Michel Roux Jr on Bread and The Hairy Bikers on Cauliflower Great British Food Revival

-British produce is under threat.

-It's at the mercy of foreign invaders, market forces.

-And food fashion.

-Produce that has been around for centuries...

-Could die out within a generation.

-So together, we're on a mission...

-To save it.

We'll give you the best tips on how to find it, grow it and cook it.

And crucially, how to put sensational British produce...

Back on the food map.

I'm Michel Roux, and I am passionate about bread.

This is the kind of bread that I want you to be eating.

It's proper, artisan bread.

It has heart and soul.

Never, ever buy another loaf of that white sponge.

I strongly believe that for too long, we've been sold bread that is lacking in nutrients and flavour.

The time for change is now, before we lose the art of good baking for ever.

So in my campaign, I want to change the way you think about bread.

From the wheat that makes your flour...

You shouldn't call yourself a master baker

-until you've gone through every process.

-I agree!

..To the craft of baking an honest loaf.

This turns me on, I tell you. This is you, and I can feel that.

It's great.

I'll be in the revival kitchen, showing you some great ways to get involved,

including a fantastic alternative to a white sliced loaf.

Mmm, so simple to make.

As well as some other mouth-watering recipes which bring out the best of true artisan bread.

If anything is going to make you join our bread revival, it should be this.

A massive 9 million loaves of bread are sold in the UK every day.

But only 3% of those are baked by a traditional craft baker.

I consider myself a Frenchman, and the smell of a boulangerie makes me feel alive.

Sadly, the art of baking in this country is under threat.

More often than not, bread in this country is seen as a fast food.

There is another way.

This beautiful white bread is real bread, cooked by professionals.

I want the tables of Britain to enjoy this bread.

In Britain, 80% of all bread is made using the Chorleywood bread-making process,

an industrialised method of baking bread that allows factories to churn out loaves on a vast scale,

and nothing like the artisan bread that I want you to be eating.

Chris, I've heard a bit about the Chorleywood bread process.

As far as I can understand, it's cutting corners. It's making bread very quickly,

and therefore reducing the price.

-Is that about right?

-Absolutely.

It's about how we can get the cheapest loaf possible with the basic ingredients.

So you whip it full of air, pump it full of carbon dioxide, and bake it off.

You have to add additives to make sure it goes through the machine.

So instead of adapting the machine to work with the dough, you adapt the dough to work with the machine.

-It's wrong.

-And then it's baked off from start to finish in something like an hour.

That's crazy. For me, a real loaf takes hours and hours of love

to make it have that taste and the flavour

and that beautiful crust that you don't get on an industrial loaf.

Take these two things. They look a bit different. What's that? That's real bread.

Flour, water, yeast, salt. What's that? What do you think has gone into that? Let's see.

-We've got flour, water, yeast, salt. Fine, that's bread.

-So far.

Let's go on. Spirit vinegar. Soya flour, emulsifier.

Diacetyl Tartaric Esters of mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids.

Rapeseed oil makes it a bit softer. Sunflower oil. Palm oil. So that's 14 things, as opposed to four.

-Is this bread?

-No.

For me, no.

Most definitely not.

Talking to Chris was fantastic, because he is as passionate as I am about bread.

I knew there were a lot of additives in these white industrial loaves,

but I didn't realise to what extent.

For my campaign for a revival of artisan bread to succeed,

I'll need to convince the bread-making industry

that there is an alternative to the Chorleywood loaf.

Hello, it's Michel here.

'I'm meeting Gordon Paulson, the director of the Bakers' Federation,

'the voice of the industrial bakers of Britain.'

-Morning, Gordon.

-Morning.

-Good to meet you.

-And you.

My utopia, my dream, is to have an artisan baker on every street corner,

like we have in the rest of Europe, especially France, where I come from.

I feel that these mass bakers, by definition, are hindering that process.

I don't think we're hindering it at all. All we're doing is responding to consumer demand.

Why have the British got this infatuation with this spongy, white, cotton wool bread?

I don't think we should criticise the consumer.

The British consumer is the British consumer, and it gets the value product that it requires.

For good or bad, bread in the UK is the cheapest in Europe.

It's meeting consumer needs and consumer demand.

At times, I felt I was hitting a brick wall with Gordon.

But I do agree on one thing, and that is that the only people that can change this are you,

by demanding an artisan bread, or even cooking bread yourselves at home.

So the first step on the road to revival is showing you how easy bread-making can be.

For my first recipe, I'm going to prove to you how simple it is to make an ordinary white loaf.

First, put the milk on to a gentle heat.

Then slowly melt some butter,

before adding a tablespoonful of golden syrup.

The golden syrup is there to give it a touch of sweetness,

but it also helps to give that lovely, moist crumb.

Whilst this is melting...

We put our fresh yeast in our bowl.

Every bread needs some form of leavening,

and this yeast is the leavening. It's the life.

Pour the warm milk onto the yeast and stir until it's dissolved.

We buy more white bread in Britain than any other variety.

I want to prove that it is possible to make a really delicious white loaf.

That's why I'm using white flour.

