Slow Food Hairy Bikers' Best of British

You know, we believe that Britain has the best food in the world.

Not only can we boast fantastic ingredients...

-Piece de resistance.

-Ah, nice.

-Which is which?

-Lamb, mutton.

-SHEEP BLEATS

-Outstanding food producers.

It's brilliant, isn't it?

..and innovative chefs.

But we also have an amazing food history.

-Brilliant!

-Oh, wow!

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

During this series were 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 the best of British!

We can get about more quickly, our shops are bigger and better,

and we can eat what we want from wherever we want whenever we want.

We like our food, and we like it fast.

But faster doesn't necessarily mean better.

So all hail the Slow Food Movement which was set up in the '80s

in Italy as a backlash to the fast food culture.

Now worldwide, its aim is to support good locally-sourced food

and enjoy a slower pace of life.

So today's show is a celebration of some of this country's finest slow food.

It is the food grown by specialist farmers,

made by single producers and sold by independent retailers.

It's the kind of food that needs time to mature, time to cook and,

most importantly, time to enjoy.

Yes, this week we are taking a leisurely look at some

seriously sublime slow food.

Slow food - what is slow food?

Well, for Dave and I, slow food is about savouring

and enjoying every element.

It's about finding fresh ingredients and preparing and cooking them in a manner we desire.

Yes, it may take more time and effort to cook food traditionally,

but it's worth it. When you put all that love and care into a dish,

boy, can you taste it.

Slow food is all about the growing, producing and consuming

the right kind of food in the right kind of way.

So where better to shut out the world and begin our homage

to top quality produce than in our Best of British kitchen?

We're going to cook a braised featherblade of beef.

Featherblade of beef is a perfect example of slow food.

It's harder to hunt out but cheaper than a steak and will

taste like velvet if you give it the cooking time and love it deserves.

Featherblade, to me, epitomises great, great taste and flavour,

and I love the grain of it. The reason that you have to cook featherblade slowly,

if Dave was the front end of a cow, where its leg joins onto its torso,

just above its shoulder blade is the featherblade.

It's that cut. Thanks, mate.

HE MOOS

Now, you see this seam? It has a seam of collagen in it.

That is full of flavour and it makes this particular cut of meat very,

very sticky when you eat it and you cut it and you cook at properly.

And these are four perfect examples

of a really, really good cut of featherblade.

-Fabulous.

-And we're keeping these steaks whole, each to be served as a steak.

It's braised steak, we braise it. You'll have some of the best gravy in the world.

We're going to serve it with mashed potatoes and greens,

but equally it's fantastic served with chips, and you get gravy with your chips.

So all I've done is I've put some heat on the pan, brought the pan to temperature with some oil in it

and I've seasoned with salt-and-pepper

either side of these beautiful featherblade steaks.

So we're going to put them in there and fry them off,

just to give them a little colour.

Now, these vegetables - carrots, onion, garlic and celery -

we're going to cook those off in the beef juices.

And it's the usual thing.

I'm keeping these quite chunky

because we're going to discard this later.

It's just for flavour for the stock.

I love this piece of meat.

It's just so, so lovely when it's cooked properly.

You probably won't find featherblade at your local supermarket,

but a good butcher should have some.

And you'll be pleased to know it isn't that expensive.

It's lovely. I want to make a little bouquet garni out of some thyme.

We'll have a bay leaf as well.

If you can't get hold of featherblade, don't panic. Buy a braising steak

and reduce the cooking time to an hour and a half.

If you saw that on your plate with a pile of chips you'd think,

"That's a hell of a nice fillet steak."

You'd get a shock when you cut into it, though, because at the moment

it's going to be like, well, rubber.

The onion, carrot and celery are browned

and then the garlic is grated in.

By grinding it you get all the flavour about.

And just cook that for a minute or so.

-Right.

-Right, lob it in.

I'll put the oven on, Si, in anticipation.

Yeah, it's going to be on a long time.

We've got two tablespoons of tomato paste, a bay leaf,

I've tied a few sprigs of thyme together, made like a little bouquet garni

I'm just going to deglaze this pan.

And all we mean by deglaze,

all those lovely caramelised flavours that we've got on the bottom of the pan

that's cooked the meat and veg, we've just taken them off like that.

And we put that in.

Look at that.

