Wild Food Hairy Bikers' Best of British

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

Not only can we boast fantastic ingredients.

Oh, there we go! Look at them!

-Outstanding food producers.

-Oh, wow!

And innovative chefs.

But we also have an amazing food history.

-So it's safe to say that's what the Romans brought to us - the art of cooking itself.

-Absolutely.

-It's called a salacattabia.

-It's like a savoury summer pudding.

Now during this series,

we are 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.

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.

Looks good. Tastes good. That's going to do you good.

Quite simply - the Best Of British.

Hidden amongst the beaches, woodlands and hedgerows of Britain,

are some of the finest wild foods on the planet.

In this show, we'll be exploring the best of British wild food

with living traditions of catching, picking, hunting and foraging

all kinds of tasty grub right on our doorstep.

And we'll be cooking up some little-known but incredible wild dishes.

From humble seaside snacks...

..To luxury cuisine,

nature's larder can provide it all. If you know where to look, that is.

It's delicious, exciting and free!

The very best of British.

But whilst we're masters at gathering some wild foods,

with others, we need a little more help.

So, when it comes to catching "wabbits",

man has an age-old accomplice - the ferret.

He might look cute and cuddly, but this domesticated type of polecat is

a fearsome hunter, perfectly adapted for putting down rabbit holes.

And bringing home some rabbit for your tea.

Their eyesight isn't very good,

but their sense of smell is excellent and they're very bendy.

If you are fairly fit you could probably touch your toes.

If you're double jointed, you could put your chin on your bottom.

But what you could never do is bend sideways like that

or like that because he's just one big universal joint.

Whilst we associate ferrets with working class culture.

You silly little devil, ain't ya?

And wriggling around people's trousers,

ferreting was originally an entirely aristocratic pursuit.

In the 13th century, if you wanted to own a ferret,

by law you had to have an income of 40 shillings,

which meant you were seriously minted.

By Queen Elizabeth's reign, ferrets were still associated with money and status.

But gradually they became available to everyone.

By the 19th century, anyone could go onto common land with a ferret

and catch a rabbit for their supper.

Nowadays you don't need a flexible friend if you want to eat rabbit.

And you certainly don't need a fancy chef to cook it for you.

In our Best Of British kitchen,

we'll show you how to rustle up a simple dish

of rabbit with prunes, cream and brandy.

An absolute game gem that combines the best of British ingredients

with a bit of French je ne sais quoi.

Now all these posh folks, they've been out for centuries

chasing stags, shooting grouse.

But it hasn't always been the preserve of the rich.

Poor folk like a good old blast too. For us it was bunnies and rabbits.

Just get a couple of rabbits for' pot, mother.

Rabbit's been around for ages. We've shot, eaten and loved them.

We are cooking a lovely dish with rabbits. A bit French.

It's rabbits with prunes flamed in Cognac.

But you know, it turns the humble rabbit into a prince. It's posh.

It's tasty, it's lovely.

I'll start with the prunes and the brandy.

I'll start with browning off the rabbit.

Look at this, a couple of rabbits there.

You can get a rabbit for about three pounds.

So that's only six pounds-worth there.

-Six pounds of meat?

-Lovely!

And I tell you what, this dish goes like a rabbit. It's fantastic.

It's quick, it's simple, it's tasty and it's...oh!

These are non-soak prunes.

Put them in a pan with six tablespoons of brandy.

Now you're talking, Myers, now you're talking!

Brandy.

One.

Two, three.

Four. Five. Six.

And then we leave the prunes to macerate in that lovely brandy.

Now I've put some butter and I'm going to put some oil into

the pan, bring it to temperature, season the rabbit on both sides.

Thank you. Season the rabbit on both sides and brown it off.

Season both sides. Just salt into it.

Now carefully flambe the prunes.

Smells like flesh to me!

# We'll get the fire brigade. Get the fire brigade.

# I think the kitchen is starting to really burn... # Woo.

Wa-hey. Woo.

I see a sign.

-I could get used to this.

-You're a worry, you are.

Right, enough of that.

Put the fire out.

HE LAUGHS

-I've got no hair left on my arms!

-Dave?

-Dave.

-Eh?

-You haven't got any eyebrows either.

No, no, you really haven't.

What's happened to my hair line?

That's it. You see, wasn't like that before he started this show.

He had a full head of hair.

Just leave those to soak till the end of the dish.

Start chopping your bacon

and shallots in anticipation for pan action later on down the line.

Now just start to fry these off in batches.

Don't try and overcrowd the pan

because if you try and overcrowd the pan they're not going to fry.

Two banana shallots.

That's what we're after.

See that, that's the saddle, that bit there.

Oh, that's rabbit fillet steak, that is. Beautiful.

And we're just going to put a little bit of colour on.

This is a humble dish made good, this.

You know, in the late 14th century rabbits were an expensive luxury.

A lot of the recipes then advocated roasting them

with the head still on.

I suppose it's so you'd see it's a rabbit and not your local moggy.

A little bit more oil.

Have you ever read Watership Down?

-Yes.

