Shellfish Hairy Bikers' Best of British

We believe Britain has the best food in the world.

'Our glorious country boasts some fantastic ingredients...

Start eating it, will you!

'It's home to some amazing producers...

My goodness gracious. That is epic.

'And innovative chefs.'

'But our islands also have a fascinating food history.'

The fish and chip shops of South Wales are running out of chips.

Yes!

'..and in this series,

'we're uncovering revealing stories of our rich culinary past.'

Now there is food history on a plate.

'..as well as meeting our nation's food heroes

'who are keeping this heritage alive.'

Let's have them enjoying themselves. It's a short life.

Let's make it a happy one, like they always have had.

'..and of course, we'll be cooking up a load of dishes

'that reveal our foodie evolution.'

Spring, summer, autumn or winter, it's brilliant.

BOTH: Quite simply, the best of British!

British shellfish are, without doubt, the best in the world.

Our cold, plankton-rich waters are bursting with them,

and the majority are plentiful, sustainable and exceptionally yummy!

Our national love affair with these tasty,

easy-to-cook critters goes back as far as our feet have walked

these British Isles, and that's why we've dedicated a whole show

to celebrating great British shellfish.

Crustaceans, across the nations!

'Yep, if there's one thing us Brits don't have to be selfish with,

'it's our shellfish.'

'As an island nation, we've never shied away from shelling out

'on the rich variety of these armoured delicacies

'that surround our shores.'

'It doesn't matter whether we're munching on molluscs

'like mussels, winkles and clams...'

Oh, there we go, you little lovelies!

'..or wrestling with Cornish lobsters and Cromer crabs.'

'..there are few shells in the country

'that us Brits have yet to crack.'

What a wonderful thing to come out of the rivers.

'So welcome to our generous and bountiful offering

'of Great British shellfish.'

It's perfect.

What's not to love?

You can't do best of British without this.

The oyster. I love these things.

Britain has the best oysters in the world.

'And we've a long history of eating them.'

'In the 19th century, oysters were a staple source of protein

'for the poor...'

'As Dickens himself observed,

'this widely available shellfish came hand in hand with poverty...'

'Yet flash forward a hundred years and overfishing, harsh winters

'and neglect during two world wars had transformed them

'into a rare and expensive luxury.'

'To eat oysters here,

'you need not only to be properly dressed but socially acceptable,

'as well, of course, as having the money to go with it.'

'Today, the Aga Khan is coming. Yesterday, a princess.'

'Now farmed in great numbers again,

'they're a little more accessible to your average Brit.'

Huge, huge player in our culinary history, the oyster.

It is, but one of our favourite recipes combines the oyster

with the other great British ingredient, beef.

The beef and oyster pie.

The oysters give it a lovely, briny, savoury flavour.

Odd to think that the oysters were used to bulk out the beef,

because the oysters were cheap.

But also, the other little sneak ingredient that the British

are better than anybody else in the world at doing is the bacon product.

There's some bacon in here as well.

'We'll be chucking in a bottle of stout...'

'..and capping it with some rather nifty labour-saving

'trick puff pastry.'

You make it yourself, you get puff pastry with none of the hassle.

'Firstly, we need to dice 900 grams of stewing beef

'into bite-sized chunks.'

'..and you get on with chopping some shallots.'

'Three should do the trick'

Just season the meat. Black pepper, bit of sea salt.

'And we need to brown off this beef in batches

'to insure we seal in all that wonderful flavour.'

And if you put too much in the pan, the beef will stew,

because the temperature of the pan will reduce,

and it won't be hot enough to put some lovely colour on that beef.

When did you have your first oyster?

Actually, I spat my first oyster out when I was about four,

I think, and I didn't come to oysters until much later,

because I think it is an acquired taste.

They're a subtle taste, though, aren't they?

There's nothing invasive about them.

No, I think it's more a texture thing for kids, really.

Yeah.

'So for those of us with a bit of an aversion to their texture,

'a cooked oyster in a pie is a great way of introducing yourself

to this highly-prized mollusc.'

'And with the meat browned off...'

'..and the shallots in the frying pan

'with two cloves of chopped garlic...'

'It's time to get to grips with our star ingredient.'

Here, that's where the main tendon is, the hinge,

stick your knife in there, you'll find it.

This is an oyster knife.

And then what you do, once you've gone through that, like that...

..there is your oyster. Then what you do, loosen it from the shell,

and we shuck it.

What shuck means is you turn it over to the presentation side.