Red wine and beef - a marriage made in heaven.

And add a jug of beef stock.

And a teaspoon of English mustard, a good one because I like mustard.

Plenty black pepper.

And then some salt.

Don't forget, not too much salt,

because I've seasoned those steaks, remember?

-Seasoned them with salt and pepper.

-And also stock, we put stock in.

Stock is salty.

Now, we've cut a piece of greaseproof paper to sit on the top of this.

Posh chefs will call this a cartouche.

Practically what it does is it stops the stew reducing too quickly in the oven.

So just pop that on there like so.

Place that in a preheated oven at 140 Celsius in a fan oven,

160 Celsius in an ordinary oven, that's a low oven.

Loooowww fooor sloooow.

And leave it for three hours, but don't worry if you're late,

it'll be all right for four or even five.

Oh, let's go and sleep while it's cooking.

Excellent. Or, if you wanted to, you could go to work.

But we are at work, roughly speaking, so we're going for a sit.

For a long time.

CRASH

LAUGHTER

Can I take your order, please?

The Slow Food Movement is a backlash to the fast food one.

And the king of this creation is, of course...

the burger.

The burger is the staple diet of many a hungry student

whose culinary skills are limited to pouring ketchup on their fries

or 9-5 people who simply have no time to cook.

This humble fast food flourished during the era of drive-ins

and diners, when hamburger joints were warm,

homely places where close-knit families wearing matching jumpers

all ate together.

And yet, centuries ago, beef came as steak and buns were bread.

And the notion of grinding up meat and sticking it inside a loaf

was simply unheard of.

How did the hamburger become round, acquire a bun and chips

and become the fastest of all fast foods?

Many claim that the first hamburger patty was born in mediaeval times

when the Tartars, a band of Mongolian and Turkish warriors,

placed pieces of beef under their saddles.

The meat, tenderised when the warriors rode, could then be eaten raw.

Food poison hadn't been invented then, obviously!

The ancestor of the modern burger arrived in America

during the 15th century,

but it wasn't until the 1920s that it began to get really fashionable.

The first White Castle hamburger restaurant

opened its doors in Kansas, selling burgers at five cents each.

By the 1940s and '50s,

activities involving cards were quite the rage in the United States.

It's no surprise then that the drive-through restaurant

became an integral part of this car culture,

and hamburgers, readily flipped onto a grill and easily cooked,

were a must on the menu.

And they were delivered to the cars by dancing girls.

The Americans may have been the front runners,

but it wasn't long before the round bundle of beefy barminess

found its way into the UK via the Wimpy brand.

But it still wasn't really fast food.

It took fast food chain McDonald's to introduce us

to American service, albeit rather begrudgingly.

The big British catering firm didn't think it was possible,

they didn't think people would drink from paper cups

and eat with finger food.

When McDonald's opened its first UK restaurant in Woolwich in 1974

we lapped it up.

Well, gobbled it up, really. Knickerbocker glories

and waitress service soon took a backseat to make way for a quick counter-style culture.

The fast food phenomenon took hold across the world with a vengeance

and became a way of life for millions.

By the millennium, Britons were spending £2.7 billion a year

-on fast food.

-That's a lot of burgers and fries.

Now, we're not against the odd burger now and then,

but who could possibly feel satisfied by a fast-food fix,

knowing there's a delicious featherblade of beef just waiting

to come out of the Best of British oven?

-And off.

-I'm excited.

-I am, too.

-Oh!

-Look at that gravy.

Oh, yes! How marvellous.

Right, we need to fish the meat out and leave all the vegetables.

You see, with the appliance of the science that is, in fact,

slow cookery, we have managed to transform a piece of meat that has

the texture of a breezeblock into the culinary equivalent of a cashmere sweater.

-You're right.

-Soft, unctuous and very, very soothing.

Now we need to make the gravy that is worthy of a gift from the gods.

What we want to do is to puree, with the back of that spoon,

the veg that's as soft as possible.

That's all that red wine loveliness.

It's not going to need much reducing, actually, Si.

It's not, you're right. What'll happen is, you see all the little bubbles coming up?

It'll start to go really glossy as well. Look at it - beautiful.

That's lovely. Turn that right down.

And put the steaks back in the gravy.

Take care because these are so tender. Literally, they'll break up.

And spoon the lovely juice over. Beautiful, isn't it?