-It's sad, wasn't it?

-Yeah, it was.

-And rabbits have always featured in literature, haven't they?

-Always.

-Watership Down, you know, Bugs Bunny.

-Bugs Bunny.

-Thumper in Bambi.

-Yeah.

Eee, look at it now, it could almost be chicken.

Indeed you can do this dish with chicken thighs.

Allow two chicken thighs per person.

Next, fry the chopped streaky bacon.

Now what we want to do with this bacon is,

we just want it to go nice and crisp.

Not very crisp but we want the fat to go quite crispy.

Right, so, can you see what we've got there? They're not crispy bits.

-That's perfect, isn't it? They're just golden.

-Yes, exactly. That.

The fried bacon joins the rabbit in the casserole.

To the pan add the shallots and just...sweat until translucent.

Can you see? I've cut them longways. Just for that little touch of class.

To the onions add two tablespoons of flour.

One. Two.

Time to add the liquid. Now you could use white wine.

-But to kind of make it a bit more British we are using cider.

-We are.

And this is 300 ml of cider.

Got some stock here. Pour half of it in at this point.

-This is good stock. It looks like jelly.

-What a wonderful smell.

To that we add one tablespoon of Dijon mustard.

Like that. And two teaspoons of wholegrain mustard.

Beautiful.

And a little bouquet garni. A little bunch of thyme tied together.

Obviously we chuck this out before serving.

-Oh.

-And...a bayleaf.

-How lovely.

-Now, I know it's a bit of a strange convention.

When you put the flour on top of what, in essence,

is sauteed onions and it goes, like, really thick.

Don't freak out because all that's doing is coating the onions

in flour, cooking that flour off a little bit

and then as soon as you add liquid, look what's happening.

It's just thickening it.

And there's no lumps or any problem, it's just lovely.

We'll add some more liquid so don't worry,

-it won't be that thick when it's done.

-Right.

Beautiful.

Now top this up with the remaining stock.

I'm going to cover this with a cartouche.

A cartouche is a sheet of greaseproof paper

that's cut to fit the dish.

What it'll do is it will stop it cooking dry too quickly.

Put that on the top.

Lid on. And place that in a preheated oven, 160 degrees Celsius

for about one and a half, two hours.

-Actually if you leave it in for two hours, it's not going to hurt, really.

-No.

Rabbit.

# Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit... #

At one time, there wasn't a market or a butcher's shop in Britain

that wouldn't be over-flowing with fresh, fantastic produce during the game season.

And in post-war Britain, rabbit, a cheap and readily available meat,

was rarely off the menu.

But when a deadly virus called myxomatosis

arrived in Britain in 1953, over 95% of the bunny population

was wiped out, and rabbit quickly fell off the weekly menu.

But now, from Michelin restaurants to small country cottages,

there's a bit of a rabbit revival going on.

And if you're happy to give it a try, rabbit is a rewarding

and flavoursome change from the ordinary.

-I think by now that's a very "hot cross bunny"! Ha-hey!

-Oh, dear me, man!

Let's remove the cartouche.

-Ooh!

-Oh, nice.

These are the prunes oozing in brandy.

I'll just light the gas under this.

We'll heat those prunes through, because now they're stone cold,

and add the cream.

Oh, man.

And just give that a little stir.

And really as soon as that's come up to temperature, we can serve.

Now...check for seasoning.

Look what I've got. I've got some cabbage and dauphinoise potatoes.

Ooh, saddle. Primo.

-And some prunes, yeah?

-Oh, for sure.

So near, yet so far.

Lovely, creamy, dauphinoise.

Cabbage.

The rabbit eats the cabbage

and they both end up on the same plate together.

Beautiful.

So there you have it.

A delicious, simple dish that's definitely worth rabbiting on about.

One of the very best areas to find and forage for wild food of any kind

is along the coast.

The seashore is jam-packed with shellfish and plants

that have been gathered by hungry people for thousands of years.

And it's home to one of our most famous wild food traditions.

Cockles are a coastal delicacy that have always been a firm seaside favourite.

'Some of a us may still distain this humble shellfish,

'but it is a valuable item in Britain's fishing industry

'and very popular with hungry holiday-makers.'

But cockling is no DIY hobby.

They've been picked by hand on an industrial scale for generations,

creating unique ways of life.

In the 1940s on the Thames estuary,

teams of pickers would head out in boats

and wait for the tide to go out.

Then they'd splash around in their undies,

gathering cockles in buckets.

You wouldn't do that in the North East.

Nowadays, Thames cockles are collected by dredgers,

which suck them up with giant vacuum cleaners.

Nowhere near as much fun.

But the Thames estuary wasn't the only place

where foraging for cockles by hand supported whole communities.

Is that the deserts of Arabia?

Don't be daft! It's the Gower in South Wales, boyo!

Where they've been cockling the same way for generations.

How many miles have we got to go before we get to any cockles?

You have got about seven miles.

Two miles over the road, seven miles of sand after.

And the cockle beds are right down at the very bottom.

