Food Pairings 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...

'Outstanding food producers...'

Look at that!

'..and innovative chefs...

'but we also have an amazing food history.'

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, let's get cracking.

We'll explore its revealing stories.

BOTH: Wow!

And meet the heroes that keep our food heritage alive.

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

'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!

MOTORCYCLE ENGINE REVS

# You were meant... #

Today's show is all about great food pairings

and in Britain, we've developed some combinations

that stand the test of time.

Cheese and onion, pork and apple

it's a mystery how our taste buds work.

Aye. Many have tried to unravel the science of taste.

They've dabbled with molecular gastronomy

and the alchemy of flavours, but some things are meant to be.

-Si.

-Dave. Hiya!

In this programme,

we'll be paying tribute to the most famous

food double act - fish and chips,

and exploring its place in our history.

We'll reveal how one of the food combos we know and love,

shockingly started life with a different partner.

We'll find what makes one of Scotland's best known products,

an ideal partner for many ingredients.

And in the Best of British kitchen,

we're going to breathe new life into old classics,

by cooking them up with a Hairy Biker twist.

First, a classic we all know and love...

..pork and apple, Dave.

-It's a classic food pairing, is it not?

-It is.

It's been with us for millennia.

And it's a pairing that's stood the test of time.

But once you get one whiff

of our succulent, sweet, slow roasted pork,

paired with the slightly tart, sharp apple,

there's no going back.

Ah, we've got an absolute belter for you,

our slow roast belly pork, with crispy thyme-seasoned crackling...

..teamed up with roasted apple, sage and onion,

and a tangy cider sauce.

It's the ultimate combination of some

naturally beautiful food buddies.

This dish is all about the quality of the ingredients,

and Britain does all this lot,

like no-one else.

This is a beautiful piece of belly pork, look at that.

Its succulent and juicy and serves up nicely

and you get cracking to die for. Fabulous.

Now for the Hairy Biker's top tip on how to guarantee crispy crackling!

You score it.

What we're going to do is make sure the skin

is really, really dry

and if it seems damp to the touch,

all you do is take some kitchen roll,

push it into those seams.

Me? I'm making a rub...

it's a rub for his belly!

And there's nothing we Hairy Bikers like more,

than our bellies rubbed!

But this rub is definitely for the pork!

'I'm using couple of tablespoons of finely chopped thyme to flavour.'

Just the leaves. I don't want it full of stalk.

'A good pinch of pepper and a couple of teaspoons of sea salt flakes.

'This will dry out the skin even more

'and give a crackling crunchier than a bag of pork scratchings.'

There we have it! The Hairy Bikers belly pork rub!

Season the underside first,

and just push that seasoning

into the meat of that pork. Look at that!

Beautiful! Push it all the way in.

Open those gaps up

and I'm rubbing the salt and herbs

into those slashes on the meat.

The key to crispy crackling, is a hot oven

and dry skin and if you've got that, you're laughing!

'As this will be going into a really hot oven,

'our a tiny bit of water around the edge of the roasting tin,

'to stop the meat juices from burning onto the bottom.'

Because we'll reserve those

to make a little bit of gravy a bit later on.

That's a long way down the process

because this is slow roasted belly pork.

Into the fiery furnace.

Put that in there

for 30 minutes at 220 degrees Celsius for a fan oven

then leave for a further one hour at 160 Celsius.

That's an hour and a half in all.

-That's just round one!

-Oh, yes!

For round two, we're going to make an apple, sage and onion bed,

that the pork will sit on for the second stage of roasting.

Mix the onions, apple and sage

put it right in the middle here, in a little trivet,

and sit that fantastically part-cooked belly pork

on top of that.

Those are going to cook underneath the belly pork

and be unctuous and lovely!

For the pork bed, you need to peel, core and cut up

three apples into thick chunks.

You'll also need to slice two medium onions

and pop them into the roasting tin.

It has been a tradition for a long time,

cooking apples with pork.

The reason is, its the sharpness of the apples,

it offsets the fatty nature of the pork.

-Nice.

-Beautiful!

-Lovely!

-That's what we're after!

Let that sit for a minute or two.

