Northumbria Floyd on Britain and Ireland

All sensible TV programmes start with a man leaning on a gate,

telling you where he is!

Not that we're sensible, but here are some clues!

First this land was invaded by these fellows - the Punks.

Then, they were followed by Asterix the Gaul and his men. The Vikings!

Then...oops! He'll never play for England!

The ears have dropped off! No point mucking about,

who do you think wore these?

The Border Reavers, men of bloodcurdling yells and healthy appetites.

You know where we are!

North Korea!

# The fells are alive

# With the sound of curlews! #

This is absurd! Just so that YOU can get what the director calls

"a sense of place,"

I have to stand on this blasted heath on the Northumberland Fells.

"Quite simply, love," he says,

"Cook up a little something with a Roman influence,"

to impress the visiting professor of Roman archaeology, Hadrian's Wall,

gastronomy and Northumberland history.

And that lot - you - are standing there with their little tripods under umbrellas!

Dismantle the lot and come down and pay some attention to ME!

Thank you! Now, the purpose of this exercise

is to interpret what the Romans might have eaten,

I don't know, 2,000 years ago,

when they were building Hadrian's Wall.

I reckon they would have eaten quite a lot of pig, like this bit.

I'll cut it into little cubes.

Now, I don't usually complain

but it is raining and I have got a temperature.

Richard might have to wipe his lens off

cos the rain is coming down.

I've got pieces of pork, bits of carrot...

I reckon the Romans...

Sorry about this, but this is real-life stuff.

This is MY programme, please. They all know what a carrot looks like!

Onions... Don't look at the onion, they know what an onion is!

Trying to make a Roman-type meal... So we'll chop those together...

I'll chop up some garlic,

cos it was the Romans who brought garlic here.

I need some parsley, because they were great herb users.

And what all wars were about was about spices and things!

DOG YELPS

Cumin seeds, ginger, marjoram, thyme, dill, and stuff like that.

A typical selection of Roman herbs.

They had more herbs than Sainsbury's.

Because, like me, these guys were stuck out here!

And if they didn't pickle, preserve or spice their meat, it was...ahem!

Anyway, they also had wine, so they whacked in a lot of wine,

with these herbs and spices.

Being soldiers, before the time of "Please Keep Britain Tidy",

they probably tossed the bottles into a hedge!

In we put our meat, carrots, onions, and stuff like that.

And we let that marinate now for about 24 hours -

as long as it takes to do the first 700 kilometres on the decathlon.

Let me tell you about this!

This was the centurion's Worcester sauce!

This was the centurion's soy sauce.

Walk along the wall, and I'll tell you what it is and why I've got it!

Emperor Hadrian was a Spanish chap.

He got the idea to build the wall from the Chinese. Of course!

You can easily imagine the legionnaires, wrapped in togas,

under the menacing Northumbrian sky,

munching on roasted dormouse stuffed with pine cones.

Yum yum - I think!

Northumbria - and here we go for complaints from other regions -

is the most unspoilt and beautiful part of Britain.

Polanski had it absolutely right when he filmed Macbeth...

oops, I mean the Scottish play, here!

Here's the home of St Cuthbert and a fine glass of mead.

Here endeth the first travelogue.

That took me SECONDS to research! Fascinating!

But back to this liquid. This is the centurion's Daddy's Ketchup.

He wouldn't eat anything without it because his food wasn't...too good.

I made this about three weeks ago

and I've had it macerating ever since.

It is anchovies, sprats, marjoram, red wine, salt...all boiled up,

left to ferment for a few weeks, and strained and there you have it!

We ought to brand it. Floyd's Centurion Sauce. Could be a hit!

You drop a bit of it into your pork marinade.

And because they didn't have sugar, and this is a bit pongy,

they put in a teaspoonful or two of honey.

That's why honey people are called apiarists, I think.

It's a Latin word.

There it is. You can feel it. You can smell it.

The pork, the herbs, the onions... it's been in there about 24 hours.

Now it has to go round here,

in my typical Wood Mark 4, or at home Gas Mark 6...

It goes into there...

Put the lid on...

HE COUGHS For about 45 minutes...

Richard, you wipe your lens. That was a bit hot.

But I have got this guy coming to dinner so we have to live with it.

HE COUGHS This is ridiculous!

I made a little joke about throwing bottles away,

but please don't be a prat and don't throw bottles, OK?

OK, Richard, back on the pot.