Then add two pinches of salt to complete the dough.

We'll leave it for a while so that all the moisture is absorbed in the flour.

And that's it.

After just five minutes resting in a warm place, you can start to knead the dough.

I'm just keeping it in the bowl and not working it very hard.

I'm stretching the gluten in there.

If it does stick to your hands a bit, you can get a little bit of flour...

..and rub that on your fingers,

and your fingers come clean.

There are no shortcuts to making a great loaf of bread.

So after the dough has been kneaded for around ten minutes,

leave it to rise for half an hour to give the yeast time to do its work.

As soon as you take the clingfilm off, you can smell those yeasts working.

It has a beautiful aroma. And it's smooth and glistening. Beautiful.

I then turn this out onto the board.

I remember these smells, these aromas, as a child,

waking up to freshly baked bread.

I want every house in Britain to be baking,

or at least supporting your local baker.

Form the dough into two balls, place them in a baking tin and allow to rise for a second time.

A bread that's only risen once

and has been pushed through the whole process is bland.

It hasn't had a life.

A further 30 minutes in a warm place is all it should need.

Wow. That looks beautiful.

It's got that lovely shape, beautiful sheen.

And it's ready to go in the oven. First, we need to slash the bread.

So we take a very sharp knife and just go there over there like that.

That will help the bread develop and open up. And into the oven.

The oven...is at 200 degrees C.

We do that for about ten minutes, and that helps to really push and make the bread develop.

Then we turn it down to about 180. It should take 30 minutes to cook.

30 minutes to wait for heaven.

Here we go. Looks beautiful.

And the smell is great.

This is what I love about cooking bread.

You never know exactly how a loaf will turn out.

This is beautiful.

It's white bread, but it has a crust, so it's crunchy on the outside

and it has a lovely, delicate texture on the inside. It's got the perfect crumb.

You can smell all the ingredients in there.

That golden syrup gives it a hint of sweetness, but it's also helping

the yeast to grow and give that lovely texture.

Good bread needs butter.

Mmm.

So simple to make.

But the pleasure you get out of that is indescribable.

Just as bread-baking has become industrialised,

so has the farming of its chief ingredient, wheat.

Our heritage wheat that may be higher in nutrients and protein

has been sacrificed for high-yielding modern wheat.

But I'm a perfectionist, and I only use the finest ingredients in my kitchen.

So my revival journey continues in South Leigh in Oxfordshire,

where I'll be getting back to the roots of wheat.

-Hi, John.

-Hello, Michel.

Great to meet you.

John, what are the fundamental differences between the bulk wheat

that's grown in this country, and your heritage wheat?

I'd say modern wheat varieties are drug-addicted, cosseted little plants

that need fungicides and herbicides and pesticides to produce monstrous yields.

But it doesn't produce good flour, whereas my heritage wheats are very low input.

You don't have to put any sprays. They out-compete weeds and produce a good quality flour.

But the most striking thing that you first see is height.

Modern wheat plants are down there, a foot and a half, two foot tall, if that.

Unless you have good weed control, they get swamped by tall weeds,

whereas my heritage wheats can grow six foot tall, and they blow in the wind.

They're beautiful and coloured and look completely different from a modern wheat field.

I'll have to come back in the summer to see.

So I suppose growing it really is just the first step, and then we have to process it.

And this is your old machine here?

This is the old threshing machine.

So before all these machines, it was literally done by hand.

-You would bash it to get the grains out? Hard labour.

-Very laborious.

You would bring it in from the field, fill up the barn and then flail it out

as and when you needed it, so that the grain was always nice and fresh.

Kept like this, it will keep for a long time.

It's in its own little capsule and is protected.

There are anti-fungal compounds in the husks.

This is part of the reason why bread, for me, has such a great history and a value.

It's important because you can store it. It is the stuff of life.

You can store vast quantities to feed people.

Right, I want a go at this.

Whoa!

You shouldn't be allowed to call yourself a master baker

-until you've gone through every stage of the process.

-I agree.

The wheat is fed into the top of the thresher and produces straw

for thatching and grain for John's artisan bread.

I'm really loving this.

This is what it's all about.

Back to nature.

I never imagined threshing wheat would be so exhausting,

but I can't wait to taste the end product.

And what will the thatchers think of John's heritage wheat loaves?

Guys, this is it. Moment of truth.

-All your hard work, and that's the result. It looks great.

-Yeah, it's smells nice.

This is with the wheat you've grown and worked hard to put through that ancient machine.

Let's hope it's worthwhile.

It's great to see the final product after a year of growing in the field.

It tastes as if it's good for you.

There's something nice and rural and rustic about it,

being a thatcher, sitting there with a loaf of bread and a lump of cheese, and you're a happy man.

I can relate to that. Good bread, good cheese.

I'm happy. All I need now is a glass of wine.

As much as I love John's bread, it's not suitable for my next recipe.

I need the bread I made earlier. The recipe I'm going to cook is a duck pie.

But instead of using pastry, I'll be using bread, just to show how versatile bread can be.

This recipe, I think, is ideal.

