaurants with Michelin stars.

But there really is nothing like a bit of home cooking.

Coming into a warm kitchen filled

with the aroma of a tasty meal bubbling away -

it's one of life's great pleasures.

There's nothing like comfort food to put a smile on your face.

Today, a taste of Northumberland.

It's food fit for a king.

We're going to do Northumberland lamb meatballs.

And this is a homage to the lamb we have in Northumberland,

because the breeds that we have vary. We've got Mule,

we've got Suffolk, we've got Scottish Blackface,

we've got all sorts.

What I've got here is some pine kernels.

We've toasted off these pine kernels and all we're going to do is just

crush them a little bit in a pestle and mortar and add them to this

-wonderful lamb.

-You've got the lot, haven't you?

Cos Newcastle's an amazing city.

You've got the coastline.

The salmon rivers - the Tyne's producing salmon.

Just to the north, you've got the Tweed, and then, of course,

you've got the countryside. The most wonderful beef and lamb.

Well, I think that's the good thing about the diversity

of Northumberland. What frustrates me,

in Northumberland we're not that great at shouting about it.

-Well, do you know what?

-And it is frustrating.

So, we've got the lamb and the pine kernels toasted and crushed slightly.

I'm just going to put some breadcrumbs in here.

I've put a teaspoon of allspice powder,

a teaspoon of cumin, some nutmeg.

Here, I've got some flat-leaf parsley, some mint,

some coriander and dill.

There's a lot going on in these meatballs.

But, you know, I think when you've got a city like Newcastle

and that region, which is an embarrassment of riches

with produce,

you know, it's justified to use all of these wonderful things.

Smell that.

That is as fresh as you get - parsley, mint, dill, coriander.

A lot of greenery in there.

One egg...

Would you like it?

Right, then, that's just to bind the meatballs.

-Have you seasoned?

-Not yet, mate.

Should I oblige?

About a teaspoon of sea salt.

And we like our black pepper.

Oh, look at that. Now, that's just coming together lovely.

My hands are really, really clean,

and it's best to just get stuck in there, and get in,

and just push all of those fantastic ingredients through

the Northumberland lamb.

And I know you must be thinking at home, well, "They don't grow cumin!"

-We know that.

-Aye.

But we do have a history of spice in the North East because of the trade,

-you see.

-Shall I help?

-Yeah, please, man.

-About 20, shall we get?

Oh, no, that's too big.

I think walnuts.

Now, we start these meatballs off in the oven at a hot heat.

We just need to brown them at 220 degrees for about ten minutes.

They'll still be raw in the middle, but then we cook them in the sauce.

-Yeah, get some colour on them.

-Oh, aye.

Look at them!

-Look at that.

-It's great.

-Let's get some heat on.

-Right, so, onion goes in.

And we're going to saute these off for a little bit.

-This is what you need, as well.

-Yeah.

-Swiss chard.

Oh! Doctor Livingstone, I presume.

I'll take the stems off. But we're not going to throw them away.

I'm going to cut these and shred them finely.

I'll put those in with the onions and the garlic.

-They look lovely, don't they?

-Absolutely.

I'll just saute these off a little bit.

A little bit longer. Mate, would you pass the broad beans, as well?

Now these, they're frozen broad beans that have been double-popped.

Let them thaw out.

And the white husk around the bean,

you just pop out these green beans, and it's like a pan of emeralds.

They are such a good eat.

They look so good on the plate.

-Oh, man, that smells brilliant.

-Doesn't it just?

Absolutely gorgeous.

Right, I'm going to put our herbs... Put those in.

Just roughly chop the herbs.

Don't worry about the stalks,

because it is all going to be blitzed.

So it's actually about equal quantity of chopped herbs

-as the chard leaves.

-I'm going to reserve a fifth of the stock

-for Dave.

-Now, remember, the meatballs have only been browned.

They need to cook through now in that wonderful, ethereal broth of

-flavour.

-It's so good, this dish.