During the Industrial Revolution, cockling was vital work for women

whose husbands couldn't get work in the coal mines.

Women were still the main cockle pickers on the Gower

right up until the 1970s and were known for their resilience

in the harshest kinds of weather.

-Ruth, how long have you been cockling on the sands?

-Between 45 and 46 years.

-Is it much the same sort of business as it was then?

-Oh, no.

It was harder then.

We had no Wellingtons, no gloves in the cold weather.

Barefooted or an old pair of naily boots on our feet.

Why did you take up such a hard trade?

Well, there was nothing else to be had in our days.

Either picking cockles or going out in service.

How do you know where to find the cockles?

How do you know there are cockles here for instance, and not over there?

Well, when we pull with these rakes, we pull in the cockles.

Some parts of the sand we pull,

and we don't pull any cockles at all.

So we know we don't keep that way, we keep this way.

But the sand does rise a little where the cockles are.

Ask a stupid question. Ah, they're strange creatures, cockles that is.

And if you're a London reporter, you wouldn't quite know what to believe.

I was told that cockles would sing in the bag,

but I can't hear anything from these.

You wouldn't hear them in the winter time.

You can always hear them when the tide is coming in.

Is that a wind up?

Well, it's what the cocklers say, but they don't sing

-Land Of My Fathers, they just buzz.

-Nay.

Foraging for cockles is still big business today.

But it remains a hard and sometimes dangerous profession,

where knowledge of the shifting sands and tides,

has been handed down through generations of local people.

So, if you don't know what you're doing,

it's best left to the experts.

As well as cockles, our beaches are stocked with all kinds of wild snacks.

But some coastal delicacies have been a bit forgotten over the years.

Next up in the Best Of British kitchen, we're going to show you an unusual, but brilliant wild dish

that we think everyone should know about.

There is no more free fertile horn of plenty

for the British forager than our noble coastline.

But we ignore these. And they are fantastic.

The razor clam.

They've been eaten since prehistoric man first walked the planet.

They are a wonderful creature and they are so, so tasty.

We want to put these back on the table.

But one of the best things about razor clams is foraging for them.

Now there's a bit of a trick to catching them,

so who better to show you how to do it than the legendary Ray Mears?

This is what I'm after here.

That key-shaped hole.

To get what's in there out,

what I have to do is to put some salt down the hole.

And now wait.

Filter feeders like clams and cockles

can concentrate poisons in their bodies.

Here it comes.

So it's a good idea to check with a local expert

what you're picking is safe to eat.

Grab that and hold him. And they really pull.

You have to coax these things out from the sand.

There we are, a razor shell. That is really fantastic eating.

You're not wrong, Ray,

and you'd love the recipe we're about to cook up.

We're going to make chilli and garlic razor clams,

served with parsley crumbs and a harissa and saffron mayonnaise.

Ancient foraged food meets the flavours of contemporary cooking.

First up we cook the clams in boiling water and you don't need long!

Literally, it is for seconds because they'll open quickly.

As soon as they're open, they're cooked.

-There's one. Look at them!

-Say hello to daddy! Look at those.

They are cooked.

If you like eating mussels, if you like cockles,

sweet shellfish, these are better.

But we can't tell you enough, the key is,

you saw literally it took seconds.

The key with razor clams is not to overcook them

because if you do, they'll go chewy and rubbery.

-Squash balls.

-Yes.

Drain them off and while they're cooling,

we'll get on with the other components.

I'm going to chop one chilli and eight cloves of garlic

to make an infusion which we'll pour over the clams.

And while Si's doing that,

I'm going to fry up 50 grams of breadcrumbs

which I'll mix with a handful of rough chopped parsley.

It's nice to sprinkle over the clams

when they've been dressed with the garlic and olive oil.

Razor clams are wonderful.

This is British produce and it doesn't come much better.

For the oil, it's really important

not to burn the garlic when you cook it.

We keep banging on and going,

"Listen, start with some heat in your pan." Not this time.

We are going to put the chilli in

and we're going to put the garlic, again into a cold pan.

We're going to cover it with olive oil and quite a lot of olive oil.

Look at the heat here, it's really quite low.

We will very, very slowly bring that up to temperature. Very slowly.

We're going to season it up with lots of black pepper and salt.

And then just stir it in.

We'll leave the breadcrumbs to cool before we add in the parsley.

In the meantime, we can get on with the last bit of the recipe,

the harissa and saffron mayonnaise.

-I love saffron.

-The smell is lovely.

-You really do, don't you?

-The spice that is more expensive than gold.

Just put a good handful in there.

Keith Floyd always used to say, he said, "When people say to me

" 'How much saffron do I use', I say, 'How much can you afford?' "

Splash of boiling water on that.

Look at the colour that has come out of that instantly.

It is going to make the most fantastic, colourful, tasty meal.

Leave that to cool. Saffron is interesting.

It's thought the Venetians,

when trading for tin with the Cornish, swapped saffron for tin.

This could explain the Cornish love of making saffron cakes.

But we do know that in the 16th century,

saffron was grown in Britain, particularly in Essex.

