Puddings Hairy Bikers' Best of British

We believe that Britain has the best food in the world.

-Not only can we boast fantastic ingredients...

-Piece de resistance.

-Nice. Which is which?

-Lamb, mutton.

BAA

..Outstanding food producers...

That's so satisfying. It's brilliant.

..and innovative chefs.

But we also have an amazing food history.

-Brilliant.

-Wow!

Don't eat them like that - you'll break your teeth.

During this series we're going to be taking you

on a journey into our culinary past.

Everything's ready so let's get cracking.

We'll explore its revealing stories.

Wow.

And meet the heroes who keep our culinary past alive.

Pontefract Liquorice has been my life and I've loved every minute of it.

And of course be cooking up a load of dishes

that reveal our foodie evolution.

Look at that. That's a proper British treat.

We have a taste of history.

-Quite simply...

-(BOTH) The best of British!

Today's show is a celebration of all the wonderful puddings this

country has to offer!

They're part of our incredible history and national heritage.

The British tradition of pudding making dates back to medieval

times and some have even credited "the pudding" as a British invention.

From the meat ones to the sweet ones,

there's something quintessentially British about the pudding.

Puddings, puddings, puddings.

British puddings in all their various and gorgeous forms.

It has not been easy trying to choose this pudding out of the many

we have in the UK.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of these gorgeous entities

are part of our daily cuisine.

We have got sponge puddings, suet puddings, puddings for afters

puddings for inbetweeners, black puddings, meat puddings.

We have got Yorkshire pudding that is not even a pudding.

We have got savoury puddings. We have got us two - two big puddings.

But we have to start our exploration of pudding paradise with

something that's a traditional, British artery clogger, that you have after your dinner.

Go on there, Toro! Whoa!

This is our version of the classic Sussex Pond Pudding.

We prefer to call it our Lemony Pond Pudding.

It is more like a St Clement's Pond pudding cos the twist is

we have an orange flavour with zest and juice and suet crust.

-You burst into that lemony pond.

-You do.

-The butter and the sugar have

converted themselves by magic to butterscotch in the middle.

It gushes out onto your plate. Have that with ice cream, creme fraiche or clotted.

And you cook it in a pond!

-First off make the crust.

-Woo hoo!

-Could you zest me an orange please?

-I certainly canski.

-It is a suet pudding.

Suet puddings. For vegetarians you can use vegetable suet - which this is.

There is no need to use beef suet in a lemony pudding.

But you can if you want.

The Lemony Pond Pudding dates back to 1750.

Back then it was made using beef suet, but I suppose they didn't have a choice.

They certainly did not have many vegetarians!

But, back in the 21st century, we're cracking on with our recipe.

Place 150 grams of suet into a bowl together with 250 grams of self-raising flour

and 50 grams of fresh white bread crumbs ready to make our pudding pastry.

It gives you a bit of "sog". Sometimes in a pudding like this you want a bit of "sog".

Now we need the zest of Kingy's orange to go in there.

Meanwhile combine this mixture together with the zest of an orange

and one tablespoon of demerara sugar, and then add your orange juice.

-It is slippy now it is skinned.

-It would be. It is naked.

-Oh right.

Pop this in here and squeeze it to make it up to 200 millilitres with some water.

You would think cutting a lemon would be simple. Well it is.

But what we do not want is the ends so discard those.

Thinly slice the lemon. Try really thin. Look, you can virtually see through that.

-Look. Thin.

-Thin.

-Into the suet mix, add your juice and water

and work the dough into a ball.

It is orangey and tangy.

When the lemon juice explodes with the butterscotch and butter by God it is good.

We've had lemons for a long time.

-Lemons were on the banquet at James II's Coronation.

-Yes.

-He had lemon jellies.

-Lemons come from far afield.

One of the sad things is that ships would be full of lessons coming from

the Far East, Portugal, whatever, and sailors were dying of scurvy.

All the time they were dying of scurvy,

the answer to their problems was sitting there in the hold

-of the ship.

-Yes they were carrying it weren't they?

-They were.

