Nation of Gardeners 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...

-Welsh lamb and Welsh leeks.

-Hey!

-'Outstanding food producers.'

-That's impressive.

'And innovative chefs.' Oh, man!

-'We also have an amazing food history.'

-Brilliant!

Oh, 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 that keep our food heritage alive.'

It's a miracle what comes out of the oven.

'And we'll 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!

You know, we're a nation of gardeners. Over a quarter of us grow our own fruit and vegetables.

Nothing tastes better than a potato freshly dug from the ground

or a hot-house tomato.

-You see, our climate suits so many crops.

-It does.

-From strawberries in Scotland...

-To rhubarb in Yorkshire.

From Jersey Royal potatoes...

To asparagus in the Vale of Evesham.

-Isle of Wight tomatoes.

-Do you know what? We've got the lot.

-We certainly have.

-Dig on.

# Can you dig it? Oh, yeah Can you dig it...? #

'Over the course of the last decade, we Brits have increasingly reached for the trowel

'to provide food for the table.

'Sales of seeds for tomatoes, courgettes,

'beans and other vegetables outstrip those for flowers by a mile.

'So today we're celebrating marvellous British veg

'and our passion for cultivating the land and growing our own.

'We'll be digging into the surprisingly exotic past of some of our communal garden veg.

'And paying tribute to the wartime growers who kept the nation fighting fit at such a difficult time.

'We'll also be cooking up some fantastic food in the Best of British kitchen.

'Starting with our first dish, a recipe perfect for a green-fingered gourmet.

'Fresh garden vegetable risotto.'

-Say that again.

-Riso'-oh.

-Riso'-oh.

-We're cooking a...

-BOTH: Risotto!

'We love Italian food in this country,

'so this fusion of the Mediterranean with all the best vegetables Britain has to offer

'creates a perfect family dish.'

There's loads of TV chefs that have shown you how to do a risotto on the telly,

but this is slightly different because it's us that's showing you and we're not chefs.

When a risotto is done properly, it can be as simple as you like, it's one of the best things to eat.

'Add a glug of olive oil to the pan, a large knob of butter and grate in a clove of garlic,

'then finely chop an onion.'

What we're going to do is we're going to cook this... We're sweating the garlic and the onions.

We'll sweat them down. We don't want any colour on them. They just want to be slightly translucent.

-There's nowt wrong with British onions and we grow good varieties of garlic in Britain now too.

-Yeah.

The dressing for the top of the risotto is minted olive oil, so I'll get that on now to infuse.

Just chopped mint in olive oil. Apart from the colour side of it,

I'll just drizzle the mint oil on top of the risotto and we've got peas and green beans in this,

it'll bring those veggies to life.

Oh, it's only my nail!

-Try and keep that out of there.

-I know.

-It is a vegetarian dish after all!

-After all!

-FORCED LAUGHTER

Oh, the fragrance coming off that mint is fantastic.

A great fan of the fragrance of mint was Pliny in Ancient Rome.

He made his students wear a wreath of mint around their neck.

He thought the aroma stimulated their minds and made them brainier.

I tell you what. Chop some more mint. We'll need more than that.

'Pop the mint in a bowl and pour over loads of lovely olive oil and let it infuse.

'Next, we want to add some building blocks of flavour to the onions and garlic.

'Four sprigs of thyme, a bay leaf and some lemon peel.'

We're going to remove this, so just do it like a potato peeling

and amuse yourself and try and get this strip of zest as long as possible.

-And look, we are using the Amalfi lemon!

-Yeah.

Pop it in.

Before we finish it off with the veg, we'll remove the lemon zest, lift the bay leaf out and stalks.

-A few leaves of thyme are nice.

-By then, they've done their job and there's no need to have them in.

-Rice time?

-I think so.

-This is the other must with risotto.

You must fry the rice in all this to glaze it with the oil and butter before you start adding the stock.

Watch what happens when we put it into the pan.