If we need an expert on the Romans,

the director goes straight to the pub and finds one.

Donald MacFarlane, what DID the Romans... I feel like John Cleese...

What did the Romans do for us?

First, imagine the culture shock to the locals.

The Brigantes, the Votadini,

the Selgovae...that lived on the tops of these hills.

These are people or birds? People! People.

And their quite primitive lifestyle

was probably to roast an ox and everyone would partake of that.

What you had when the Romans arrived

is a very highly civilised nation, even by our standards.

They introduced a disciplined system

of society, and along with that - which is the reason why we're here -

they introduced foods, commodities, that the locals didn't have at all.

Like turnip, cabbage, lettuce, herbs.

Name a herb. The Romans brought it.

The British cabbage was...? Brought by the Romans, yes.

Donald, if I don't serve this,

using the standard Roman utensils, it'll to be cooked to a frazzle.

We've had the Romans.

What other influences stormed into Northumberland?

Well, following the Roman withdrawal from Britain,

the Anglo-Saxons came for about 400 years.

So, as a Roman historian, what do you think of my dish?

It's interesting.

I think you've probably recaptured

the..."flavour" of yesteryear quite well!

Oh, it's not bad, actually.

It's got that rough, coarse sauce, if you don't mind me saying....

My dear fellow, feel free to be edited!

I believe, sitting for three hours working my way through this...

But this rough sauce would be exactly as they would produce.

If I saw a poster in Rome saying, "Caesar needs YOU,"

and this was the food you got, there's no way I'd join up!

You've got to ask the question - why DID they withdraw?

If my director had his way,

this shot would last half an hour. He loves Newcastle.

Joking apart, we asked the College of Science and Technology

for a taste of the North East.

They generously obliged by giving up a day to create an edible tableau.

Fresh salmon from Berwick-on-Tweed.

"Loppy Dog" - lamb cooked in Newcastle Brown Ale.

"Electric Soup" - more nutritious than Popeye's spinach.

Craster kippers baked with cranberries and rosemary.

A fillet of pork in flaky pastry.

Here's the boss, James Walling, to talk you through the rest.

Well, we've got here traditional jugged hare, potted celery,

leek and onion stuffing, parsnips,

roast pheasant in an oatmeal crust

which is cracked to release its wonderful odour.

What is this? This is a traditional dish - a leek pudding.

Suet pastry with leeks inside,

a bit of ham through the centre to give an extra bit of flavour.

I've been here in the North East, which I love, for five days now.

I've been to 128 pubs, 94 discos, 18 restaurants, 47 hotels...

and I haven't seen those on any menu anywhere!

Well, I'm amazed. It should be on every menu in the North East.

It's a very traditional north-eastern dish.

It's very old, very solid, very robust.

The type of thing chefs are trying to get back to. So they should!

Now, this looks splendid. That's a wonderful dish - a pan haggerty.

Sliced potatoes and onions,

a bit of grated cheese, baked in the bottom of the oven.

A staple dish of any north-eastern menu. Wonderful flavour!

# ..Dum...dum...dum...

# Dumble dumble dum...dum... #

This music is incredible! But back to the commentary.

Here we are, on The Good Ship Radiant Way, just off Seahouses.

A bit like The Owl And The Pussycat without the five-pound note.

Now, all cooking of the REAL kind depends on first-class shopping!

Anyone can buy a packet of frozen fish.

But if you've got real "B dot-dot-dot with an S on the end",

you go where it's really happening!

Waves, head of white water, all that business!

But you know what fishermen are like, don't you?

They say it was that big, but they haven't caught anything!

So I brought a few mussels

from Seahorses - or Seahouses or whatever it's called!

But the crew HAVE caught some fish, so I'm going to prepare a dish

which is going to be called "Light On The Radiant Way".

Our nautical dish of the day!

Panache of fish, The Radiant Way. Name of the boat. Get it?

We've got whiting, haddock,

lemon sole, cod, prawns, and we've got some codlings.

So take your shopping basket. A couple of whiting...

I'm not joking! This is unbelievably bad!

One of these things here. Very slippery. In you go.

This is shopping on the ninth parallel, OK?

A little codling, and something else...

Don't laugh! Every time you have a fish meal,

what I'm doing now is what they do every day of the week!

So don't joke about it. It's fun, I know, for us.

But this is how they really work.

So, out of this lot, I'm going to dedicate a dish to this ship,

The Radiant Way.