Now knead your dough on a very lightly floured surface

until soft and pliable.

-Kingy?

-Yes.

-What is your favourite pudding?

I am not particularly a fan of really sweet puddings.

I like a bit of complexity to them. What about you?

I like a good old-fashioned syrup sponge. There's a comfort in it isn't there?

There is.

I wonder who thought of Suet? Who would looked at the kidney

and thought the fat around that would be really handy?

-Especially in a jam splat.

-Yes.

-There's another pudding.

(BOTH) A jam splat.

Yes. Or dead man's arm - the jam roly-poly.

Classic. This ball's going to be the lid.

And this ball I will craft into the sides of this basin.

Grease your pudding bowl with butter

and line with a small piece of grease proof paper on the bottom.

There we go. We roll it out.

We start to build a pudding of fabulous magnitude.

Roll your dough to half a centimetre thick.

You can see the orange zest just winking at you.

Don't worry about the pleats. Just form that with your hands.

It doesn't matter that the inside's a bit lumpy because your

presentation side, that's going to be lovely and smooth, is formed by the basin.

There we go. Start the build.

It is a very simple process. What we're going to do is build up layers

of lemon, sugar and butter. Just dot the butter around like that.

What is brilliant is the lemons cook with the sugar and the butter -

it makes its own butterscotch.

It is like lemony butterscotch and a wonderful orange crust.

-It is fabulous.

-Repeat this process until all your ingredients are gone.

As we're using 175 grams of both butter and sugar in this recipe

it really is a calorific treat!

# Everybody pinches my butter

# They won't leave my butter alone... #

Do you think you would be entitled to call the lemon one of your five

a day, or do you think what it is wrapped in negates its health-giving properties?

I think you get fat, but you do not get scurvy!

I think you could. I do not think anybody would believe you though!

-That is some pudding.

-That is tradition.

-Right.

-I want to encapsulate that in a lovely thick suet lid.

The thing about that is it will collapse a little bit on the side.

The bottom will sink in. When the butter melts it will sink.

Do not worry about that.

Wet your finger like so. Put on the lid.

Yes. Get the rolling pin around the edge.

Swift movements and you get a lovely neat finish.

-And the pud.

-That is epic.

And it's sealed, it's tight, it's there.

'Now take a large piece of baking parchment and place over your bowl,

'fold in a pleat in the paper to allow your pudding to expand - and it will expand.'

'Oh yes. Then do exactly the same with a piece of tin foil'

finally use a length of string to tie the whole thing together.

You can even use the string to form a handle.

If you can work out how to do it that is, it took us a while!

-That's it.

-Grand.

-A handy handle to get your pudding in and out.

-Perfect.

-Perfect.

We need a pan with some kind of trivet in the bottom.

I have got an upturned flan ring.

The sauce is good. Pop that in there.

Pop your pudding in by its carefully crafted handle

-and we fill that up with water.

-Lovely.

-You need to simmer for three and a half hours.

-You do.

-You need not to boil dry.

If you do you will explode and we don't want that.

This allows us time to indulge in the wonderful history of a pudding we know all too well.

A pudding that's SO special we only eat it once a year.

# Make, make, make, make, make, make a Christmas pudding

# At an average cost of three and six... #

The Chrissy pud is part of our history

and part of our national heritage.

It tastes really lovely and we can afford it. Dad likes it.

-Any other reason?

-I have always bought their mincemeat.

-Ah.

Everybody does you know, love.

Robertson's Christmas pudding - as much a part of Christmas as Robertson's mincemeat.

Man, I love a bit of Christmas pud, me.

I'm not really a fan. Come to think of it we've always had

a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Christmas pudding.

But this truly British pudding nearly didn't make it to our dinner tables at all.

If the Puritans had had their way in the 1600s

it would have remained outlawed.

Its sinfully rich ingredients have been

described as "the invention of the scarlet whore of Babylon" no less.

That's a bit much!

The Quakers tried to ban it too, but you can't keep a good pudding down, oh no!