That's if you were going to serve it raw,

but seeing as we're not, we're going to put it in here, like that.

Right, the onions are coloured up. Time to add the fatty bacon.

And it's streaky bacon. You could use smoked.

Oh, look at these!

They're just lovely.

Taste great. Turn them over, and then what you do...

You put them...!

Put them in the pie. How many have we got left?

Ten, 11, 12. There's two spare.

Look at it, though. It's a beautiful thing.

Well, not really!

I mean, what's beautiful about it?

Jonathan Swift said,

"Credit to the person who first thought of eating that."

We are funny, though, aren't we, with our shellfish. Best in the world.

I mean, the South Koreans go bonkers for our whelks,

and at the same time, we're importing cockles from Holland.

Eh?

And green-lipped mussels from New Zealand.

What's going on?

We've got stuff around our shore.

Will you stop... You lot at home. Start eating it, will you?

They say that, medically speaking,

oysters are among the best thing you could possibly eat.

They're high in protein, they're full of vitamins and goodness,

and apparently they're good for your libido.

'As long as Kingy doesn't eat any more, we'll pop these in the fridge

'and finish adding them to the pie later.'

'There'll be plenty of oysters, Dave, don't you worry!'

'You just focus on finishing off the beefy bit!'

'Add two chopped sprigs of thyme, and a couple of bay leaves.'

Take a bottle of stout, and deglaze the pan with that.

Let that froth up, and then pour that into the mix.

To that, we add about half a litre of good beef stock.

That's the beefy bit of our beef and oyster pie.

'Pop that in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees Celsius

'for about an hour and a half.'

'And if you want, when your hour and a half's up...'

Now, look at that. It's nice.

'..you can thicken your gravy with a bit of cornflower.'

'Simply mix in two tablespoons with some water

'and stir into a paste before adding to your beef.'

Oh, that is gravy.

That is gravy.

Stick to your ribs.

'Add that mixture to your pie dish and then leave to cool.'

'We'll add the oysters later.'

'And while we wait,

'let's get on with our aforementioned trick puff pastry.'

And it involves frozen butter and a cheese grater.

Frozen butter, and it has to be frozen, it has to

be in the fridge for at least two hours,

because what happens is we grate the butter into the flour,

and it stays solid, but when you bake it, that butter creates flakes.

'375 grams of butter goes into 600 grams of flour.'

Have you put your tongue out yet?

No.

Right, that'll do. Now, fold that in, please.

Make sure it's folded in quite well, because that butter needs to be

evenly distributed throughout the flour.

'And remember, don't use your hands!'

'They'll warm up the butter and turn our trick into a disaster.'

'Add 375ml of water and make sure that's cold, too.'

Have to be careful we don't put too much water in.

Yeah, that'll go, now.

I can feel it in my fingers.

This paste will probably make double what we need,

but actually, after all this grating, what you can do is freeze this

pastry, so it is worth making a double batch up.

'It's only when our mixture begins to stick together

'that it's OK to handle it.'

'A light kneading on a floured surface

'is the final touch to our shortcut trick puff pastry.'

Half for me, and half for the freezer.

-Oh, look!

-Look.

The folds.

The matrix and the striations

that have been caused by that cold butter, all without the folding.

GUN COCKS

'Roll it out to your desired thickness to make your lid.'

A bit of pastry edging helps firm things up, up top.

Righto.

In with the oysters.

How many are left there?

One, two, three,

four, five, six, seven.

Eight, nine.

Ten. 11.

12.

Just cover that with water.

There you go.

Beautiful.

Now, we need a steam hole.

Look what I've got here.

It's a cow-shaped pie cutter.

Beef and oyster.

Eggy wash, and we're done.

And if this isn't history,

the British culinary tradition in a pie, I don't know what is.

I bet Nelson had this for his tea.

Yeah.

Place that into a preheated oven, 180 degrees Celsius for a fan one,

25-30 minutes, until it's golden and luscious.

That's a beautiful pie, Kingy.

It certainly is, Myers.

See you later.

Oh! Oh, yes!

Now that's a pie.

Look at that.

Good pastry, huh?

Oh, yes. Puff pastry without the effort.

It smells fantastic.

-It's where the sea meets the land, isn't it?

-It is.

In food form.

It's like a food estuary.

Oh, look at that.

This is a generous dish.

It certainly is.

Oh, man!

And then, jauntily...

Some kale?

I think so.

And a couple of batons?