It can be made hours in advance and it can sit there in a warm oven.

You just have to bring it to the table and I guarantee, people will be ecstatic.

It's one of these recipes that is a Roux household favourite.

It's, in fact, one of my Christmas specials.

Cut thick slices of bread and then trim off the crusts.

These rectangular slabs will form the case of the pie,

and need to be thick to help it maintain its shape.

This is a really wholesome dish and a vital component is the sauce,

that will bind the flavours of the pie's filling.

Start by sweating some shallots in duck fat.

To which we add our port.

Then add veal stock and let that reduce before turning your attention to the main ingredient.

I make it with confit duck,

duck that's been cooked slowly and for a long time in duck fat.

I need to take the duck legs and the gizzards out of the fat.

Then I need the basin, which I shred the duck into.

Shred it into little bite-size pieces.

We then chop up these gizzards.

Chop these up.

The gizzard is so tender and flavoursome.

You get a real kick of duck.

There we go.

Wild mushrooms are a great compliment to duck,

so I'm going to fry some in some duck fat, with garlic and fresh parsley.

Whilst they're cooking, I can start dipping the bread. Just in and out of the duck fat.

Not drenched, or it'll be too oily.

We're lining the whole of this pudding basin with these little soldiers of bread.

There's a fair bit of duck fat in there and the bread,

but as I said, I normally do this at Christmas time, and...it's Christmas.

With the pudding case ready, mix together the duck, mushrooms

and reduced sauce to create the sumptuous filling.

All of these flavours will melt beautifully into the bread base.

Pack that in really tight.

What's left is to cover the top with the bits of bread left over.

So we dunk them again.

There we go.

Cover the pie in foil and put in a medium oven for 45 minutes.

The pie must be cooked now.

Smells lovely.

Moment of truth.

That is beautiful.

This is just heavenly.

It just goes to show how versatile, how great bread is.

I like to put a bit of sauce on the top, the sauce that we had earlier.

Right, I can't wait any longer.

Gosh, look at that. You need to get a bit of the bread

and the duck. Oh!

The flavours are just so intense.

The bread has soaked up all that fat and all the lovely duck and mushroom juices, and become one.

It's a bit crispy on the outside, yet soft on the inside. It's fantastic.

So here you have it - the duck bread pie, made with my bread.

In the 1950s, there were close to 30,000 local bakeries on our high streets.

Today, there are fewer than 4,000.

I'm on my way to Hackney to meet a guy who is as passionate as I am about bread.

He is bringing baking to the community.

And if we are going to win this campaign, that is what we need to do.

Ben McKinnon has only been making bread for sale for just over a year,

but already, his bakery under a railway arch in Hackney has become a thriving business.

I'm hoping he will inspire you to support your local baker.

Right, Ben, I'm here for a reason - to make bread. Let's do it.

OK. First thing, in the fridge here, we've got the sourdough starter.

The starter is the lifeblood of any good sourdough.

It gives the bread texture and flavour.

As a living leaven, if looked after properly, it can give life to bread across generations.

This sourdough starter has a story behind it.

Somebody came in to visit somebody in the kitchen and said "We use this

"culture, which we were given from Lapland. It's over 200 years old".

And she brought some in for me.

That is unbelievable. From Lapland to Hackney? And 200 years old.

It's been constantly fed.

To keep a sourdough starter going, you have to feed it about once a week

with flour and water, and keep it in a cool place like the fridge.

For me, this is what baking is all about.

This is a million miles away from Chorleywood.

It's great. Enough talk.

Now's the time to go and make some.

Let's go.

Do you think that making bread is an art form?

I think it is, the whole process.

One thing that I've found making bread and one of the reasons I think

it's so good for other people to do is that it generates more creativity.

You've certainly got time to be creative,

as this dough will not be ready for the oven for another ten hours.

So it is it possible to marry art and business and still make a profit?

-How much do you sell your bread for?

-This bread, I sell for £3.50 a loaf,

which is about 800 grammes when it's cooked.

Obviously, you're not doing this for charity.

You have to see a return on that.

Yeah. Well, I've kind of jumped in, and I'm just giving it as much of a go as I can. So far, so good.

As far as I can see, I'm not losing money.

Ben's sourdough might be three times more expensive than a mass-produced loaf,

but considering the time and effort involved, I think it's worth every penny.

The dough is placed in floured banettones to mould the loaves, ready for the oven.

-Come on, darling.

-You have to tease it out.

Here she comes. This is where the skill of the master baker is evident.

Each loaf is crafted with care and attention.

You sell out of this stuff, don't you?

Oh, every day we sell out.

You obviously can't make enough of it, so there's a definite market for it.

Well, people want to eat good food and they want to eat food that has been prepared without chemicals.

There are only four ingredients in this - or three, really.

Salt, flour and water, and the wild yeasts and bacteria.

Like works of art, each loaf is given its own signature before

going into the oven, where it bakes for just half an hour.

Ben's 200-year-old starter has done its job and combined the ingredients to create something special.

Isn't that beautiful?

-This is amazing. This turns me on, I tell you.

-I'm happy to hear that.