Lovely. Look at that!

The earliest mention of pork and apple

is in a collection of Roman recipes called Apicius.

This ancient cookbook

was named in honour of a first century Roman who,

like us, liked a bit of luxury on his dinner plate.

Though we'll avoid the recipe for flamingo's tongue!

Finally, for the appley base,

chop a good handful of sage leaves.

You get some sage leaves that big and others that are well, that big!

Use your judgement a bit.

Give it a good old mix up.

Look at that little bed of loveliness!

That will cook down to a sticky mass

of sage, onion and apple.

Lift the pork onto its cosy bed of flavouring.

Go along with a spatula

and just tuck it under a bit so the belly pork, while cooking,

protects the vegetables, so they don't burn.

Pop that back into the oven,

again leave it at 160 centigrade on a fan oven,

for another hour.

Next, use the juices from the meat to make cider gravy.

If there's a lot of fat that's come out,

what you do is skim it off.

On this occasion it hasn't

because we've used quite a lean bit of belly pork.

Place the tin over a medium heat on the hob

and stir in two tablespoons of plain flour.

Mix that with the juices and just cook the flour for a while.

-It kind of makes a roux, doesn't it?

-It does.

We're not going to make much gravy but it's going to be very intense.

-Are you ready?

-Certainly am!

Deglaze this with cider!

Mix in 200 ml of cider

a bit at a time.

Don't worry about lumps, we'll strain this.

If you were just to eat that

it would be far too salty and rich,

so splash of water, about 100 ml...

think that's enough, I can always put more in.

What we'll do is turn the heat up a little bit

so I can get that on a bubble and cook that flavour of flour out.

I guarantee we're not going to need to add salt to this!

The stuff from the pork is really salty.

Just make sure you get all of that lovely caramelised flavour.

-He'll do anything to get out of washing up!

-True!

He'll scrape that till the Teflon's frothing on the top!

Bit more water, mate!

It's thickening up, ain't it?

-Man.

-Look at that!

That's beginning to look like gravy, ain't it?

-Lovely!

-Look at that!

That's heaven!

If you fancy a really smooth gravy,

it's worth sieving into a saucepan to get the bits out.

After an hour, take the pork out of the oven.

If the crackling's crisped up,

it'll be music to your ears.

Before you get all piggy with it,

the pork needs to rest,

so set it aside.

Whatever you do, don't cover it with foil,

or you'll steam the crackling and ruin the crispy loveliness.

This is the little confit, let's mix it together, shall we,

of the, look in there, the onions,

the sage,

and the most wonderful apples.

That is going to be beautiful!

# You were meant for me

# And I was meant...#

You are a lovely thing!

-Shall I get the veg?

-Yeah!

To make a meal with our perfect couple,

it's worth cooking up some veg that complement the main event.

We've gone for roast spuds and red cabbage.

Look at that, Dave. That's a beautiful piece

-of British pork.

-Best of British, that!

See? Come on, tell me you don't want that! Oh!

That's like the little confit of the apples,

onions, laced with sage.

It's like a super chutney.

That plate, its yin and yang. It's wonderful pairings.

You've got potatoes, gravy,

we've got sage and onion,

apples and pork,

everything goes together.

It's a proper, proper meal.

Can I dress your little segment?

Ooh, yes!

-Ooh, sir!

-Thank you!

That's sage on the top.

Taste buds are in ecstasy.

Sweet and savoury as well.

That's what I love about belly pork.

The meat is very, very succulent and actually quite sweet.

The apples, just cutting through that succulent, sweet meat.

Just perfect!

That's one thing about British food, get back down to basics.

There's a lot of really good food science

and a whiff of common sense.

Eat that, you want for nowt!

Just perfect, absolutely perfect!

What a great pairing!

Does what it says in the catalogue, that!

# You were meant for me... #

Pairings like pork and apple are fantastic,

but they also have an important part in our food history.

Now, if we're talking about the ultimate food duo,

there's a matchup that's so spot on,

I can't imagine life in Britain without it.