Oh, indeed.

There it is.

The amalgam of everything that's the best of British.

Want to have a little bit of oyster. Look at that.

That's a taste of England.

And actually, if you didn't want the oysters in, it's all right without.

It so isn't!

'Forget your scampi and steak, viewers.'

'If you fancy giving the original surf and turf a go,

'you can't get much better than this.'

'Like these oysters, much of the shellfish available to us

'in the UK is now farmed up and down our coasts.'

'But some UK fishermen are still only taking

'what nature can afford them.'

'In September, where most of the country are hopefully celebrating

'bringing in a successful harvest,

'for one group of fishermen in North Wales, the month signifies

'the start of eight months of back-breaking work.'

'Yep, with the night's drawing in and the temperature dropping,

'it should come as no surprise that what these fishermen toil to gather

'is regarded as one of this country's best-kept seafood secrets.'

'Thomas Jones is the third generation of Jones family 'Mussel Men'

'to work the famous Conwy mussel banks,

'and they do it using nothing but a giant rake.'

There's nowhere else in the UK

that'll fish for mussels in this way.

The skill of doing it with a rake has passed down through

families and generations.

Like my dad taught me, and his dad taught him.

I've actually been to Aberystwyth University to get a degree,

but I always had at the back of my mind that when I came back,

I'd carry on fishing, and that's what I've done.

All the fishermen have always treated it as a fantastic

part of Conwy's history, so no intention of changing.

'The bountiful mussel beds at the mouth of the Conwy estuary

'have been fished since Roman times and have supported

'a commercial mussel fishery for hundreds of years.'

Just after the Second World War, there were over 70 licenses held,

and whole families were involved in the trade.

'Tom's keeping these traditions alive,

'but they are not using these age-old techniques for sentimental reasons.'

The way we fish for mussels with the rake is very traditional.

It's probably the most environmentally-friendly

way of fishing.

There is no harm to the natural beds, you know,

we only rake of a certain size.

The small stuff will fall back through the rake, you know,

ready to grow back, and we're seasonal here,

from September to April, and then in the four months

we're not raking, it gives the beds and mussels a chance to replace.

The beds have been here for 500 years so far,

so it must be a pretty good method.

If you brought a dredger in here now, and carried on working

all year round, the beds would be ruined within 12 months.

That would be the end of the industry.

'..and these mussels aren't going to grow anywhere else.'

'They're not known as black diamonds for nothing.'

Because they grow in deep waters here,

the mussels tend to grow bigger,

so they've got a lot more meat inside them,

and most fishermen will tell you, because the mussels

grow in the estuary,

so they've got the mixture of fresh water from the valleys

and the mixture of the salt water from the sea,

so the mixture of waters gives it a distinct taste.

'In their heyday, it was these outstanding qualities

'that saw Conwy mussels exported all over the UK.'

'But, where there were once up to 70 mussel licenses

'held on the river, there are now only around six,'

'and despite all of Tom's catch being sold in the UK alone,

'Conwy mussels are still a bit hard to come by.'

'But if you can find some, he suggests you make the most of them

'and cook them up with a bit of continental flair!'

Our most common way is to steam them with a bit of wine

and chop up some celery and some garlic,

get your bread ready for dunking in the juice, and away you go!

'But for the folk who fished these mussels,

'things would have never been so fancy.'

Years ago it was popular for housewives to get Conwy mussels

and just fry them up in a pan.

Mussels for breakfast, mussels for lunch, mussels for tea.

It was a cheap and healthy meal.

'And it still can be now.'

'When it comes to making the most of a Conwy mussel,

'the world is your oyster.'

Well, I just like, personally,

to sprinkle a bit of chilli over it now, it just gives it a bit of zang.

'I think you mean 'zing', dude!'

'Ah, well, whatever floats your boat, Kingy.'

'It's not very British,

'but I do find a splash of vino would be very appropriate here.'

'You always find the old vino appropriate!'

'With the mussels, dude, with the mussels!'

You can steam them in water just as good,

but most people now like a little glass of wine in it.

'Well said, sir!'

'And you can't help but revel in the fact

'that these shellfish are just so quick and easy to cook.'

Generally, you'd keep the mussels in five or ten minutes,

but you want to keep an eye on the mussels, really.

When they open, they're cooked and ready to eat.

'Cooking mussels really is that simple.'

'Shellfish like these are a quality, ecologically sound

'and abundant food source

'that's right on our doorstep, and we need to make more of it.'