The remaining stock goes into a pan.

So bung this in. I'm just going to sweat that down

for a couple of minutes in that stock.

I just want to wilt down that chard...

..with the 'erb.

Oh! What?

-That's fabulous.

-Right, I'll take your device and...

-WHIRRING

-..and puree this green.

Thank you.

That'll do nicely.

Oh, what?!

Now, we stir this through the meatballs.

And apart from colour,

this is completely and utterly flavour-packed.

-Look at that.

-That is beautiful, Dave. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. This really is the icing on the cake.

Mr Myers.

There we are, mate, I'll take this off the heat.

-There we go, mate.

-That's brilliant.

We've tried to make the most

of all the ingredients, not least your lamb.

-Let's have a look.

-I think we should.

They're juicy, which I think

is one of the essential elements of the meatball.

Good old Northumberland lamb, mate, perfect.

-I'll drink to that, shall we?

-What a good idea!

The secret to creating delicious comfort food is using the right

ingredients.

The real work is done by the producers,

who put all of their passion and expertise

into getting their ingredients just right.

I'm Andrew, and this is my wife Billie,

and together we farm and mill in the heart of Northumberland.

We've lived here together for 16 years.

I've been up here for 24 years.

We were the first cereal farm in Northumberland

to convert to organic production.

The considered wisdom was you could only grow milling quality wheat,

so baking quality wheat, in the south of England.

This far north everybody said,

"You're wasting your time, it can't be done."

Now we grow milling quality wheat every year under organic conditions.

This is what we grew here this year.

This is spelt that's thousands of years old.

And if you look at any field of wheat anywhere else in the country,

it's 40, 50 centimetres, and we're growing stuff that's over a metre.

And these really ancient varieties - the spelt in particular -

they're so tall that when we grow them in an organic field,

they overshadow all the other weeds.

They grow in an environment they were designed for.

We have very, very deep soils.

And as much of the plant is growing below the soil as above,

so these plants will scavenge for their nutrients in a way that

modern varieties can't.

And they produce really nutritionally rich grains.

So, when you walk into the mill, the first thing you see

is the big 3½-tonne millstones.

It's two stones. The bottom stone is static,

and the top stone is driven and mills the wholemeal flour.

The grains that we mill have an enormous amount

of minerals and vitamins in them. And if you mill them slowly,

and you retain those minerals and vitamins,

then you are bringing to the customer, really,

the best nutritional delivery system that we could possibly produce.

It's only half the story to say that we've got grains that have high

nutritional value. The moment you add water to a grain it'll start to

germinate and a chemical process will happen.

And it's exactly the same

when you add water to ground-down grain as flour.

The only way that you can stop that process and make those minerals and

vitamins available to us to digest

is if you lower the pH of your dough.

And low pH is sour, it's acidic - it's sourdough.

Every sourdough starts with a good sourdough starter,

or called a mother.

And my sourdough comes from a lovely bakery in Newcastle.

Add a bit of flour to it, a bit of water.

Now, what we've done here is called a poolish,

and that best sits overnight in a plastic bag

and just let it ferment away.

So, here's the poolish I made yesterday, and you can see

it has changed quite a bit.

We need 200g of this.

The gluten now begins to develop.

It's still very stiff.

So with every knead and with every rest, it will be better.

And now the long wait begins.

We put it in the bag

and let it rise for six hours in a warm place.

I think it's just one of the simplest pleasures in life,

to bake bread. It fills the kitchen and the house

with a beautiful smell.

It also satisfies something very deeply inside us.

It nurtures us.

There was a tradition of ice-cream making in Northumberland.

And this is why I thought

deep-fried ice cream.

Well, I'm working under instruction.

In this bowl I have crushed ginger nuts and desiccated coconut.

I suppose this is your crumbs for your frying, is it?

This is it. The most important thing is, about deep-fried ice cream,

is your ice cream balls need to be as tight as possible, because,

-you know, we're going to deep-fry them.