My favourite thing in probably the whole wide world.

-There we go.

-Lovely.

This is crying out for buttery mash, isn't it?

Just some French beans and carrots.

Look at those.

-Glazed to perfection, with a little bit of butter.

-Yep.

See, the thing is that slow cooking with this dish,

it's made a really cheap cut very, very good.

And some would say that it could have more flavour than

-a very expensive fillet steak.

-And I would agree.

Now, in our view, you can't have featherblade of beef

without some proper good old-fashioned English mustard.

-Your Dijon wouldn't quite cut it with this, would it?

-No.

-Ready?

-Yes.

-We should take our time with this.

-We should.

-It's not a meal to be gallumphed.

-No, it's to take time over.

Oh... You could cut this with a spoon.

A bit of that said moutarde.

Mash.

Mm.

If you like the flavour of beef,

this is supercharged beef.

-Mm-hm.

-Ah!

It's soft...

..moist.

And it melts in your mouth, doesn't it? It's lovely.

And that's the nice thing about slow food -

it is that - it's taking the time

to sit and to contemplate what you're eating

and to have fun with friends around the table

and to eat, drink and be merry.

So, well worth the wait - braised featherblade of beef,

a sensational example of a slow food dish.

Beef is often cited as the sovereign of slow food

but did you know that all over this green and pleasant land of ours

there's another majestic source just waiting to mature?

The lovely, humble, hairy sheep.

Herds of hairy sheep are taking their time to mellow

into a slow food classic...

SHEEP BLEATS

..Mutton.

And the flocks in the foothills of Derbyshire are no exception.

For centuries, mutton has been one of the most widely-eaten meats

-in the whole of the UK.

-Certainly has.

I mean, Samuel Pepys ate it as the Great Fire of London blazed,

and Mrs Beeton said...

-POSH WOMAN'S VOICE:

-Certainly the meat's most generally used by families.

However, a while ago, it fell out of favour,

but now it's firmly back on our dinner plates

and we're here in Glossop to find out why.

This shop is a Glossop institution.

Five generations of the family have run a butcher's business here

for over 100 years, and the current owner

and slow food hero is keen to champion British mutton,

as his father, and his father's father,

and his father's father's father's father,

and his father's father's father's father's father...

All right, man, stop bleating on!

-Hello, John!

-Hiya, Dave.

-Hello, how are you?

-Not so bad.

-Are you well?

-I'm not so bad.

-Slow food! The story of mutton.

-Yes.

So, John, just to kick off with,

what's the difference between lamb and mutton?

Right, lamb is an animal that's under a year old,

whereas mutton is two years plus.

So, really, we should be eating more mutton?

You should, from every point of view.

The only reason mutton went out of fashion

is because it was slow-growing, slow to cook

and we're in this environment now where everything's so quick,

everything has to be cooked yesterday.

After the Second World War, Britain suffered a terrible food shortage,

so in a drive to feed families quickly,

efficiently and cost effectively, lamb was promoted

and longer-maturing mutton fell out of favour.

And with the arrival of prepacked meat and fast food,

few families wanted to spend over two hours cooking a dish,

so mutton disappeared from the menu almost completely.

After many years of being out of favour,

mutton is now back on our plates. How much mutton do you sell?

Actually, we sell now as much in a week as we were in a month last year.

And this is partly due to the Mutton Renaissance,

which is an organisation that's there to promote mutton,

but it's also due to the fact of price as well,

because mutton is about £2.30 a kilo cheaper than lamb.

So in this environment we're in at the moment,

it's a lever for us to persuade customers to buy it.

Hey, what's the origin of that phrase "mutton dressed as lamb"?

Right, lads, let's come and have a look.

I think it was probably down to a naughty slaughterman.

A naughty slaughterman!

When you actually turn an animal into a carcass,

a piece of meat, the process that it goes through is called dressing,

right?

And when you dress a lamb,

the traditional way of doing it is to put this fat here,

which is called a caul fat,

and that is the fat which surrounds the stomach of the animal.

-Originally, this was put on as fly projection.

-Really?

Before they have refrigeration.

Now... This is the lamb.

Now, perhaps a naughty slaughterman decided, "Right,

"I'm going to try and pass off a piece of mutton as lamb."

-So he put caul fat over the leg...

-Yes!

