Episode 7 Floyd on Food

So, if life isn't crazy enough, this, on the last programme of Floyd on Fish, where are we?

We're racing for a grand in the Plymouth fishermen's trawler race.

I've got to do some cooking as well.

I've got a selection of fish. I'm going to make a fish stew if I can.

I've got soles and saithe and lobster. Monkfish and stuff.

I'm gonna make a stew to dedicate to the fishermen of the country

who've helped us to make this series fabulous.

If anything goes wrong,

I have the unidentified frying objects.

OK, this is great, isn't it? Sorry I'm looking a bit wobbly,

it's not what you think it is - this is a dry ship!

Anyway, here on the good ship Valdee, which we've borrowed,

we're going to cook them a fish stew for making us feel welcome.

I've also been told not to tell the cameraman off -

but Clive, could you come down? Stand still, man!

Come onto a little bit of fish we've got - a bit of red mullet,

pollack, ling, some scallops, which are plentiful here,

Lobster - a treat for the captain, and a bit of hake.

Come over here - we're wandering all over the place.

A few chopped onions, leeks and carrots.

Here in this other hand, I've got some olive oil,

Ooh, yes, that's olive oil - I'm not allowed to drink!

So olive oil into the galley,

This is what they call wide-eyed and legless.

So that goes into there.

And we throw that in.

Hygienic wooden spoon...

We've had some letters saying, "He uses his fingers for cooking."

Sorry about that - I'm gonna keep using them.

Do you wear gloves when you're making sandwiches?

Now I'll put my little bits of fish in.

Clive, please come over here. Thank you.

Fish into there - all these little bits.

The gas is on maximum.

At home, in the sanctity of your beautiful kitchen,

you'll find no trouble in making a stew like this using any fish.

We've taken what we had on board - you can use whatever you like.

Chop it into the olive oil, the leeks and carrots, and let it cook.

That's the first phase. You can go away because it has to cook.

I'll come back for the next stage.

I wonder if I could get an ordinary job - like cooking on breakfast TV?

They don't get lumbered making stews on a trawler

with a bunch of bananas who've gone completely guys!

I wish I'd brought my hymn book.

Number 47 would fit the bill. # For those in peril on the sea. #

What I've got to do is thicken this fish soup.

I'm preparing a mixture of butter and flour

which I'm gonna knead together in a golf-ball sized dumpling,

which, when I've got all the juices into the pan...

Sorry about this, it's very difficult.

I'm making a golf ball of flour and butter to drop into the stew,

piece by piece and thicken the juices from it.

It's easy to do this at home, but we are in the middle of a race.

Going flat out at 15 knots, it's a bit tricky.

But you get the idea. Knead the flour into the butter,

using up all the flour. And you don't just use this for fish stews,

you can use it to thicken anything - even your Sunday roast.

Thickening the gravy with rolled butter and flour like that,

which the professionals call buerre manie.

That would thicken any stew or gravy. Better than packet stuff.

Ah. That's bubbling away rather nicely.

Things are more or less cooked.

Now we add our herbs and flavourings

which is quite tricky at 15 knots.

Little bit of parsley.

Just to be on the safe side, a little squirt of tomato puree.

A bit of paprika to give it a little spiciness.

And a bit of a sage leaf I've got in here somewhere.

I like a bit of sage to make things cheerful.

A grind or two of pepper,

And I've got 20 minutes of the race left -

I hope I'll get this finished before we get in.

Stir it gently round a bit.

It's looking quite good.

And I need, if we can get it, a drop of water.

Very seldom you see us using water, but what are you supposed to do?

There we are - good.

You still with me, Clive? We're all over the place.

Bit more of that, bit of saffron to cheer things up really well.

Stir it round, better have a taste, see how things are going.

Mmm.

It's coming on well.

So I'm going to thicken the sauce with my buerre manie. Pop it in.

It's difficult to see, but stir it gently in.

Another little bit, like that.

Stir it in and it'll melt and you can see it thickening already.

OK, so that's thick. Two things I'm gonna do -

I'm gonna serve myself some, and I'm gonna ask Billy, our skipper,

to come and taste it.

I don't have any of the things that you have

to stop me burning my fingers.

Let's tip a bit out - get some lobster in there.

We don't normally eat lobster - we haven't had it on the whole show.

So it's a treat to have one.

Now, the proof of the pudding as always...

I know it's slopping around, but let's see how it tastes.

I think it's jolly nice. Billy can tell me what he thinks.

Billy if I could interrupt. Have a go at the fish stew.

Tell me exactly what you think - no need to tell fibs.

That's very nice. It's all right?

You can taste all the different ingredients,

all the different seafood, uh...

I'd well recommend it. Thanks. And thanks for driving us.

Who's driving at the moment? It's driving itself!

'We didn't win the race.

'We came sixth...out of several.