# Oh-h-h haddock or cod or sprats or hake

# Filleted Dover sole

# Kippers or scampi, plaice or skate

# Mackerel by the shoal I tell you

# Everything's fresh and newly fried Hot to the fingertips

# You've never eaten till you've tried

# Old English fish and chips

# Oi! #

When it comes to great British food pairings

you don't get much greater

than the marriage of two

of our most popular national foods,

fish and chips.

But surprisingly

no-one agrees exactly where fish and chips got together.

No-one knows who started cooking them either,

but both north and south England,

claim to have paired them up first.

Down south in the 1840s,

Londoners had a flourishing potato industry

and a tradition of eating fried spuds.

Meanwhile up north in Lancashire,

they had a thriving fishing industry

and love their fried fish.

Both claim to have opened the first fish and chip shop in the 1860s.

Jewish immigrant, Joseph Malin,

opened his in London's East End...

while in Manchester,

John Lees called his shop a restaurant.

They both became so popular,

people opened fish and chip shops everywhere,

including in their own houses.

Working class diets were bleak and unvaried

so fish and chips

became a filling and affordable alternative.

The meal even played its part in World War One.

The National Federation of Fish Fryers

claimed fish and chips enabled the factories to keep going

and so helped win the war.

And in World War Two,

fish and chips were thought so essential to the family diet,

that they were one of the few foods never rationed.

Thousands of young evacuees found them a comforting reminder of home.

'Sir Winston Churchill called them "the good companion".

'No other food has won such a place

'in the British way of life.'

And the nation's favourite fry even managed to boost

the morale of some lucky troops.

'It's been said that the British tummy has three basic needs,

'shops in Nicosia cater for two of them, fish and chips.'

I wonder what the third was.

The mind boggles.

# Fish and chips

# A little cork and you, oh babe... #

After the war, fish and chips went upmarket

and found its way onto the dinner plates of all classes.

Good afternoon, sir. Ready to order?

Yes, I'll have the haddock, chips, mushy peas,

tea, bread and butter.

Right, love. Thank you.

Good here, ain't it?

The idea of making this working class meal

into a posh dining experience was the brainchild of one man.

Harry Ramsden. He famously built up his restaurant empire

from a small hut in Leeds in 1928.

Now, over 50 years later, Harry Ramsden's is the biggest

fish and chip shop in the world.

That'll be a record breaker, then!

The UK has over 10,000 fish and chip shops.

More than half the adult population visits one at least once a month.

-# Who invented fish?

-God!

-# Who invented chips?

-God did too!

-# Who invented fish and chips?

-The English did!

-Really? #

But with fish stocks under threat,

to feed our appetite in the future we're going to have to use

other fish as well as our favourite cod and plaice.

Hopefully that way our great fish and chip tradition

is going to survive.

Fish and chips are a classic combo,

but the search for a perfect food match never ends.

And to explore some modern food pairings,

we're heading to Edinburgh.

Scotland might be famous for its 'Haggis, Neeps and Tatties',

but we're here to take a look at a more contemporary approach

to Scottish cooking.

The Scottish Whisky Heritage Centre houses a top quality restaurant

that pairs the finest whiskies with Scottish produce,

to create some intriguing food pairings.

But before we head there,

there's a very special collection we've got to see.

-Wow!

-Wow!

-So this is the...

Oh, wow!

Oh, man!

-So, welcome to the world's largest collection of Scotch whisky.

-Crikey.

It's all whisky? It's not cold tea?

No, it's all genuine stuff, never a bottle opened.

'Showing us around is Marketing Manager, Julie Hunter.'

What's the oldest bottle of whisky you have here?

There are two really old bottles in the collection over here.

One is M James Buchanan from 1897,

and then next to it is the John Dewar's from 1904.

-This is amazing.

-It is, isn't it?

There are 3,500 different bottles of whisky,

so each one is different, unique and individual.

This is Scottish history in liquid form, I think. It's mad.

Do you think you got every whisky in the world here?

You know, we haven't.

We've got 3,500, but we absolutely know

that there are plenty of bottles that aren't in the collection

and we're continuing to collect every year as well.

Whisky has been distilled in Scotland,

in one form or another, since the 15th century.

There are countless varieties, all with highly individual flavours.

Everything makes an incremental difference to the flavour,

from the type of fuel that was used to dry the barley...

'The furnace below the kiln is served with coke and peat.

'The aroma of the peat imparted to the barley during the drying stage

'eventually gives character to the whisky.'

..to the kind of wood that makes the casks

and how long it's aged for.

A drop of good stuff.

'A tap on the cask tells the expert ear whether it's still sound or not.'

Most importantly,

the character of the whisky varies from region to region.

Producers claim it's all about the local water.

An expert can easily tell which part of Scotland a whisky comes from.

These are the island malt whiskies from the island of Isla.

In cooking terms, this means each regional whisky brings

something different to the table.

One of the ways the Heritage Centre has been experimenting

with the different characters of whisky,

is by using it in their cooking.

David Neave is a classically-trained chef

who learned his trade in London and Paris.

He now experiments with whisky to find the perfect food pairing.

-Hello, I'm Dave.

-I'm another David as well.

'David takes ingredients from different regions of Scotland

'and pairs them up with a whisky from the same area.

'The idea is that they will naturally complement each other.'

Islay for example, if you put that with seafood, shellfish,

then it is just a magical thing.

It's very smoky, isn't it?

That comes through with the seaweed, it's like it's supposed to be there.

'His first dish is a selection of fish and seafood

'from the island of Islay, including langoustine and hake,

'paired up with Islay's local malt whisky.'

-Oh, that is fabulous.

-Not too bad.

It is just brilliant,

because fundamentally, in that pan, is Scotland, isn't it?

-And then we're just about to add a bit more.

-This is Islay.

'Mind your eyebrows!'

Oh, look at that.

'To get the subtle whisky flavours,

'David burns off the alcohol in the pan.'

You just know that it's going to taste fabulous.

Oh, I can't wait.

-I'm so looking forward to trying this.

-Oh, yeah.

That's a lovely looking plate of food.

-You cannot ask for more than that.

-I know.

-I think that's going to be a treat.

-Yeah, so do I.

Something has happened to the seafood. It's more seafoody!

-It's mad.

-That's gorgeous.

-Absolutely superb.

-You actually are eating this.

-It's absolutely gorgeous.

Absolutely superb. What an interesting food pairing.

Have you got any more?

'His next dish comes from the lowlands of Scotland.

'Venison stuffed with rabbit and wrapped in bacon,

'paired up with a lowland whisky.'

So this is a lowland whisky. Soft, subtle flavours, lovely.

-Yeah.

-It smells like grass, doesn't it? It smells of grass.

That's what we hope.

'Then to make a sauce from the juices and whisky, he adds some stock.'

-Look at that. Look at that.

-Beautiful, isn't it?

-Yes.

It's served with a clever dauphinoise of carrots,

neeps and tatties.

Lovely. Sweet with the honey, but the whisky...

That is spectacular.

-The whisky's complementing it.

-And it heightens the flavour.

-It's fabulous.

-Just gorgeous, isn't it?

-Really, really well balanced.

-David, fantastic food.

-A very clever food pairing. That sums it up.

Absolutely superb.

David, it has been our greatest of pleasures to meet you.

Thank you so very, very much.

I look forward to working my way through your menu.

It's great to see David's work

in creating new and exciting food pairings.

He's continuing the quest for a perfect match

that has obsessed chefs for millennia.

Marrying together natural taste companions has a long

and venerable history.

And in Cumbria one man has dedicated his life to exploring that tradition.

Best of British food historian, Ivan Day,

loves nothing more than to cook over an open fire in his farmhouse.

And he's got a surprise about one of our great British food pairings.

One of the classic combinations that everybody knows

in this country, is the iconic roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

But if you delve a little bit into the history of the dish,

you find out that 250-300 years ago when it first evolved,

it wasn't roast beef, it was roast mutton and Yorkshire pudding.

So what I'm going to do today is to go back to the earliest recipe,

which is from 1737, and make you roast mutton and Yorkshire pudding.

Oh, that sounds delicious.

We're in for a treat, as Ivan isn't just going for one classic combination.