Richard, come into the kitchen, if we can get back.

To recap, Richard, and I know you're not used to boats...

we have my little fresh codling, my little whiting, my haddock,

langoustines, prawns, the mussels I brought with me, some parsley,

and some cream, and not really very much else!

But while I fried those fillets of the freshest fish you can imagine,

at the same time I made, as every little cookette knows,

a simple white sauce - butter and flour, milk, onions, bay leaves

and a bit of parsley. OK?

I did it while I was fooling about. Cos this is the magic of...magic.

At the same time...from Seahouses I got these brilliant mussels,

merely poached them in about a quarter of a pint of water

so that they opened.

I want a really fishy flavour... Richard, this is the tricky bit.

We've got to get some of this juice from the mussels into the sauce.

And stir that in. So we have a fundamental white sauce, OK?

With a fishy flavour, which is quite nice...

If I may now... You know, I have to tell you I am REALLY tired.

We take this pretty serious. I know you love me rolling about in ships.

And trying... And cooking things but there AREN'T, I can promise you,

17 home economists behind me doing all this.

Right. Our little fillets are sort of ready, OK?

The point of this kind of dish

is that you do not need to go to night-school for a CSE in cooking.

Freshness is everything. Simplicity.

If I can do it in this small space,

any of you can do it in the wonderful comfort of home.

Right. I've got a few tasks to do.

Very freshly chopped parsley, we all know what that is.

Stay with it, Richard. I'll buy you a large one if we ever get ashore.

Stay with it, dear boy. I can see you wobbling.

Strain the white sauce into the parsley there.

Discarding the flavourings I added,

the carrot, the onion, the mushroom and stuff I put in.

Stir that in. That is really real.

And it's very, very good.

And, because it's for the captain and a very good friend, Mr Swallow,

I want to make it really rich and luxurious so I'll add some cream.

And put that gently on the gas, to cook away.

And here we come to the tricky bit.

I put a couple of little fillets on this lovely white plate,

the little langoustines, tailed and headed and split down the middle...

A few fillets of fish... then some of my little mussels...

I think that, one way or another, this has got to be

a sort of fishy version of Northumbria on a plate.

We're working in absurd conditions,

nothing on the clock but the maker's name...

My sauce is warm, the flavour has gone through...

And watch closely... Well, just admire the steadiness of my hand...

under these absurd conditions...

I can't put that down...

I think, you know...fresh fish... Floyd... Northumberland...

On a plate. I think it's brilliant.

Now beginneth the history lesson.

A long, long time ago, before telegraph poles were invented,

on this rugged shore, a Viking longship floundered.

The enterprising locals turned it into the Northumberland coble.

"But this is a food programme!" I hear you cry.

The chippings from the boat yard go a few yards away

and are used to smoke these plumptious little monkeys.

I love this symbiotic stuff - nothing is wasted.

The cobles catch the herring and the oak flavours the kipper.

The kipper was invented by John Woodger, of Seahouses, in 1840.

I think there should be a statue of Woodger in Seahouses.

The fish are split and immersed in brine for half an hour.

Then they're put on these "tenterhooks",

and this is where the expression originated.

And that's what I'M on when I'm making these programmes!

This timeless procedure has been handed down for generations,

as this rare archive film shows!

On these programmes, the Floyd programmes,

we've done so many crab cooking sequences, I've run out of things to say in the commentary!

I thought I'd write a little poem instead. Here it is.

It can make you quite sad to cook a crab

They say that they squeal in the steam

but I know a crab is really quite glad to appear well-dressed on the screen!

I'm a very partisan kind of guy.

I LOVE Somerset and Devon and Cornwall.

# I love coffee, I love tea, I love the Java Jive and it loves me!

But, jokes apart, as much as I love the West Country fish,

if you want a real crab, come to Seahouses. They're the sweetest I have ever tasted!

They live off the hard bottom, not in mud. They're superb.

They live off the hard bottom, not in mud. They're superb.

DOG YELPS

But what we're really here for is the kipper. The REAL kipper.

No Japanese technology,

no gas-fired burners, but the REAL business.

Now, Richard, sometimes in a cameraman's life,

smoke gets in your eyes, but stay with it, OK?

This is where it's at. Step in to see the fire, to see the kipper.

After about eleven hours, killing me softly with her herring, you can take a bite...

..and step into heaven.

Heaven turned out to be dead good,

lots of pretty scenery and birds, rivers flowing with milk and honey.

