Pub Grub 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, dishes you might find down your local.

We're talking pub grub.

You know, there once was a time when you went down the rub-a-dub-dub,

where the last thing you got was a plate of grub-a-grub-grub.

-That's true, yeah!

-It was.

Yes, it was a bag of crisps and that was it.

Pub food has come on leaps and bounds.

From your humble backstreet boozer

-to your Michelin-starred kind of gastropub.

-Yeah.

But fishcakes, in one form or another,

-has always been on the menu of both.

-They have.

This is a proper fishcake.

-It's not loads of spuds with a fishy flavour.

-No, it's not. It's good.

It's a good balance, this. So I'm going to start the mash, David.

We're going to poach this salmon beautifully,

a little court bouillon.

And flake some hot smoked salmon to give it a nice savoury,

kind of umami thing.

So first off, I've got some milk in this pan.

Put a bay leaf in.

Some peppercorns, just to flavour it a little bit.

-Go on, let's have some dill stalks in this as well.

-Go on, why not?

But to go with this, we're going to make some home-made tartare sauce.

But it's a dill tartare sauce.

-You know what, I think it's just that little bit nicer.

-It's lovely.

It's a lovely recipe, this. And it's quite simple, as you'll see.

Just float the salmon in there.

Pop the lid on, and give it about five minutes.

Top tip when you're using a ricer. Don't overfill it.

Remember once, we passed a potato through it twice.

-We thought we'd get it finer and finer.

-Doesn't.

-No, no.

We released all sorts of gluten and created edible wallpaper paste.

This is hot smoked salmon.

Lovely flaked on a salad, but it can be quite salty, which is why we'll

taste the mixture before we do it, and just kind of flake it up a bit.

And pop that in there.

You know what, people often ask, "Where did you two meet?"

Well, we met in a pub.

We did! It was brilliant.

We were both working on a Catherine Cookson drama, and we were crew.

And you were in your 20s, I was in my late 20s.

And...

I saw this tall, old hippie standing by the pool table,

and everybody was there. It was like, they're all television people,

for lunch and that. They say,

"Oh, I'll just have the spritzer and the vegetable sandwich."

And he said, "Julian! What's the curry?

"I'll have that, an Ambridge, and a pint of this."

And I just said, "Well, I'll have what he's having."

-So then joined in the pool and been friends ever since.

-That was it.

I'm going to use my hands for this.

Just give it a little mix while we wait for the...

Yeah, not too far off.

Oh, that's all right.

Beautiful.

So, just flake that.

Let's just get this skin off.

Put that in. And see, it's quite a lot of fish.

Which is what we want.

Wash your hands, and then get stuck in. Because you need to get this...

-Is it hot, that salmon?

-..all evenly distributed.

It's quite hot, but not too bad.

'Chill in the freezer for ten minutes if possible,

'just to firm up before you start the process of coating them.'

-Tell you what we could do.

-What, mate?

We could make the dill tartare sauce while we're waiting.

-Do you want to man the beast?

-I'll man the beast.

-Right.

We start off the process with an egg yolk.

-The dexterity of it!

-I know.

The egg yolk goes in.

-Perfect.

-Little bit of salt. Pinch of salt,

and then a teaspoon of Dijon mustard.

Just a little bit of oil, just to get it going.

I think we'll give that a zip-de-doo-dah first.

Right, because we want...

It's all about emulsification across the nation.

-And then just a tiny drip.

-Tiny drip. Yeah, that'll be lush.

The trick to making mayonnaise or indeed tartare sauces,

is endless, relentless, gentle stream of oil.

Yeah, once it starts to grip, you're off, isn't it?

I think that's it. It's starting to turn in on itself, isn't it?

-Perfect.

-Perfect.

I will chop some cornichons.

I will chop some capers.

So I want about four tablespoons of chopped cornichons,

three tablespoons of chopped capers.

So we put all that in, there's two tablespoons there.

Cornichons.

And we'll just get, we'll chop some chives.

Oh, lovely.

You know, that's what I call tartare sauce.