How about adding some seafood?

They used to stuff mutton with anchovies.

Kind of the original surf and turf.

If I smell a joint of mutton that's been hung for about 25 days,

it smells like an old, muddy creek, and anchovies have got

a very, very similar taste.

I think it's that that suggested to people the idea of combining it.

But we don't need to put any salt on at all,

because it's all been provided by these little fishy fellows.

Using this pastry brush, which is made out of goose feathers,

I'm going to give it a fairly nice anointing with some melted butter.

We won't need really to baste it very much at all,

because mutton has got a wonderful jacket of fat over the top.

Mutton like this is from a sheep more than a year old,

younger than that and it's lamb that gets the chop.

In the early days neither lamb nor mutton

were everyday foods for commoners like us.

We'd be on oats and barley.

This particular breed of mutton is local to the Lake District

where I live.

It's called Herdwick, and is one of the oldest breeds in Britain.

Probably at least 1,000 years old, and it is a mountain sheep,

so it is living mainly of wild herbs and grass,

so it has an amazingly sweet flavour.

So it's a bit of history in itself, the actual breed.

So that's ready to be hung up in front of the fire.

So here's how to roast.

Just hang it up in front of the fire.

But to do yourself a good turn, you need a bit of clockwork.

This gadget is called a bottle jack and it gently spins

so that the joint is cooked nice and even.

This mechanism first appeared at the end of the 18th century

and it enabled people to roast vertically,

instead of a great big spit with a huge fire going round that way,

this goes round in a vertical axis,

which meant you could use a much smaller fireplace, which meant

quite ordinary people living in a cottage or a small farmhouse

or even a townhouse could start roasting meat.

So during the 19th century, this became the most popular way

of the Englishman producing his Sunday dinner.

Nowadays we don't roast at all, we bake the meat in an oven.

And this is a lost English art.

Next, we need Yorkshire pudding.

Ivan is going to follow the first published instructions

from this 1737 book where it was originally called Dripping Pudding.

But it's not made of dripping.

Hang around and you'll see where the dripping bit from.

Ivan is using the familiar pancake recipe,

eggs and flour.

They didn't have electric mixers back in the 18th and 19th century,

but there was always a willing kitchen maid

or a little boy who would be given this sort of work.

And after beating, add milk.

OK, that's beginning to look like a nice, smooth batter now.

Well, I'd be putting my batter in a hot tin in the oven now.

But the old-fashioned way gives you something a bit special.

This is the Georgian and Victorian way of doing it.

I'm going to put the frying pan on to the fire.

After five minutes on the fire,

Ivan finishes off the cooking by placing it under the meat.

What we have here is the original combination of roast mutton

and Yorkshire pudding, and you can see the Yorkshire pudding

is rising like the wood in the oven, but it's now in front of the fire,

a process that used to be called firing.

There were lots of other fired puddings.

There was a wonderful potato pudding that was fired under meat

and even a suet pudding that was fired under a joint too.

So the Yorkshire pudding is the only surviving one

of this group of fired puddings.

The top crust now gets dripped on by all those delicious juices.

Hence the name dripping pudding.

All the meat juices run down the little bone

and drizzles the drips into the pan.

And what's going to happen is,

that will cook in the intense heat of this fire

and caramelise on top of the pudding,

and that's really what gives this 18th century Yorkshire pudding

its unique flavour,

and why it was such a popular dish to serve with meat.

That's it.

Oh, that meat looks a treat. A feast fit for a King.

But Ivan that looks a soggy mess to me, mate.

I know it looks like a chapatti that's gone wrong or a pizza

that someone's forgotten to put the topping on,

but this is actually the mother of all Yorkshire puddings.

Well, I have to say, paired with the roast

I wouldn't mind feasting on that.

Yep, there are flavours we'd never get to taste today

if it weren't for enthusiasts like Ivan.

1747, Yorkshire pudding, not with beef,

but with mutton studded with anchovies.

The flavour of the Georgian age.

Well, that's got us thinking.

For our final recipe we're going to take another traditional pairing,

but this time give it a modern twist.

Now one of those classical pairings has been pears and cheese.

