Mushrooms and Offal Great British Food Revival

-We're losing touch with our British food heritage.

-Commonplace ingredients are now under threat.

And teetering on the brink of survival.

By changing the way we shop and how we eat...

-We have a chance...

-To breathe new life...

Into our delicious...

Mouth-watering...

-Succulent...

-Fantastic...

Home-grown produce.

Join our revival campaign...

To help preserve our food legacy...

For generations to come.

And put Britain firmly back on the food map.

That is proper lush.

I am Antonio Carluccio and I am going to take you on a journey.

A journey to the amazing hidden kingdom of the produce that

grows all around us. In all sort of unexpected places.

Me, I am completely obsessed by them and I love the musty smell.

And what I really love is there is always something to learn about.

I present you the British mushroom.

We have been eating mushrooms for thousands of years,

but lately you have all become lazy.

You only buy one type

and have abandoned a host of other delicious varieties.

Determined to awaken your fungi passion, I'll be uncovering

a whole new world of British mushrooms.

Wow, it's unbelievable. I'm feeling like Alice in Wonderland.

Taking a glimpse into the future.

Do you know, in the fungi world I was expecting anything, but not this.

And rustling up some mouth-watering mushroom

recipes in the revival kitchen.

Ah, the smell.

As an Italian, I have foraged and eaten wild mushrooms

since I was a boy.

It is in my blood.

I have one of the most wonderful memories as a child to go

picking mushrooms.

Going into the mystery of the forest, filling up the basket,

going home and my mother would turn them into fantastic dishes.

I have been cooking with mushrooms for over 50 years.

You could say they were my first love affair.

Eaten simply, drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice.

My love for mushrooms, treated this way, is because the taste is pure.

You taste the woods, the air and the must and it's just delightful.

We spend over £360 million a year on mushrooms.

There are numerous species that I would eat.

But you Brits generally only buy one type. I don't understand it.

Thousands of tonnes of these mushrooms, in fact two-thirds

of the mushrooms eaten in Britain, they are the white variety.

The classic champignon. Now, are you colour blind?

In that case, follow your nose, because we have fantastic mushroom on offer.

Chestnut mushroom, the oyster mushroom, the enoki,

the pleurotus eryngii.

Come on, Britain, be courageous and be adventurous.

Try to respect the mushroom.

It's much more important than you believe.

Mushrooms are fungi, and professor Lynne Boddy knows how vital

fungi are to our planet's ecosystem.

A mushroom is a fungus,

but not all fungi are mushrooms.

There's lots of different types of fungi.

Fungi is a kingdom, like plants and animals.

They are living organisms,

but only the fruiting body is commonly known as a mushroom.

Is it true that we are surrounded by fungi?

We are completely surrounded by fungi.

In all of these plants there are microscopic fungi.

In the leaves, in the roots, in the shoot, in the soil all around.

Underneath the mushroom you find the mycelium, which is

a network of tiny threads.

Fungi keep our planet ecologically balanced.

We've got a heap of dead stuff here, and if it weren't for fungi

well, we'd be up to our armpits in dead organic matter.

The fungi actually rot down this dead material and release the

nutrients. And then later on, at some point in its life the fungus will

produce the mushrooms, the fruit bodies and these produce the spores.

The spores will blow away, land somewhere.

They will germinate and grow, and so the cycle continues.

You see, mushrooms is just a part of the cycle of life.

Don't think mushrooms are just something to go with your fry-up.

They are a force of nature and deserve our respect.

In the revival kitchen, I am easing you in gently with

a delicious recipe. Using the best-selling mushrooms in Britain...

..the white closed cup mushroom.

In the world of mushrooms you have the simplest one

and with this one I'm going to show you how to do a fantastic

dish which is simple to make, very, very good to eat.

Its called chicken and mushroom casserole.

This is a really easy recipe.

I remember cooking it for friends and lovers when I was a student.

Now, there is an affinity between mushroom and chicken.

Both, they are extremely easy to get and to cook, as well.

And that's why the combination is just fantastic.

I begin by trimming some chicken thighs.

Then I dust them in flour

and fry in olive oil before preparing my mushrooms.

The mushroom, don't wash it.

And you brush off everything then you put it into the pot.

I then add chopped onion, carrot and celery.

And of course, Italian white wine.

The nectar to the gods. This smell is just fantastic.

I leave it to simmer and let the ingredients work their magic.

After 10 minutes of bubbling away the moisture is reduced quite a lot.

I'm going back to put the chicken in it

and we have to add it like this and the juices as well.

Very good.

So...

now let it flavour quite a lot.

Oh, that looks fantastic.

Optimum! I finish with some boiled potatoes to serve

with my casserole. And the final touch,

some chopped parsley.

Wonderful. Oh, look at this.

Delight! And then I take a little bit of two or three potatoes.

I can take with my fingers. I have asbestos fingers.

There you are. And my maximum of decoration,

because I am not a decorating man, is this here.

There you are. Casserole of chicken and mushrooms.

Buon appetito.

A delicious supper to share with your family. Mushroom heaven.

Mmm. It is just fantastic. I can tell you that.

The taste, you taste both. Chicken and mushroom.

Simply delightful.

In the British countryside there are between 60

and 70 species of mushroom that I love to eat. And there is nothing

I enjoy more than spending a day foraging for this delicious bounty.