'Anyway, there's lots to do. I've got to have a quick haircut.

'Eating so much fish makes it grow very quickly, as you'll see.

'And you've got a cooking lesson with Chikaka. You remember her from last week.

'And if you don't, it's off to bed with no supper.'

And this is your present from me.

It's an apron because you're gonna cook a paella today.

For me and all of them too.

Let's get to work, cos you know how expensive television time is.

They have no understanding of our art and our fun!

Let's go for it. Have you ever had a paella before?

Yes. Where did you have it? In Japan.

And what is a Japanese paella?

It's like a Spanish paella but we use different materials.

The rice is different because it's Japanese rice.

What is so different about Japanese rice?

Japanese is more sticky rice, which we like.

But English or whatever, we call foreign rice,

is not sticky. That's different. We'll make ours fairly sticky,

because we're gonna cook this paella properly.

The Spanish can't cook paella. Have you eaten a good paella in Spain?

Chikaka makes them in Japan, I make them in England,

A paella has three requirements, and if Clive can follow me round, I can tell you what a paella needs.

A paella needs a paella. This pan is a paella.

By the way, this is not a wok. There are programmes with woks in,

but THIS is not a wok.

The other very important thing is rice.

And the rice - I'll bring it over to you - here it is.

That's the essential other ingredient.

The third ingredient is saffron.

Everything else can go into a paella - fish, shellfish, rabbit, whatever.

It's a peasant dish, it's not a gastronomic experience,

except it's good and fun.

What is nice for me is the opportunity to use some octopus.

Would you use octopus in your Japanese version? Quite a lot.

I'm going to put some rabbit into mine,

and some chicken and later on, some mussels.

Incidentally, the ones that are open are not edible,

unless you can resuscitate them by massage.

If they close down, that's OK.

But if mussels are open, don't use them cos they're not good.

If they close back again, they're OK.

We're going to have some large Mediterranean prawns or langoustine,

or any other shellfish, lots of garlic,

tomato and peppers and onion.

and finally a little garnish of pine nuts.

You can pick up a recipe from the BBC if you need the details.

So shall we start? Yes. You get the stove going. I'll start chopping.

Is it on all right? Yes.

You stay on there, doing it? I'll just do the work,

and you start chopping these pieces of chicken which we'll cut up.

In Japanese and Chinese cookery, the smaller the things are,

the quicker they cook.

Do you want to chuck those in? Perhaps a bit of salt and pepper.

Then our pieces of red pepper.

It's a rich sunshine dish, so we want quite a lot of garlic,

which I'll bring over in just a second.

Garlic is something that frightens the British -

frightens a lot of people actually,

but if it's chopped coarsely, it will release lots of lovely flavour.

It'll enrich it and give it that Mediterranean taste.

Be prepared to go over the top.

I'm enjoying being a commis chef to a talented cook

and a beautiful lady. It's rather fun.

So that's all going along quite nicely.

Once we get those - can you turn them over to brown them?

..A little bit of parsley,

and then, what we have to do

is, now those are nice and golden, we'll put in some water or stock.

As you like.

And we'll let that cook away for a little while.

Now I'll add some rice. How much rice do you think we ought to use?

We're making a feast for eight people, so let's put one, two...

You need never be really accurate about paella measurements.

Let's put five lots of rice. Would you agree?

That's fine, yeah.

And some saffron.

Let's put lots in.

So we need to let that cook for a little while.

When the rice has started to fill out, we'll add our shellfish.

The smells in this kitchen!

The paella's coming up already, it's making me feel hungry.

I'm gonna take a leaf out of Chinese cookery here -

I'm going to use a piece of squid which as you know is beautiful raw,

but unless it's blanched in boiling water first,

it will never get tender - it'll be like rubber.

We'll chuck in this and the octopus tentacles, we don't get that often,

and we'll drop them into the boiling water to blanch them,

before we add them to the main body of the paella.

I'll let those go for a second.

Let's get the mussels in.

We want to bring those in while there's still liquid in the rice.

In fact, we can add more liquid

because these mussels are going to cook in the rice

and impart their own flavour to the rice part.

Chikaka, pass me the water. Do you want to chuck a bit in?

Water is perfectly all right, cos we've got the chicken and the rice,

the peppers, garlic and saffron, we've got plenty of flavours.

The important thing is, by blanching the squid,

and the octopus into boiling water,

it saves us this business of it being all rubbery and tough.

Strain it carefully,

and chuck it into the paella.

And we'll also add... Now these prawns are already cooked,

so we'll add those on the top so they'll steam through.

We don't want them to be overcooked, and become soggy and nasty.

You can see the mussels are opening. You there, Clive?

See how the mussels are beginning to open under the steam,

We want - this is my own personal addition -

a few pine nuts to make the whole thing splendid.

Bit of parsley. Shall we taste it?