Now, as soon as the heat hits that rice, the grain will open up slightly

-and it will just get covered with that beautiful, beautiful, oily loveliness.

-It goes like pearls.

-It does.

-You know what I love about this dish, Si?

We tend to cook meat and fish and they're the backstage players, the vegetables.

On this, the veggies are given the respect and importance they deserve.

'Pour over 150 millilitres of dry white wine and simmer it until the liquid has reduced by half,

'then it's time to start adding the stock.

'Make up 750 millilitres of stock. You can use vegetable or chicken and make it fresh or from a cube.'

When you're making your risotto, you have your working pan

and next to it you have your stock pan with the stock just at a simmer,

with a ladle standing by ready, one to the other, one to the other. The result is epic risotto.

Look at the consistency. That's reduced by half.

The rice has absorbed some of that liquid and now we can start to add the stock,

about half a ladle at a time.

'Now for the veg.

'Chop a generous bunch of asparagus to add, along with a handful of runner beans,

'some peas and one of my favourites - broad beans.'

One thing we do like to do with beans... These have been blanched.

We skin 'em, double pop 'em.

I think this is what puts people off broad beans - that tough outer skin.

It's a bit of a faff, but look at that beautiful thing.

The best thing about going to my Uncle George's house was popping the beans straight off,

literally pulling your peas straight off and popping those pea pods... Oh, fabulous!

When I was a kid, we used to get peas in their pods.

Me mam sat me down to pod the peas for dinner.

She made me whistle cos she knew if the whistling stopped, I was eating the peas.

You can't rush a risotto, can you?

No, it's done when it's done.

It says on the back of the rice packet, "Cook for 12 minutes." It takes longer.

It takes about 20 minutes to cook the rice in a risotto and you've got standing time as well.

You just want it to relax and that's when you should eat it.

The rice is getting slightly softer, but it's still quite hard,

so just keep letting it absorb and let it absorb slowly.

Look at those, fresh as a fresh thing!

Look at all the different hues of green. It's just building up into something really lovely.

'When you only have a couple of ladlefuls of stock left, remove the thyme and lemon zest

'and stir in the asparagus, peas and broad beans, then pour over the remaining stock.'

Look at that!

And then just... nice and gently fold it over.

Cook this for three minutes, then put the lid on and leave it to stand for five.

-That looks fabulous. It looks a really attractive dish.

-That's like St Patrick's Day on a plate.

Since we're handling vegetables, I'm finding a new-found calmness and gentility.

-You know what I mean?

-No.

I feel more centred, more part of the earth. I look at those beans.

You haven't got sandals on? You'll be riding a pushbike next!

I've got one.

You haven't?!

-You haven't?

-I have.

-Have you?

-Yeah.

-It's got 15 gears and everything.

-Has it?

-Yeah.

Cycling is wrong.

I'm fed up with beer, beef and indolence.

I want green stuff, freshness, feel the air pouring down my lungs without the aid of Ventolin.

This is an expose on Dave Myers' secret life.

It's only when I'm looking at the risotto. I don't think it'll last.

Are we ready for the "fet-AH"?

'You'll need 100 grams of feta, but be careful, it's quite salty,

'so when you season, you should only need pepper.'

Gently fold that in.

Oh, you see, you're calming down now.

I can feel your anger's going out as you stir that risotto.

Every time you breathe out, green love goes in and anger goes out.

-See?

-Look at that...

..and tell me that wouldn't be fantastic

with some freshly barbecued spring lamb.

-That'd be great.

-It would.

-Little cutlets just charred in a little olive oil.

Yeah, but if you didn't have lamb, it's still nice. Just cover that and let it steam in its own steaminess.

The pan's off the heat now. Look, I've turned it off. Look.

No heat. Let it sit.

'Now bring a pan of salted water to the boil and blanch the green beans for a couple of minutes.

'While you're waiting, shave some nice, big curls of Parmesan

'to pop on top of the risotto when it's finished.

'Once you've drained the tender runner beans,

'pop them back in the pan and toss them with a knob of butter and a generous amount of ground pepper.