The smell and your lovely signature here, it's personal. It's you.

It's not a machine. This is you.

And I can feel that. It's great.

If Ben's story has touched you, why not take a course in bread-making?

Like this one in Nottinghamshire.

It gives me a lot of satisfaction to come on the course, because we learn

everything about bread production from it growing in the field right through to it being baked and then

sold on, so we're learning the whole journey of bread and being an artisan bread producer in this country.

The students here have come from all walks of life.

They've found the experience life-changing.

Bread does need a revival in this country.

Anyone can learn to make bread.

It's not difficult. So long as you have the fundamental building blocks to begin with, you can do anything.

For my final recipe, I'll be using some of Ben's Hackney wild bread, and my bread as well.

It's a diplomat pudding.

It's very close to my heart.

It's a special recipe, the very first recipe I learnt as a pastry apprentice in 1976.

This is a French version of a bread-and-butter pudding, but with a difference.

What's great is that you can use bread that isn't the freshest,

bread that's stale and would otherwise end up in the bin.

To start off, we need to remove the crust.

There we go.

You can use almost any combination of breads, as they'll all add flavour and texture.

Slice them into cubes and scatter them on a baking tray.

So here we are with our bread. We need to dust it with icing sugar.

Here we go.

This is just to give it a lovely, crunchy coating that will caramelise in the oven.

We're making sweet croutons, in effect.

While the croutons are crisping up, start to make the custard filling with egg, sugar and single cream.

I'd rather use single cream than double.

Double cream tends to be too heavy, too rich.

I remember as a young apprentice, 16 years old, being shown how to make this.

I remember the first day I walked past the pastry shop after work,

and I saw my puddings, good enough to be sold in the pastry shop.

That filled me with pride.

The secret ingredient for this dish is vanilla.

Vanilla is very expensive, but it's very worthwhile.

You get so much flavour out of it, so much satisfaction.

I love the idea of putting a very expensive ingredient

like vanilla with such a humble and cheap ingredient as bread.

Put a handful of raisins and sultanas in a pan,

cover them in water

and put them on to a gentle heat to rehydrate.

They'll plump up and become succulent.

Then drain them and cover them in dark rum.

These little packets of sweetness will be the bridging texture between the custard and the bread.

Rum and raisin and vanilla.

I mean, is there a better combination? I don't think so.

And there they are.

Lightly toasted.

That smells gorgeous.

You can smell the wild yeast in there, and an almost brioche-like smell from my bread. It's beautiful.

Then it's time to put the ingredients together.

Into some buttered ramekins, layer the croutons and raisins.

It's as simple as that. It really is very simple.

We ladle them into here.

You can make them individual like this in ramekins, or you could

put it in a terrine and then take slices off it.

I think these little individual moulds look really cute.

Unlike a classic British bread-and-butter pudding, don't put these straight in the oven.

Instead, steam them in a bain-marie.

Cover them with buttered foil, and they're ready for the oven.

On a medium heat, they'll take half an hour.

I think these puddings must be ready by now.

You can't take them out of the mould while they're still piping hot.

You need to leave them to rest for five or ten minutes, because if you were to take them out of the mould,

they would crack and wouldn't look nice.

While they cool, make an apricot glaze for the top of the puddings.

Melt a large spoonful of jam and a dash of water until it turns into a sticky liquid.

The jam's nearly melted.

At last, it's time to reveal the diplomat puddings.

Wow.

All it needs now

is just a little brush of the apricot jam on top.

I find that these are at their best when they're just warm.

Not cold, definitely not fridge-cold.

Diplomat pudding, made with

the best artisan bread you can find.

Oh, this looks beautiful.

Mmm.

It's totally, totally delicious.

You can taste the bread, you can taste the egg and the rum, the vanilla. It's beautiful.

I've been on an incredible journey and met some passionate people,

people who are as passionate about bread as I'm passionate about food.

And that, to me, is heart-warming.

That, to me, means that if we all join together on this crusade,

we can definitely change bread in Britain.

Now it's time for a couple of cooks who are as passionate about reviving British produce as I am.

We're the Hairy Bikers!

And there's a fantastic vegetable that we're desperate to revive.

It's taken a bashing over recent years.

It's even fallen out of fashion.

And we know it's being seriously overlooked.

It's tasty, it's cheap, it's full of flavour.

It's the great British cauliflower!

Yes, we love it!

Us Brits used to love our caulis.

Up until the early 1990s, they were a staple ingredient at dinner time.

But over the past decade, cauliflower sales have fallen by a staggering 35%,

and farmers are struggling to make money from their crop.

So in our campaign to put it firmly back on our plates,

we'll meet the people who are working tirelessly to produce this delicate vegetable.

-Is that acceptable?

-We'll have a bit more off the base here.

Hurry up, I'm about to get run over.

We'll join forces with another huge cauli fan and top chef extraordinare

Yotam Ottolenghi to show you just how versatile the cauliflower can be.

Lots of dill.

You never want to be shy with your herbs.

And in the revival kitchen, we'll be serving up delicious recipes that show off this veg at its very best.

Look at that.