But no more so than pears and Stilton. Pear and Stilton.

And we've turned this into what we believe to be

a modern British Classic.

We've turned it into a fruity little pear and stilton tartlet,

with good old walnuts for some extra crunch.

It's a real little feast.

-One, two.

-Yes!

-Three.

-Yes!

While Si's making the filling, I'm going to make the pastry.

It's really simple.

To start with, I just need 300g of plain flour and 175g of butter.

Blitz the crumbs, add an egg, and we have a very short pastry.

For the filling, prepare three Conference pears.

There's nothing like a Conference pear, is there?,

but pears have been around for a while.

And do you know, they were always thought more superior to apples.

Really?

Yes, in 1640 there were 64 known types of pear,

and by 1872, there were 700.

What we're going to do is peel the pears, slice them,

fry them in butter.

You know when you take the skin off a pear,

they're slippy little devils, aren't they?

-It's because they're juicy.

-Yeah.

Just pulse the flour and butter together

until they're like breadcrumbs.

Sling an egg in. Wacko! Mr Pastry!

There is no liquid in this crust apart from an egg,

but this is so short, it's shorter than Ronnie Corbett in his socks.

Just pulse and add, and a block of pastry will miraculously appear.

It's happening.

It never ceases to amaze me how making pastry is so simple.

So how come my Auntie Marion's always used to turn out

like cricket pads?

Now this is a swine to handle.

But you know, the harder it is to work with,

-the more it'll melt in your mouth.

-That's it.

Now, wrap this in Clingfilm, pop it into the fridge for half an hour,

and the butter will firm up again

and it will give us pastry that we can work with.

'But all will be lost if you can't get your tarts out of the tin.

'So use loose-bottomed pastry cases

'and give each one' a thorough coating of butter.

With the size of Dave's tartlets, they aren't going to fit in there,

but what I want to do is get a nice, even colour all over these pears.

So what we will do is half them when they come out of the pan

and they're evenly coloured.

What will happen is the sugar in the pears will caramelise

and sweeten to become the perfect partner for the savoury Stilton.

Stilton cheese is first thought to have seen

the light of day at the Bell Inn in Stilton.

And Daniel Defoe writes about Stilton in 1772

and there he calls it the English Parmesan, which is very interesting,

because Italians have been eating pair with Parmesan for years.

A bit of flour, and these tart tins can consider themselves

well and truly prepared.

Now we need to divide the pastry into eight.

Roll out, line the tart tins and blind bake them.

Oh, look, we've got some colour on these pears now. They go quite quickly.

They're fickle things, pears.

And when you buy a bag and you put them there and they're rock,

like hand-grenades four days, and you turn your back,

and the next minute they're cotton wool.

-You've got to catch it that moment when it's on the cusp.

-You do.

Tell you what, you don't put them next to bananas, do you?

Because if you put them next to bananas, bananas make everything go soft.

So take your bananas out the fruit bowl with the rest of your fruit

and put them to one side in isolation.

Don't make sure bananas with other fruit.

OK, look we are getting so nice colours on these pears now.

And that's just the sugars in the pears caramelising on the hot

surface of the pan, and that's what you want, that sort of lovely colour.

When doing the bases, roll out each pastry ball onto

a lightly-floured surface

and press it into the base and sides of the tins.

Make sure you trim off any excess.

Now I'm making a savoury custard

for the pears and stilton to cuddle up in, using three eggs,

300ml of creme fraiche and three finely chopped sage leaves.

What we want to do is mix that together, but don't whisk it too hard,

because if you put too much air in it it's not going to do the job

that it's supposed to do,

which is hold all those lovely, lovely textures in that tartlet.

And because these tartlets have a savoury element

I'm going to season with salt and pepper.

Tip the pears onto a piece of kitchen towel

to soak up the excess butter.

They are glistening with loveliness.

By now Dave should have finished lining the tins.

Hey! There we go. Eight.

I tell you what, that's a marathon session, dude.

It is quite impressive, that.

To prevent the pastry going soggy when we add the filling,

we've got to pre-bake the cases.

It's called blind baking and for this you usually add

a temporary filling of dried beans.