'Stir the remaining butter into the risotto and that's it, time to dish up.'

Oh, look at that!

-That's the texture you want, isn't it, Si?

-That's absolutely perfect.

Now, to the top of that...

-Oh, yes!

-..some of these lovely, buttered, peppery beans.

And some lovely Parmesan shavings.

And they're just going to relax down on to the risotto.

-I think that's enough.

-I'm going to put a little drizzle of mint oil...

All that mint oil is just going to be so fresh with the veg.

It looks great, doesn't it?

And there we have it - our homage to Britain's gardeners.

A most fantastic, British, vegetable risotto. Brilliant!

A dish that could make a vegetarian

out of a pair of hairy 'uns.

Well, for a short while maybe.

'Oh, beautiful, creamy gorgeousness!

'Risottos are the perfect way to reap the benefits of that toil in the garden

'and make the most of your home-grown produce.

'We Brits have a long and fruitful history when it comes to the allotment garden.

'It could be said to go back over 1,000 years

'to when our Saxon ancestors cleared woodland for land to be held in common for cultivation.

'When this common land disappeared into the hands of a few wealthy landowners in the 16th century,

'they graciously allotted small parcels of land to their tenants.

'So the poor had something to stick their pitchforks in rather than them.

'Hence the term "allotment".

'During World War Two, they became very important

'as growing your own became a necessity, a duty no less.

'When food rationing was introduced, we were encouraged to utilise every piece of ground and grow veg.'

You may not be lucky enough to own an ideal kitchen garden like this.

But the flower garden will grow beetroot just as well as begonias and is more fashionable too nowadays.

There may be room for vegetables on top of your Anderson shelter or in the back yard

or even on that flat bit of roof.

'So we patriotically picked up our shovels and did our bit

'in the 1.4 million allotments up and down the UK.

'But as rationing ended, factory-produced food started to fill shop shelves

'and interest began to wane a little.

'But all that changed in the 1970s when applications for allotments suddenly soared.

'I wonder why that was?

'Like Tom and Barbara, people were buzzing with the romantic notion

'of heading back to the land and becoming self-sufficient.'

I hope it's going to be a family effort. This is my wife and Leonard, the father-in-law.

'But it was harder than it looked.'

How much experience have you had?

So, you know, this is it, starting from rough, both the plot and me.

'Getting an allotment is one thing, making it work quite another,

'but luckily, there's always someone at hand who is happy to offer advice.'

-Professor, it looks a bit weedy and rough.

-It is a pretty rough plot.

But we can get this into good fettle.

We've got a good soil depth and, as you can see, we've got a soil that has a pH of 5.5.

That means, Mike, it's a bit lime-deficient.

'Yes, and getting your pH balance right is just the start.

'If you're not careful, you can come under attack from all sides.'

-The smell of the rotting tubers...

-And the weed-infested rubbish tips.

Cabbage root fly. Rabbit attack.

-Coral spot.

-The hoverfly larvae.

-Slugs.

-Carrot fly.

-Moles.

-Wind scorch.

That is death.

-Get cracking, lad, because you're on your own.

-Thank you, Tom, Harry.

'But we're a hardy and tenacious bunch, us Brits,

'and won't let little things like that put us off.

'Today's allotments are more in demand than ever.

'In some places in London, you must wait up to 40 years.

'40 years? I'd be 60 by then(!)

'Mathematics was never your strong point.

'Alas, neither's gardening, but thankfully for the nation,

'a passion for horticulture runs through our veins and is deeply embedded in our past.

'And if the Brits are a nation of gardeners,

'then there's one corner of Coventry that has to be our spiritual home.

'And we're here to find out more about the historical roots of our favourite veg.'

This may look like an average garden centre, but there's something special about it.

This is Garden Organic in Ryton near Coventry

and it's a charity dedicated to the craft of organic gardening.

They have a special mission here as well - to protect endangered veg.

Not only that, they're here to protect some of our most historic varieties.