Saffron Walden.

Look at that. A tan like an Essex girl.

And now for the other main ingredient.

This is harissa. It's a chilli paste

that goes well with Middle Eastern food.

A lot of people think it's Moroccan,

but originally it's Tunisian and it is fantastic.

So, you put a teaspoon of that in a bowl.

What's great about cooking in Britain

is that we get to spice up our lives

with fantastic international ingredients.

The one that we're using is rose harissa.

It's not as hot and fiery.

You can get some harissas that are, like, blow your socks off us.

But these are all really robust flavours.

Honestly, the razor clams can take it.

Add in a couple of large tablespoons of mayonnaise and mix it in.

-That is gorgeous, man.

-Now, mix the saffron in.

And we don't waste any of this. Look at that.

Somewhat tasty and somewhat psychedelic.

That's what you call a seafood sauce.

-Spoon's clean.

-Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. It's earthy as well. It's lovely.

By now my chilli and garlic infused oil should be ready.

This is when it's ready, look. Little bubbles in the oil.

At that point, take it off the heat and leave it.

That's it, it's done.

Put the parsley in the crumbs and we're nearly there.

So, we've got the clams, we've got the dressing,

we've got the accompaniments and we've got its juice.

-Lovely.

-We can start building now, can't we?

-We can.

Let's show you how to dress a razor clam.

Really, really simple.

Save the shells.

They come out of their shells easily, don't they?

Yes. This bit here, you don't want.

And then you want to make a cut across there like that.

Look at that beautiful piece of meat.

We want all that, so you nip that off like that.

So you have two lovely pieces of meat.

And this bit, you chuck.

Take the shells and snap the hinge,

so they lie flat on a baking tray,

then replace the prepared clams.

There we are. Lovely.

Dress them with the infused garlic and chilli oil.

Coastal foraging is interesting

because it's far from being survivalist food.

It's quite haute cuisine.

You could eat this in a very fancy restaurant and be happy.

There we are. Beautiful.

Last of all, the clams need to go under

a blisteringly hot grill for 2-3 minutes.

Move the shelf as close as you can get it to the grill

and under a preheated grill, which is key, stick your razor clams in.

They're starting to go. I think they're perfect.

-Nicely sizzling.

-Sizzling away.

Lovely.

Now, just dress that with the crumbs and parsley.

And on the side a nice big dipping dollop

of the saffron and harissa mayo.

That looks fantastic.

I think that's what I would call a Michelin-star forage.

-I'd be with you. That's a top scrounge, that one.

-Should we?

-I think we should.

-Forks or forage?

-Forage.

Mayo, garlic, crumbs.

The chilli and the razor clam, it's so sweet and then you have

that lovely savoury taste with the garlic and the oil. Fabulous.

Then you dip the mayo in and get that earthy thing with the saffron.

-Honestly, it's amazing.

-If you like squid, you'd like these.

If you like mussels, you'd like these.

If you love scallops, you'd go bonkers for these.

And if you like food for nothing, give this one a go.

They're here on our beaches and on our shore lines,

and there're fantastic.

All you need is a bit of courage, a good sense of the tides

and a bag of salt.

Cooking foraged food and eating the oldest grub around,

is a great way to connect with our very earliest foodie ancestors.

But it's great to combine those primal flavours

with the best tastes that modern cooking has to offer,

fusing the really old and the new.

Razor clams aren't the only wild foods that slipped off the menu.

People once depended on a variety of grub that was readily available along the coast

and one of the best-stocked places they turned to were the cliffsides.

At Farnborough head people once collected birds' eggs.

Highly illegal today, of course.

But there's plenty of different wild food out there that's perfectly OK

if you know where to look.

Here in Cornwall, Miles Lavers has been eating what he can forage

from the seashore his whole life,

part of a tradition that's as old as mankind itself.

My grandmother used to pay me when I was four or five

to go and find things

and really that was about identifying things early on.

Obviously, a lot of people now have lost that completely.

'So foraging has been a total part of my life, all my life.'

OK, one of my favourites - rock samphire.

This plant has 30 times more vitamin C than oranges,

hence sailors used to take it away with them.

It's even mentioned in Shakespeare, I believe it's King Lear,

and they basically said it's a dreadful trade,

people used to fall off the cliffs.

You can imagine, if you see where it's growing,

they loved it so much that people were dying to get it.

Despite its beauty, for hundreds of years,

this region was one of the poorest parts of the country.

Right up until the early-20th century,

edible wild plants found along these cliffs

were a key to survival for the very poorest people.

Whole villages would go out to forage from the cliffs.

The vital extra food they gathered

would help see them through the winter.

Miles is looking for one of the plants that would have kept them nourished.

All this is sea spinach. Cook it like spinach,

a bit of butter, tiny bit of water, probably best to steam it,

awesome plant.

Awesome it may be,

but one group of plants which are absolutely invaluable

and grow abundantly all around our coast are seaweeds.

That's a lovely bit, look at that beauty.

They are fantastically good for you and a phenomenal natural resource.