Including a unique cauliflower cheese that you've never had before.

That's cauli-licious.

-Look at that.

-Ooh.

-Belters, eh?

-Nice, man. Well done.

-The Romanesco - it's kind of vegetable matter in a crystalline form.

It's fantastic. And then the good old snowball that we all know and love.

And look, there's even a purple one here. Who needs purple sprouting broccoli?

We've got a purple sprouting cauliflower.

There's one for everybody.

I love it. My first experience of cauliflower was with my Aunt Hilda and piccalilli.

We used to pick it out.

What was yours?

With my Sunday roast chicken, we used to have mashed potatoes,

the chicken, the stuffing, and then we'd have cauliflower mashed up with white pepper and butter.

And it's Sunday, it's Jean Challis with the Two-Way Forces Favourites on the radio. Fabulous.

But in the past year alone, sales have fallen by 5%.

The poor old cauli is being pushed off the heat

and relegated to the back-burner by its trendy cousin, the broccoli.

We're on a mission to restore the cauliflower to its rightful place on our dinner plates.

But to understand the challenge we face, we need to get to the root of the problem.

Philip, where's it gone wrong with the good old cauliflower?

Well, it has gone wrong.

Farmers, instead of being paid 41% of the retail value

of the cauliflower, are now only getting about 20%.

So they're really struggling.

And unfortunately, because of this idea that green and colourful vegetables

are considered to be more nutritious,

the poor old pale cauliflower has suffered in comparison.

Yet it's full of folic acid and vitamin B6.

This is a product that is so damn good for you.

So what can we do, Philip?

We need to revitalise people and get them more excited.

It's also about consumers.

If they can, buy from farmers' shops like this.

You won't see something like this in a supermarket.

They don't like these big ones.

But they are fantastic.

So there's a host of things we need to do.

But ultimately, buy more cauliflower.

You heard it here first.

Buy more cauli.

So our first step on the road to revival is pretty obvious to us.

It's convincing you that cauliflower can taste fantastic.

And what better way to prove it than with our recipe for the perfect cauliflower cheese?

Look at this! We've even got a Cheddar cheese coloured cauliflower!

How nice does that look on the plate?

It's not Cheddar cheese-flavoured.

It's full of carotene, like you get in carrots, so you can see in the dark. It looks great.

-Which is handy if you've got a power cut and you're eating cauliflower cheese.

-I can't wait to get cooking.

It's cauliflower cheese like you've never seen it before.

Right.

Take the bottom off your cauli.

You know how we normally take the core out?

Run your knife through, like that.

That also is brill.

It's great value, isn't it? That's about a pound's worth, 70p to a pound.

And it'll feed what, three, four people?

And there's two in our house, but you know me.

Pop the florets into a big saucepan of boiling water and blanch them for about five minutes.

To give this dish some extra pizzazz, we're adding a crunchy topping of breadcrumbs.

I've got some ciabatta, the staler, the better.

Just going to cut the crust off. You could use any crumbs you want.

Panko breadcrumbs are good, the Japanese ones.

The ones that don't really work are those golden orange ones that you can see from space.

They're brilliant on a fish finger.

But on a cauliflower cheese, it would be like putting Audrey Hepburn in a cheap frock.

-It wouldn't be right.

-It'd be wrong.

Put it in the food processor.

And blitz.

The best tip for a crunchy topping is dried breadcrumbs,

so I'm popping them into a baking tray and toasting them in the oven for about five minutes.

As I said earlier, we're making cauliflower cheese with a twisteroonie.

So first of all, we're going to put bacon in it.

Look at this. Streaky.

Can't whack it. Smoky too.

Slice the bacon into thin strips.

What people get wrong at home, and you do all the time, cos I've seen

you, is, you need to put some heat in the pan before you cook anything.

Make sure the pan's up with temperature. That's not quite there yet.

But the caulis are, so drain them off.

Look at that. That is just cooked.

It's just giving a little bit.

It's still got a bit of life.

But back to my bacon.

Fry it until it's coloured, but not crisp.

My next job is the sauce. Start by melting butter into a saucepan and then beating the flour.

Look, brassicas. There we are.

I like a good brassica. That's why we're cooking them.

That's what cauliflowers are, brassicas, you see.

Meanwhile, check my crumbs.

Hold on, mate. Move your legs.

Oh, they're lovely, man!

Look at that. Dry, lovely.

No colour on them, though.

Just nice and dry.

Start adding milk to the sauce. About half a pint will do.

This will make it become quite thick.

It is thick. But once

it's baked with the cauliflower, the cauliflower will give out some more liquid. We don't want it runny.

We've all had cauliflower cheese that's swimming in watery scum.

Not ours.

What makes our recipe so special are the added ingredients which enhance the flavour.

The next one is mushrooms.

Try and use mushrooms like light brown chestnut mushrooms or something like that with a bit of colour.

If you use those white button ones, it just looks monochrome and it doesn't look appetising.

Don't forget, you always eat with your eyes first.

To the sauce, I'm adding some grated Gruyere cheese, and don't be mean with it.

It's more like a fondue, really.

-Lovely, isn't it?