I think a little salt, what do you think? Taste it and see.

See if you think you need more salt.

A little bit more salt.

And a little more pepper.

And a little Spanish piece de la casa - whatever they say in Spanish.

A little bit of ground pepper paprika,

which we can stir in.

Anything else you'd like to add in?

A little bit of lemon. I don't want to. If you want to, do it.

It's Japanese paella, you see.

I like lemon for cooking.

Do you like squeezing them - it's lovely to squeeze.

It's very sexy.

I'm going to have a drink.

We leave. We leave it.

Let it bubble away.

'Wow, that paella was absolutely fantastic.

'Honestly, the best I've ever eaten. Sorry you couldn't have any.'

'Now, my little poissons, here's a little riddle for you.

'What seaside town starts with W and ends in TH?'

# Big girl in the red dress She's just trying to impress us

# And she's got the barley fever But she doesn't make a sound

# She's just hanging around. #

'This is the travelogue-y bit. Interesting, isn't it? Anyway, you're quite right. It's Weymouth,

'where I'm happy to say I can smell the tempting aroma of boiling crabs.'

If you... Sorry about the steam here.

If you take a walk along the average seafront,

you'd be hard-pressed to imagine that real crabs and fish exist.

With the smell of chips and hamburgers,

you don't get this wonderful smell of freshly boiled crab.

All these theme pubs and wine bars and things

who serve packets of frozen crab in their sandwiches ought to be shot.

Especially when you can come into a proper old-fashioned place like this

and buy a real one.

Nobody likes cleaning them as it's jolly hard work,

but we'll show you how to do all of that, and we'll have a glass of wine with it, too.

So, crabs.

Hammers. Two essential ingredients for a really good lunch.

The hammer is useful for many things - apart from cracking claws.

It's useful for biffing the bloke who complains cos I use my fingers.

I really can't help it, I'm not going to change, I'm sorry!

The first thing is shattering the silence -

smash the claws.

This is a messy and irksome business.

Get your husband in to clear up the bits on the floor!

And also...

picking the little bits out of your eye.

Tedious work this, it's a bit painstaking.

I've a blunt knife, or a knife without a sharp point.

It's very good for feeding the meat in.

This is where the other people on television suddenly stop.

They get halfway through filling a bowl,

the next thing they have a dressed crab!

I'll go back to that in a moment,

next we open up the thing.

This is where many people don't feel happy about eating crabs,

because they don't know what they can eat. I'll show you.

These are the dead man's fingers.

You don't need those - just pull those off.

Pull off everything that's detachable, if you can.

Then, with your knife, poke into these cavities,

and pull out the flesh.

It's difficult to do, but it's the sweetest part.

You carry on while I turn to this nasty piece.

I've got to move to the sink, if the cameraman could follow.

And these bits of, sort of, what would you call that?

Skin. You want that out.

And little bits of membrane - take those out.

Then you're left with this nice, brown edible mixture

which I will tip into me bowl,

using my fingers, you see.

Sorry about the finger business but there's nothing we can do about it.

The pinky bits of meat are nice stuff.

And this is where I've dropped a real clanger,

I'm getting a spoon - actually, it's a fork I want!

You get so tense doing those programmes, it's very confusing.

So, we've got our brown meat there,

mashed up, and our white meat there.

And the claws you see - peel off the shell

and poke out the meat.

This is the ideal job to get everyone else in the family doing.

You should be relaxing and ring a bell to get someone to bring it.

Right, there's that bit.

Over to the sink, I'm going to rinse that out.

I'm going to put the crab into this.

You continue mashing up the brown meat.

You have the white meat one side of the shell and start to feed it into the centre.

Make them look fat and plumpscious.

Serving your dish in the shell makes it look fine.

Talking of shells, it does worry me that some people

use shells again. Seafood is a highly delicate thing.

You can't risk it going off.

Using an old shell to re-serve food is bad.

People write and say, "Don't use your fingers."

We all have clean fingers. Pay more attention to fundamental hygiene -

like not using a shell twice.

Anyway, stuff this in beautifully.

There's a lot of meat here.

It's a real feast for one person.

A little snack for two or three.

Stick it onto an elegant little plate. Add a bit of lemon.

Piece of bread and butter as well.

I've got some nice... I know you know what it looks like...

This is the ideal lunch.

Let me show you the perfect lunch.

Butter... and then of course...

Just a little glass of wine.

Anyway, I've still got more work to do

because, while I was fiddling about in the kitchen here,

when we were out shopping this morning - great fun,

everybody saying, "Hey, you're Floyd on Fish, we enjoy the programme," love all of you -

we bought beautiful melon. And what could be better with a bit of the crab that we had left over?

To pour that in, stuff that beautiful fresh crab into there,

To pour that in, stuff that beautiful fresh crab into there,

then - I'm in trouble, trouble, director pass me a dish, no, it's all right.