What you'd normally pick up and whack your brother with as a kid,

is used industrially for medicines, but also if you can believe it,

in tomato sauce and other products - hair products, all sorts.

Seaweeds like kelp - masses of minerals, nutrients, iodine,

iron, that we just don't really get in the same quantities

we get with land food. We've totally forgotten about this.

Most people's perception is that, just playing on it,

falling over it, slipping on it.

But if you tasted it, deep-fried it, you'd be completely bowled over.

Miles' favourite seaweed is a little delicacy

that's dead easy to cook.

Sea lettuce. It even looks like lettuce,

you're not going to get much wrong with this one.

Perfect for wrapping round fish,

even better for pork,

or just crisping up. Absolutely delicious, sea lettuce. OK?

My kids call it mermaids knickers, you can see why.

This grows all over Britain in slightly sheltered spots,

so if it's a bit too rough, you might struggle.

There are a few things you need to think about

before you go off with your basket though.

Before you go foraging in the sea, you might want to have a look

if there's any sewage outlets nearby.

You can find this information on the internet

and it's well worth checking to make sure you're in good clean water.

And you can't just turn up any old where and grab what you want,

you have to ask the landowner's permission first.

Back at the family house after a hard day's foraging,

Miles is preparing to cook up a storm

with the ingredients he's gathered.

On the menu today is pan-fried pollock wrapped in sea lettuce,

served with rock samphire and sea spinach.

Everything in this frying pan is almost free.

The sea lettuce is free, we know the people we got the fish from,

and what's going to go in this pan is totally free as well,

so cooking this here and eating it at home with your family

is really what it's all about.

Let me just turn this over, I can't wait to eat it.

Look at that - crispy seaweed on one side,

and we're going to end up with crispy seaweed on the other

and succulent fish in the middle.

When the fish is nearly done, Miles quickly cooks

the spinach and the samphire together in the pan.

Cor, top nosh that! Who'd have thought you could get a slap-up meal

from a morning's rock pooling?

Thanks to people like Miles, our ancient and tasty heritage

is being kept alive.

I tell you what - my trips to the seaside'll never be the same again.

The spinach is absolutely fantastic.

Is that nice, baby?

For me, going and picking food from the hedgerow and seashore makes it,

and what better way? You pick it together, you eat it together,

and it's really fantastic, so we should all be doing it.

Cheers.

There's no denying you can rustle up a real wild feast

along the shoreline,

but our woodlands and pastures also contain some real hidden forageable gems.

So we're heading inland to look for a fish that doesn't live in water.

It's an easily foraged treat that has all but disappeared,

so we're heading to Priddy in Somerset to find out more.

They know a bit about foraging in this corner of Somerset.

Folk once came from miles around to sample a local delicacy

that could be found living wild in the nooks

and crannies of dry-stone walls.

This is it.

It's called the Mendip wallfish,

better known to you and I, as the garden snail.

We all know the French love a snail,

but in the '60s it was a Brit who put Helix aspersa back on the menu,

when rocket scientist-turned-chef Paul Leyton began serving them

in his restaurant the Miners' Arms.

It was a British food sensation!

Paul's son Nick and wife Pauline still have a treasure trove

of his late father's memorabilia.

Nick and Pauline, we're here to see you because you're part

of the great wallfish... The Mendip snail dynasty.

That's right. My parents had a restaurant down the road in the '60s,

and a new restaurant was opening in Bristol,

Harvey's were opening a restaurant

and they advertised they were going to serve Mendip snails.

Their building work fell behind so we thought we'd beat them to it.

Snails are a traditional Mendip thing

because they were eaten by local road men on a shovel

at the side of the road for lunch type thing.

And it just took off. We never expected

that people would be so interested in the common garden snail.

Snails were once a local treat in Somerset

and just after the war, you could find people eating them as a snack in pubs.

The Leyton's wanted to create a gourmet dish from the southwest.

And their wallfish became renowned all over the country,

from Delia to Egon Ronay and even the SAS.

There's one from the SAS. They were into the foraging.

"My regiment is responsible for running combat survival courses

"for officers and senior NCOs for the army.

"I wonder if you could help me by supplying enough Mendips snails

"for 40 people for the foraging dinner on 8th of April."

You see, we British have always been great foragers, even our SAS.

-They're having a go too.

-That is right.

Thousands of snails for the restaurant

were foraged and sent in from all over the country.

In order to store them all, Paul used his engineering skills.

He converted a swimming pool into a snail pen,

complete with electric fence to stop them escaping.

Father sort of developed this and we made a time-lapse film of it.

Put paint on the snails

to see what they did during the night and how far they went

and it's quite fascinating, charging round the swimming pool

like a bat out of hell. THEY LAUGH

-Your father was a scientist first and a chef second.

-Very much so, but cooking is a science,

when you know what flour does, what fats do,

it's much easier to look at it from a different point.

Paul Leyton put the Mendip Wallfish on the map

and carried on cooking them until he sold the Miners' Arms

along with the recipe in 1977.

It was taken over in the early '80s by Bob and Pat Reynolds,

who were the last people to cook Wallfish for the paying public

until the Miners closed in 1999.