-Yeah.

We want this dish to be a celebration of the cauliflower.

For too long, we feel it's been becoming the poor bridesmaid to

-broccoli, and it's not right.

-No, it's not right.

Look at that. It's like a pot of Anaglypta.

That's lovely.

I think that'll do. Toss the mushrooms into the sauce.

And the bacon bits.

In you go.

They've got a lovely crunch to them.

Grate on a sprinkling of nutmeg.

Mix the ciabatta crumbs with Parmesan cheese, and spread over the top.

I'm just going to put this into a moderate oven, about 180 degrees Celsius,

for 10 to 15 minutes to warm through.

Oh, yes.

Look at that.

-Lovely.

-One big Parmesan crisp on the top.

And that's what you get - the lovely crunch.

You get the soft - oh, cauliflower and cheese...

We're just going to serve this with some crusty bread and a bit of green salad.

But it's not unknown to enjoy this with chips.

Steady on, Myers!

-Shall we decimate the creation?

-Absolutely.

Oh, man.

There we have it - the perfect cauliflower cheese, with mushrooms and bacon. Ooh!

Mmm. Lovely. Can taste the smoke of the bacon through it.

Cauliflower texture's just right.

That's cauli-licious.

Facts you didn't know about cauliflower.

In the past ten years, cauliflower production has dropped off by over a third, because farmers

have been forced to move into more profitable crops.

That means that farms growing this treasure are few and far between.

But the undisputed capital of the cauliflower-growing kingdom is right here in Lincolnshire!

Look, man, look!

This family-run farm near Boston is one of the largest brassica producers in the UK,

and they have just under 3,000 acres given over to growing cauliflower.

It's my idea of heaven.

George, what are the problems in growing and selling cauliflowers?

To start with, you need to grow cauliflower

on the best quality land.

That's why we're here in Lincolnshire

on this grade one silt land.

Selling cauliflower is difficult.

When it's warm, cauliflower grows quickly and demand for cauliflower is low, so we have an oversupply.

When it's cold in winter, cauliflower stops growing because

it's very cold, and everybody wants cauliflower with their roast beef.

So demand increases probably double to what supply we've got.

So it's difficult to get the balance of supply.

My perception, and I'm sure lots of people at home's perception

of cauliflower is that it is a winter vegetable.

-Actually, what you're saying is that it's not?

-Absolutely not.

We grow cauliflower all year round.

In the summer, it's a much more delicate product, because it grows much quicker.

That creates its own problems, because it is a flower.

Very tender, and you can bruise the cauliflower very easily.

Each cauliflower grows at its own pace. You can't harvest the whole crop in one path.

These guys will pass through the crop probably three or four times to harvest the crop.

There's a lot of gubbins going on for what is a cauliflower, isn't there?

In the winter/autumn time, you need a lot of outside wrapper leaf

to protect the curd from the rain, protect it from the frost.

The curd is...

-The white.

-The white.

Show us how to harvest this.

Chop the stalk off. Trim the outside leaves, so you've got a nice, clean base.

Mind your fingers.

One cut across the top.

Straight from the field. Yes!

Doesn't get better than that.

You've got to keep ahead of the game.

The cauliflower machine stops for no man, time or tide.

So George, like that?

That's it.

And then just trim...

Trim the outside leaves off.

Bit more.

It's pretty labour-intensive, this.

-Dangerous work.

-You're not wrong.

-What happens now?

-Straight across the top. That's it.

-Is that all right? Is that acceptable?

-We'll have a bit more off the base here.

Hurry up, I'm about to get run over.

It's all very well Kingy over there playing about with tractors and stuff, but this is serious business.

The calamitous cauliflower is in desperate need of an image revamp.

-Hello, Philip.

-Good morning.

-You picked a day for it.

-Real cold Lincolnshire morning.

-Aye.

'The chairman of the Brassica Growers Association

is trying to introduce more visually pleasing varieties onto the market, but it's an uphill struggle.

This is a favourite of mine, the Romanesco.

Such a pity that we can't get this one off the starting blocks.

Very crisp and nutty in its flavour, and yet people seem to see it as

space-age and it tends to stay on the shelves.

It's nice in salads as well. Little broken bits in salads.

It's lovely. We need to eat more cauliflower, don't we?

We do. We need to get the message across to many young consumers

coming into buying for the first time that they're here and are such a good ingredient.

How many cauliflowers are grown a year in Lincolnshire?

We're about 60% of the total acreage, which is around 12,000 acres across the country.

That's about 100 million cauliflowers.

Sounds a lot, but it's actually less than two cauliflowers per person.

-Per year.

-If you take wastage into account, it's very low consumption.

We don't actually get into 60% of all households.

Unbelievable!

Six out of ten British families don't even buy caulis.

But that's exactly why we think they need to be revived.

What I love about it is, it's sustainable.

It's a crop that grows 365 days a year, so we never have to import cauliflowers. And it's tasty.

-We need to eat more, enjoy them.

-Yeah.

By heck, it was cold in that field.

Wasn't it? I nearly had my fingers cutting them - whish!