-..to pass it off as mutton dressed as lamb.

-Get it.

And that's where we think the thing came from.

Mutton has remained popular in West Indian and African cooking,

but John has worked hard to get it back into his customers' repertoire.

He has mutton sausages...

Mutton chops...

-Mutton mince...

-Mutton curry...

-And mutton kebabs.

-And then we have got the piece de resistance!

-Ah, nice!

Now, which is which?

Erm...

Lamb, mutton.

-Yes.

-The colour again.

-Spot-on.

It'd be interesting to do a little taste test.

-It would.

-Side-by-side.

-We can do that.

We cook them side-by-side and see what people think.

Brilliant. So the taste test will be mutton versus lamb.

-Bang on.

-Oof...

Why don't you clear off, go and see where this mutton comes from,

-while I stick this leg of mutton in the oven?

-Sounds like a plan!

John, and his father, and his father's father's father,

-and his father's...

-Oh, stop ramming home the point!

..have bought mutton from the same farm just five miles away for years.

The farm has the Peak Lamb quality mark,

which means that the borders around the fields

are allowed to grow wild.

Which means that the sheep get to graze on the herbage,

and for a long time.

Which means even better-tasting mutton.

It's run by Mike Salisbury.

I'm Si. How are you? Good to meet you.

Pleased to meet you. I'm fine, thank you.

-This is a grand spot.

-Yes.

I imagine anything that roams these hills for long enough is going to get very healthy, aren't they?

Yes, you've got to be healthy to live and survive up here.

You're not wrong!

You know that the years that people didn't eat mutton,

and it was several decades, it must have been soul-destroying for you

because, obviously, you had a commodity, a product that was good,

and yet you couldn't get a price for it.

Yes, there's been times when mutton was literally unsaleable.

You'd struggled to get rid of your mutton at all.

And as a Great British farmer, that must have driven you mad.

-Yeah, there's been times it's been stressful!

-Aye.

In 2004, Prince Charles spearheaded the Mutton Renaissance

campaign to raise awareness and support British sheep farmers.

Now over 200 family farms, restaurants,

abattoirs and butchers are rearing, selling and serving mutton.

That's the thing - you know that the meat from those animals

is going to be superb, because look at them. They're healthy,

the husbandry that clearly you practise here...

I mean, it's top-drawer. It is fabulous.

Well, we try to achieve that.

We've been supplying John now for...

possibly 27 years, so something must be right.

-Oh, aye.

-I think so. I think so.

Our taste test should just about be ready,

so we're heading back to the butcher's

to find out how the more slowly-cooked mutton fares

against the roast leg of lamb.

Here we are. Well, shall I tell you which one is which or shall we decide when we taste it?

-No, let's decide when we taste it!

-Right, OK, then.

Now, I can't tell which is which now.

-There we are.

-Thank you.

-Are you going to dive in and try some, then?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

So this is what we reckon...

-..is lamb.

-Is lamb.

-Beautiful lamb.

-That's fabulous.

Mm. That's really good.

And this.

'And now, the mutton.'

-And all that natural grazing.

-Yes.

Yes. Go on, have that piece, there. That looks a nice one.

-That's a lot deeper, more structured flavour, isn't it?

-Yes.

-Lovely.

-Good, isn't it?

-Yes.

-You're happy with that, aren't you?

Very nice.

That's really good. There is no mystery to it - it just tastes...

It's tender, it's tasty...

It just melts in the mouth.

Then, John, this mutton - slowly reared, slowly cooked,

and enjoyed slowly, with the dignity it deserves.

-Fantastic.

-Worth waiting for.

-Well worth waiting for.

SHEEP BLEATS

We Brits watch more TV cookery programmes than any other nation.

And we love our celebrity chefs.

Like old friends, they've been there for us

during the Spam, the Smash and Slush Puppy years,

gently coaxing us away from the junk food

and tempting us into the kitchen.

And back in 1988 Keith Floyd travelled around Britain...

-And Ireland.

-..to waive the slow food flag, promote local produce

and try out some of our considerable culinary heritage.

This'll be fun. Him in Ireland. What a combination.

-TV:

-..and a fine plate of grub, run by my old chum Billy...

We didn't go into the restaurant kitchen because like all professional cooks we get sick...

There's a fellow that drank some stout in his time.