Luckily they live just round the corner

and offered to show us how it was done.

-I reckon this is the wall down here.

-So these are your common garden snails that we get everywhere.

-Absolutely.

-Look!

-Have you got one?

That was quick. That one's getting away, we better take him.

-He's got some meat on him as well!

-Oh, yeah.

Beautiful.

So, Bob, how do you go about cooking these fellas?

Well, the first thing to do is make sure they've not eaten anything

that would harm you, so we purge them,

that's done by feeding them lettuce, cabbage, anything like that.

-And after ten days, we kill them by putting them in boiling water.

-You know, this is fine-dining foraging,

I like this, you know.

I got out brambling with my mam, but you know, this is a bit, um...

haute cuisine.

-Follow me.

-Yup.

The snails we've found aren't ready to eat,

so we're going to cook some that have been purged,

using Leyton's original recipe.

'Ex-Miner's Arms chef Pat is going to give us a demonstration.'

'After being boiled, the snails need removed from their shells.'

I'm going to give you one each.

Oh, look at that, now there's a tool of the trade.

Tool of the trade. What you do with them is, you just pop it in there like that

and pull it out.

-They taste great as well, I must say.

-Just pop them on there. You have a go.

Out it pops! They don't look the most attractive things, do they?

They don't at the moment.

-But...they're lovely.

-Yes.

'The snails are boiled in cider for 45 minutes

'and the shells are stuffed with a herb butter.

'It's time consuming.'

Do you ever wish, Pat,

you'd bought a restaurant with a different speciality?

Yes, I do. I didn't realise when we first took it on

that this was something I was going to have to do.

Now then, having done that, the next thing is,

you get a hold of a snail and you stuff it in there like that,

push it in, then you have to seal it off with some more butter on top

and that's it ready.

'With the stuffing done,

'all that's left is to pop them in the oven.'

Hot.

-And bubbling.

-They look beautiful.

-They are fab, Pat.

-It's a lovely colour with the herbs.

-Yeah.

I can give you this. That's what you...

-Thank you.

-..pick them up with.

-Pick them up? Oh, that's no good, I can't get to my shell.

-No.

Oh, hey, that butter's fabulous.

I'm going to use my fingers.

Mmm, really good.

Wallfish, snails, whatever you want to call them -

-great British delicacy and fantastic to eat.

-Yeah.

Have a ball, have a swall.

Mendip Wallfish is a brilliant recipe

with a really unique, regional British character.

We think it's a shame that they've all but disappeared from the menu.

But maybe as more get interested in foraging, they'll make a comeback.

Amongst the woods and forests of inland Britain lurks a wild food

that's just about the poshest nosh you can get.

Knowing where to find them is an art and a science, but as one

of the most expensive treats on the planet, it's certainly worth it.

Known to some as black diamonds,

truffles are a type of fungus that can fetch over £8,000 per kilo.

And they aren't just the domain of the French or Italians,

we grow them right here on British soil.

Regrettably, our native truffles are a delicacy that have almost vanished from our dinner tables.

But our Best Of British food heroes, Marion Dean and Dr Paul Thomas

are determined to put the British truffle back on the culinary map.

Truffles are really exciting. I love finding them. I love eating them.

I love training dogs how to find them

and I love teaching the people on what to look for to find them.

When I was a kid, I always used to go out and collect wild food

and I started to collect mushrooms and then I read about truffles.

When I got into my teenage years, I read about how expensive they were

and how delicious they were and I really wanted to find them and I couldn't!

And then I did a PhD at the University of Sheffield.

Eventually, through a long process, we developed a way to grow them

and I've been completely absorbed ever since.

When you eat a truffle, you really want to say, "Wow!

"That's what I'd heard about."

Together they've planted one of the country's first truffle orchards.

650 trees that have been impregnated with truffle spores.

The best way to think of a truffle

is it's kind of an underground mushroom,

roughly the size of between a golf ball and a tennis ball.

The truffle is the fruit of the truffle fungus and you find that underground.

It needs a tree to survive.

The truffle helps the tree to grow so it's completely symbiotic.

You need to get the truffle and the tree working together.

Traditionally, sows were used to hunt for truffles,

but there were some disadvantages.

Truffle releases a pheromone which is very similar

to the sex pheromone in pigs so when a pig's hunting these things, they go crazy, they start salivating

and then you've got to get in between the pig and the truffle.

It can be quite dangerous. People lose fingers. It's a very hard way of hunting.

Whereas dogs, you can train them to pick up the scent and they'll

pick up a scent line, run down, stop where the truffle is,

mark it and then you just go along and dig it up.

Marion trained her own dog, an Italian truffle hound called Mufty,

as even cultivated truffles require an expert nose to find them.

But the truffle orchard won't be ready to harvest for up to seven years,

so Marion, Paul and Mufty

head off to a top secret location to forage for wild ones.

Anything they find today will be taken to a local hotel

in the hope that Marion will become a regular supplier.

'After only a few minutes, it looks like Mufty's spotted something.'