'The centre is home to an incredible heritage seed bank

'which safeguards those vegetables that were once the mainstay of British gardens,

'but could otherwise have died out.

'We're meeting Bob Sherman, the centre's Director of Operations.

'He's going to tell us more about the work they do.'

-Welcome to Garden Organic.

-Thank you. Can we look around?

-Please do.

What an amazing garden!

Garden Organic is like a living library of Britain's gardening heritage?

That is a key part of what we do,

but these gardens are all about how to look after the landscape organically.

-They were created organically 25 years ago and have evolved into what you see now.

-It's beautiful.

-So this is clearly the herb garden.

-It is, yes.

We've just come right through the herb garden, so we've got Mediterranean plants over this side

and where we are now is more Chinese and Asian.

-So it's not just indigenous British plants we have here?

-Certainly not.

And if we were to rely entirely on indigenous plants,

we'd not only be hungry, we'd be very bored.

We have some quite good herbs here, but over the centuries, many, many plants have come into this country

and that's where most of our vegetables come from.

I don't know how much you like kale, but that's what we'd be eating!

I land on these shores of Great Britain and I want to eat veggies.

What would be here natively?

Wild cabbage, quite tough.

-Right.

-Sort of celery, leafy stuff.

-Yeah.

-Bit of wild garlic.

-Not bad.

Little things like pignut and things you find under the ground if you know what you're looking for.

-Some rather nasty fruit.

-Really?

Crab apples!

We British have grabbed the craft of cultivation and really made it work for us over the centuries.

-I think we're a brilliant nation in terms of cultivation of plants.

-Yeah.

# When you walk in the garden... #

I sense that it's not just for food that you adore the plants.

When we talk about them, it's their appearance as well,

so a vegetable garden could fulfil your need for aesthetics as well.

The idea of using vegetables ornamentally I love, it's brilliant.

You get two bites of the cherry, so to speak.

# In the garden of Eden... #

It's everybody's dream, isn't it?

-The ultimate allotment!

-I mean, just look how beautiful that chard is.

-Yeah.

-Just look at these.

-That is gorgeous.

-It's so beautiful.

-I've got to admit, at first glance, I thought that was rhubarb.

-Yeah.

Just look at the colour of that. Isn't that fantastic?

There's a lovely wax on the leaf. It's so beautiful.

Is it true that carrots used to be purple?

Yes, and actually, wild carrots are white,

but the edible carrots that we know were purple, from Afghanistan.

The reason they're orange is because of the Dutch, for the House of Orange and being loyal to the King.

Hold on, hold on.

Carrots and Afghanistan are not two things that you put together,

so what you're saying here...

What you're saying is carrots aren't native to the UK.

They're probably one of the most common vegetables we eat, but they don't come from here.

-Being carrot-coloured is a political statement, not an accident of nature?

-Yeah.

OK...

What about the tomato?

OK, tomatoes are from South America.

And the original one is a little, tiny pimpinellifolia, about that big.

Very tasty, tiny little fruit.

And then you look at what's there now.

-We've got hundreds of varieties in the collection and they're all different.

-Leeks! They're Welsh!

No, I don't think so.

-I thought they were Geordie. You've got a leek trench, haven't you?

-I did have.

-You did have, aye.

-Amazing, eh?

-Isn't it extraordinary? Our ancestors were great scavengers and collectors.

It does form the foundation of what we have on our plates today.

That's right. We have a rich culture in this country

of people experimenting and liking to grow stuff

and that has allowed us to develop an incredible range of different vegetables.

# I'm gonna be round my vegetables... #

'We've seen some great-looking veg,

'but there's only one way of getting to grips with our food heritage and that's by tucking in.'

Oh, brilliant!

This is a range of stuff from the Heritage Seed Library.

So here we've got some tomatoes. That's an American one.

That's a French one and these are good old British ones.

-I'd expect you'd like to try them.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Those are Carlin peas which you'll know well.

-Yeah.

-Yes.

-Pigeon peas.

-They have an incredible history.

The pea is very old, at least medieval.

It was good peasant fare, 25% protein,

and enough to keep them working for a few more days at dirt wages, then you'd give them a few more.

But it gave rise to the whole idea of Carlin Sunday

which is the Sunday before Palm Sunday.

-That's in the north-east, isn't it, Carlin Sunday?

-It is.

When I was small, you knew you were coming into Easter when you started to have Carlins.

We used to have them with salt, white pepper, always white pepper, and vinegar.

It was one of those things that you looked forward to because Easter was coming. It's lovely.

-Perhaps you'd like to try a few.

-Hmm.

-There's a couple of forks if you want to have a go each.

Looking at those, it's not the sort of thing you would expect people to go wild with excitement about,

so they wouldn't exist if we didn't look after them.

The Carlin Sunday idea is part of our heritage and the story is as important as the seeds

because it's all to do with the Siege of Newcastle,

Newcastle being a Royalist town.

The dastardly Scots had surrounded it and everybody was starving

down to their last bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale.

And a French ship managed to break the barricade and brought some seeds in

and that saved the population.

They're great, but if I was medieval,

I wouldn't have liked to have lived on them seven days a week.

I would have welcomed a carrot or the odd potato.

So how about a tomato?

This is Essex Wonder from Essex,

so a commercial variety that was grown up until about the 1950s.

-Again, if we hadn't saved it, it wouldn't be around.

-It would just have gone.

-What a shame!

-Yeah.

This reminds me of the sort of tomatoes that I would have had on a salad when I was a kid.

The other great thing about tomatoes is there's our next crop in there.

If you can restrain your hunger and just take some of the seeds out

and eat the rest, you've had a meal and you've got next year's crop.

LAUGHTER

But if you can restrain your hunger, you have next year's crop. However...

No more seeds.

Well, you should have said it earlier, shouldn't you?

This is called Darby Striped. Have one each because it'll run all down your nice shirt.

-I don't think it'll affect it!

-LAUGHTER

That's a beautiful-looking tomato.

Oh!

Good shot.

-That's the money shot.

-LAUGHTER

Straight on the lens.

-You can't take him anywhere, can you?

-Can you see now?

-Is everybody happy?

-This is how to eat a tomato.

-Oh, that's good!

-Isn't it?

-Oh, aye.

'That's got our appetite whetted and we couldn't come somewhere like this and leave empty-handed.'

-Here, dude, have you got the seeds?

-Have I got seeds?

I've got peas, beans, lettuce, tomatoes. I've got instructions and seeds to grow our own Carlin peas.

The future, my friend, is in my pocket!

'Now, Si and I are merely amateurs when it comes to this gardening lark,

'but others have achieved great things and as a nation, it's something we've always celebrated.

'We've been showing off our home produce at village and agricultural shows for years.'

# Talk of your beautiful meadows and fields

# And your parks so grand

# Talk of your wonderful gardens down at Kew... #

'Many were first introduced around the latter half of the 19th century

'to celebrate rural pursuits and crafts in the face of the growing might of the Industrial Revolution.

'But when it comes to green-fingered success,

'the shows that really matter are those hosted by the Royal Horticultural Society.

'These days, people travel from all over the world to see their show gardens and displays,

'but, if like us, you don't know your Dicksonia from your begonias,

'they also offer delights of a more edible variety.

'And in an arena where the standards are high,

'Medwyn Williams is well ahead of the field when it comes to growing champion vegetables.'

That's one of the longest.

They reckon that... That's about my height from the floor and I'm about five foot eight.

That's not bad for a July parsnip.

These are the best I've grown for this time of year.

It just gives you a great thrill. It's a good buzz.

'His passion for vegetables has paid off. With 19 consecutive gold medals under his belt,

'our best of British veg-growing hero is hoping for his 20th

'at the Chelsea Flower Show of the North, Tatton Park.'

I really want to win the gold medal. It's the winning thing that counts.