I think so, man. I think so. Look at that.

Very funny dish to make, this, isn't it? What exactly is it?

It's a great Cork dish.

It's spiced beefcake, it's called.

What they do is they corn the beef, put it into water and...

It's real corned beef, isn't it?

-Proper.

-Corned beef that doesn't come in a can.

You mix it with this explosive-looking mixture...

What we've got here is your ground black pepper, your white pepper...

What's interesting about Floyd and slow food,

in 1986 the slow movement food was started in Italy,

and he was the forerunner of bringing it to the UK

two years later in 1988,

which was just, you know, that's fantastic.

Such an influential character in the cuisine.

Get a fistful of it in your hand like that.

That's the spicing for the beef.

And that would then go into a wooden barrel or an earthenware bowl for, what, a month?

Indeed. Possibly a month, and rolled and...

A month! This IS slow food.

So that is now - the magic of television - three months old.

Three months cured.

It goes here into a simple vat of water,

root vegetables, leeks, celery, onions and a bouquet garni.

See you in three hours' time!

Oh, crumbs. So it's cured for three months, simmer for three hours.

This is colcannon, which is mashed potato, hot chopped cooked cabbage...

It's funny - people say that nowadays we haven't got time

for slow cooking, but the thing is, actually, this is pretty quick.

-I mean, it may COOK for three hours, but you put it in a pot.

-Yeah.

You know? It's not over-elaborate.

And it's good, wholesome food then, because it's cooked slowly,

all the flavours are going to be fantastic.

-It's brilliant.

-See how we're getting get on.

Oh, boy.

That is superb. Doesn't it smell good?

It smells like an oriental spice parlour, you know?

That's a hell of a bit of beef, isn't it?

This is traditionally cooked on Christmas Eve.

When you come back from Mass, you have a slice hot

and the main deal is let it cool until tomorrow and have it for breakfast,

with a pint of stout before you start your Christmas Day.

Highflying punters in smart restaurants...

I tell you what it does do to you.

It gives you a brilliant thirst, because it is very spicy, this beef.

-Slainte.

-Slainte!

Keith Floyd, he might have liked slow cooking

but he was rather partial to a quick drink!

He was!

The slow food movement

isn't just about cooking things for a long time.

It's about old-fashioned values.

It's about celebrating and supporting local artisan producers and their goods.

From bread and cheese to oysters and eels,

this country is overflowing with amazing produce.

And we've even got something very slow to wash it down with.

Over 100 distilleries around Scotland

are working at a snail's pace to produce

some of the finest whiskies, and none is slower

than this factory in the foothills of the Campsie Fells near Glasgow.

We're on a malty mission to find out how they do it.

Meet Duncan McNicoll, our Best of British slow food hero.

He's the man in charge of making whisky at Glengoyne.

He's been working here for 35 years...

And he has the patience of... well, several very patient saints.

At Glengoyne, we're not automated, so everything has to be

slow and deliberate to get the best out of these stills.

If it was quickened, we wouldn't get the same character of spirit.

We've been making whisky here since 1833, and that's legally.

Before that there was all the illicit stills in the glen.

But that's another story.

Scotch whisky, or the "water of life"

as the ancient Celts called it, not only takes decades to produce,

it has also been around for centuries.

The earliest written record of it dates back

to when a Friar John Corr bought...

-SCOTTISH ACCENT:

-Eight bottles of malt wherewith to make aqua vitae

for King James IV, in 1491.

Here, isn't that the year you were born?

Steady on!

But, back to the not so speedy business

of making this little bundle of deliciousness.

The ingredients for whisky have always been the same -

water, sugar, yeast and most importantly, barley.

Whisky begins its life as a very basic mixture

of hot water and ground-up barley malt - or grist.

It's probably the most important part of the distillery here.

It's the sugar and starch we're going to convert into alcohol sugars in the fermentation room next door.

This process all in will take

probably about six, six and a half hours.

Time for a charming interlude.

The BBC actually made loads of these little nuggets of TV gold

in the 1950s to pass the time for the viewer as he waited patiently

for his next programme to begin.

She was only a whisky maker's daughter, but I loved her still...

'Distilling means the heating of liquid

'till it becomes a vapour,

'then cooling it till it becomes liquid again.'

By the 1700s, the English had decided

to bring the rebellious Scots to heel

and hit them where it hurt by taxing whisky production.

That really didn't stop the canny Scots, though.

They just went underground.

In 1820 alone,

there were almost 5,000 convictions for illicit distilling.

# ..Hoots mon! #

The excise law in 1823 put an end to all of that

and permitted the distilling of whisky - "aye, for a small fee", of course.

'The casks are filled in a special building called a duty-free warehouse.

'The door is fastened by two locks,

'one controlled by the excise department,

'the other by the distillery management.'

-It looks a bit like a petrol pump, doesn't it?

-Oh, aye, but over 20 times more expensive.

# We have all

# The time

# In the world

# Time enough for life

# To unfold

# All the precious things love has in store

# We have all

# The love in... #

If you thought that took a while, you ain't seen nothin' yet!

# ..And if that's all we have

# You will find... #

These casks won't see the light of day

for a very, very long time.

And that's them for 10, 17 or 21 years.

Until we're ready to use them.

A long wait, but it's worth it.

Over the next 10 years, some of the whisky evaporates

and even the air in the warehouse turns to alcohol.

-They call it the "angel's share".

-It's a tough life being an angel!

And for the real whisky enthusiast,

you can even buy yourself a cask at this stage.

But...you still can't drink it!

That's exactly what Craig McKinlay has done.

He and his mate clubbed together to buy a whole cask last year.

# Show me the way to the next whisky bar

# Oh, don't ask why

# Oh, don't ask why... #

He can look at it, pat it, stroke it, read poetry to it if he likes,

but it won't be ready to bottle for at least another nine years.

Some people write little things on.

We've just written on it, "Do well," as I am sure it would.

But you can see from other casks there's little messages

written all over them.

We bought this for our 40th birthday and the intention is

that if it's good when we're 50, we'll bottle it off.

But, then, if it's not good, we'll keep it. It's...

It can only get better!

I think is the nice way of putting it. It can only get better.

I'm quite happy to wait.

# It's been a long time coming... #

If you like doing things slow come to Glengoyne where it happens...

slowly.

# ..But good things

# Are going to come my way. #

The slow food movement embraces the past

and revives old traditions and flavours.

So for our last recipe we want to give you our Best of British twist

on a classic slow food dish. Mutton.

Yes, we're going to be cooking SLOWLY

a cracking spicy mutton and spinach curry.

Mutton has a much gamier, deeper flavour

and it's perfect for this curry

because there's some robust spices going in there

and some big flavours.

-And it needs something that's kind of pretty big...

-Rarr!

-This is a big, butch curry.

-It certainly is that.

-It's not terribly hot.

-No, no.

-But we're not going for heat.

We're just going for flavour.

First thing is we need to brown off four onions in the pot.

And that'll take about 15, 20 minutes.

That's the basis of all great curries, you know.

That really kind of rendered, nicely slow-cooked onions.

What we're doing is cutting these onions in half

and we're just slicing them basically.

It seems to be an unfeasibly large amount of onions

when you first start, doesn't it?

It does, but what they do is they just disappear into the pan.

Grr!

-Spice.

-First off, take 10 cardamom pods.

HE COUNTS TO TEN

What I want to do is to bash them

so I can lift the green husks out and leave the black seeds.

And while Dave's doing that, all I'm prepping up is two chillies,

quite finely chopped -

I'll keep an eye on these onions - and eight cloves of garlic.

And they're just chopped.

The first recorded recipe that we have in Britain

for a curry is in 1747.

A lady called Hannah Glasse wrote a recipe entitled

"cooking a curry the Indian way". 1747!

It must have seemed so exotic

and the spices so expensive at that time.

Luckily, they're not so dear now.

So, we're adding a tablespoon of cumin seed,

two teaspoons of black mustard seed,

one tablespoon of ground coriander,

two teaspoons of turmeric to add colour, and some cinnamon.

They're all ground up into a powder.

Now this is how you make a proper curry.

There we are.

Hairy Bikers' curry powder. Looks like curry powder.

Smells like curry powder.

-Tastes like curry powder.

-Whacko!

They are lovely!

Now take half of them out

and set aside till later.

-That's about it.

-Goodbye!

We'll see you in about four hours.

And we cook the chilli and the garlic

for a few minutes.

This is beginning to start to smell now.

The chilli and that garlic mixed in with the onions.