Wait. Well, let's see. Oh, yes, here. We've got one. We've got one!

-Can you see it. It's there.

-Oh, yeah. Well done, Mufty.

There's a little damage on top, but to me, it's worth its weight in gold.

-Absolutely. Come on, I can't wait. Let's dig it up.

-Out we come.

-'Looks like a ball of mud to me.

-No wonder they're hard to find.'

You just love finding those truffles.

That's in much better condition on one side than it is on the other.

The top has been damaged a little bit by the recent rains.

-OK.

-Let's keep going.

-Good start.

-'As luck would have it, Mufty finds another.'

-I can feel it.

Paul, do you want to come and feel it? Just a little bit.

Mufty, good girl! Wait.

'And another!'

-Is it?

-Smells good.

'And another!'

-And a tiny little one.

-'Look at them! It's like finding buried treasure.'

-In terms of success, I'm thrilled. I'm so happy.

-You should be.

With a basket full of top quality wild British truffles,

Marion and her fellow trufflers have come to Langford Fivehead, an exclusive hotel

run by celebrity chef and food writer, Orlando Murrin.

To the truffle season that lies ahead.

Orlando has a penchant for decadence and he's going to put Marion's

truffles to the test by cooking up his favourite truffle recipe.

Such strange and interesting things to cook with.

I think they're the oddest thing in the kitchen.

It's a kind of classic French dish in a way, but it's a modern take on it.

Truffles have a flavour not too dissimilar from garlic blended

with an earthy mushroomy taste.

They do have a strange, haunting flavour that nothing else has.

Orlando starts with some chopped garlic,

shallots and mushrooms, which he softens in butter.

He then adds a good glug of champagne.

Next he places a sliced truffle under the chicken skin,

strains the sauce and adds the remaining truffle.

Just leave it off the heat now so that they get to know each other.

We're now going to finish the champagne truffle sauce with

some creme fraiche.

Champagne and truffles, you can't get posher nosh than that.

-Smells good.

-Oh, wonderful!

Tuck in.

Makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it, Marion?

The truffle is a winner and Orlando agrees to add Marion to his list of suppliers.

And with British truffles making a comeback in recent years,

between them, aficionados like Marion, Paul

and Orlando are confident

they can keep these culinary gems on our menus.

Ah, shame Mufty doesn't get any!

With all this talk of luxury, we thought we'd pay a homage to a wild

ingredient that you can find pretty much everywhere in the country.

Our final recipe is a pudding that's made with a wild fruit

we've probably all had a go at picking -

the humble blackberry.

We're going to make an amazing steamed apple and blackberry

sponge pudding, with a blackberry sauce. It's berry-berry nice!

This pudding's brilliant. It's a steamed pud and the sugar turns to syrup,

but the lovely thing about it is you've got apples built into the body of your sponge,

and it's got this mountain of blackberries sitting on top.

I'm going to make a lovely, jammy coulis thing to dribble on the top.

It's an event. You didn't pick THOSE blackberries off a bush, did you?!

I was just thinking - you see these blackberries?

If you found a blackberry bush close by where you live,

and you found those on them, you'd kill for it, wouldn't you?

But that's what we just found this morning when we were out foraging.

-Down the fruit wholesaler's place.

-Can't win 'em all.

We're busy, you know! Cooking stuff for you.

'You start with the usual thing when making sponges -

'blend together 150g of butter, and 150g of golden caster sugar.

'To this, we add the zest of a lemon.'

If the butter's hard, just knock it about the bowl a bit with a wooden spoon,

and once it's softened slightly, take it over to the mixer and blitz it there.

Meanwhile, I need three eggs in a bowl, lightly whipped.

'The first mention of any sort of sponge was a "sponge cake",

'referred to in a letter written by Jane Austen in 1808.

'Sponge pudding, which is steamed,

'arrived at the end of the 19th century.

'They're both made with the same basic ingredients of eggs and flour,

'which allows the mixture to rise.'

It was like a seminal moment in the world of baking and pudding making

when people first decided and realised

that eggs could be used as a raising agent.

First off, whisking half the eggs.

Then, whisking half the flour.

Then, the other half of your eggs.

And by adding it kind of bit by bit,

you kind of ensure that it's not going to split.

That means, kind of go all curdly.

'Now, for the Bramley apples.'

Skin 'em, core 'em, and cut 'em into cubes of about two centimetres.

These are nice big appley chunks, that just sit in the duvet of sponge.

Meanwhile, I'll prepare the pudding basin.

Butter a basin, put a disc of greaseproof paper in the bottom.

It sits there, and stops a seal being formed between the pudding and the basin.

That'll let you get your pudding out without it sticking.

There's nothing worse, after all the cooking, all the baking,

all the foraging,

than getting your pudding stuck and it comes out looking like a cobbler.

And you put these...into there.

When the sponge cooks,

there's going to be quite a lot of liquid comes out the Bramleys.

'Blackberries are our classic foraged ingredient.'

Now, this is the lovely Hairy Biker tricksy-twisty bit.

Just put the little kind of flanks

of blackberries on the bottom of the bowl.

And obviously when we pop the pudding out,

they're going to be like proud little soldiers standing on the top.

There you are, look. Nicely packed in the bottom.

We reserve this to make a sauce for the top.

That goes in.

-There's over 2,000 varieties of blackberry...

-Is there?

..and it's said that the blackberry leaves purify your blood.

Every year we used to go out blackberrying with my mother,

and she'd make blackberry and apple pies.

Bramble jelly was always a favourite. That was lovely.

It was just like thin, thin jam.

But the thing about foraging is, it is seasonal.

And you can actually define the seasons by what you're eating.

Because we've got big hunks of apple in it, we're just going to

tamper the mixture down a little bit.

The mixture will expand, so take some greaseproof, put a pleat on.

'Then, wrap it over the pudding bowl.'

Put the foil on...

'Then do the same thing with a layer of pleated foil, to seal it up.'

The pleat will allow the paper and the foil to expand,

so it's not simply going to split and pop off.

'Tricky bit this - tie the foil in place with some string,

'leaving a bit left over to make a handle.'

That's given us a nice little handle,

to drop our pudding into the pan.

Now, you notice in the pan we've put an upturned flan ring.

That's like a trivet to rest the pudding on.

You can use an upturned saucer. It's just so that this bottom

doesn't rest on the bottom of the pan and catch.

So you pop that on there,

pop your pudding in, sitting nice on the trivet.

Then pour water in,

up to about two or three centimetres short of the top of the basin.

'Set it on a low simmer and allow it to bubble away for an hour and half.

Keep an eye on it check it doesn't boil dry,

'or else it'll ruin your pudding, and your pan.'

That gives us time to make the sauce.

'It's a simple sauce, made with

'blackberry jam and whole blackberries.'

Don't worry about those little stalks,

because we're going to sieve this off before we serve it.

'Take the rest of the lemon,

and squeeze out the juice into the fruit mix.

And these Amalfi lemons - they're like the caviar of the lemon world.

Beautiful, aren't they? That quintessentially Mediterranean sunshine in a lemon.

I know it's cheating, but we British, we're a nation of traders.

And it's just the thing you need after a cold day out foraging for your blackberries.

This is nice, cos it's sweet-sour.

But we need to cook this until these blackberries are soft. They're still quite hard,

so let's just cook them down for a little bit further.

'Stir over a low heat for six to eight minutes.'

Look at the deep, red colour that that is.

So lovely, so autumnal. Just lush.

-I think they're just about ready, mate.

-Aye. They've disintegrated.

I'll get the basin, sieve those off.

'Press the mixture through a sieve and into a bowl.'

Look at that. It's fabulous, isn't it?

'Taste the sauce, and add more sugar or lemon as you prefer.'

Right, that's perfect. Ooh, yeah.

Big, big flavour of fruit, blackberries.

But it's sweet-sour, it's like sherbet, isn't it?

Oh, yes. Epic.

'All that's left now is to wait for the pud to cook.'

-The moment of...

-Cor, look at that!

There's pressure under there, Kingy.

See that? That's stretching like Nell Gwyn's bodice. Isn't it?

If this was a bosom, it would heave, wouldn't it?

All that chemistry's happened in that pan.

-Should we unleash the beast?

-I think so.

There's something that's always exciting

about unpacking your pudding, isn't there?

Has it worked, has it happened, and will it come out?

Oh, that is epic, man!

Beautiful.

-Hey. Go ahead.

-This is the tricky bit, isn't it?

Right, danger's over.

Yeah. It's coming.

Apple chunky... Yes!

Look at that. That's beautiful.

Now, THAT is an apple and blackberry steamed sponge pudding.

Now, this is what we like to refer to as the Vesuvius moment.

It's just screaming out for cream.

Or ice cream. Or home-made custard.

That... is flippin' lovely.

Bit of sauce on there, like that.

And now...

Oh, yes!

Got to get the berries off the top, haven't you?

-It's absolutely gorgeous.

-It's great, isn't it?

What's lovely is the sweetness of the sponge pudding,

it's offset by the Bramleys. It's quite a grown-up pudding, this.

It is. And there's that lovely level of acidity

from the blackberries and the Amalfi lemon. Really nice.

That is a forager's success.

'It's brilliant to think that with a few berries found in a hedgerow

'can completely transform a simple sponge like this.

'And, if you have any sauce or berries left over,

'you can freeze them for another day.'

Wild food is a revelation.

Some of it might take a leap of faith,

but a whole new world of cooking possibilities are opened up, and it really is exciting stuff.

-Oop, there's one.

-There they go. Look at them!

What could be more "Best of British" than the grub

that grows wild in our land?

Food that our very ancestors ate.

Ancient seafood with a modern twist.

Luxurious ingredients and humble fruity desserts.

But most important of all, foraging in the great outdoors

is just brilliant fun!

You'll always have to be careful, but it's in our blood.

It's delicious, healthy... and out there waiting for you.

Visit:

to discover some amazing facts about the history of food.

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

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