The Christmas pud started life in the medieval times

as a concoction of minced beef, wine, spices and sugar,

sealed with copious amounts of fat and boiled in an intestine.

Mmmmm, and a merry Christmas one and all(!)

The Hack Pudding as it was called, endured several incarnations

before ending up as the Christmas, or plum pudding, we know today.

Prince Albert who wooed Queen Victoria with that

woefully tiny moustache, is credited with making it a yearly tradition.

And it was in 1843 that Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

rekindled the joy of the Christmas pud in Britain.

The now familiar cannonball of a pud was even used to boost

morale during wartime.

And it provided a seasonal taste of home to those on the frontline.

The ration-friendly Christmas pudding may have been a challenge...

but we weren't going to let that stop us!

Recipes appeared using substitutes for limited ingredients

-like dried egg...

-And grated veg instead of fruit.

A triumph of ingenuity!

The Chrissy pud has survived and thrived in modern day Britain.

It still remains the grand finale of any Christmas dinner.

All aboard! Chocks away!

But you know, there are loads of other puddings that

grace our table more than once a year.

And the Lemony Pond Pudding is one such pud.

I can't wait a minute longer to try it out, let alone a month or a year!

-Five, four, three, two, one.

-Go!

-You have reached your destination.

-Yes, hi!

-Look at that.

Because we put that cleverly crafted handle on we should be able

to lift it out. Theoretically.

This is the moment of truth.

Cut off the string.

It smells good. Look at that.

It's sunk a little there. We expected that. That's fine.

It is golden. It is cooked.

One, two, three, four. In one.

Izzy busy.

-In the mouth around the gums...

-(BOTH) look out belly, here you come.

You can see around the edge, the pond starting to ooze.

-Oh!

-It is sinking there but that is fine.

-Look at the side.

-It is perfect.

-Look at that.

That's our butter lemon juice. Butterscotch.

-Look. It is oozing out.

-That could not be better.

That is our Lemony Pond Pudding.

-I will get the ice cream, you carve.

-Right.

-Two scoops.

-Thank you.

# When will that be say the bells of Stepney... #

-I think we need a big spoon.

-We do. Look at that.

-As they say, a little of what you fancy...

-does you good.

This is the bit though. It is that shredded lemon. The butterscotch and the ice cream.

-It is great isn't it?

-Mm hm.

You expect it to be really sweet, but the marriage of lemons

and the sugar is quite perfect, so you get the zest.

-And the citrus.

-And the orange flavoured crust. It is to die for isn't it?

-Really good.

-Literally.

If this is the start of our voyage of culinary discovery in the pudding world, cast me off!

Yeah. Forget the anchor.

The Lemony Pond Pudding comes from Sussex,

but you can try a different variant made over the county border

called the Kentish Well Pudding if you like.

That one contains dried fruit instead of lemons.

In fact it is Kent where we are heading to next.

Canterbury to be exact.

Puddings are the stuff memories are made of.

-The perfect end to a meal.

-And the ultimate comfort food.

A few years back our traditional puds were

overlooked in favour of black forest gateaux and tiramisus.

But you can keep your fancy foreign deserts, for British puddings

have made a comeback and in one corner of the country

they are being positively celebrated.

Our Best Of British food heroes Jo and Phil Owen

are helping to keep the tradition of pudding making alive.

They opened their tearoom four years ago and the puddings became

so successful that they set up a monthly Pudding Society to

commemorate Britain's heritage

and rejoice in the delights of the sweet trolley.

The Pudding Society are aiming to meet once a month.

30 is our maximum and we have been full for the ones we have done so far.

It is taking off really well. People love pudding.

There are so few places that you can go nowadays

to get a decent steam pudding.

It is preserving the history of puddings as well.

There comes a point where people are fed up with the complete fine

dining and small portions that you get that the end of a meal

and they just want to pig out.

You do not have to be as precise as you do with fine deserts.

They are supposed to look big. They are supposed to look like school dinners.

-Dollop on to the plate.

-Yes, a good old dollop onto the plate.

We pride ourselves on making everything here.

We make everything fresh.