We've never had less than a gold anywhere ever.

The problem with that is there's only one way to go.

I don't know what I'd do if I came in here on Wednesday morning and I saw a bronze or something like that.

'But it's taken a lifetime of dedication and hard work to get to this point.

'Back at his home in Anglesey, Medwyn will stop at nothing to grow the most perfect veg in the land

'and it's an obsession that took root at an early age.'

We've been growing vegetables for the last three generations, really.

And quite honestly, it was a matter of necessity very often because we were quite poor,

so the veg in the garden was packed just for eating,

but after a while, my dad started getting into this exhibition game for showing his veg.

I used to love that experience.

It all started for me when I was in primary school

and about eight or nine years old.

My dad gave me three packets of seeds in my hand.

He was very wise because he gave me radish, mustard and cress -

three seeds that germinate very quickly, thereby catching the imagination of a young child

when you see these green shoots coming out of the ground.

And they harvested quickly. I invited my friend Gareth over.

I cut the bread like gravestones with lashings of butter

and we had a sandwich of radish, mustard and cress, six weeks after I sowed them.

That was, to me, the start of my gardening career.

From then on, I was hooked on what made these things grow, what made them tick

and how I could grow them better and better.

# Well, what do you know, he smiled at me in my dreams last night

# My dreams are getting better all the time... #

'He's been honing his skills for years and with the competition season looming,

'this year, Medwyn is going for broke.

'He has a fantastic, new, state-of-the-art greenhouse

'which he's hoping will leave his opponents for dust.'

This is the latest weapon in my armament.

It's the best greenhouse you can possibly buy.

I don't think any of my opponents have one of these

and I hope they don't because I want to keep one step ahead of them.

# My dreams are getting better all the time... #

-'Good grief! Medwyn certainly knows his onions.

-The size of them are enough to make your eyes water!'

What I'm doing at the moment is cleaning off the dead skins on these onions,

so hopefully, they'll be on one good skin for Tatton Park.

I'm quite pleased. They're about 18 inches and there are bigger ones here.

But when you consider that the world record for the heaviest onion is 16 pounds, over 16 pounds,

that is a big onion, that's nearly as big as my head and I've got a big one!

Every show, of course, is different.

The pressure is on. The more shows I do, everybody wants you to fail.

And I'm determined I'm not going to fail.

There will be, hopefully, over 40 different kinds of vegetables there.

When I get to Tatton, we have tables in front of us and we start building dishes.

We create a picture with the material that we've got.

I firmly believe that vegetables are more colourful than flowers

with the added benefit you can eat them and that is the best part of it all.

It's the taste of growing your own veg. There's nothing quite like it.

There you are. That's a nice bulb.

'With his prize veg all on site now at Tatton Park,

'it's time for the painstaking operation of showing them off at their best.

-'His wife Gwenda takes charge of the staging.'

-We've only got two baskets of carrots.

'While Medwyn's in charge of quality control.'

Isn't that a little rude? I can't help it. It grew like that!

There's too much of a gap here now.

I strive for perfection, but settle for excellence.

-Put it in front of the tomatoes.

-I have settled long ago. She will not settle.

She is perfection personified.

'Can you imagine how good all that lot would taste cooked up?

-'Yeah, you'd certainly get more than your five a day.

-More like 500!

'Wow, it looks amazing, man!

'After all his hard work, Medwyn can only stand back and hope the veg he's carefully nurtured from seed

'can win him his 20th gold medal.'

I think that people will be amazed at the absolute range of colours there are in vegetables.

From those little packets, we've got this fabulous display - 20 foot wide, 40-plus varieties.

What more can a man ask? Contentment.

Well, that's it. That's good enough for me.

'Let's hope the judges enjoy their greens.'

OK, any other comments before we go to our first stage of the judging?

Once the judging starts, you're not allowed in the marquee.

I've done everything I can and it's up to them.

I'd like to be a little fly on the wall,

just to be there listening to them to hear what comments they make.