That is tartare sauce.

Thank you, mate.

Oh, that's perfect. Oh, yes!

Wow! Oh, yes.

Well, we'll just put this in the fridge and it'll be

"Tartare, see you later!"

-Fishcakes!

-Yes!

-The time has come.

It certainly has!

I've got some flour.

This is what everybody calls pane-ing,

which basically means "put it in crumbs."

We're using panko breadcrumbs.

You know, like the Japanese ones.

Do you know, in a funny sort of way,

I quite like those orange breadcrumbs that my mum used to use.

-Yes.

-They're not right, but you know what I mean. They're ornamental.

So, to form your fishcakes,

just take some of the mixture,

and then just push it together.

In your hands.

Get some heat. And we want...

..the fishcakes to be golden.

And the trick to that is to put some butter in with the oil.

Pat them out.

Nice and gently.

So we dip it in flour.

In egg.

Make sure it's nicely coated. And then in the crumbs.

And really dredge it.

And just float it into the oil and butter, and repeat.

Some children are a bit odd about fish.

Somehow, they don't see fishcakes as being fishy.

-Yeah, they don't see them as intimidating at all, do they?

-Nah.

It's an easy eat, that's why. And that's a good thing, you know.

That's why you want to get your kids into eating fishcakes.

Because eventually, their palate will develop for the taste of fish.

And we're an island race, and we should be eating more of it.

Let's make it generous.

You know, because we're that sort of pub.

The sort of pub that's got that bearded, jolly landlord

that's full of bonhomie and you get good portions.

-Absolutely.

-Aye.

That is our salmon fishcakes, super-pub style,

-with home-made dill tartare sauce.

-Come on.

What's not to love?

Every dish tells a story.

It may be about the ingredients that define it,

the memories it evokes, or the people who created it.

This is the story of Pete Tiley's ham, egg and chips.

'My name is Pete Tiley, I'm the landlord of the Salutation Inn.

'Well, I grew up in Gloucestershire. I grew up just down the road.

'I ended up working in London for eight years

'as a telecoms business analyst.

'It kind of wasn't quite what I wanted to do,

'I really loved pubs and beer and so really kind of wanted to get

'into the beer and pub industry.

'My dad, who still lives in the area,

'phoned up and told me that the Salutation was up for sale.'

I quit my job and left London, and yeah, bought a pub.

I always wanted this to be the very best pub that I could

possibly create.

I wanted it to be a traditional pub

which kind of reflects traditional pub values

and traditional food and drink,

specifically of the local area of Gloucestershire.

We're in a village called Ham.

We wanted to produce the very best ham that we possibly could,

so we started keeping pigs.

We've got eight pure Gloucester Old Spots.

It's a breed that originated from this area in the Berkeley Vale.

The spots on the back were said to be from

bruises from apples falling on top of them.

The customers bring in sackloads, literally,

sackloads of apples for us to feed the pigs.

We're feeding them on whey,

which we get when we pick up our cheese from the local cheesemaker,

which gives them a really succulent kind of juicy, tender kind of meat.

It's nice to kind of use waste products like whey,

instead of having to just rely on, sort of, animal feed.

And nice to link back to the traditions of the area.

The fact that they live as happy, contented pigs in

a nice, stress-free environment

means that they are relaxed and that affects the quality of the meat.

It's kind of getting back to the simplicity of the ingredients,

making sure they're really good quality and sourced correctly.

Well, ham, egg and chips is,

for me, it's the quintessential British pub meal.

So then we felt, well, OK, we've done the ham

and the next obvious step for the perfect ham, egg and chips

is the egg and chips.

'We've got nine hens. They're a mixture of different breeds.'

We've got some sort of interesting kind of rare breeds.

We've got a Buff Orpington,

we've got some Cream Legbars, which lay the blue eggs.

Because there's not too many, we kind of generally use them up

pretty much every day, so the egg turnover's nice and fresh,

so you've got nice yolks, they hold together well in the pan.

It's great for customers to have eggs from our own chickens.