- with the machete. Did you see that?

-Yeah.

-This dish is our homage to Lincolnshire.

-We have seared scallops with a cauliflower and cheese puree and salad.

-It's a posh 'un.

It is. Shall we crack on?

Yes. Funnily enough, the first ingredient is a cauliflower.

I think this dish demonstrates the versatility of cauliflower.

It also demonstrates perfectly well that cauliflower, you can be fine dining with it. Oh, yes.

We're dead posh, us two.

So we're going to boil these beautiful florets for about ten minutes, until they're tender.

What we're going to do is take nice, thin pieces of pancetta.

Look at that. You can see through it.

And then we're just going to render the fat out of that pancetta.

What we want is, we want it crispy.

Now the salad dressing.

This one's a little beauty. First, take the olive oil.

About two tablespoons.

About one tablespoon of white wine vinegar.

The zest of an orange.

Add a splash of squeezed orange juice and a blob of wholegrain mustard.

It's one of those salads that make you go "ooh".

It is summary and fresh and lovely.

Things that make you go "ooh".

Listen, do us a favour.

-Can you pass us a knife?

-Yes.

Thank you very much. Look, top tip -

-don't Morris dance.

-No, don't.

Cut all this lovely bacon when it's still slightly warm, because it cuts easier and it won't shatter.

Lovely. Bits of pancetta.

Close your eyes and think of summer.

Yes. Now, this is the coral on a scallop.

I like it, but for presentation purposes only, we're going to take it off.

Just get hold of it, support the flesh, and then there's

-a little membrane and you just pull it away like that.

-That's ready.

-Nice, delicate flesh, isn't it?

-Yes.

Just dry you off.

Then pop them in a blender along with some double cream, and blitz.

Look at that.

Now, pop that in a saucepan.

Because it's a homage to Lincolnshire, we're using a cheese called Lincolnshire Poacher.

It's great, because it's tangy and quite strong. Strong flavour.

Believe me, the scallops can take the flavour.

I've got a piping bag.

I'm going to load it. Would you?

I would.

This puree is scalding hot. I don't think it'll melt this plastic bag?

No, it'll be fine.

Look at that, man.

What a piping bag full of loveliness that is.

So, scallops into the frying pan, and you really do have to use your fingers for this.

Do the scallops in a clockwise direction

so that when you turn them, you do them in the same order, so that some don't get cooked more than others.

You see?

Right, I'm going to start now with my piping. Cut the end off your bag.

Start there. Bueno.

Five little blobs and a few little mistakes.

We'll fix that.

Oh, man.

Some little pancetta.

These are so crispy.

Right, turn them over.

Now we need to cut a lime, and put the lime all over the scallop.

Loads of lime juice. Get the pulp in.

What happens is that the scallops go...they suck it in.

The lime just counters the sweetness of the scallops, brings in a savoury note, and it just tastes amazing.

Thank you.

There we have it.

Seared scallops with a cauliflower and Lincolnshire Poacher puree

with a salad dressed with orange juice, orange zest and wholegrain mustard. Thank you.

Right.

-Fantastic.

-Earthy note with the cauliflower and the Lincolnshire puree. Fabulous bacon, salty note.

Crisp texture, and then the sweetness of the scallop on top with the fishy thing going on. Oh, man.

It's wonderful, isn't it?

Even in something that quite fine like this, with cauliflower in the engine rooms, you know you're safe.

It goes with everything.

As we've already discovered, cauliflower is in desperate need of a makeover.

Its image has been tarnished by overcooked school dinners

and a misconception that it's not very healthy.

People don't appreciate the true potential of the cauliflower.

No, dude, we need to broaden the horizon of the culinary wonder that is the cauliflower.

So we're revving up a gear for the final stage of our revival.

We're taking our campaign to the streets of Sleaford to blast away those attitudes.

And helping us on our mission are two people who are also championing the cause of the cauliflower.

All around the Middle East,

people look at cauliflower as something you can do a lot with.

So they load it up with flavours.

We fry it, we pickle it, we eat it raw in very flavoursome salads.

Renowned chef and writer Yotam Ottolenghi

has come up from London especially to cook his chargrilled cauliflower

salad and to convince the public that there's more to enjoy in caulis than just boiling them.

Nice, hot griddle pan.

We've got salt, pepper and olive oil on the cauliflower, yeah?

And the hotter the griddle is, the better, because I really want to burn it.

You want to bring flavours, and you want to bring the smokiness to the cauliflower.

So I'm going to try and get some colour.

You can see it's starting.

All of those lovely sugars. Look at that.

This is a lady who's as passionate about cauliflower as we are.

I am indeed, yes.

Lecturer in food science Linda McWatt is also a huge cauliflower fan.

She thinks that one of the best parts of the cauli is the middle bit, the core.

But most of us throw this bit away.

So together with the University of Lincoln, she's working on ways to revitalise this under-used part.

-So you're making soup from this?

-We are making soup from that, because that's where all the flavour is.

The core's got all the same vitamins and minerals, and it's

full of fibre, and at the moment, that gets thrown in the dustbin.