But we've dragged blind baking, along with pear and Stilton,

into the 21st century.

Don't worry, it won't burn,

a Clingfilm bag full of lentils that fits exactly.

I know it's an odd convention, but they use it in professional kitchens

all the time, so we're letting you in on a little secret, you see.

Make sure they're nice and tidy on the tray.

It doesn't make any difference, but it does to me.

Pop those into a preheated oven of 180 degrees Celsius,

for a fan oven, for 20 minutes.

Then we take the little baggies out

and leave them in for 10 minutes more.

Then we fill them, bake them and eat them.

Did you know that sage, for centuries,

has been used as a medicinal herb?

Yeah, I did. It was traditionally associated with long life as well.

I think I might have heard that somewhere, yeah.

Did you know that by washing your hair with sage infusion,

it lessened the chances of hair loss?

Obviously not.

I'll have to try that then.

Did you know that sage leaves were also good to rub on to a bruise?

And did you know that Italy, France

and Greece eat twice as much cheese as we do?

And did you know that every spring sees the inhabitants of Stilton

racing and rolling a cheese through their streets?

-I think I did, yeah.

-It's called a cheese roll.

After 20 minutes take out the Clingfilm bags.

Aaah! Aaah!

'Don't be daft, Dave, use a fork, mate.'

Turn the oven down to 150 degrees and bake for another ten minutes.

This will dry out the bottoms.

-Oh, nice, mate.

-Lovely, aren't they?

There is no sense of sog in those bases.

They're ready to receive the happy couple.

First, crumble in the Stilton.

And you don't need much, because Stilton can be a virulent beast.

But, this is the sour for the lovely sweet pears, which now,

thanks to Mr King, are beautifully caramelised.

What I am going to do is cut a few slices of pear in half,

and then just putting some in there.

It is all beginning to kind of work, isn't it?

It is one of those kind of mad things that you read it

and think, "I'm not sure."

Now the guests of honour for this happy occasion, the walnuts.

Just roughly sprinkle them over the top.

Nothing terribly refined.

You want to keep the texture integrity of all the flavours

and, actually, if the nuts on the top roast a bit,

there's nowt wrong with that.

It does kind of say autumn and winter.

It's got a lovely feel to it, the palate of flavours.

Finally, fill the tartlets with that lovely egg custard.

And tap them down to help it all settle.

And they shouldn't rise up much, so don't worry about filling them to the top.

And then just go round and just top up once it's settled.

The tartlets now need to go back in the oven at 150 degrees Celsius

for another 30 minutes or until set.

Yes! Now these will need to cool a tadge.

They are bubbling away like a good'un, aren't they?

I'd give them five minutes then pop them out of the case,

then give them another 10 and then consume whilst warm.

They are beautiful.

Look how that's bubbling. Look at that.

I must say, nicely filled, Mr King.

'These sumptuous tarts are stunning served warm,

'with a green salad of watercress and rocket.'

Look at those. Look at those.

I'm at a bit of a loss with this one.

-Let's eat it.

-I think so.

-We might as well.

Look at that.

That's all that lovely caramelised pear, the Stilton,

crunchy walnuts and egg and creme fraiche.

And a pastry that's as light as a light thing.

She's a bonny little tart.

What's lovely about it is, it's one of those textures,

the sage goes through it.

-But when you hit the pear...

-Lovely, isn't it?

But that pastry, it's so simple. It's flour, butter and one egg.

Nothing else. And it tastes stupendous.

And that is a perfect pairing. The pear and the Stilton. Beautiful.

With walnuts and sage as the bridesmaids.

What more can you say?

There are some foods that are just made for each other.

You know if you team them up, you're in for some fantastic flavours.

And the great thing is, you can use food pairings to experiment

and create all kinds of fantastic meals.

But more than that, food pairings are part of our national identity.

Landmark dishes where you can't think of one part without the other.

And whilst we have some great old traditions,

there are new combinations popping up to keep British food pairings fresh.

Visit bbc.co.uk/food to discover some amazing facts

about the history of food.

And to find out how to cook up tonight's recipes.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

Email: [email protected]