-They've got to be super-cold,

-haven't they?

-Super-cold.

And we're going to put them back into the freezer.

You want them rock-like, don't you?

-Yeah.

-I've got two eggs and I'm going to stir in some coconut cream.

So, I can see that we've got the Caribbean vibe coming on

with the rum, the coconut... I'm beginning to like this, Mr King!

You see? I know it sounds a bit bonkers, but it's not.

Do you know what, as well, mate?

I just thought it's a nice wintry recipe for ice cream,

do you know what I mean?

Because it's deep-fried and warm on the outside.

Most of us have got freezers, and I, actually, to be fair,

most of the time in my freezer,

-I have to wait for the ice cream to thaw before I eat it.

-Yes.

-Should I put the raisins on, Si?

-Would you mind?

No. So, the raisins go into a pan.

-How much rum would you like in there?

-About 150ml, mate, please.

-Whoa!

-Well, you know what we're like up in the north, dude.

We don't do anything light.

-Two, four, six, eight...

-Right, I'm going.

-Put them in the freezer.

Yeah, I've got to put them back in the freezer.

-Don't be long.

-I won't.

Now, he said to put a teaspoon of cinnamon.

As soon as it comes to a simmer, I'm going to grate the zest of a lime.

Kingy!

-I'm coming!

-I don't want this to catch light because, if it does,

we'll take the kitchen out. So, I've got the cinnamon, the rum

-and the raisins.

-Perfect, mate, perfect. Right, now...

-Oh, wow.

Well, I did some earlier, you see.

-They've changed character, haven't they?

-They have.

-Right, we'd better be quick.

-We do. So,

into here first, and just scrunch it a little bit,

so you get a nice coating.

-Now, I've got my eggs and my coconut cream.

-Yep.

And it's back to you, isn't it?

Yeah. And you cover it again in the ginger nut and coconut mixture.

And you have to work quick.

That's one of the fundamental things with ice cream,

its propensity to melt.

-I'm getting it, though, Kingy.

-Are you getting it?

Yeah, yeah. I think those ice cream balls need to go back in there

for a couple of hours to firm up.

I'll bash on with this, but don't linger. I know you -

once you go out there, that's it, I never see you again.

I mean, this is possibly the ultimate grown-up

rum-and-raisin ice cream sauce. Now, we turn the heat off.

I want the zest of a lime.

This needs to go cold.

And whilst the ice cream's getting harder,

this will be macerating all that lovely lime, cinnamon,

raisins and rum.

And those raisins are going to plump up and look absolutely amazing.

Do you know what, I'm beginning to like this recipe, you know?

But it's very odd being here on my own.

Right, now, we haven't finished with the sauce yet.

We're going to make a caramel.

Sugar. Do you know how we've always told you not to stir caramel?

Well, this is a little bit different.

So, we're taking 100ml of water...

..and we're just going to stir it until it looks like wet sand.

So, like that.

And then, we'll turn it up and let it turn into caramel.

Now, at this point we definitely, definitely do not want to stir it.

While that's going, you can see the bubbles now,

Dave's just swirling it around.

-And we don't want it to go to toffee, do we?

-No.

-Just caramel.

That's it, Kingy, look. It smells of caramel now.

We don't want it to go any more, so let's get that cream in.

Now, bearing in mind, when you put the cream in,

it is going to split and splatter.

HISSING

Look at that. And this is very, very, very, very hot.

-Ready?

-Yeah.

Now, this is what you call a rum-and-raisin sauce.

Now, we will have to wait for this to go cold

before we put it on the ice cream.

Now, THAT is a rum-and-raisin sauce of some calibre.

And as it cools, it'll thicken.

Oh, this is nice. I think the nice thing is,

we should serve this sauce warm, but JUST warm, just tepid.

Yeah, nice, nice.

Here we go, mate. So, these have been in the freezer again.

They are like rock. That's what you want.