When you go to a restaurant

and they've brought a cheesecake out of the freezer it is disheartening

because this country is great for pudding.

-We've got the best puddings in the world!

-Yes!

Phil and Jo aren't the only ones running a pudding club either,

There are several others dotted around the UK all paying homage to the gorgeous British pud.

If I could eat anything it would be a Christmas pudding -

maybe because you only get it once a year, but it is certainly one that I enjoy the most.

-You cannot stand it.

-I cannot stand it.

I have to eat a little one of my own on Christmas Day.

I have my own little chocolate pudding.

When I met him he'd only eat his auntie's chocolate cake.

I have come a long way since then.

Around 20 society members will gather this evening to sample Jo's puddings.

The one they have chosen for tonight is the Lord Randall's pudding,

named after some poor chap in the 13th century ballad of the same name.

We have chosen to do the Lord Randall pudding because it's an orange pudding

and the past few Pudding Society club, we've done lemon puddings

and we stumbled across the Lord Randall Pudding.

In the song Lord Randall is poisoned by his sweetheart.

But no-one knows who he was or why the pudding was named after him.

It definitely does not contain any poison.

FOLK SONG PLAYS

The method is like making any other sponge pudding with your butter,

your sugar and your eggs. Then all you have left to add

is flour and some milk to make it a much looser consistency.

Then all the flavourings go in which is half a bag of apricots...

..and half a jar of marmalade.

For two and a half hours this is going to steam.

That is it. It is ready to go in.

This steamed pudding is crammed with apricots

and will be topped with a glaze of orange marmalade.

When you steam a pudding it gives it an entirely different texture.

By steaming it you are going to get that heaviness renowned in our puddings.

It is a slower process so it takes a lot longer to steam a pudding than

it would to bake a pudding.

Doing that gives it that texture

when you bite into it which you do not get if you get a cake.

So I prefer everything steamed if I can help it.

After a little savoury starter the Pudding Society

members will be presented with seven delicious puds to choose from

Seven?! Crumbs, that's a lot!

There we go.

I have great pleasure in welcoming you all to the Pudding Society this evening.

But first they must take the pudding pledge.

I do solemnly pledge to the Pudding Society...

(ALL) I do solemnly pledge to the Pudding Society...

..that I shall willingly eat pudding...

(ALL) ..that I shall willingly eat pudding...

-..until I have to...

-(ALL) ..until I have to...

..undo the top button of my trousers.

(ALL) ..undo the top button of my trousers.

Thank you very much. Well done.

Each pudding is presented to the diners...

Pudding number one - the Eve's Pudding.

APPLAUSE

..along with a potted history of each dish.

The name is a reference to Eve - from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

They'll vote for their favourite pudding of the night and the winner will be crowned king of puddings.

-Treacle Sponge.

-APPLAUSE

-Spotted Dick.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The sherry trifle.

Not technically a pudding but always a crowd pleaser.

Trifle was really at its height in the 1970s

where it graced numerous buffet tables,

served in a glass dish to show off its colourful layers

It truly is a beautiful thing!

The earliest known use of the name trifle was for a thick cream,

flavoured with sugar, ginger and rosewater

But it wasn't really until the mid-1700s

when jelly was added that trifles started to become anything

like the glorious smorgasbord of stodge we know and love today.

-You picked fruit. There you are sweetheart.

-Thank you.

-You're welcome.

-That looks lovely.

-Very nice.

-I'm going to go small first of all.

-Eve's pudding. There we are.

-Getting into a routine.

-Treacle sponge.

-Definitely treacle sponge. By far.

-The bakewell pudding was the one for me.

Hopefully I will be able to try some more.

All I know is try everything else

and then come back to the light ones

and then go back into my favourites and that will see you through.

It is a champion strategy.

Ee, after sampling all that lovely pud, it's time for the guests to give their verdicts.

Let's start with the Eve's pudding. Hands up.

The Bakewell pudding.

Hands up for the sherry trifle.

AUDIENCE: Yes!

Hands up for the Lord Randall.

And, finally, the chocolate bread and butter pudding.

Are you ready for me to announce the winner?

CUTLERY JANGLES

Tonight's winner is...

..the sherry trifle!

CHEERING

Well done, sherry trifle.

This is the winning pudding. It doesn't seem like an awful lot of it's gone down.

I wasn't expecting that one.

Well, at the end of the day, they don't have to be elaborate.

Puddings are all about the pleasure.

And as the diners will agree,

our great British puds are very much alive and well.

Puddings may be enjoying a renaissance now,

but they were pretty popular back in the '60s, before they fell out of fashion.

TV chefs have been instrumental in keeping these jewels of our foodie heritage alive.

In the past five decades, TV chefs have been fundamental

in shaping the way we eat and think about food.

What have we got to do with puddings, then?

Well, we've got vintage Fanny Craddock.

'We're going to go back in time to watch an old classic on puddings and cakes.'

Are you intrigued to find out what Fanny is going to do with a pudding?

'One of our favourites, and one of the most memorable,

'is the legendary queen of the kitchen - the formidable Fanny Craddock.'

Do you know, Fanny Craddock wrote 100 cookbooks?

-Did she?

-Yeah, she did.

Apparently she inspired thousands of housewives to cook.

The Queen Mother thanked her for improving the standard of catering throughout the British Isles.

-Really?

-Yeah!

This is something that always amuses me,

because the name is zuppa Inglese.

And zuppa Inglese, if you translate it literally,

is no more or less than English soup.

Whereas, of course, this is a trifle of Italian style.

That's confectioner's custard spread on that one.

And that is sieved apricot puree spread on that one.

We'll do those straight on there. They've been moistened, as I'm going to do this one.

We'll just do the last two layers...

You know, it's funny, Fanny, like the Pudding Society,

saw the trifle to be a pudding.

But this one really looks more like a cake.

Do you know what I find about Fanny Craddock, she scares me.

She scared the nation.

'This recipe first appeared in the Italy in the late 19th century.'

'Apparently, the rulers of Ferrara asked their cooks to recreate the sumptuous English trifle

'they'd enjoyed at the Elizabethan court, and this was it.'

This is a sherry shaker, a Victorian job,

which I picked up in a junk shop in Reading for a shilling.

And in it I've got a mixture of Strega and chianti.

Strega is, as you know, a very popular liqueur from Italy.

It's very strong, so I never use it as the Italians do...

Sherry, Strega and chianti.

It's a right old mix.

Here comes Simon with the thing that we cover it with. Thank you, Simon.

And that is meringue, which we've also studded.

'Trifle's a national favourite,

'so I suppose you understand why the Italians wanted to copy it.'

Of course, it's the sponge we use for making the Swiss roll.

The one that needs no fat and yet, wrapped in foil or put in a tin,

will keep for up to ten days.

Now, meringue mixture in here. This is how we go to work.

I'm only going to do part of it. Start with the bag.

We push wider when we get to here. We turn the corner and we chase back again.

It's a bake meringue on top of this sponge-cake trifle affair

with three kinds of liquor in it.

Do you know, I bet that tastes quite nice.

It's certainly an epic pudding, isn't it?

I don't see it as a pudding, but it is epic, I'll give you that.

Maybe the confusion comes from the misuse of the word "pudding".

You know, when people simply mean "dessert".

I don't know. Either way, mate,

I'd be way too scared to question the fearsome Fanny Craddock.

There is practically no limit to what you can do with this.

I can tell you of the simplest pudding of all.

'If she says it's a pudding, it's a pudding.'

'Next on our voyage of pudding discovery,

'we're hitting the road and heading north.'

'Deep in the heart of the Lancashire countryside

'lies the village of Ramsbottom.'

'A peaceful little village that's about to become a battleground.'

It's Sunday and the crowds are starting to gather

to take part in a conflict that dates back to the 15th century.

And, yes, it's all about puddings.

The enemy - the Yorkshire pudding.

The hero - Lancashire's very own black pudding.

And today, they will be locked in mortal combat.

Because we've come to the World Black Pudding Throwing Championships.

He's not wrong.

'That's right. A world championship. For throwing black puddings.'

'After all, us Brits have a strange tradition

'of having slightly mad food-related festivals and competitions.'

'The aim of the competition

'is to knock off as many Yorkshire puddings as you can from a 20ft-high platform.

'And you've got three goes at it.'

'The weapon is a six-ounce competition-standard black pudding.'

'And the winner receives a golden pudding

'and the all-important bragging rights.'

'This event is the brainchild of Jimmy Cunliffe and Phil Taylor.

'They've held the World Championship Black Pudding Throwing contest in Ramsbottom since 2001.'

'We caught up with them to find out more and to ready our weapons.'

Now, Phil, I'm putting black pudding down a pair of tights on a Sunday in the pub.

The idea is that the black puddings won't splatter all over the road

and leave us with horrible gunge on the road after the event.

So we've got about 150 of these to go at.

-So we lob the black puddings at Yorkshire puddings, don't we?

-Yes.

And this rivalry goes back centuries to the War of the Roses.

'The War of the Roses took place between 1455 and 1485

'between two rival Royal houses - the House of York and the House of Lancaster.'

'They fought a series of battles for the right to the English throne.'

'Lancaster emerged triumphant

'and it's been a source of bitter rivalry in these parts ever since.'

'But what's this all got to do with black puddings?'

In the time of the War of the Roses, the battle was going on

and they'd ran out of ammunition at Stubbings Bridge.

And the Lancashire lads were throwing food at the Yorkshire lads

and the Yorkshire lads were whizzing Yorkshire puddings back at the Lancashire lads.

They did used to catapult rotting meat and stuff at the enemy in order to spread disease.

-It could have come from that, couldn't it?

-I never thought of that.

But this is the history I've heard about.

Er, Lancashire won the war and he who wins the war writes history.

So I'm not going to argue with that.

'Either way, I know which pudding I'd rather be hit by.'

There's a thingie my Auntie Hilda used to sing...

# All of a sudden a dirty great puddin' came floating through the air

# It missed my mother and hit my father and knocked him off the chair. #

You couldn't say the same about a Yorkshire pudding.

-If somebody threw that it would hit you and you'd go, "Tut."

-You'd be like that.

'Meanwhile, outside, our first brave pudding throwers are stepping up to the golden grid.'

'Is it easier than it looks, or more difficult? It's hard to tell.

'Some of these boys have had years of practice.'

'Still, I do fancy my chances.'

Not bad. Not bad.

Oh, eh!

'A pair of puddings throwing one type of pudding at another type of pudding -

'surely it's a match made in heaven?'

FANFARE

'Time to find out.'

Ladies and gentlemen, we've got Si and Dave from the Hairy Bikers.

CHEERING

'Dressed in Ramsbottom team colours, it's over to us to put our skills to the test.

'It can't be that difficult can it?'

-Did you see that?

-I know. Have you got your eye in?

Here we go. Come on, give 'em some encouragement.

CHEERING

GROANING

CHEERING

'Si's done it.'

Tension now.

ALL: Oh!

'The pressure's on.'

'I don't want to let the side down.'

ALL: Oh!

ALL: Ah!

Come on, mate.

Go on, then, go on.

APPLAUSE

-Zero.

-'Better luck, next time.'

Thank you!

'Let's leave the professionals to it

'while we sample some of these infamous puddings.'

'And who better to try one from than Tony and Mary Chadwick,

'the heroes of the Bury black pudding?'

-Heh, heh, Chadwick. Hello, Mary.

-Hello.

The black-pudding goddess from Bury.

'They've been making black puddings for over 20 years.'

'In Mary's case, since she was six.'

'The recipe dates back to 1865 and has earned them quite a reputation.'

-£2.09. Would you like a carrier bag?

-Thank you.

'In their mix goes pig fat, dried pig's blood, oatmeal,

rusk, barley and a bit of water.'

'This gets piped into a skin made from the intestines of an animal, in this case, a pig.'