And the lady angels were Wikings, as the next cooking sketch reveals.

Northumberland must be the last bastion of rural countryside in Britain here amongst the fells,

the valleys and where the North Tyne flows.

People here eat in a strange way.

GUNSHOT QUACK!

This is what they eat. Not, as it is in the succulent South, a luxury.

Here it is quite a common dish.

It is so cheap and so plentiful and people are so bored with it,

I couldn't find a real Northumbrian person to cook me one.

What I did find was a Wiking. A Wiking.

Who is called Ebon.

I shall call her deep and crisp and Ebon because that's how I remember it!

And she's a great pheasant plucker - difficult to say if you've had one or two!

And as a Wiking who's been raping and pillaging for 1,000 years,

she's going to cook something for us that demonstrates her understanding

of Northumberland, particularly because I don't feel well today.

I've got a cold. What are you going to do with this?

I'm going to skin it,

take the breasts off, which I'm going to cook in mead. Mead.

You are talking to me in a nice way, I know you can drink it.

What is Mead? Let's have a glass.

It's a honey-based drink that was brought over by the Vikings.

Ah, plug for the Vikings.

This is what they fired themselves up on

when they charged on their cricket club tours. Yeah, yeah. Very nice.

It's brilliant. Start plucking the pheasant.

It is true what I said, that the locals are not desperately keen on eating it

in the hotel restaurant because it's such a common sort of dish for them.

Yeah, they usually sort of eat the lambs and beef, things like that.

But...

As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the nicest meats you can get.

That's right. So tender and... And good value, too.

One of each, this is why farmers are cross

because they eat all their little...

The last supper!

You carry on plucking away, we all know what plucking is about.

We have to get on with some real cooking.

What you should do, I've pinched deep and crisp and Ebon's recipe...

You get these lovely fillets of pheasant

and these still have their shot in them, that upsets some people.

In the old days in my restaurant,

to make things really authentic, I had a little tray of split

shot and put it into the dish at the last moment just in case

they thought they were home reared ones.

Anyway, these breasts of pheasant have been marinated for how long?

48 hours, just in mead, just to keep it really simple

because as you probably already know, the Vikings'

and old Northumberland way of cooking was to try to keep everything

simple and also they didn't need to disguise any real...

Sort of meats, flavours with anything

because it was so fresh.

Right, OK, let's get to do some cooking. The gas is on over here.

Whizz round in one of your steady slow walks, Richard.

We'll find ourselves over here by the stove.

Ebon, it's up to you to tell me what to do. We have the gas on.

Yeah, it's on. Richard, close up in here, if you please.

We've already sweated off or melted down or softened a few onions.

What's next?

Add the pheasant breasts now and blanche them off. One in there.

No seasoning at this stage? Not at this stage, no.

Just sort of close the pores on it.

Maximum frying speed? Yeah. Let that sizzle away.

Let them get brown or golden on both sides like that so they seize up and seal.

Richard, if you don't mind, close-up and then organise a wibbly wobbly shot

so that we can come back to that later on in the cooking stage.

And certainly this mellifluous amber liquid will make all the difference to the dish.

Sweetness and light, it is. Good word, mellifluous. What's next?

Then you add some double cream to it.

But first we're going to cook the alcohol from the meat off,

take the breasts out and serve them up on your dish.

Spilt it all over the place but that doesn't matter.

We'll wipe those dishes in a moment. Cream into there now? Yes.

Be quite generous. I mean, this is your invention, this dish.

This is a Wiking Northumbrian marriage, I suppose.

Yeah, it's so simple

but I prefer simple dishes that are really tasty and nice.

It is tasty and nice, actually.

And if you think this is a very rich dish,

if it's too fruity and too sweet to go with game, think about pork

and apple sauce, think about venison and redcurrant jelly.

The thinking behind this dish is perfectly OK,

the savoury meat and the sweet sauce.

Do you want to whack those onto the table, my darling?

And then we can have a little taste and see how it all comes out.

Right. This, as usual, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

If it isn't brilliant I'm cutting you out of the programme!

SHE GIGGLES

It should be tender enough now.

Well, marvellous.

It is gamey and sweet

and I worry about dishes that have honey and cream in them

because I feel it's an excuse for not cooking properly sometimes

but you did reduce it all properly and it really does work.

It's a lovely melange of flavours. Yeah. Here's to you, my darling.

Viva Northumberland. Cheers! And up with the Wikings!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd