A Taste of the Med 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.

-Aaah!

-Nice.

-Now, 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.

-Oh, brilliant!

Oh, wow.

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

Now, during this series,

we're going to be taking you on a journey into our culinary past.

Everything's ready, so let's get cracking.

We'll explore its revealing stories...

Wow!

..and meet the heroes who keep our culinary past alive.

Pontefract liquorice has been my life,

and I've loved every minute of it.

And, of course, be cooking up a load of dishes

that reveal our foodie evolution.

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

We have a taste of history.

Quite simply...

BOTH: the best of British.

We've always absorbed cuisines from all over the world.

We've reached into every corner of the globe

and brought back a taste of it.

-From the Romans...

-To the Normans...

-..the Crusades...

-The Empire...

..tourism and immigration.

All of these things have influenced our great British cuisine.

That's what makes our food so fantastic -

it's not rigid, but ever-changing and evolving.

And one style of cooking we're particularly fond of

is that of the Med.

And that's what we'll be celebrating in today's programme.

Continental food now accounts for many

of our nation's favourite dishes,

but not so long ago, things were very different.

Before the 1960s,

the closest many of us got to exotic food was a tin of pineapple chunks.

Pasta meant Alphabetti Spaghetti...

..and olive oil was Popeye's girlfriend.

When it came to our holidays, we also had simple tastes,

and made the most of what Blighty had to offer.

But all that was about to change.

The package holiday would make foreign travel more affordable.

Us Brits were heading for the sun.

It began slowly in the '50s, and momentum gathered in the '60s.

MUSIC: "Hot Hot Hot" by Arrow

# Feeling hot, hot, hot

# Feeling hot, hot, hot... #

By the late '70s,

some 2.5 million Brits a year went on package holidays.

And that swelled to 10 million by 1986.

We quickly entered into the spirit of things...

..soaking up all the local flavours.

But when it came to the nosh, at first, we were a bit more reticent.

What do you like about Benidorm?

I like the food. The food's very nice.

-The English...?

-The English food, yes. It's very nice.

Well, we wouldn't want to upset our delicate constitutions

with that unfamiliar foreign muck, now, would we?

Thankfully, familiar food was readily available.

Fish and chips, a pint of English ale and all the trimmings.

But some people didn't even trust that,

and took their own food from home.

For the few brave souls

who were willing to risk havoc with their stomach

and indulge in some of the local cuisine,

even ordering it could prove a little daunting.

Most of the waiters in the bars only speak enough

to serve you with a drink.

They don't actually speak English.

Once you deviate from the subject that they're selling to you,

they don't understand what you're saying.

Brits would try anything to avoid having to speak a foreign language.

If you don't know what you want in the restaurant,

just show this up and just point to the appropriate thing.

-This always assumes the waiter's quite intelligent.

-Aubergine!

-And they should understand what you want.

-That's probably very good!

But when they did manage to get served,

they realised it wasn't half bad.

MUSIC: "Je T'aime...Moi Non Plus" by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin

Little did they know it,

but they were at the coalface of a food revolution.

Because we took more home with us

then lobster-coloured skin and a sombrero.

We'd also developed a taste for continental food.

And that's not all.

Come and see me in England.

You can come and see me. My mum won't mind.

Unfortunately, when people got home,

they didn't find it all that easy to replicate.

We've all eaten pasta, and for most of us,

it comes out of a tin, or dried, in a snack pot, or a packet.

But thank goodness for television cooks,

who were about to teach us how to rustle up our own.

I get lots of queries about cooking spaghetti,

asking why it sticks together, this, that and the other.

So I think it's quite a good thing to have a run through and see.

# Do-be-do-be-do! #

MUSIC: "Macarena" by Los Del Rio

Soon, supermarket shelves reflected our changing eating habits,

and now we regularly devour food from all over the world.

And today, in the Best of British kitchen, we're going to cook up

a holiday classic that's become a British favourite,

and it's guaranteed to transport you to sunnier climes.

# Eviva Espana! #

Ole!

# For we are off to sunny Spain, we're gonna make paella. #

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a paella pan.

-And that's what we're going to make.

-Paella.

Paella is actually a pan, not a dish.

And the word paella comes from the Roman for pan.

This delicious paella is easy and packed full of flavour and colour.

Succulent chicken, tasty mussels,

perfect prawns and plump rice, all spiced up with paprika and saffron.

I'm just going to put some oil in the pan,

because that's a very good place to start.

For our paella, we try to do quite a generic recipe,

the sort of thing that you might have tasted on your holidays,

and you want to make it when you come home, and you want one

that's got all the elements, without becoming a pan of confusion.

A confused paella is not a good way to approach said dish.

You want a dish, not a pan of mud as is so often seen.

Now, what I'm going to do is season these lovely, boned chicken thighs.

-Hello! Smiling sausage!

-We've got to eat that, man!

That's all right, I'm behind my beard!

-MOCK SPANISH ACCENT:

-This is a chorizo,

or choritho, as they thay in Thpain.

This is a cooking chorizo, one that needs cooking,

and it's the best type to use for paella.

-I'm going to cut this into slices.

-What's lovely,

and what you'll see when we do cook it,

it leaches this wonderful paprika fat that's deep red and lovely.

But the paella is this combination of chicken, chorizo, saffron,

rice, vegetables, prawns, mussels.

It can be whatever you want. It can be clams.

They say the paella originated in Valencia.

But we know the first paellas were made with predominantly rabbit,

because that was what poor folk ate.

As time went on they realised,

"I can put this in with the rice, it'd be brilliant."

Because rice is a great flavour carrier.

"I can put duck in, it'd be brilliant."

"I can put in chicken, prawns, be brilliant!"

You can put what you want in, really.

Just going to put this chicken in first.

Once the chicken is nicely browned, pop in the chopped chorizo.

Kind of half the trick to this is the smokiness and the paprika

leaching into that oil, and that oil is what we turn

the rice and vegetables into, and the flavour just goes on and on.

After a few minutes, use a slotted spoon to lift the chicken

and chorizo into a bowl and put it aside for later.

Next, chop an onion and sweat it in the paprika-infused oil.

The lovely thing is, when you cook something like this,

you've experienced it when you've been abroad,

it takes you back there, doesn't it?

When tender and lightly browned, add a tablespoon of olive oil,

a chopped red pepper and some green beans.

You're getting very hungry, aren't you? I know I am.

I tell you what, I've just seen Mrs Miggins' arm come out.

Will you stop that? Mrs Miggins, just wait! Wait, will ye?

Now, you can't have anything Spanish, or "Foreign!"

as me dad would call it, without "Garlic!"

My dad was a disaster with food.

He refused to eat tinned chicken soup,

because he said it was "Full o' garlic!"

The thought dreadful!

Spaghetti, "Comes in tins."

THEY LAUGH

I remember my first paella.

-It was one of those Vestas. Do you remember those?

-Oh, yes!

You put water on, and you had a meal. It felt so exotic.

I mean, their paella was luminous. You could see it from Mars.

Little did I know that that was the first tentative steps

-that have brought me to where I am here.

-Where's that?

-In the kitchen?

-The pinnacle of culinary culinariness!

Stir in three cloves of finely grated garlic

and a heaped teaspoon of the secret ingredient - smoked paprika.

It gives it like a wonderful outdoor barbecue sense to it.

-It did say heaped teaspoon, didn't it?

-Yes!

It is now! I love this stuff.

It's great.

-And then it just smells fantastic.

-Saffron. I love saffron.

-He's not keen.

-I'm not.

-More expensive than gold.

-But you don't need much.

-You don't.

-Uno pincho, two pincho.

-That'll do!

And a bay leaf.

The smells, man. I wish you could smell this at home. It's so lovely.

-But all of this is just a dressing for the rice.

-It is, mate.

-Absolutely.

-The time has come. Bring out the rice.

Add 250 grammes of paella rice and stir it around the pan

until it's glistening with paprika-infused oil loveliness.

Then, the chicken and chorizo needs to go back in

along with any of the juices that have collected in the bowl.

And now the liquid.

We're using chicken stock, but you can do a vegetarian paella.

Obviously, use vegetable stock, and vegetables.

You can do a fish paella, use fish stock.

But, you know, for this one, chicken stock.

You'll need about 900ml of the stock made with one stock cube.

And let it simmer away over a medium heat for about 12 minutes,

stirring occasionally.

12 minutes, and the rice has started to grow.

-I think it may be time for the mussels. Do you?

-Aye.

Go on, get them flexed.

Scatter 500-750g of well-scrubbed live mussels on top of the paella.

Make sure the beards have been removed

and that they're well tucked into the hot rice and steaming liquid.

Then cover with tin foil to allow them to steam

in all the lovely aromas for five minutes on a fairly high heat.

Wait for the mussels to open, and discard any that don't.

And look, they're all open.

So we give it one last stir,

and from this point on, we don't kind of mess with it, do we?

-Time for the prawns. Heads first, into the centre.

-I think so, yeah.

Like Morris-dancing prawns.

When those have gone pink, your paella is done.

-MOCK SPANISH ACCENT:

-Thanthy a cervetha?

-I do.

-Thmashing!

Reduce the heat slightly and it will need to cook

for a further six to eight minutes,

leaving you time to perfect your Spanish.

'Esto bocadillo es el mas grande.'

But do remember to turn the prawns halfway through.

Right, and may the spirit of Torremolinos be upon us. Hoo-hoo!

-That is as pretty as a picture.

-That is as pretty as a paella.

All we need now is parsley sprinkles

and a kind of daintily-placed lemon wedge.

-I'm wedging.

-I'm sprinkling.

-Are you dancing?

-I'm asking.

DAVE SIGHS

-Look at that.

-Yes.

Now, in the true tradition of this wonderful dish,

I'll have that half, and you can have that half.

It's quite easy to demarc, this one, isn't it?

Do you know what people used to do?

It was very handy that the paella pan was round, and the big ones

made a perfectly functional table, so they would sit around the pan

and you would get a fork, and you'd go, "That's my section,"

and people eating paella would stick to their own turf.

That's mine, that's yours.

That's mine. Don't, don't transgress.

-I'm not, I'm not!

-You are!

It's all about the rice in paella.

Try the chicken.

That's been poached in all that paprika, chorizo...

That...is fabulous.

Isn't it? It's got everything a paella should have.

Taste, colour, variety. It's got holiday spirit!

Thankfully, being British, we don't have to get on a plane

to taste authentic Mediterranean food.

All the ingredients are readily available,

so you can cook up this fantastic food at home.

We're lucky that people from all over the world

have made Britain home,

giving us such an exciting and varied cuisine.

Today, you can find a little bit f Italy on every street corner,

from pizzerias to coffee shops,

all serving up traditional dishes and ingredients.

And you can find one of the best Italian delis in the world

in Edinburgh.

Valvona & Crolla is run by husband and wife team

Philip and Mary Contini.

They are part of the thriving Scottish-Italian community

which has been estimated to number over 35,000 people,

and it's played a key role in the country's food heritage.

My grandfather, Alfonso Crolla, he emigrated from Italy,

and came to Edinburgh in 1910.

The original Italians that came here either sold fish and chips

or ice cream, and this original shop was in fact an ice cream shop.

And he came here and made ice cream here, with his brother-in-law,

and they lived in the dark basement of this shop,

and when his wife and son came, they, too, lived in the basement.

Ah! Ice cream!

Ah! Fish and chips! What better way to win favour with the locals

than through their bellies?

Well, it certainly works with me.

Soon, there were scores of Italian ice cream and fish and chip shops

springing up all over the Scottish countryside.

Alfonso Crolla settled in Edinburgh, and what he did,

as a lot of the Italians did in different parts of the UK,

was to bring more of his family across, or his relations,

from the same village.

So, Alfonso brought across quite a few of his brothers,

his cousins, and my grandfather, and set him up in business

down the coast in East Lothian, where our family had their business.

Fish and chips was the perfect business

for the Italian incomers to Scotland.

It was a relatively modern creation.

The first stall had opened in London, around 1860.

The Italians' inherent love of food and good ingredients allowed them

to spot the potential in the natural produce of Scotland.

Fantastic fish and perfect potatoes.

They quickly turned into food entrepreneurs

and were responsible for building businesses all over Scotland.

Can you imagine, in 1910,

being able to eat something like fried fish and crispy potatoes?

It must have just been a sensation.

Of course, Italians are very competitive,

especially the ones who emigrated

so each family would settle in a village

and want their ice cream and fish and chips

to be better than everyone else's,

so the Scots got very high-quality product from the beginning.

But whilst the ever-increasing Italian population

were satisfying the Scottish appetite,

they were missing many of their own tastes from back home,

and Philip's grandfather saw a gap in the market.

This shop was established in 1934.

It was changed from an ice cream shop into this Italian delicatessen.

I would say that, 75 years ago, 95% of our customers were Italian.

It was initially just a tiny hole in the wall,

packed high to the ceiling, as you can see.

Now, we have wine, cheese, salami, Parma ham, pasta.

We used to sell the pasta in drawers, by the pound,

so we had lots of drawers you pulled out to get the shape you wanted.

Then we would get cheese from Italy, and packages of sausages,

which was the huge desire of all Italians, to get the product.

We imported coffee, and we imported the raw beans,

and we roasted it here in the shop.

And I guess that this was happening all over the world,

where there were Italians.

They created this coffee culture,

because they had to have their cup of coffee that they were used to

back home in Italy.

And of course, now, coffee is international, isn't it?

It wasn't until after the war that Scottish people

started to come into the shops,

because the soldiers who had fought in Italy, first of all

against the Italians, and then, in the second half of the war,

with the Italians,

they started to taste Italian food, and that's where it all started.

The post-war years would see the shop's appeal widen.

But again, it would be thanks to the birth of the package holiday

that the market would really take off.

The change in the shop was to do with the Scots who began to travel,

and who were travelling on holiday to Italy, and coming back,

and they had tasted different kinds of pasta,

different types of wine and cheeses, and they wanted more of the same.

And so, gradually,

the Scots were outnumbering the Italians who were buying from us.

And our story is mirrored throughout Scotland

and probably throughout Britain.

The deli has come a long way

since Alfonso Crolla first arrived in Edinburgh over 100 years ago.

But so has the British palate.

Visitors to the deli's restaurant are now very keen to eat food

that their Scottish ancestors may have turned their noses up at.

And owner Mary still loves serving up all the finest local ingredients

cooked in the traditional Italian way.

What I want to do today

is celebrate the food that we ate when we were kids.

The fishermen left langoustines at the back door for us,

or even some squid, because the Scots didn't want to eat it then,

this is talking about more than 40 years ago.

The fishermen now remember their fathers throwing overboard, I mean,

the langoustines from Scotland are better than anything,

and we're going to prepare it now, and fry it in olive oil,

deep-fried, and make a fritto misto.

We'll add some courgettes, and just show you

how wonderful Scottish produce is.

Frying is a good way of eating

because it seals the flavour in, and if it's drained properly,

and you use good oil, it's a healthy way of eating.

It's typical of Neapolitan street food,

where, even today, you see people standing on the side of the street,

frying things, just to feed passing people that are hungry.

The fritto misto that we do here in the cafe bar,

and other Italian restaurants do, is an extension of fish and chips.

There's a heritage, in Italy, of deep-frying fish.

And so, you can take any fish, any shellfish, and deep-fry it,

and just with that light batter, just cooked to a crisp,

but keeping the fish moist.

It's a stunning thing to eat.

And the last thing we would do is just sprinkle some sea salt,

just to season at the very end.

# O fritto misto! #

It looks delicious.

The Scots-Italians are the luckiest of races, cos we have everything.

We have everything we love from Italy, here,

we've got the lovely ingredients from Scotland,

which sometimes are even better than Italian ingredients,

and we have the skills to make them taste good, so we are a bit spoiled.

Not quite as sunny, though!

But who cares when you've got great food?

From being virtually unheard of,

Italian cuisine is now a British favourite.

It's been calculated that spaghetti Bolognese

is eaten on average nearly 3,000 times in our lifetime -

more than stew and cottage pie.

And one adopted Brit who's done his bit to raise the profile

of Italian food over the years is restaurateur Antonio Carluccio.

NEWSREADER: They call him Mr Mushroom.

But now Antonio Carluccio, the man who's developed a business empire

through his enthusiasm for Italian cooking,

is taking his restaurant chain, Carluccio's, to the stock market.

His first Italian food shop opened in 1991. He later added an eatery.

Today, Carluccio's is a feature on many of our high streets.

He's the Godfather of Italian gastronomy.

He was also one of the first chefs to celebrate

Italian food on our screens.

Package holidays may have given us a taste for Mediterranean food,

but television was instrumental in teaching us how to cook it.

-Every day's a holiday when you've got Carluccio.

-It's true, it's true.

The Italian stallion.

I've got a few minutes of time, so I'll show you

a wonderful dessert from Italy.

Yolk of egg. Sugar.

He's a bit like an Italian Delia.

-His recipes work, don't they?

-They do.

Then I add the mascarpone cheese,

which is a wonderful cheese that you can eat it savoury and sweet.

In this case we do it as a dessert.

He came here in about 1975, didn't he?

Yeah, he worked in Germany before he came to England.

-Yeah.

-And opened restaurants.

He had one near Neal's Yard for donkey's years.

Yeah. That's where he trained up score of British chefs,

including Jamie Oliver!

Dip them in this coffee but don't leave them too long,

otherwise they soak too much and they become very soft and breakable.

So this is the first layer.

Then the mascarpone, which is wonderful.

Creamy and nice. Calories here... As many as you want!

THEY LAUGH

The second biscuits are the amaretti biscuits, which I dip in this wine.

A bit longer because they are harder.

And we build a layer with that one.

When he cooks, he cooks with the air of a man who's been

knocking it out in the kitchen for donkey's years, doesn't he?

-He's very, very adept.

-He's fabulous.

And a bit more of those. Everybody knows amaretti,

which means little, bitter almond biscuit.

I love the way he's very relaxed,

the way that he kind of approaches his food, isn't it?

-He was born on the Amalfi coast, you know.

-Next to the lemons.

The other layer is simply whipped cream. So there we come with that.

Wonderful.

And the finishing touch is a little bit of cocoa powder.

So this is the tiramisu, or lift-me-up or pick-me-up

Italian dessert, very quick - you can make it.

He makes it seem so effortless.

You can see why he's been so successful

in making Italian food accessible to us Brits, can't you?

There we are.

Our obsession with continental cookery might seem to be

a relatively recent thing, but in actual fact,

Mediterranean food was being regularly consumed on these shores

nearly 2,000 years ago.

But back then, olive oil was the preserve the rich, Roman elite,

the first wave of Italians to come to our fair isle.

On the outskirts of Chichester, there was once an immense

and sumptuous palace.

Before the Romans, Iron Age Brits got by with bread, beer and milk,

fruits and berries, some basic veg, peas, beans, bit of cabbage

and occasionally some wild mushrooms and seafood.

But when it comes to food, what have the Romans really done for us?

Fishbourne Palace was built in the 1st century AD.

It's the largest and most luxurious Roman residence

to have been discovered in Britain.

-Doesn't look like a Roman palace.

-Wait until we get inside.

Unfortunately, the structure has long gone,

but miraculously, this floor with its amazing mosaics has survived.

Archaeologist Jaane Rowehl believes it gives us an invaluable insight

into the Romans' relationship with food.

This is one of the central pieces of the whole palace structure.

-It is one of our dining rooms.

-So the Romans, then, had a special room

for dining, food was that important to them.

What does the archaeology tell us

about what the Romans actually ate here?

The first clue is already in the mosaic.

You can see in the central bits we have craters that were used for wine.

And we can imagine there was a lot of wine consumed

-in a dining room like this.

-Hmm.

At Fishbourne we know that the people that ate here

loved an Italian diet. They loved pork.

We have enormous amounts of pig bones on site.

They ate cattle, they ate sheep as well. They went hunting for deer.

We've got wildfowl such as duck, geese... Apparently they ate crane.

-Really?

-Yeah.

We also found a lot of storage sheds, amphora.

They used to bring in olive oil,

dried fruits from the Near East, for example.

The import of all these products, it must have been such a problem.

Actually navigating your way from Italy with some olive oil,

it was such a decadent thing to have, wasn't it?

Absolutely. And it would only have been accessible to the rich.

What Romans loved was the theatre of cooking itself.

They wanted the flavours to be complex, they wanted to show off

that they had access to the spices and the herbs that could make a dish,

not just its ingredients, but a piece of art, if you like.

-Cooking?

-Cooking itself.

-So it's safe to say

that's what the Romans brought to us - the art of cooking itself.

Absolutely.

Wow.

You might think the art of Roman cooking is gone, but you'd be wrong.

Keeping it well and truly alive is food historian Sally Grainger.

-Hello.

-Hi, Sally.

Smelling good.

-Hi, there. Nice to meet you.

-Dave.

-Cheers.

-Nice to see you.

-Hi, Sally, I'm Si.

-Hi.

-How are you getting on?

-I'm doing well.

-Hey, this is fabulous.

-Yeah.

-Sally's Roman kitchen.

-It is.

It flat packs.

It flat packs - it has to! It would have been made of masonry, but...

Hey, this is fantastic!

We're going to do Roman food, a sauce of pine kernels,

which would have been served with wild boar,

-but we just have a pork fillet, if that's OK.

-Sounds great!

So we're going to start with a little bit of pepper.

And pepper, one of the most important ones for the Romans.

-Can I hand that to you and you do that?

-Yes.

We're going to roast our spices. That's lovely.

We've got celery seed, one nice heaped spoon.

A couple of spoons of cumin.

And we're going to roast them, because they need to be brought out.

So we'll just stick them on the fire to let them pop.

We want savoury. It's dry so we'll need to try and break it up.

-Yeah?

-There you go. We also want thyme.

And then we can start adding the mint. We're going to use fresh mint.

-Plenty of mint.

-I'm getting the smell from that already.

-I know.

So, what fascinates you about doing this? Because it clearly does.

I think at heart of it is the fact that Roman food

has a reputation of being weird and odd and rotten and disgusting.

And I've been experimenting with Roman food for about 15 years.

Most of it, I think, is pretty good. And some of it is fabulous.

And I'm trying to get that message across.

Always, "Ooh, it's made with rotten fish sauce."

But we know fish sauce isn't rotten.

-Is their fish sauce like a Thai fish sauce?

-Exactly the same.

-Vietnamese fish sauce?

-Exactly the same.

I actually make my fish sauce.

-You make your own Roman fish sauce?

-I make it out of mackerel.

And this is a fresh batch. And nobody's tasted it yet.

-Could we have a little...

-Do you want to taste it raw?

-Yeah.

-Just on its own?

I think it's got so much more complex flavours.

Oh, yeah.

-It really lingers.

-Yeah. That's lovely and savoury.

-That's fantastic.

-Beautiful.

The Romans are winning so far.

Now the work starts, because we've got roasted pine kernels.

I do these in the oven, rather than a pan,

because I want uniform colour.

-It's kind of a pesto, this, isn't it?

-Well, it is.

It's going to be thinned down quite a bit.

How did you come to know about this recipe?

-Because it's fascinating.

-Isn't it?

It survives in a recipe text

that we're pretty certain was written by slave cooks

-for other slave cooks to use.

-Could you imagine,

if we were around then, we'd be sitting up near Hadrian's Wall,

painting ourselves blue, with a pigeon on a stick over a fire.

THEY ALL LAUGH

So, we are ready to add our liquids.

Start with the olive oil.

Oil and vinegar, so we're balancing sweet and sour.

Quite sophisticated kind of concept, isn't it, really?

We're going to add sweetness in terms of honey.

Honey was one of the major sweeteners.

They did also use grape juice. They'd take fresh juice

from sweet grapes and they'd boil it to a third of its volume,

with quinces and with figs.

And that, subsequently, in the mediaeval period,

having being left in an oak barrel for too long, soured,

and balsamic vinegar was born.

A little bit of dessert wine, just to give it a bit of extra sweetness.

And we finish with our fish sauce.

The wonderful fish sauce. That really does taste good.

Decent amount. I like using a lot of fish sauce.

-You can do with that, because it's not acrid, like some.

-No, exactly.

The sauce is then simmered for a bit.

And while we wait for our main course,

Sally's got a small appetiser for us.

So, here we have a Roman salad.

-It's like a savoury summer pudding.

-Savoury summer pudding.

You have a sourdough bread, soaked in vinegar and water.

Then you put layers of cucumber, hard cheese, pine kernels,

onions, diced chicken and capers.

Ooh, I like that. There's nothing freaky about that.

-Exactly.

-That's good, honest food.

Roman cooking really is very sophisticated, isn't it?

Very much so, yes. Yes.

All the kinds of cooking that we do in terms of poaching,

making souffles and puddings.

They invented custard.

You know the ratio of eggs to milk in a creme caramel? That is Roman.

That occurs in a Roman recipe, 2,000 years ago.

-Five eggs to one pint.

-That's amazing. Now, that is amazing.

All the techniques that we cook today,

apart from microwaving, they did.

But a Roman centurion couldn't have got by on salad alone.

We need some meatus maximus to have with that fantastic sauce.

And because archaeologists have discovered the Romans

were partial to a bit of pork, that's what we're having.

Wow. That sauce is everything you'd want in a sauce. Beautiful.

That is fantastic.

-The sauce is great.

-It does work, doesn't it?

-Yeah, man.

-Living history.

-Living history, and it's tasty, too.

Somehow, this seems much more vibrant

-than the mosaics and the stones. This is real.

-Thank you.

-Absolutely brilliant.

-My pleasure.

-Have you got any bread for dunkers?

-No, sorry.

Oh!

The Romans introduced many staples of the British diet.

-Chicken.

-Leeks.

-Onions.

-Carrots.

-Apples.

-Plums. And many more.

It's just a shame that when they left

they took their olive oil and tastes with them.

And it took nearly 2,000 years for them to return.

Aye. Better late than never, though.

Now, for the last recipe in the Best Of British kitchen,

we're turning to the Greeks -

who themselves taught the Romans a thing or two about cooking.

And we're whipping up an absolute classic.

A dish much loved by us Brits.

THEY SING

-Hola!

-Look at that, then.

The Geordie Zorba.

-Zorba the Greek!

-Zorba the Geordie!

The principal ingredient of moussaka is the aubergine.

Or eggplant, as the Americans call them.

How could that be an eggplant?

-It doesn't look anything like an egg!

-Aubergine!

Ah, moussaka. A dish fit for any Greek God.

Layers of ground lamb and sliced aubergine,

topped with a cheese sauce and baked for a fuller flavour.

We're going to give ours a bit of a British spin.

We're putting potatoes in our moussaka.

First time I had it I thought,

"It's meant to be moussaka, not a hotpot."

But, actually, it's kind of all right.

Just go with us on this one.

Try it with potatoes. If you don't like it, go with aubergines.

Slice the aubergine into one-centimetre-thick slices.

You might want to salt them to draw out some of the bitterness,

but it's not always necessary with new varieties.

If you do, remember to wash it off again

before you pop them in the pan to fry them.

We've brought back loads from holidays.

The one thing you always bring back, I find, is these bottles of booze,

that, at the time, you have this fragrant thing

made from orange flowers

on the south-west hill north of Kefalonia, that's a speciality.

You have it and you go, "By God, this is nectar of the gods."

You bring it home and it's like...

And it sits at the back of your sideboard, doesn't it?

That's what holidays are.

It's about being in a time and a place and a space.

And you fill that time, space and place

with lovely things of the region, don't you?

Aye. It is a tonic, a holiday, isn't it?

It is, everybody needs them.

We've sat on that beach with our bellies out,

getting all-over sunburned.

-I find that your belly catches the sun first.

-Yes.

I'll tell you what, it's dead funny on a beach with him.

If you put your head on the ground, he looks just like the Eden Project.

-Shut up, you!

-Don't hurt me, I'm old.

-I wasn't going to do anything.

Moussaka is made with minced lamb. Minced lamb is full of fat.

Therefore, don't bother putting any olive oil in.

This goes into a pan.

-How do them guards walk?

-What, the Greek guards?

They have pom-poms on their feet, don't they?

-They've got their rifles.

-No, it's a flick.