'If history is to be believed,

this delicacy has been enjoyed for centuries, and I mean centuries.'

'The oldest reference to black pudding

'goes back to around 1000 BC and Homer's Odyssey,

'which refers to a stomach filled with blood and fat, roasted over a fire.'

'There's even a 15th-century recipe for a black pudding using a porpoise.'

'Enough talk, it's time to try one of these pieces of history.'

'I don't think either of us has handled food this long before without eating it.'

HE CHUCKLES Here you go, mate.

Ah, look, man.

-These, probably, are the best black puddings in the world.

-How do you feel

about seeing your fine produce being hurled against the wall?

It's OK, it's a completely different product.

They're competition puddings, six and seven-eighths of an ounce,

and they've all been tested.

-I would never have thought it was that much bother.

-Oh, yes.

-We have researched this for years.

-Hold on, hold on!

The competition black pudding is aerodynamically sound

to hit said Yorkshire pudding?

I've read this. The weight and aerodynamic properties of a black pudding

are important to the sport.

People have been hurt doing this,

because once you get to, like, 42 knots

rather than miles per hour, cos that's what you measure it in...

'It's catching...

'Dave, come back. I'm not ready to lose you to a pudding just yet!

'Where've you gone?

'Dave?!

'The competition's rattling on, and Dave's still prattling on.'

If one goes off like that,

the velocity of it on the spin off, on the turn and the final...

-Catastrophic.

-Thank you very much, chaps.

'But thankfully we've another pudding to make

'so I've lured him back, for now.'

We want to make you a medieval British classic

that's almost as old as the black pudding itself.

This is food that we were built on.

It was. Two, three, four...

Pease pudding hot...

-Pease pudding cold.

-Pease pudding in the pot...

-Nine days old.

-You've all heard the rhyme, now eat the plate.

-Yes. Pease pudding.

-Gammon with a mustard sauce.

-It's a northern classic.

-It is.

But it is absolutely, utterly rooted in British history.

To make our pease pudding, which will be good hot or cold,

soak 300g of dried yellow split peas for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile melt 25 g of butter,

and roughly chop one medium-sized onion.

When was the first time you had had pease pudding?

-I think it was when I was just about off the bottle.

-Same as me.

We used to have pease pudding, but we couldn't afford gammon

so we used a ham hock in it.

You stripped the meat of the hock in the pudding.

But the best bit was cold pease pudding.

The nostalgia, the onions, it's making me weep.

My mother, my mother would make this...

It's all right, mate. Don't you worry.

It's not my mother, it's the onions. They're killing me.

Right, onion goes in the pan, not to be browned.

There's something quintessentially fantastic

about the smell of onions and butter or oil.

I love it.

-Basically it was one of the stalwart recipes of the family.

-Yeah.

You always had it, it was always there.

I can remember sitting with my granddad,

and I must have been about three

because my granddad died when I was just about four,

sitting eating pease pudding.

There was always a spare ham hock on the go

and he'd strip the ham hock off and build it and me mam...

Oh, the smell of the stotties in the oven.

It was epic. That was my first memory, that was my absolutely...

This recipe takes a bit of time, but it's really worth it.

If you fancy a weekend in the kitchen,

just give it a go because it's brilliant.

It's really yummy.

Now, this is gammon, it's pork that's been salted, cured.

We need to get rid of some of that salt before we go any further.

So what we do is put it in a big pan of water,

bring it to the boil, discard the water.

So we blanche the ham and that gets rid of the excess salt.

Then fry your chopped onion,

together with a good pinch of dried thyme and one bay leaf

before adding your split peas and one litre of water to the pan.

Simmer for 30-40 minutes until the liquid is well reduced.

-Oh, yes!

-The smell of home. That and Steradent.

-Yes.

We're going to extract the ham.

I'm going to throw that down the sink and rinse the pan out

ready for the pea build.

Let's remove the bay leaf. Right.

Gas off? To that, nutmeg.

You need a lot of seasoning, don't you?

Remember the salt in the gammon.