-Brilliant. It's a gold medal. It's a straight gold. Very well deserved too.

-Thank you.

'Medwyn's looking nervous.

'Time to put him out of his misery.'

Medwyn...

After all these years and your beautiful, beautiful display...

-Yes?

-What do you think your medal's going to be?

Give me a Valium first.

-It's gold!

-Oh!

Congratulations.

-Yes!

-Congratulations.

Just the job.

Yes!

'That's a "turnip" for the books!'

I started at the very bottom of the ladder and I've now been able to creep up slowly,

dragging the vegetables up with me to the top rung.

This very method here of staging vegetables with the leeks upright and the celery upright,

that is a very, very old tradition going back 100 years-plus.

This is something that I'm trying to uphold, really,

and I'm proud of that.

# People say a man is made out of mud... #

'For the last recipe, we want to pay tribute to those people like Medwyn who make Britain great.'

That's a baby one. I couldn't carry the biggest!

'Their dedication and perseverance highlights just how magnificent vegetables can be.

'But we're using one that doesn't normally win too many prizes when it comes to taste.'

This recipe is a fabulous way for using up your marrow or indeed your overgrown, distended courgettes.

I mean, marrow can be tasteless, big and boring.

People have said that about us, but we're still on telly, so don't give up on your marrow.

Who said that? Just folk? You should've let us know.

I can live with it. I've got broad shoulders.

'We're about to prove the marrow can be great by packing it with a punchy sauce

'made of British beef and fresh British vegetables.

'Flavoured with red wine and a bit of chilli to give this humble vegetable a bit of a kick.

'And to top it off, we've got a lovely bit of mozzarella.'

-I'll start with the onion.

-Right oh. I'll start with the carrots.

Basically, we're going to build the stuffing for this marrow first and it's a lovely stuffing.

It's like a bolognese. It's got minced beef in it. It's lovely.

'Add a good glug of olive oil to a pan

-'and fry the onion and carrots with two stalks of finely diced celery sticks.

-Cook it over a low heat.'

Have you seen what we're doing with this? We're just cooking it down, getting some heat through it.

We're building the flavours up because poor old Mr Marrow hasn't got much of his own.

'Next, add some nice minced beef to the pan and brown gently.

'Then chop two garlic cloves and sprinkle on a bit of sea salt.

'Using the side of your knife, blend it to a paste and then add it into the pan.'

-Lovely. It's nice and brown. A bit of dried flavouring now.

-Yes, indeedy!

A teaspoon of dried oregano.

Dried herbs are great for this because we want the oregano to cook in for a long time with the meat.

And a teaspoon of chilli flakes.

If you don't like it spicy, don't put your chilli flakes in.

-'And finally, a teaspoon of caster sugar.'

-Give it a crush.

'And a bay leaf.' You can smell it. It's lovely.

And the base to the stuffing is tomatoes.

You can use fresh or tinned.

If you're using tinned tomatoes for this recipe, use one tin.

If you're using fresh, it needs to be seeded and skinned and use about double the quantity.

They're canned cherry tomatoes cos we're feeling a bit flush.

It's up to you if you use tomato paste or not.

If you use fresh tomatoes, you definitely will need tomato paste.

But we'll just use a little bit of tomato paste.

Now, the marrow is full of water,

so the sauce that we stuff it with has to be really, really thick.

It may look like I'm using a lot of flour, but I'm not, we need this to be like wallpaper paste,

really claggy.

Now what we're going to do is we're going to add about 150 ml of red wine...

-..which is just about a glass.

-A large glass.

And about 300 mls of good beef stock.

Look at that.

And then just very gently, cos our pan's a bit small...

-DAVE LAUGHS

-Just move that around.

Put that in.

Then what'll happen is that flour that Dave put in before will just absorb all those cooking juices

and it'll taste fantastic.

Now we leave that to cook for about half an hour.

Which gives us time to prep the marrow and to make a yummy cheese sauce.

-I'll make the sauce and you can prep the marrow.

-Fantastic. Nice to get my hands on you!

'For the cheese sauce, first make a roux.

'Mix 15 grams of melted butter with a dessertspoon of plain flour

'and then add 250 millilitres of milk slowly,

'a bit at a time.'

-Mate, listen, before I cut into this beast...

-Yeah?

The thing is, when we cook with marrow, we always give it a name.

-Do you remember we did one in Wales and we called him Dewi?

-Oh, yeah.

This is an English marrow.

I think... And this programme is about British gardeners.

Shall we call him Percy?

'Get a big, sharp knife and split it in half from top to tail,

'then get a spoon and scoop out all of the seeds.'

Of course, where we take the seeds out, it leaves us with a very, very convenient cavity to stuff.

This is a good marrow.

-Is it nice?

-It's firm. It's not all water.

Right, I'm going to add to the white sauce some Cheddar cheese.

And to give our Cheddar cheese a little bit of zip,

just a little bit of Parmesan.

There we go. Now, if we put this in the roasting tin like this, it will roll about all over the place,

so I'm just going to cut a level bottom.

There you go. And it will sit there loud and proud.

Now it's time to put Percy in his tin.

You don't have to, but because I'm paranoid, I'm going to oil the bottom of the tin.

I don't want the marrow to stick.

You know when you do a Sunday lunch, you have to have a main event brought to the table?

We are in tough times. A stuffed marrow is a good Sunday lunch thing, isn't it?

-It's not quite your roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, but it is an event for the family.

-Certainly.

'Season the cheese sauce with a pinch of white pepper and salt,

'then whisk it until it's blended to perfection.'

That is the consistency of the cheese sauce that you're after.

'Take the cheese sauce off the heat and cover it with clingfilm to stop it getting a skin on top,

'then check the mince to see if it needs any seasoning.'

That really has no seasoning at all. By golly, it needs some!

'Add salt and pepper to taste, then it's time to stuff the marrow.'

So with a happy heart and a cheery grin...

We're just about to give Percy a grin...

Hey! ..when we put the mince in.

-We could do cookery and poetry, couldn't we?

-No.

It'd be like Pam Ayres, but butch.

Now the time has come not to harrow,

it's time to put our mince in that marrow!

We're going to put the top on with cheese,

as much as you like, if you please!

LAUGHTER

Then we're going to bake it...

All right, all right, shut up and get on with it!

'Once you've removed the bay leaf, spoon as much of the mince into the marrow as you dare,

'then pour over a generous drizzle of cheese sauce and top with some chunks of torn mozzarella.'

Mozzarella is good. It's like a living, breathing thingy.

It's great. Buffalo mozzarella comes from, unsurprisingly, the buffalo and the milk of said buffalo.

-I bet it's a swine milking a buffalo!

-It's hard to catch.

-Come here!

-On you go.

'Finally, cover it in foil and pop it in a pre-heated oven at 160 degrees for an hour.

'Then remove the foil and cook for a further ten minutes.'

-Ooh!

-Percy... Perky Percy, look at that!

The cheese is bubbling up like that.

-Whoa!

-Right...

-I get excited like this.

Look at that.

That's it. You just put it side by side and that makes a lovely, lovely thing.

The first thing that strikes me about this is there is a lot of good food there for very little money.

It does look tasty.

-You can serve it with a green salad or a great big bowl of chips.

-Lovely.

'Marrow can be a great base for lots of sauces. We used minced beef,

-'but you can experiment with different fillings.

-Italian sausage is particularly delicious.

'Or keep it vegetarian to make the most of your home-grown produce.

'We British are so privileged to live in such a fertile land.

'Throughout our history, we've cultivated edible plants from all over the world.

'Thankfully, we'll still be able to reap the benefits far into the future.

'There can be few things more satisfying than growing your veg.

'Except perhaps eating them. Yum-yum!

'If you want to find out more about the series...'

Visit:

You'll discover some amazing facts about the history of food.

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

Subtitles by Subtext for Red Bee Media Ltd 2011

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