But wait till I put that in there.

It's going to be like incense in a cathedral.

-The cathedral of slow cooking!

-Beautiful.

Just toss that like that.

Then the salt and pepper.

And you want a really good coating, really good coating.

Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful.

It's time to put in that wonderful spice mix.

-Woah!

-Oh, man!

As we cook this, all the oils in those seeds

are going to be released

and make one heck of a curry paste.

Now it's time to add a bag of spinach and let it wilt.

Now, while we're waiting for that to wilt, I'm going to start to

sear off and some put some colour on this lovely mutton.

And they're nice, big, hearty chunks, aren't they?

You want them to maintain their integrity

through the slow cooking process, so when you dip into that curry

you get the most fantastic pieces of soft, beautifully flavoured meat.

The spice and the spinach all goes in a blender.

And we're going to make a spectacularly green spice mix.

Phwar!

Ooh! That's knocking me eyeballs out.

The spinach and the spice mix are blended into a fine paste.

And then added to the browned mutton.

Now I'm just going to take a little of the water

that we were going to put in, and deglaze that pan

because we don't want to lose any of those flavours.

Look. Can you see?

Lovely. All coming off there.

I'm just going to stick that in there.

To this, add about a litre of water.

Some tomato paste goes in.

And a teaspoon of salt.

Now, be careful about your salt.

Because what we've done is, don't forget,

we seasoned with salt and pepper the mutton before we fried it.

-So, be careful.

-Lastly, add bay leaf.

Now, once again, a greaseproof paper circle or cartouche

is placed on top of the curry to stop the liquid evaporating.

Now, we put that into a moderate oven,

that's 150 degrees Celsius in a fan oven, for about three hours.

That cartouche should stop it drying out.

It's a long time, but the mutton will be yunctuous.

Do you know what time it is?

Yes, it's time for another BBC interlude.

-Oh, it smells great.

-It does smell fantastic, doesn't it?

Right. Let's have them out. Ho ho!

-I love this bit about slow cooking.

-Me too.

-It's like the reveal, isn't it?

-Look at that!

All that mutton just about ready to disintegrate.

I wish you could smell it at home! I wish you could smell it.

Do you remember those onions we made about four hours ago? The time's come!

And we stir in another bag of raw spinach.

Which is going to give a kind of freshness to the curry.

It's going to lighten it up a bit. Bit of a green transfusion.

The mutton is about ready to fall apart, so be careful

and just push the spinach in around the sides,

put the top on,

leave it and then we can always fold it in later when it's wilted.

Pop that back into the oven for another 10 minutes.

The irony is

you worry so much about the mutton being tough

and now we're worried about breaking it up.

Because it's so tender

-because we have employed the art of slow cookin'!

-Yes, we have!

-SLOW!

-SLOW!

-Oh, another ten?

-Yes.

Just time for a stroll around our magical TV vegetable patch.

Hark!

I hear a slow call from the interior of the oven,

going, "I'm ready!"

Let's unleash this into the world.

Ho ho ho! Oh, man! The greatest delight of marvellousness.

Let's give this a turn. Look at that.

-The spinach is just about holding together.

-Oh, yes!

So it's not destroyed. That's just what you want.

That is a saag gosht.

-Shall we prepare a plate on the plinth?

-I think so.

Shall we turn this out in that jaunty fashion?

-Oh! Are you sure?

-Yeah.

Oh, Mr Myers! That's sheer genius.

You get that in posh curry houses, don't you?

I would recommend a little spoonful of mango chutney with this one.

So the sweet notes cut through the epic amount of spices

we have in the saag mutton.

Well, that's our saag mutton.

which is a slow way to make a saag gosht of spinach and mutton.

Quintessentially the best thing to do with beautiful mutton.

Delicious!

# Jai ho! #

Our Best of British produce combined with our multicultural heritage

to create the perfect "no hurry" curry.

# Jai ho! #

Slow food is all about growing, producing

and consuming the right kinds of food in the right kind of way.

So the next time you feel like the pace of life's getting too much,

or you just fancy joining the quiet revolution,

take some time out, wander round your local shops

and cook up a slow storm for you and your loved-ones.

It's worth seeking out and supporting our edible heritage.

If we don't use it, we lose it.

If you want to find out more...

Visit...

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

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

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd.

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