They can come in, they can see how they've lived,

they can have a nice life.

CHICKEN CROWS

We feed them on corn, which gives

a nice yellow, good-coloured yolk.

I think the way we have these fresh eggs and happy chickens,

it's good to have happy animals, really.

We grow our own spuds.

Very rewarding to go into the garden, turf them out of the ground,

out the soil, and straight into the kitchens.

Chips don't get a lot fresher than that.

It's simple ingredients, but together they combine to make

this most amazing kind of taste sensation.

You've got your hot chips, the cold ham,

sort of saltiness of the gooey, you know, rich egg.

I love the simplicity of it,

I love the fact it's a traditional pub meal.

-Here we are.

-Fantastic. Thank you.

It's nice to eat food that's grown, reared,

cooked just a couple of miles from where you live. It's lovely.

The taste is great. The taste really comes through.

And you know what you're getting. You absolutely know.

Because it's produced just over the road.

This food has flavour!

I wouldn't even attempt to find fault, because I couldn't.

We were on a mission to create the very best

ham, egg and chips that we could, and doing it all ourselves and

being able to say to the customer,

"We can tell you exactly how each component has been produced,"

then I think that's a great thing.

There was a pudding that we all loved as children

that did make its way into the pubs, and that was...

Lemon meringue pie!

-Can we reinvent it?

-Yes.

I'll do the chocolate pastry. To be fair, I have tried this out.

It is the shortest pastry you've ever seen.

Either whizz the flour, cocoa,

icing sugar and butter in a food processor,

or rub in by hand

until the mixture is resembling fine breadcrumbs.

And you want to get the air into this,

so it's like chocolate fluff.

To make the filling, zest one of the oranges and the grapefruit.

Put in a bowl,

then add all the juice from the oranges and the grapefruit.

Now, what I'm going to do is squeeze the juice into a sieve,

because I don't want any of the pulp.

There's my chocolate crumbs.

So now, I put in an egg yolk.

SI GASPS

I don't know, I just thought I'd do it for dramatic effect.

And I'm going to cut it in with a knife.

I'm still on with the oranges!

Now, we don't need much water in this,

but I think we'll just put a bit in, just to bring it all together.

Because even with the egg yolk, it's starting to clump.

Teensy teensy drop, like a teaspoon of water.

And there we have a very, very rich,

unctuous chocolate pastry.

Try and roll that out, you might as well try to knit a jellyfish.

It's not going to happen.

So what we need to do is to put this in clingfilm and put it in

the fridge to chill for a good hour.

There's half a litre of water in this pan.

I'm going to bring this to the boil.

All will be revealed in the fullness of time.

We've got the zest of one orange, the zest of one grapefruit,

the juice of three oranges and the juice of one grapefruit.

This is cornflour, and I'm just going to whisk it into here.

And you just keep whisking until you've got,

well, a really, really thin paste.

Now, the pastry has chilled.

Put a bit of flour down.

Oh.

Roll it out, beautiful.

At the minute, it looks as though you could sole your shoes with it.

But it's going to come right.

It does need to be this cool,

or else you wouldn't have a chance of getting it rolled out.

Now, this is a nonstick loose-bottomed baking tin.

Do I trust it? Do I heck.

But I'm going to either put butter, or a little bit of this spray.

It's good stuff, that, because it gets into all the crevices

-and nooks and crannies, doesn't it?

-Yeah, yeah.

And I just put that there...

Plop your pastry over.

Your chocolate pastry.

And work it into the tin.

Then line and fill with baking beans.

We use clingfilm. It works well.

Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes,

then remove your beans and bake for a further five minutes.

Bring 500ml of fresh boiled water back to the boil

in a saucepan.

Then, whisk in the citrus and cornflour mixture.

Stir over a medium heat until the consistency of a thick custard.

Remove from the heat.

Beat the egg yolks and sugar together.

Then add this to the custard.

It's started to cool.

Now, what I'm going to ask Dave to do is just dribble that in

while I'm still whisking it.

-It's quite thick, this, isn't it?

-It is, it is quite thick.

And do you see how it's changed colour? Lovely.

And this is the custard that is the filling for our meringue pie.

So, don't forget, the next tip, is we've got to let that cool.

We're going to get some clingfilm.

Put it over the top,

but make sure it touches, because,

don't forget, we don't want a skin forming.

Marvellous. Wow, it looks great, doesn't it?

Yeah, and what's happened is the pastry's so rich that it's

actually, kind of, you know, the excess has just fallen off.

Take your knife round there.

Look at that. Beautiful.

-Right, while you're making the meringue...

-It's loose-bottomed.

Got it.

Right, yes, can you imagine? Oops.

While you're making the meringue,

I'll fill this beautifully, beautifully made case.

And look, no skin's formed, because what did we do?

We put the clingfilm on, didn't we?

Right, four egg whites go into the bowl.

We mix the four egg whites to soft peaks.

We've got a very nice, user-friendly meringue.

'Finally, fold in the toasted hazelnuts.

'Pipe or pile the meringue over the filling.'

That is a really good job, mate.

I've turned the oven down to 180.

-Yeah.

-So, just pop that back in the oven for how long?

20 minutes.

Sun-kissed and beautiful. And that's just us.

We've got to wait for that to cool, now.

-That's the hard bit.

-Aye.

Britain has an army of creative chefs who, day after day,

send out sensational dishes to customers in their restaurants.

They work long hours, toiling over their stoves.

But at home, what's their idea of comfort food?

My name's Tim Denny, I'm chef proprietor of

The Historical Dining Rooms, and The Star And Dove in Bristol.

The food at The Historical Dining Rooms is taking old British recipes

as far back as the 1200s, all the way up to the Victorian era,

and making modern interpretations of these dishes.

Sometimes they just need that little bit of elevation, just to,

sort of, bring them up-to-date.

We wanted to cook just British food, but we had to, sort of,

look a little further back than post-Second World War.

People think if food was bad in the 1950s,

it must have been even worse in the 1850s.

But that really couldn't be further from it.

There's nothing I love more than discovering

a new recipe within an old, historical cookbook.

Some of these dishes are almost, like, timeless.

There's things like Parmesan ice cream,

and foie gras ice cream, all of these different things that

we deem as a very, sort of, modern Michelin-star restaurant.

These have all been done before.

Our appetiser is a cucumber ice cream,

which is flavoured with cognac and pistachio.

Once it's balanced right, it's absolutely delicious.

Food's my life.

When I'm not working in the kitchen, I'm going home to cook.

My influences at home would ultimately be Spanish food.

I believe Spain to have one of the best cuisines in the world,

from its top restaurants all the way down.

Typically, when I'm at home, I like to cook sofrit pages,

which translates into a country fry up.

It's a very, sort of, rustic dish from the island of Ibiza.

It's a one-pot wonder, so it's starting with the garlic,

then you add the peppers, then there is sobrasada,

which is a type of soft cured sausage.

And then you got a lamb, chicken, potatoes, all fried together,

all the meats you generally get in any rustic places in Spain.

It's all on the bone, so that's why I've kept it.

If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

Next up is something called sobrasada,

it's a really interesting ingredient.

Places like Ibiza can't dry-cure things,

so this is their equivalent to, say, a chorizo.

This, as well, morcilla, this is a Spanish black pudding,

very sort of paprika-y and, again, this will, sort of,

give added depth to the actual finished dish.

'I get back to Spain as much as possible.

'Last year, I went there six or seven times.

'Every time I go there, regardless of whether it's

'a three-Michelin-star restaurant, or a two euros tapas bar,

'for example, I'll always take something and take some influence.

'I absolutely live for the eating.

'One thing that really amazes me is the amount of chefs that I know,

'even, like, Michelin-star chefs that don't even actually cook at

'home, they do it for a profession. When it comes to their day off,

'it is generally take-aways and pizzas and whatnot.

'But I think it's absolutely crazy.

'I spend 60, 70 hours a week cooking all these beautiful foods

'for people, there is absolutely

'no way I'm not going to have a slice of it myself.

'The good thing about this dish, I mean,

'you can use it in terms of leftover roast meat from your Sunday dinner.

'To my mind, some of the greatest dishes on Earth

'are from leftovers.

'So, that is a country fry up, or a sofrit pages.

'Very short, very sweet,'

it's really delicious. Good flavours, good ingredients.

The Parmo is this chip shop/pub, kind of, guilty pleasure,

which is the national dish of Middlesbrough.

-It is!

-I know!

So, I take some soft white breadcrumbs.

This is just a loaf that has been through a processor.

A big heap of grated Parmesan cheese.

-Mate, they are butterflied, ready for your delectation.

-Brilliant.

Right, I've got a teaspoon of dried oregano on there.

Could you chop us some fresh basil, Si?

I can, mate, I've just cleared my board down, so we're laughing.

And I'll do that now.

Right, so, pane, clean hands.

You take the chicken, like so.

Just flour and roll in the egg.

-But I've seen this done with massive turkey breasts.

-Yes.

You end up with a Parmo the size of a Frisbee.

It's massive.

Then just put that in the crumbs and don't be shy, because really,

to my mind, the crumbs are, kind of, one of the best bits.

That, Mr Meyers, is a job well done, sir.

At certain hostelries around the north-east,

this would be deep-fried.

But, as a nod to culture and health, we're going to bake ours.

-That's the last one.

-Perfect.

Now, we need to drizzle them with olive oil, would you mind, sir?

Clean my hands.

And that needs to go into a preheated oven, about 180 Celsius,

for 12 to 15 minutes.

Until it's just cooked through.

'To make the sauce, heat the olive oil in the saucepan,

'and add the onion.

'Saute until very soft.

'You want it translucent and buttery.

'Then add the garlic.

'Cook for a further couple of minutes, then add the red wine.

'Allow to bubble fiercely until reduced by half.

'Add the oregano and tomatoes.'

We'll want to cook this right down, so it's literally quite lumpy,

because if we lay the chicken down on, like, a runny sauce,

it's going to make the chicken wet and horrible.

We're going to cook that probably for about 20 minutes.

Right... There we go.

-That's the chicken.

-Lovely.

The sauce is doing well.

When the sauce is done,

we can start assembling the Parmo.

Look at the consistency. Beautiful.

-Really, really rich.

-Perfect.

Time to build the Parmo. I'll just put that in the bottom.

The Parmos go on the top.

Cover it in mozzarella and then we stick it in the oven.

Now, we're doing triple-cooked chips,

which seem to be all the rage in pubs these days,

and this is our foolproof method.

What we've done is, these are relatively chunky chips.

These have been poached, like a gentle, gentle boil, for 20 minutes.

So, you need to handle these with care.

We put these in the deep fat fryer now at 130 degrees

for about five minutes.

That's at 130.

-Mozzarella.

-That's good buffalo mozzarella.

-It is.

And that's what you want, this is the sort of stuff you want.

Look at that in there,

nice, stringy, young, beautiful mozzarella.

This goes into the oven, 15 to 20 minutes.

Until it's golden and bubbly.

Right, that's stage two complete, Si.

I'll let them rest, I'll turn the fryer up to 190.

Don't leave your chip pan unattended.

I'm just going to sit down, keep an eye on.

Right, mate, you have your two-minute warning.

Right. We will have triple-cooked chips in three minutes.

So, this is stage three.

This is the "trip" in triple.

Hello, you lovely Parmo. Oh!

Look at that.

Get in the back of the net.

Fryer off. Listen to that.

CHIPS RATTLE

Like a set of maracas.

It is a great one for a family tea-time, isn't it?

It's a fab one.

Now, they are crispy.

That's the beauty of the triple-cooked chips.

-It's flipping tasty.

-It's fantastic, the taste, isn't it?

Perfect chips, Chef.

The Parmo may be new to a lot of the country.

-Yeah.

-But it's worth discovering, it's worth a visit.

It's a chip off the old block, this.