That's what you want. The oil is preheated to 190 degrees,

and we're going to drop the three balls in at the same time,

and cook them for 15 seconds.

Take them out, set them aside.

-Right.

-Are you ready? Are you counting?

-I'm counting, now!

Five seconds.

That's the 15.

Oh, yes, golden and crispy.

A three-ball scoop of magnificence, Si.

-Shall we spoon some of this over?

-Oh, yeah, go heavy on the raisins.

-How's that?

-I just can't wait to taste it.

Right, let's do it.

Remember, the outside of the ice cream is crispy and red-hot,

and the inside is frozen solid.

The coconut's toasted, the ice cream's fabulous.

The sauce is immense.

Kingy, I'm not really an ice cream man...

This is the best ice-cream dessert I've ever tasted.

Well...

it's always a joint effort.

Nothing beats home-made comfort food,

but every now and then it's nice to have someone else cook for you.

Thankfully, all over the country

there are places that make us feel right at home,

and keep enticing us back.

My name is Mary Manley,

and we've been running this bookshop since 1991,

when we opened in only 800 square feet of the shop,

which has grown since to 8,000 square feet.

This building was built in 1888.

The first room that was discovered, we changed into the buffet,

was a boiler room,

for boiling water to heat foot warmers that go in the carriages.

Then the next room we expanded into

was the gents' first-class waiting room.

And the third room is the ladies' first-class waiting room,

which still has the original marble fireplace.

We get a lot of regulars come in every morning, read the paper,

have breakfast. Some stay all day, some people come with their dogs.

What I wanted in the buffet was just simple, good food, local produce.

Creamy mushrooms and a quiche.

Simple but well done.

And people liked it.

And we grew.

Well, they're one of the best bacon sandwiches in town.

Plus, I have quite an affinity towards the place.

My father used to work on the railway,

and he's got his name up on the board along the side there.

And I have fond memories of coming here as a schoolboy, actually.

It's been named by one magazine

as the British Library of second-hand book shops.

And the difference between this and the British Library is here you

can see all the books at once and handle them.

This cafe is wonderful.

You can take a book in, you can read it over a teacake and coffee.

The only problem is, you mustn't get the jam on the pages of the books.

That's frowned upon.

The thing I love cooking most is the macaroni cheese.

Cream cheese going in.

A lot of people say mac-cheese and they think of what they had

in school, but mac-cheese can be an art.

Put in our magic.

That's the cream reduction that has the herbs, the wine, the butter,

the whole lot, really.

Parmesan.

Now we just add the sharp cheddar.

Just warming the pasta through.

Boiled in water beforehand.

And in we go.

Sprinkle the crumbs.

And I love doing...

a simple dish like that, but really well.

That's what I'm after in our buffet.

The macaroni cheese is wonderful.

You get the bacon bits on the top.

They're really, absolutely divine.

Very nice American influence, I have to say!

The cafe is definitely an added draw for me.

It's grown so much over the years.

Whenever I come in, I like to come, sit at this table,

table number nine.

I've warned the staff that when I die, I'm going to come back

and haunt table nine.

The very kind of customers we have

are the same ones who used to come to the railway station.

Every age, every...class come here.

And that is what I aim for.

The first thing that we're going to do is

I'm going to give our beautiful brill a bit of a haircut.

So, it's just...

Take that off...

..like that.

And then the same on the other side.

This is a celebration of what you have locally.

-Yeah.

-What I love about brill, Dave, and I know you do, too,

the flesh of the brill is quite compact and solid,

and it flakes beautifully. And also,

it just imparts this wonderful, wonderful flavour.

I'm just going to make, like, the steaming vessel now.

So, I'm making sure that I've got

enough to wrap around.

Because we want to create some vapour...

..for the fish.

I'll put some oil on this side, Si.

-Yes, please, mate.

-So, some oil on here, and a little knob of butter.

-Beautiful.

-A couple there. A couple of bits of garlic.

And some zest, mate.

So, we've got, like, the strip of lemon peel, so we'll get the aroma,

but you're not actually eating the lemon.

Look at this. Gosh, there's some meat on that.

I've put some garlic just in its inside.

-And there's some more zest, mate.

-And some salt in here.

Some lemon zest.

Bits of garlic.

And now the steaming liquor.

You can use white wine, water, or vermouth.

Vermouth is, it's lovely.

So you want about 100ml of this.

I'm just pouring it around the sides, cos I don't want to take off

any of the seasoning that Dave's put on.

And it's almost cooking in this wonderful,

-kind of, nice, boozy steam.

-That's about there, mate.

-Yeah.

And just gather your foil up.

We want to do what you call a tent.

We want the steam to be able to circulate around the fish,

which it will do.

So, we need to put this in now for about 15 minutes,

for a fish of that thickness.

The oven's being preheated to 200 degrees.

So, it's quite a fierce oven, but we want the steam.

-Beautiful.

-There we go. Now, we'll time this.

Again, what do we serve this with?

Well, you don't want to detract from the quality,

you want to focus your head on the langoustines, mussels and fish.

So, I'm going to do some game chips.

You know, just posh crisps on the side.

Basically, the first one's sacrificial,

and then you turn it 90 degrees, 90 degrees, 90 degrees, 90 degrees,

and, look, we get these lovely perforated crisps.

And I'm going to do an aioli, which, fundamentally,

is really a garlicky mayonnaise.

In a bowl, take two egg yolks.

Just to start the emulsification, we're going to put a little,

little bit of lemon juice in.

A teaspoon of Dijon mustard in.

A little bit of salt. I'll give these a whisk.

Suddenly, when you start to make crisps or game chips,

you realise what a lot of crisps you get out of one potato.

The game chips are deep-fried at 190 Celsius until crisp and golden.

Now, a key ingredient with aioli is garlic.

So, we're going to put one lovely fat clove in.

And, you whisk it until the egg yolks change colour,

and they go slightly light, and then from that point

you start to add your sunflower oil.

Just in a little dribble every now and then.

And then I'm just going to add a little olive oil, just for flavour.

And then...

..the saffron.

Whisk it in again.

A little touch of lemon juice.

And I think, mate, just have a taste of that and see if we're there.

Oh, wow.

-That's superb.

-Yeah?

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's going to be the richest thing on the plate,

but I think you leave that to people,

-how much they want to enrich.

-Absolutely.

-You forget, you know,

little garnishes like this add such a lot to a dish,

and they really are supporting players to that gorgeous fish.

Right, mate, I'm going to take this brill out.

-I've got my last batch on.

-So, at this point...

Oh, yeah, mate, come and have a look at this.

-It's beautiful.

-Oh!

-We can put our langoustines on.

Yeah. Put our langoustines and mussels in.

That's an event, isn't it?

Absolutely. For people who are frightened of cooking fish,

this is a great way to do it, because it's simple.

How beautiful is that?

Now, more butter...

and then we're going to seal her up again.

Five more minutes, mate.

I think we've got enough game chips here.

Yes!

Right, bit of a tidy-up, eh?

Yeah, and wait for the main event.

-Oh!

-Oh, yeah.

Now, this is a bundle of joy.

I'm so excited...

Oh, look at that!

See, Mr Fish, there you go.

Oh, come on, Si, at least let's get it on a plate.

Right.

There we have it.

Brill with mussels and langoustine from the cold waters around the UK.

It's completely brill.

Yeah.

-Drop of white wine?

-Oh, absolutely.

Langoustine?

Look at that.

When people say about opalescent,

white, flaky fish, that's what you want.

Plain...

It's the best, Si. It really is.

Because the pure way we've cooked it, it ticks all the boxes -

it's moist, it's tasty, it's lovely.

It's one of those occasions, in cooking,

where you just let the ingredients speak for themselves,

because they are of such a high quality.

Cheers. Here's to Northumberland.

Here's to Northumberland. Cheers, mate, cheers.