From one processor alone, they're throwing away 3.5 tonnes of that a day.

-3.5 tonnes?

-Yeah.

It's delicious.

Cauliflower makes great soup.

It does. So everything goes into this big pot.

Now I'm going to add my tomatoes.

And everything while the cauliflower is still hot.

Then I'm adding a vinaigrette with garlic, mustard and capers.

Look how beautiful it looks.

-Dill.

-That's a lot. Big flavours. Lots of dill.

-Lots of dill. You never want to be shy with your herbs.

-No, never!

Here you go, try this.

Mind, it is blisteringly hot.

Let me know what you think.

-You like it?

-Gorgeous.

See what you think of that.

-Nice.

-Do you like it?

Yes!

Just stick your hand in there and grab a piece of cauliflower.

How does it compare to cauliflower cheese?

Superb.

That's lovely.

-Yeah.

-You see?

Everybody has been so enthusiastic.

-I think they're ready to come off their cauliflower cheese and try something new.

-They probably are.

What do you think?

'There you have it. Our taste trials have been a resounding success.'

'And have proved to us that if cooked with more imagination

'people are ready to have cauliflower back on their dinner plates.'

Cauliflower is a truly global vegetable.

In fact, it was the British who took cauliflower to India.

Did you know, it was a Cornish variety of cauliflower, to be specific.

I didn't know, but I do now.

So to show off its true versatility, we're now going to make a spinach,

potato and cauliflower dish known as Saag Aloo, with roasted gobi curry.

This is a wonderful cauliflower dish.

Normally, you just do it with good old-fashioned white cauliflower.

But the Romanesco cauliflower, look at it.

It's a wonder, isn't it?

Fabulous flavour with this, and this is what we're going to use.

-Bit of a mix.

-You want quite small florets for this.

It's become quite fashionable recently to roast cauliflower.

And indeed, it works absolutely brilliantly.

It's a lovely texture as well. Something happens when you roast it.

It intensifies the flavour somehow.

-It's lovely.

-Little dinky florets.

Roasting tin.

Mr Cauliflower goes in there.

Mr Snowball with Mr Romanesco.

-Hello, how do you do?

-Happy days.

Coat the caulis with oil, and season. Lots of pepper.

Put that in the oven at about 180 degrees for about 15 minutes.

Keep an eye on it until it starts to catch and turn.

Now we start to make the curry.

You can use ghee or vegetable oil for this.

Don't use olive oil, it kind of doesn't work with curry.

No, it's wrong.

To that, add a finely chopped onion.

Over to you, lord of the fiery furnace.

That just needs to sweat till it's translucent.

We don't want caramelised burger-van onions.

We don't want any colour on them at all.

-Whatever you do, don't burger it up.

-No. That'd be wrong.

This is when the smells start to go up and the neighbours get jealous.

And the reason? Because we're grating in a thumb-sized piece of ginger.

One of the best ingredients in Indian cooking - black mustard seeds.

Don't get confused with yellow mustard seeds.

They are used for making mustard that you spread on your sausages.

It will taste rank.

Just put the black ones in, and pop 'em.

The reason you want them to pop is, when the heat pushes

through them, they release all the flavour and all their lovely oils.

But you need to let them pop first.

Next, add curry leaves, fenugreek seeds

and chilli powder.

And some turmeric, or haldi, as it's known.

-Look at the colours in that.

-It's like a sunset over the Indian Ocean.

You're not wrong.

To the onions and spices, add uncooked diced potatoes.

Make sure at this point that all of those potatoes get nicely covered.

Look at that. Now we put the other stuff in.

Tomatoes.

Four, five? Four will do, eh?

In they go, followed by a couple of whole green chillies.

Stir well and season.

A splash of water. Just a bit. Don't overdo the water.

Look at that.

That's all coming off now.

Add some spinach, pop the lid on and simmer for about 20 minutes.

Here we go.

-Oh, yeah. Cooked through. Right, I'll do the rice.

-I'll get the cauli out.

Oh, yes.

That's what you want. Just started to speckle up, hasn't it?

Lovely. So we're going to add that, and then we stir it in.

Nice and gentle, because you want to maintain the potato and all of those lovely flavours.

It's nice using the Romanesco as well, isn't it?

It makes an event out of it. I love this recipe.

Finish it off with some fresh lemon juice.

It really makes a heck of a difference.

It kind of brings the whole thing to life. Don't be shy with it.

Look at that cauli, sitting proud.

Proud and loud, that's what we want cauli to be.

And there we have it.

The Hairy Bikers' Saag Aloo with...

-Gobi.

-Roasted.

-Yeah.

Mmm.

It's a lovely dish, isn't it?

It's brilliant. How versatile is the cauliflower?

With all those spices. You can throw anything at a cauliflower, and it still comes back laughing.

It does, because it's a great veggie.

-It's brilliant.

-On this journey, I've found that I'm even more passionate

than ever about cauliflower, and I'm even more concerned for its future.

We must support the growers.

People at home, the power's with us.

You need to eat more cauliflower.

Enjoy it, love it, eat it, revive it!

Mmm.

Beautiful.

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