It is so exciting to go picking mushrooms.

Wild mushrooms...which is indescribable.

Once you find your first one, you see, you are hooked.

Where are they? Oh, here they are. Mushroom foraging is my passion.

We Italians are mad about it.

Today, I am meeting my friend Diana,

a fellow mycologist who has a top secret tip-off

about a delicious mushroom that appears briefly, only once a year.

Diana, so tell me, what are we going to collect?

Right, we're going to hopefully collect some St George mushrooms

today. They're on a field that belongs to

a friend of mine, in a secret location.

Foraging for mushrooms requires a huge amount of knowledge.

Not every mushroom is safe to eat.

You should never go foraging without a trained specialist who

really knows their mushrooms.

St George's mushroom, here we come.

There was a big circle there and a big one there,

but I don't think they're there anymore.

The St George's mushroom only appears around St George's Day.

They taste heavenly sauteed in butter and are a prized delicacy. If you can find them.

Ah.

Oh, Antonio.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

-Yes.

-They are here.

Oh wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

Finally. Ecco qua. One, two, three look at this.

-Antonio.

-Oh!

SHE LAUGHS

That's fantastic. Oh, look at the beauty.

So, practically the colour of the gills, of the stem and of the

head, they're all the same and they're growing here in circle.

Oh, wow. I am happy.

That's wonderful. This is perfection.

Absolutely.

For me, taking a wild mushroom straight from field to plate is the only way.

Yes, perfect.

But the closest most of you get to foraging is searching out a

box of white mushrooms in your local supermarket.

But can you buy British mushrooms in the supermarket as fresh

as the ones I just picked?

I come to Stockbridge to investigate.

Welcome to Leckford Estate.

Hello, I'm Antonio Carluccio. And you?

Lovely to meet you. Andy Lazenby.

Andy. Andy Lazenby.

Please. Let me show you how we grow our wonderful mushrooms.

Fantastic.

Leckford Farm is a 4,000-acre estate owned by Waitrose

and supplies fresh produce to its stores.

Including 80,000 punnets of mushrooms every week.

We have 16 growing rooms

and we rotate the growing through the rooms.

That allows us to provide mushrooms to the British public 365 days of the year.

Every single chestnut mushroom we sell in our store...

-In your store.

-In our stores,

is British 100% of the time.

Can you show me how you do it?

It would be my pleasure.

Two thirds of our mushrooms are imported, so it's great to

meet a supermarket intent on getting British mushrooms on our shelves.

But I am convinced that the best mushrooms only grow out in the wild.

Wow, wow, wow.

So, in here, Antonio.

-Yes.

-We're trying to recreate the woodland litter.

So you've got two layers.

The bottom layer is the peaty layer that has built up over years

and years and on top of that we put a layer of compost which

is the equivalent to last year's leaf fall and the leaf litter.

So you imitate nature?

We imitate nature. We put it in here.

We inject that with the mushroom spores, they grow

through in the mycelium and up come the little baby mushrooms.

This stage is called pinning and that's

when the little tiny pin heads come up. And from this point on,

we are less than ten days away from delivering big, beefy mushrooms.

I must say that you succeed very well,

because I've never seen something like that in the woods.

One here. One there.

The spores take 10 days to grow into large brown chestnut mushrooms.

Mmm.

Mmm.

So, Antonio, here we are at the other end of the farm.

10 or 11 days further on and the beds are full of lovely, big, juicy portobellos.

Do you know that I am very,

very upset to know only one word for admiration and it is - wow!

Here is triple wow.

Well, thank you very much indeed.

That's unbelievable. I'm feeling like Alice in Wonderland.

Leckford pick their chestnut mushrooms at different

stages of growth.

Tell me again the three stages of the mushroom that you've got,

because here, three mushroom in one?

OK, the first stage is that when the mushrooms are quite small

and quite closed, we come through and we pick these little

guys off and they're the cup mushroom, the chestnut cup mushroom.

-And when we've harvested them.

-Yes.

-That leaves a bit more room for the mushrooms to start to open out.

-Yes.

And then we get to this size of mushroom which is a portobellini.

Portobellini.

And eventually, we get the king of the mushrooms.

The big, beautiful, portobello.

Chestnuts, portobellino and portobello.

I am impressed, but a good mushroom has to be more than just British.

It has to be fresh, with a firm texture.

Qualities you find when you pick mushrooms in the wild.

Ah, solid.

-Beautiful, white, fleshy.

-Oh, wow.

Delicious mushrooms.

This is unbelievable.

This is really inspiring,

but I know the top-selling mushroom in Britain is the white variety.

So, why aren't you buying more home-grown mushrooms like these?

Consumers and customers are increasingly busy

and they're time-pressured and it's really easy for them

to visit the store and just take the first punnet of what they know.

What they bought last week and the week before.

So, it's time to convince them about something else?

It's time to convince them to buy more

and to use them in more innovative ways.

Don't just stick to one type of mushroom, be adventurous

and experiment.

There are other great British mushrooms out there, good

enough to win over an old forager like myself.

When I came here, I was a bit sceptical, as you would do.

I still believe that, for me, my wild mushrooms, they are the best.

But here taking it from the plant,

put in a plate, cut freshly,

it is fantastic.

Chestnut mushrooms are delicious, but the only way

we will encourage more British growers is by going out and buying them.

So, I've got another mouth-watering mushroom recipe to inspire you.