Pepper, don't be too scared of that,

but you need to slightly under salt this.

What you don't want to happen

is that the salt that may still come out of the gammon

will seep into those peas when we cook them together.

Allow your pea mixture to cool for ten minutes before blitzing

with a stick blender until the peas form a thick puree.

My mother never had this.

-No way.

-She would have passed it through a set of old tights.

Right, that's lovely, now put an egg in.

The egg's going to make it more pudding-y.

Get it in quick, you don't want to scramble it.

Look at that.

-That is lovely.

-Now this is only part cooked.

We're going to poach this with a gammon

and it's going to take in all those lovely bacon juices.

We need to put this in a pudding cloth.

The pudding cloth was invented in the 17th century

and provided a major breakthrough.

It meant that animal guts were no longer required for the casing of the pudding

and they could be made at any time of the year.

Just pop that in the cloth.

This is going to hold it in a really nice shape whilst it's in with the gammon.

And we will have a proper pease pudding.

'The fact that anyone could own a pudding cloth

'meant that puddings became part of the daily fare of all social classes.'

Now, we start to build.

Pop your pudding, next to the gammon.

Like so.

'Next, roughly chopped one carrot and two sticks of celery,

'quarter an onion and stuff a clove into each quarter.

'Add all of these into your pan, alongside the gammon and pudding,

'with around ten peppercorns and two bay leaves.'

The poaching liquor that your pease pudding is going in is pretty spectacular.

We serve this, the pudding on one side, slices of gammon,

then, we're going to make a mustard cream sauce to pour over the top.

Don't forget, this is all about recycling the flavours

and not wasting anything.

We're going to pour some water until it covers the gammon and the wedges.

And leave it to simmer for an hour and a quarter.

Keep an eye that it doesn't boil dry. Do you fancy a game of Ludo?

-Good idea.

-Excellent.

'By the 19th-century, boiled pudding moulds

'were found along with metal pudding boilers with clip-on lids.

'Now the cloth may be on the wane, but the British pudding fan club

'continues to grow and grow, much like a pudding.

-Beautiful.

-Nice, mate.

-Shall I set the gammon aside to rest?

-Yes.

The pudding, look, you see how it's expanded in the bag. Fantastic.

'To accompany our juicy pudding, we're making a mustard sauce.'

'For this, melt 25 grams of butter in a pan,

'add a dessert spoonful of plain flour and make a roux.

'Before slowly adding half a pint of the reserved stock.'

'Then add a teaspoon of both wholegrain and English mustard,

'followed by five tablespoons of single cream.

'Simmer, season and serve in a warmed jug.'

Yes, that looks perfect.

-We're ready to plate up, aren't we? It looks nice ham, that.

-It is.

That's just a piece of gammon from the supermarket, nothing fancy.

Let's unleash the pudding.

Right.

MUSIC: A Space Odyssey

Dum, dum, dum-dum!

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

That is a pease pudding.

Parfait!

I must say I'm quite overcome with this.

Mustard cream sauce. Eek, look at that.

It's an old way, it's a bold way but it's a savoury pudding.

Do you know what, if our mothers are looking down on us, they be proud of that.

Well, it's all about the peas.

Well?

Oh...

That's splendid, isn't it?

Nobody can say that the split pea doesn't have a place in the world.

Mix the mustard, the gammon and the pease.

-Mmm.

-That's epic.

That is epic.

# We are the champions... #

'Now if you want to try pease pudding cold,

'allow the gammon and pudding to cool and then use as a delicious filling for a Stottie cake,

'essentially a pease pudding sandwich.'

-BOTH:

-Yummy!

Us Brits have really excelled ourselves

when it comes to the taste entity, that is, the pudding.

'We've seen sweet puds, meat puds, puds you can throw and puds that grow.

'Puddings of old, puddings of new, real British classics, 'tis true!

'And without them, we Brits really wouldn't be who we are today.

'I hate to add on a cliche,

'but the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

'And, if you want to find out more:'

..To discover some amazing facts about the history of food.

'And to find out how to cook up the recipes in today's show.'

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