Look at him, he doesn't do a thing. Put bit of that beautiful fresh mayonnaise into there.

You've got to stay with this. A bit of tomato puree,

a little bit of Worcestershire sauce,

a little squeeze of lemon juice,

a little bit of mustard, like that.

Whisk all of that up until it goes slightly pink.

Sauce rose. This is not a prawn cocktail, all right?

It's not that pink nasty muck you get out of your bottles.

Because I've made it with real eggs and real oil,

I have a perfect sauce there.

Which is superb just to pour over like that. OK?

A little bit of fresh parsley.

Now I'm going to show off a tiny bit

just to - stay down here with me, cameraman -

and I'll make something really pretty for you

just to show you that I'm actually sensitive, creative and artistic

and everything like that as well.

so I thought we put a little rose on top of the prawn cocktail.

You saw how I just deftly peeled that tomato skin.

It's not a prawn cocktail, it's a crab. I know it isn't!

I said it isn't prawn cocktail, that's the whole point.

I mean, it's not the prawn cocktail, as in the way of bottled sauces and frozen prawns.

It's a melon stuffed with fresh crab

with a beautifully prepared pink sauce over it.

Now we just make this little rose.

The director's learnt quite a lot about cooking on this programme.

You notice how swiftly he picked up my little mistake.

He established the difference at once between crabs and prawns.

So I hope you're all benefiting in the same way.

Look at this. This is real art, isn't it?

This is where, when I witter on about the love of food,

this is how you can take advantage of love.

You've got a little rose there.

And then using a chive,

which we picked from this lady's garden, Rachel's garden.

Lovely woman. We've conned our way, as usual, into here, we will put on the little rose stem.

Like that. We'll call this melon farci a la Rachel, whose kitchen this is.

PHONE RINGS

'Look here, I still wish to complain about him using his fingers

'and there's a filthy cat in the kitchen

'and there's a dead fly on the melon.

'And why he keeps on picking on me, I don't know...'

JOLLY MUSIC

I must say, I can't really understand what they see in windsurfing.

This is much more fun, you know.

He lied with a light smile playing on his fat and fulsome lips.

Up to your knees in freezing salted water,

backbreaking work, looking for cockles.

Come and you have a look at the damn things. This is what I'm here for.

That is a cockle. And it's beautiful, isn't it?

Absolutely wonderful.

Do you know, you can buy a jar of these in the pub.

I'd much rather be in the pub doing it, to be honest with you.

Anyway, never mind, we have to, here on Floyd on Fish really do the real stuff

because I've got to get them back and cook them.

Freshly boiled, they should be absolutely delicious.

And there's another.

Actually, on a more serious note, these little dreams, like some other people I know,

need purging - no names, no pack-drill.

And to purge them, you put them into a bucket of fresh clean water overnight.

12 hours, or something like that.

Then they open and close during the night when you're not looking. Don't look or they won't do it.

And they cleanse themselves of the sand and other little predatory molluscs and things

that inhabit inside their shells.

Very important thing to do, that.

Still, I'd better fill the damn thing up. Here's some more.

Just my luck, I'm going to lose the bucket in a minute!

When the mist goes, we should be able to see.

Yes, cockles exactly like mussels.

Put them in a drop of water, bring them to the boil till they're open and pull them off.

You mustn't overcook these things,

you can easily overcook them.

The second they come to the boil, tip them into a colander.

Now my expert... The director is so frantic about cockles

that he's conned all sorts of people to be here,

to cook them for us. I didn't actually cook these myself,

I'll rinse them under fresh water.

You've got to check them for bits of sand, small crabs

and other parasitic crustaceans.

Talking of that, my director's a bit of a parasite.

He is determined to have cockles in the programme.

I really like them - not too keen on them warm.

But what better way to enjoy a dull holiday

than to find a bit of food for nothing!

If you can get them for free, it's worth doing. Pick these out.

Keep looking at those. I need the vinegar. That's the important bit.

Real malt vinegar, and although I object to those already in bottles,

this way, they're actually very nice indeed.

Really very nice. You happy I've done a nice thing about cockles?

I thought it was OK.

I didn't think it was brilliant. I don't like them. It's hard for me to get enthusiastic about cockles.

This is how you cook them if you want to. Or you can buy a jar.

I don't like 'em. Or the director.

And now the end is nigh, etcetera, etcetera.

Sniffs, sniffs.

Takes onion to cheek, sniffs again... Sorry, I was rehearsing.

You see, it's the end. Before I go, I want to leave you with a glimpse of all the sufferings I've endured.

Au revoir my little crustaceans, Bye-bye.

HE SPITS

I hate oysters! I hate fish, I've had enough!

I want some hamburgers and chips! CREW LAUGH

Subtitles by BBC Broadcast