Sorry.

Now, while the lamb is browning, chop an onion

and a couple of cloves of garlic and add them to the pan.

Now, to this we add oregano. Uno.

A teaspoonful and a half of dried mint.

We want power in this. This is why we're using dried herbs.

The dried herbs will cook into the dish.

On top of that, pop in a stick of cinnamon, a bay leaf,

chopped rosemary and some freshly ground pepper.

A whole tin of chopped tomatoes, and two teaspoons of tomato puree.

As you can sense, this is a rich dish.

Somehow, this is why I feel justified putting the potatoes in.

Because it's kind of just nice.

And wine. About 200ml.

I'm going to bring that back to the boil

and kind of cover it half with the pan lid,

and leave it to simmer for about half an hour.

Or even cook it for longer.

Ten minutes before the end, it's time to make our white sauce,

which is pretty much like the bechamel you get in lasagne.

Step one, a big knob of butter.

Melt that down and put some flour in.

About a tablespoon.

And just mix that with the butter and cook it out a little bit.

Just make a smooth paste.

And we start drizzling in about a pint of milk.

It's just a very basic white sauce.

-Now, just increase the heat a little bit.

-And wait till it thickens.

A top tip for white sauce is when it starts to thicken,

get your whisk out, because it helps prevent it going lumpy.

So, now we're going to start to build up the flavours,

we're going to season it with salt, but most importantly, white pepper.

Take it off the heat a little bit.

Go careful with the salt,

cos we're going to put a bit of Parmesan in this.

-That's our touch, just to build up the richness.

-And a bit of nutmeg.

You can't go wrong with nutmeg.

What's nice about putting the nutmeg in it,

it adds a kind of spice to it.

But, also, it's slightly sweet.

There's a sweet tinge to it, which is really lovely.

I'm just grating some Parmesan. This isn't traditional.

But it's just going to serve to enrich that sauce.

Actually, we're going to put some Parmesan cheese on the top, as well.

This is good Parmesan. Look at that.

Over a gentle heat, stir a handful of the Parmesan cheese

into the white sauce and prepare to assemble the moussaka.

-We're kind of ready to build the Odyssey now.

-We are.

-Step one.

It's three layers, so we want a third of the meat to go in there.

Don't put the cinnamon stick in, that would be gormless.

Just to avoid embarrassment, I'll take ours out.

Once you've spread out the meat, it's time to layer on the potatoes.

The slices have been slightly boiled and allowed to cool.

It's going to be a nice little layer. Just a layer here.

It is a bit hot-potty. This is where Lancashire meets Larnaca.

Where Altrincham meets Athens.

Then add a layer of the aubergine.

And two more layers of meat and aubergine.

-Smelling quite radiant, isn't it?

-It is.

And this is just going to bake together

in this mass of coagulation.

That's it. Look at that.

Once you get to your final layer of aubergine,

it's time to finish the white sauce.

First, make sure it's cool.

Beat an egg and, using a whisk, mix them together.

If the sauce isn't cool to begin with,

you'll end up with scrambled eggs.

Lovely. Next, we need to pour all that sauce

on to the top of your moussaka.

There you are. You see? Now the cheese.

Simply pop that into a preheated oven, about 180 degrees Celsius,

for about 45 minutes.

But keep an eye on it so it doesn't burn.

Oh, the magnificence that is the moussaka!

-It's like the beaten bronze of Hercules's helmet.

-Look at that.

-Nice.

-Nice.

-Noice.

-Are you going to carve?

-Yeah.

It's nice, this, if we can get it out in a square.

Cos then we see all the layers.

And that is how moussaka should look.

Look at that.

Seems a shame, doesn't it?

-It does, doesn't it?

-I know, but I will.

# Ever and ever

# Forever and ever you'll be... #

-Oh, that's nice.

-It's a really good meal.

That's a good moussaka.

Moussaka. It's a British favourite and a classic example

of how foreign influences have informed what we eat now.

Great British ingredients combined with the effect of immigration

and our own travelling experiences

has made our food unique in the world

in terms of its inclusiveness and variety.

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

..visit bbc.co.uk/food

to discover some amazing facts about the history of food.

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

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