It is fantastic.

For my next recipe, I am using the mushroom that come from the

Leckford Farm for doing a fantastic dish called the purse of mushrooms.

For this recipe I use the chestnut mushroom and it's called chestnut not

because of the smell or the taste of chestnut, but because of the colour.

I would suggest you never peel them because most of the people,

I don't know why, they have been brought up to peel mushrooms.

In peeling mushrooms you take away the goodies.

This dish, it's easy

and no excuses as the mushrooms are available in your supermarket.

To begin, I chop them in half and lightly saute with

some olive oil and garlic.

So, I put garlic with these mushrooms here because it is quite, um,

complementary and I put it in now and also a little bit of chilli.

I like chilli. A little sea salt.

A handful of chopped parsley

and already my simple mushroom feast is coming to life.

It's fantastic.

You could use it also as a side dish to a wonderful steak.

They are cooked.

Ah, the smell that comes from them.

It's just wonderful. Which leaves enough time for a little story.

Do you know the story of the lady who was in court

because she smashed the head of her husband with a hammer and the

judge, looking at the lady said, "But tell me here out of your file,

"I can see that you were married four times before

"and all the previous husbands all died of mushroom poisoning,

"so what happened? Why did you have to smash the head of your fifth one?"

"Your honour, the fifth one didn't want to eat the mushrooms."

They don't call me a fun guy for nothing.

Now, I take some filo pastry, brush with melted butter

and add my mushrooms.

Ah, the smell.

Then gather the four corners to make the purse before popping them

in the oven to crisp the pastry.

And after 15 minutes, wonder of nature. Look at this.

Oh, that's fantastic. Don't tell me you can't do that.

So, I give you my purse of mushrooms.

A quick, tasty supper, rich in flavour but easy on your wallet.

Go to the supermarket, buy whatever you like and do it!

It's just wonderful. Delicious.

I need to open your eyes to a whole new world of mushrooms.

It's out there, but you're ignoring it.

These heavenly tasting varieties grow in unexpected places around

Britain and you don't have to root around in the forest to find them.

I am in Wiltshire and after I've said goodbye to my little

friend here,

I'm going to see somebody that makes mushroom.

God in person, because he cultivates the most wonderful

example of shiitake and oyster mushrooms.

I have come to Marlborough to meet Dewi Williams.

One of a handful of small-scale British growers cultivating

speciality mushrooms.

So, I heard you're an entrepreneur here?

Well, we started about two years ago growing exotic mushrooms.

-Shiitake and oyster mushrooms particularly.

-That's wonderful.

-Yeah. So...

-In small...?

It's a small-scale set-up. It's only about 60 kilos capacity.

-Fantastic.

-Would you like to have a look?

-Very much.

Oyster and shiitake mushrooms originate from East Asia,

where they are considered a delicacy and are also believed to help

boost the immune system and lower cholesterol.

Wow, my goodness gracious me. Look at these.

Fantastic. Oh, the little one. It's a spectacle.

They're spectacular, aren't they?

Dewi grows mushrooms from wood chip blocks impregnated with

mushroom spawn, which fruit in a warm temperature controlled room.

You have shiitake, which we moved in yesterday from the incubation

room, which are here. And we've got golden oysters, which you can see growing beautifully here.

Magnificent.

A fantastic colour. Here, have a taste.

It can be eaten raw? That's fine?

Absolutely, these can without any problem.

Mmm. It really tastes of wood.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And it looks spectacular, doesn't it?

Oyster and shiitake mushrooms are delicious

and you can find British ones in supermarkets and online.

But, speciality mushrooms only account for 1% of sales in the UK.

Shiitake mushrooms, for instance, they suffer for the name

because lots of people think that it's just for Asian cooking.

They're fantastic with venison. They're fantastic with pork.

May I again?

Of course you can. Absolutely.

They are so good.

Look at this. Look at this.

They smell and they taste... wonderful.

My heart breaks to think you Brits are not embracing these

delicious home-grown varieties.

I really want you to eat more unusual mushrooms,

so I'm going to meet another supplier who might be able to help.

Hello. Are you Sue?

-Ah. Good morning, sir. I am indeed.

-Hello.

-Antonio Carluccio.

-Lovely to see you.

Sue Whiting has over 10 years experience growing

and importing speciality mushrooms.

Everything from shiitake and oyster to more exotic varieties.

That's a fantastic display here.

That's...

Wow.

That's, um, a good variety. These are all cultivated types of mushrooms.

Which one are cultivated here?

Obviously nameko.

These are the eryngii and the white shimeji, as well.

And those there?

These we import from growers.

We can't grow everything here, but we import them

from very good growers in Europe.

Why do you import them?

Well, we import them because at the moment there are not enough

growers in the UK, but also the demand for speciality

mushrooms is quite low in this country at the moment.

Aha. That's my special point.

The imported mushrooms can easily be grown here,

but Sue thinks British shoppers are put off by them.

In the UK, it's not in our culture as much to grow,

to eat wild mushrooms as it has been in say Italy, Poland, France.

People have grown up with a culture of picking them.

They know what to do with them.

In the UK, it's very unknown.

-So, we need more adventurous people.

-We need adventurous people.

They recognise that perhaps with a mushroom like this

they could have a better life.

Our task is that we want to prepare the people of all of Britain

to say "Look, if you look well in the shops and so on,

-"you may find those, use them and you will see them more often."

-Yes.

And if you don't see them in the shops, ask the shops to get them.

Ask. Be adventurous.

Because they are here.

So, don't tell me that I am biased.

I am biased 300% because out of what I have seen there

I think there is a problem.

The problem is that you don't buy enough mushrooms.

We have got to overcome our fear of eating the unfamiliar,

and keep British growers, like these, in business.

And I have the perfect recipe to entice

you into the world of speciality mushrooms.

They'll prove how simple and delicious they are to cook with.

My trio of mushroom antipasto.

Now, the first of the dishes that I wanted to show is

the crostini. In the sort of department of antipasti,

there are various sort of preparations for mushroom

which are delightful to eat before the meal.

Antipasto means before the meal.

Not the antipasta, before the pasta, as many people believe.

Antipasto.

All the mushrooms I'm using here are grown in Britain

and sold in selected supermarkets.

This mushroom crostini showcases their wonderful flavours.

For this dish, I put a few shiitake mushroom, which I have to cut

a little bit of the leg because the leg is a bit tough sometimes.

So, then we take one of the...chestnut one.

This is the gold or yellow oyster. Also very good.

We take also some few of the shimeji.

We cut away a little bit of the stem, and then like this.

There's no secret to using speciality mushrooms.

Treat them not differently to button or chestnut

mushroom, and experiment.

Shiitake are fantastic for flavouring broth and pasta dishes.

Shimeji add a wonderful flavour to stews and sauces.

Oyster varieties are extremely delicate,

so perfect in a stir fry or salad.

They also work perfectly sauteed together with chilli,

garlic and herbs and served on freshly toasted bread rubbed

with olive oil and garlic.

We put them on the crostino.

And this is a crostino of mushrooms and this

is the first of the dishes which is really utter delicious.

This is fantastic as a light snack,

but it also works perfectly accompanied by my next dish,

deep fried mushrooms.

Simply take an assortment of sliced mushrooms, cover in flour,

egg and breadcrumbs and shallow fry in oil.

A few at a time you put them in. That's fantastic.

They will cook very, very quickly. Lovely, look at this.

So, we turn it now and look how wonderful, brown and nice and it's cooked.

They cook so easily.

With the crunchy breadcrumb coating, they are irresistible.

Yes, there. There is a mixture of mushrooms that's really superior.

That's unbelievable.

Ah, I'd like to eat them straight away.

Hm. That's fantastic.

To complete my trio of delights, I serve some wonderful British

mushrooms I have cooked in vinegar and water

and then preserved in olive oil.

Deliziosi.

This is the chestnut.

We have here the hon-shimeji.

We have the shiitake. My trio of mushroom antipasto. A quick feast.

Now, do as we Italians do, and share them with your family and friends.

I am coming to the end of my revival journey,

but I've got one final stop, in London.

Stay with me. Now, we're going to find out what the future

holds for the mushroom.

I wouldn't expect to find mushrooms growing in the city,

but Adam Sayner wants to prove me wrong.

Wow, what is all this? My goodness.

-What is that?

-These are mushrooms that we grow

and it's all grown on waste coffee grounds, like this.

Wow. Let me see. Let me see. That's interesting.

Adam reckons that we throw away at least 1500 tonnes of coffee grounds

every month, but he's developed a pioneering use for it.

Look at this.

-Yeah, all of that.

-All of it?

All of that, yep. OK.

After you now.

Thank you.

Adam collects the grounds from cafes

and mixes it with mushroom spawn.

So, how long does it take until the first fruit appears?

So it will take now three weeks for the spawn to grow across the whole

coffee and then it is ready for, to go into the grow kit

and to be opened up and then it will just take two weeks from

when you open the grow kit to the first harvest.

-Interesting.

-So, it's very quick.

Adam then sells it online, as a ready-made kit for growing at home.

I have to shake my head because it's incredible that somebody

comes up with an idea like this and you learnt it all by yourself?

Yeah, through a mixture of trial and error

and from reading books and on the internet.

So you must be very passionate about mushrooms.

I am, yeah.

It started as an interest just in foraging, quite like you

and then I began to think "I want to grow

-"stuff for the rest of the year, not just in the autumn."

-Very good idea.

Do you know, in the fungi world I was expecting anything, but not this.

This really is a novelty and it makes sense and I wish him,

the guy here, a lot of success.

Adam and all the British mushroom growers deserve our support,

so now it's down to you.

Now we have a variety of mushroom here that is fantastic.

I call them the jewel of nature. Go to the supermarket.

Buy them. Preserve them. Cook them. Fry them.

Stew them and you will see which delightful dish you can produce.

Mushrooms. Mushrooms. Mushrooms.

Stay with us as we launch a revival campaign for yet another

classic British product.

I'm Matt Tebbutt and I pride myself on my robust approach to life and food.

But this time even I could have met my match.

I'm celebrating a food that some may say is the culinary

equivalent of climbing Everest and its very name can strike

terror into the hearts of the average shopper.

It's sometimes known as the quinto quarto or the fifth quarter

and in America it's known as variety meats

and here in Britain we call it offal.

In my campaign, to revive great British offal, I'll be bravely

going where few dare.

That is tripe.

I'm covering an underground offal club willing to try anything.

-And this is what we're eating tonight, is it?

-Lambs' testicles.

Right. Nice. In their purest form.

They need, er, they need peeling.

HE LAUGHS

And in the revival kitchen I'll be showing you how to turn these

cheap and delicious cuts into family favourites.

It's fast. It's nutritious and it's delicious.

What more do you want?

I grew up eating all this. All the good stuff. The hearts.

The livers. The kidneys.

But I think we've forgotten about offal

and I think we've forgotten how to cook it.

Offal is all the off cuts, from brains to trotters, but we've become

squeamish about what we eat and offal is going to waste as a result.

Incinerated, exported or used in pet food

and if we don't act now it could vanish completely.

My motto is embrace the waste.

Let's get offal back on the menu.

Come on, Britain, I need your help.

Here in South Yorkshire, they used to eat literally

everything from black pudding and blood sausage,

one of my favourite types of offal, to the cow's stomach lining, or tripe,

my least favourite cut.

Now, up to a few years ago offal was a mainstay of the working class diet.

It was quick, it was cheap and it was easy.

Now I've come to Barnsley market to visit one of the last

bastions of old-school offal and to find out what he's got.

Steve Short has been in the offal business

since 1980 and has seen sales decrease massively in recent years.

This is quite a sight. You don't see this very often.

No, it's a thing of the past. Unfortunately, yes.

How many people like you are there? Still doing this.

-There's three of us in the country. That's it.

-Just three?

Yes. 30 years ago there was between 30 and 40.

Really? It's a real shame to me to see that, you know, this whole industry

is shrinking so fast, so quickly.

The selection is pretty vast

and there's stuff here that I've never heard of.

I mean, pig bag, I'm presuming, is the stomach.

OK, and what about reed?

It's another part of the tripe.

A cow has three stomachs and that's number two.

Right. And what about wesson? What's that?

That's the tube which the grass passes down from the mouth to the stomach.

-Really? Do you eat all this?

-Yes.

OK, do you love it all?

Join me in a sample.

HE LAUGHS

That's so sweet. I love my liver, heart and kidneys

but I think you need to see the more, well,

the more extreme end of the scale so you can work out where you stand.

Are you ready?

First up, wesson. How do you cook this?

Just boil it up?

-Boil it.

-For a long time?

Three to four hours, yeah.

Texturally, it's lovely.

It's got quite an aroma to it.

It's very bland. You'd be better off with salt on it.

Yeah. Next its pigs' intestines.

It's, ah, I'll tell you what it is.

It's knowing what it is.

Hm, that's a lot of problem with a lot of people.

-There is one you haven't tried.

-Oh, really?

Yes, the reed.

No, we didn't have reed. Shall we try the reed?

The cow's second stomach.

-I take this as it is.

-Do you?

-It has a flavour of its own.

-Me too.

There's a smell that just fills your mouth as soon as you bite into it.

It's just like the, um, wesson.

Is it?

Yeah. I don't know what to do with it now.

Thank you, very much.

You're more than welcome.

-I'm just going to leave it here for a while.

-Nice to meet you.

Cheers.

Now, there's an experience I won't be forgetting in a while.

Even I had no idea there were so many outrageous cuts available.

So, is there a future for these delicacies?

I've stocked up on a few treats from Steve's stall to find out.

No? I can't give it away.

Can I ask you if you'd be interested in trying any of this?

That looks like tripe.

That is tripe. Have you ever tried it?

Are you familiar with haslet?

-No.

-Just eat it. Go on. Do it.

Come on. It's not that bad, is it?

HE LAUGHS

Do you want a bit of vinegar on it?

-It's gone.

-It's gone? Right, how was that?

It weren't that bad actually.

Exactly. Success, at last.

But my last taster was definitely in the minority.

Most of the people I approached wouldn't even try it.

So, what's clear to me is that even in this offal stronghold, tastes

have changed and people aren't embracing it like they used to.

But you know what?

I believe in this and I want those tastes to change again

and there's so much more to offal than just this.

And you don't have to start at the extreme end of the scale.

For this recipe I'm going to be doing a real kind of offal

classic and it's one to maybe dip your toe in the water of offal-eating

and it's using one of the most popular cuts.

I'm going to be doing a steak and kidney pudding.

The kidneys that I first experienced were in school, where

they were overcooked and they were very grey and chewy

and almost inedible and disgusting

and I think that's what a lot of people's kind of memories are.

But this, and in this recipe, it's going to be totally delicious

because it's being cooked for such a long time.

I'm using beef kidneys in my pudding

and ox cheeks instead of regular steak.

Get them from your local butcher.

The colour and the texture of a kidney... And that's really important.

It shouldn't be sticky. It shouldn't have any smell either.

It should be a very sort of fresh taste.

Kidney and offal in general has got a sort of a two or three-day shelf life.

It's very important that you get it fresh.

This is the ox cheek. Now this is a real classic recipe.

It's based on a Mrs Beeton recipe and it's one of those that

I don't think you should mess around with.

It doesn't need it, you know?

If you get good beef and you get good kidneys,

you've got all the flavours you need.

And I'm sticking with a traditional suet crust, too.

Suet pastry has kind of fallen out of, out of fashion, as it were, but

very, very easy, totally delicious and it's kind of a meal on its own.

You don't need loads of potatoes and what-have-you because the

pastry, as it were, is just so rich and it soaks up all those juices.

Wrap it and then give it about an hour in the fridge.

Brown the meat.

Now, once it's in the pan you want to leave it alone

and don't be playing with it too much

because you're going to lift it off the base and it won't brown as well.

You won't get the caramelly juices, and that's what gives you lots

and lots of flavouring.

So we get it out, and that's what I'm talking about, those nice

kind of golden-looking bits and pieces on the bottom of the pan

and before you lose those, just get a little bit of water in there.

Swirl it around and get that into your finished stew

and then in with kidneys.

Drop them in and then leave them alone.

Now, the reed and the wesson were a real kind of challenge for me

because in my head, offal meant things like liver, kidneys and delicious oxtail.

But that was just...

It was quite hard work and you've got the kind of...

I remember the smell of it and it's not for everyone.

Some people love it, but it's not for everyone.

But this is a very different ball game because this,

the kidneys are going to give that just delicious flavour and they're

going to be so soft you're almost not going to notice they're there.

Then add the celery and onions to the meat

and some good old British stout.

So, this recipe is everything you'd want in a meal, I think.

I mean, it's the perfect kind of, you know, plonk it in the middle of the table. Cut it.

Everyone goes, "wow" and it's kind of a taste of the past, in a way,

without sounding too romantic.

Once the filling is cooled,

pour it into a pudding bowl lined with the suet pastry and seal it in.

That's it, done. Right. OK, so now we need a lid.

Now, the lid I've got,

you can either use foil and some grease-proof paper or you can buy

this clever stuff which is all-in-one.

It's important, because it's going to swell as it cooks.

It's important you put a crease.

Then steam it for around four hours or use a pressure cooker like this one

and leave it to cook for two-and-a-half hours

before turning out and diving in.

Beautiful. Beautiful. That looks really good and it smells amazing.

That suet pastry. Don't be upset. It will start to fall apart.

And there you have it. My classic steak and kidney pudding.

Right, so let's try it.

The smells, the aromas from this are just brilliant.

It's a real winner. You know, it's a classic for a reason. And you've got to go out,

you've got to try offal. You've got to get it in recipes like this,

because you won't be disappointed. I'm telling you.

Offal, and tripe in particular, which is the cow's stomach lining,

had its heyday after the war.

It was the only meat that wasn't rationed

and soon became the fast food of its day with over 140 tripe shops

and restaurants run by United Cattle Products on every street corner.

-Peter, right?

-Yes, Matt.

I've come to the outskirts of Manchester to meet somebody

who witnessed tripe's decline first hand.

-25 years ago we used to deliver to, er, about 130 shops every week.

-Wow.

-We now do about three.

-Really?

-Really.

-And all this area?

-All this area. This is the centre of it.

-This is Manchester and they were the biggest tripe eaters in the world.

-Really?

-Oh, yeah.

We've found it's quite generational. There's a lot of older people who will happily eat it

-but the young kids, not so much at all.

-Well, the older people when they couldn't get any other

source of protein, they had to eat it and it is an acquired taste.

You try it a few times and you eventually like it.

-HE LAUGHS

-Did you enjoy your first pint of bitter?

-No.

-You've got to work at it.

-I'm really good at it now.

Absolutely, same with tripe.

HE LAUGHS

Believe it or not, today there's only one remaining tripe

shop in the whole of Manchester.

20 years ago this tiny shop would have sold 100lbs of tripe a day.

Today it sells just a quarter of the amount it used to.

So this is it? This is a typical tripe shop?

This is a typical tripe shop.

It's quite sort of small and compact.

It used to just sell just tripe and nothing else.

That was the original idea. They didn't need a lot of space.

The window would get filled up every morning

and the girls would serve the tripe from there.

From inside, but they would serve from that display.

-Really? Hi, are you Karen?

-I am.

Karen Baxter's been selling tripe for 23 years

and knows a thing or two about this local delicacy.

-So it comes in and it's cooked and it's ready?

-It's ready-cooked, yeah.

What have you got here? What type?

We've got honeycomb here.

This is the one with the holes in which is the most popular tripe,

because it holds the vinegar better.

Is that right?

That's why people like it. And this is the jelly tripe.

The smooth tripe.

In terms of nutrition, is it quite nutritious?

-It's got, supposed to have the same protein content as steak.

-Really?

Probably a little bit less than that but provided you... There's very little fat on it.

So Karen, do you think there's much of a future for tripe

and for offal in general?

I think if a lot more people tried it they probably would like it.

I think it will be residual people who will eat it.

But it will be a delicacy rather than a food that everybody eats.

I think it's amazing to think that, in a short space of time,

you know, just one generation, this huge part of British lifestyle

and culture has almost gone for ever.

You know, this whole area. Over 141 UCP shops, you know?

Tastes and styles and the way people are eating has changed

and it's going to be lost for ever and I think that's very, very sad.

Nowadays, we buy over 80% of our weekly shop in supermarkets,

the majority of which only stock a very limited selection of offal.

And I think that's one of the reasons why offal has

fallen off of our shopping lists, because quite simply

if people like these guys don't stock it, we can't buy it.

However, things are slowly changing.

Here at Morrisons they've introduced a radical new

approach to the whole animal.

Now that's something you don't see every day in supermarkets.

Roy Craven has been a master butcher for over 20 years.

They slaughter 3,000 cattle and 20,000 lambs

and pigs every week to sell in their stores

and three years ago, they decided to sell the offal, to avoid waste.

Something no other supermarket is doing.

This is the pluck in here. The heart.

The liver and the kidneys are all left in.

And this is an enormous part of the animal, isn't it?

It weighs a lot and it's... I always find it's, you know,

in weight terms, in money terms, it's an awful amount of waste.

It's in everybody's interests to utilise as much as you

possibly can in the best possible way you can.

To keep all of this fantastic food within the human food chain, really.

Since changing their policy, offal sales have increased,

and last year went up by 12%.

I've brought a few extras. This is the ox heart.

-Quite a bit bigger than the lamb heart.

-Wow.

This is the pig's head, as everybody would know.

They even have ox liver. Wow. That's beautiful, isn't it?

Gorgeous. Gorgeous piece of meat. Full of flavour.

Full of goodness.

Yeah. So go on, be brave. Give offal a go. It's cheap,

it's delicious and it shouldn't end up in the bin.

It's really good that supermarkets, like Morrisons, are getting

behind offal and getting it on their shelves

so that people can get hold of it more readily. And it's such a shame.

You know, we kill all these animals just for their meat

so it's an awful waste that we're not using the offal, as well.

And with that in mind, I've got a very accessible offal dish.

This is lamb's liver with balsamic sauce.

That is what your lamb's liver looks like.

It often comes with a slash in it

because they have to check these things in the abattoir.

But it's very, very easy to cook but it's also very easy to mess up.

So, first things first. It is an organ. It does a job.

There's lots of tubes in there that you need to kind of work around.

There's also this membrane, which on a lamb's liver is pretty thin,

but if you go up the scale and get some calf's liver,

it gets quite thick and you need to remove that the best way you can.

Otherwise, what happens is the liver will contort in the pan

and it makes it a little bit... a little bit rubbery.

But I'm using lamb's liver

because it's probably one of the easiest to get hold of.

When you go to restaurants you often see calf's liver on the menu.

Calf's liver is very, very good.

It's almost kind of seen as the king of liver.

Um, but they've all got their own unique taste.

They're all creamy, very rich but lamb's liver is a little bit

cheaper and it's a bit more accessible.

I'm going to serve the liver simply with crisp bacon,

soft mushrooms and wilted baby gem lettuce.

OK, so while they're waiting,

we're going to throw the mushrooms in, in just a sec.

Now this liver, it's very, very fast food.

It's not what you think of when you think of fast food, but it takes two minutes to cook.

Very, very quick. It's also very good for you.

It's full of vitamin A. It's packed full of iron and protein.

It's very high in cholesterol, which is not great,

but you can't have everything.

But it's also... It's very cheap and it's very accessible

and we need to be eating more of it.

Now, I grew up eating this kind of stuff.

My mum used to make it.

My grandmother was a big kind of offal advocate.

The first time I ever had cuts like this, and kidneys

and oxtail, was at my grandmother's, and it was all a bit odd

when you're aged kind of five or six, but it was delicious, you know?

I think as long as you all sit down together

and you all kind of buy in to the whole kind of offal experience...

It's just delicious. It's a delicious piece of meat.

Now, for the liver. OK, so warm pan.

Liver into just some seasoned flour.

Right, so when the butter is looking like that just lay the liver

slices with just a real fine dusting of flour.

And this is what makes liver so delicious.

It's just nice, fast cooking.

Nice pink liver in the middle, and that's how you want to eat it.

Nice and creamy. Not sort of shoe leather.

And that's it.

Time to plate up. Right.

A couple of bits of this liver and then a little bit of this sauce.

So there you go. That's my lamb's liver with balsamic sauce. Beautiful.

Mmm. Delicious. It's fast,

it's nutritious and it's delicious. What more do you want?

It's shocking to think we discard between a third to

half of every animal we kill just because we won't eat offal.

It's such a waste, but more people are beginning to think the same way.

Author and environmentalist

Tristram Stuart is behind the Feeding The 5,000 campaign

and is promoting its message at an event here in Bristol.

The aim of Feeding the 5,000 is, in practical terms, feed 5,000 people

in one sitting all on food that otherwise would be wasted.

They're encouraging people to stop wasting food by showing how

to turn previously disregarded offal into delicious, nutritious meals.

There's the cured pig's cheek. Essentially, you should just

be able to use it like pancetta or lardon bacon, basically.

What we're trying to do here today is say to people look, this

stuff is relatively easy to cook and very often it's a lot cheaper.

So, this is one of those rare occasions where the

environmentally friendly

and socially responsible thing to do is also the cheaper thing to do.

And it's not just campaigns like this one that are encouraging us

to eat more offal.

Top-end restaurants, up and down the country, are already dishing up

unusual cuts to a new wave of adventurous eaters, keen to

explore a nose-to-tail style of dining.

-Its great news for my offal revival.

-I'm going to try some brain.

Tonight, in this London restaurant,

customers are being initiated into offal.

Well, it looks tasty.

It's a first class offal tasting menu.

But, at 40 quid a head, it comes with quite a hefty price tag.

Here in Manchester, however, there is a different kind of grassroots offal revival going on.

It's a little bit hardcore, but it's more affordable and accessible

because it's taking place in their very own kitchens.

Simon, Howie and Jason set up the Manchester offal club 12 years ago,

to share their love of all things offal.

They take turns to host offal dinner parties. I'm intrigued.

Now these guys meet once a month and they're serving

delicacies like deep-fried calf brains salad and crispy pigs' ears.

They mean business.

-Hi, Simon?

-Hi, Matt.

Matt. Pleased to meet you.

I'm going to try out some of their home-made delicacies

and I can't wait to find out what's on the menu.

So, what are we doing tonight then?

Well we've got lambs' testicles and we're going to do a couple of different dishes with these.

We're going to do, um, slices of lambs' testicles sauteed with some nice wild garlic.

-Very nice.

-And then we're also going to put them inside a meatloaf which we're,

-amusingly, going to call a nut roast.

-Right. A nut roast. OK.

And if you think testicles is pushing it, then

how about a large lymph node?

We've tried some very strange things.

We've tried spleen, which butchers affectionately call the melt.

How was that?

It was, um, it tasted like death and, er, and chewy death at that.

-Yes, it was pretty awful.

-What a lovely phrase.

I mean, so you don't necessarily love every bit of offal?

-But we'd like to try it.

-You'll try it first.

-Yeah. Absolutely.

It's a brilliant attitude and one we should all adopt

if we're going to rescue offal from the bin.

I can't wait to get stuck in. Are you with me?

First course, pig's head terrine with a side of brains.

This cut will feed four for less than 50p a head.

Shall we try it?

Mmm. That is really good.

Really good.

OK, gents, next course.

A salad of crispy lambs' testicles, or fries, as they're more politely known.

It looks beautiful. It's very, very delicate.

Considering it is such a gutsy sort of dish, isn't it?

The first time I had testicles actually the texture really shocked me.

For some reason I got it into my head that they'd be chewy

and they're not at all.

It was really surprising, you know?

That was delicious. But there's more, isn't there?

There's more to come.

Beautiful. The piece de resistance.

Simon's nut loaf with lambs' testicles.

That's really nice.

Do you find the spicing always works with offal?

I think it does.

We never want to mask the taste of the offal,

because the taste is important.

Yeah. They're lovely.

-This is completely experimental, as we've never tried this dish before.

-Oh, really?

So, I'm really pleased that it's worked out.

-It's very good.

-I love the name.

Look, what these guys are doing here is really important.

Yes, we've got offal eating in high-end London restaurants,

but it's in our own kitchens we need to get to grips with it.

So, we really should be following their lead.

Now that offal club, it was a really interesting night out. Not what I expected at all

and who would have thought three really great courses of offal

and three great recipes? And now I've got another one for you.

It is, probably, something you've tried in the past and maybe forgotten about.

It is the great British faggot.

Now, the faggot, it's not a fantastic name and I think it probably

puts a lot of people off but it's essentially a bundle.

That's what it kind of loosely translates to

and here we've got the most sort of offaly of all the dishes.

But, there's lots of different elements going on here

and they're all going to kind of envelope the offal

and make it really, really tasty and delicious.

So, here's your pluck. We've got the heart.

We've got the lungs and we've got the liver.

Let's take a small amount of liver. A bit of the lungs.

Now, if you go and ask your butcher for this, they will get very

excited because all this usually sort of ends up in the bin.

This really is the perfect kind of nose-to-tail eating.

You know, using all the bits and pieces of the animal.

Not wasting anything.

There's not many recipes that use lungs and what-have-you,

but this is one of them and it's delicious

and in these sort of economic times, these cash-strapped times,

this is a really good recipe to be getting your head around.

I'm going to boil the offal first in salty water.

And it's not in there for long.

All you're doing is just kind of softening those strong offal flavours.

Then, in the fridge.

Let it cool.

And then when it's cool, you need to mince it.

It's a different texture. So these are well worth investing in.

Especially if you want to make sausages or anything like that.

Just don't put your fingers too far into them.

That could be awfully messy.

Now, I reckon this is one of those dishes that has

kind of fallen off the sort of the British culinary list.

I mean it is a great British sort of heritage dish and, you

know, it's one of those recipes that really needs to be revived.

Now, we mix that with a little bit of onion and garlic.

Now, I came across faggots quite late in life

and I was quite surprised how much I liked them.

And you wouldn't know if you served these to somebody who said,

"I don't like offal and I certainly don't like lungs and liver."

Um, they probably wouldn't know they were in there

because the whole kind of overall sense of taste

and texture is that of a delicious meatball in a way.

Then, cover the faggots in caul fat to hold them together.

Now, this is available from butchers by request.

So, what you need to do is just lay it over each one.

Just gather it underneath and give it a bit of a twist

and then cut off the excess.

So, when you ask for this, ask your butcher for caul fat or

crepinette and he'll know what you're after.

He'll also be very impressed.

So, there you go. There's your little faggots and now we need to cook them.

Just cover them in stock and whack them in the oven.

So, after an hour's cooking that's what the faggots look like.

Lovely, beautiful, rich kind of glossy meatballs.

So, there you go. That's it. That's the great British faggot.

You really, really need to try these

and start cooking with offal on a regular basis.

It's an ingredient I'm passionate about and

if you didn't get offal before, I hope you do now.

Come on. This is part of our heritage.

We need to experiment more. You know?

We need to get hold of offal.

Put it in the supermarket trolleys and take it home

and just play around with it and this needs to become much

more of a feature of our dinner tables, you know?

We need to be embracing this. Not wasting it.

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