Everyone should be enjoying them.

You know, we've got perfect waters here,

we harvest them ourselves, there's no reason why

we should be letting this great product go overseas.

They're such a healthy food to eat.

Should be part of everyone's diet that likes seafood.

'If there's one native shellfish that's been undervalued more

'than any other in the 21st century, it has to be the winkle.'

'For thousands of years, they supplied our countrymen

'with a valuable and appreciated source of fast food.'

'Aye, before we learned to cultivate the land,

'we foraged for food, and what could be easier to catch

'than a very slow-moving and abundant sea snail?'

'Right through the post-war years,

they were still a very popular form of grub,

highly valued, and people waxed lyrical about them.

They're delicious, and they're moreish.

Make caviar seem quite boorish!

The humble winkle, king of them all.

Bought from your local shellfish store.

How's that?

'Sadly, over the last few decades, the world of gastronomy appears

'to have turned its back on this humble little gastropod.'

'And the mollusc has slipped off the menu.

'Now we think it's time for this sustainable and tasty treat

'to make a return.'

'But there's just a few things standing in its way.'

'Firstly, there's its name.'

'Yeah, the word "winkle" doesn't really conjure up

'the image of an epicurean delight.'

'Not helped by the fact it's become little more

'than a playground euphemism.'

'But it was no joke back in the '60s.'

At any time of the year, when he has the chance,

Snips will be busy with his winkle.

'OK, maybe it was after all.'

He collects small winkles from all over the place and puts them

down on his own patch, and he leaves them there to fatten

until they've grown big enough for the market.

This is something he can keep going all the time.

The winkle is a very consistent performer.

'It might well be consistent

'but pretty it ain't, and here probably lies its second problem.'

'Especially when you see it really big, close up.'

'Stop, mate, we're trying to persuade people to eat them!'

'But looks aren't everything.'

'I mean, look at us. We're both extremely tasty.'

'These days we're far too squeamish about our food.'

'Again, not so much of a problem back in Snips' day.'

Snips is thinking about his winkles again.

What was sown a year or more before should now be ready for reaping.

Well, you can average 300 a week, see.

That's a lot of winkles to pick up with one pair of hands, isn't it?

And they all have to be graded and bagged,

and then dispatched upcountry, where the football crowd will eat them.

'And that brings us to the final stumbling block.'

'Actually eating them,

'these little fellas can be a bit on the tricksy side.'

Pick the black cap of the winkle asunder.

Now thrust the pin into the head that's under.

Twist your pin and the winkle's out.

Thrust into the cavern, called a mouth.

'Yep, it demands a certain amount of dexterity

'to prize them out of their shell.'

'So much so, it's even found its way into the record books.'

This, now, is an official challenge

to the existing Guinness Book Of Records.

Now, this is the only winkle-picking championship

in the Guinness Book Of Records. I don't know why.

Get set, go!

'But we believe the winkle should be back on our plates.'

'Forget the negatives.'

'They're sustainable, can be found up and down the UK

'and free, if you're willing to go out and look.'

'But most of all, they taste fantastic.'

Countless millions have been eaten. A seafood that just can't be beaten.

So buy a pint or three, enjoy the scavenger of the sea.

'He's not wrong!'

'But whilst we do have a profusion of some of the tastiest molluscs

'you could ever hope to munch on...'

'we've never been afraid of ripping a page

'out of somebody else's recipe book when it comes to cooking them.'

One of the great things about being British is, in fact,

we can take recipes from overseas and make them our own.

Yes.

An Italian recipe sometimes translates wonderfully well

with British ingredients.

They do.

They do. Take the vongole.

Exactly. Basically, it's tomatoes, spaghetti, chilli,

good, good British surf clams.

Well, they're not surf clams, they're palourdes.

Is that a palourde?

That's a palourde.

And it's actually from Scotland, that one.

Palourdes from Scotland. Not easy to say.

But clams are interesting.

There's loads of different types of clams around.

There's manilas, there's all sorts.

-Manilas were an accident, weren't they?

-They were.

They tried to introduce them into Britain, and they escaped,

but I tell you, the one that makes me laugh is in the Solent,

you've got the American hardback clam.

What happened was, the Queen Mary

and the Queen Elizabeth would come back from America,

and it would dump its shellfish overboard before it docked,

and these clams, who are Americans, go, "Howdy-doody", start breeding,

and now we've got American hardback clams in the Solent.

Now, top tip when you're dealing with clams.

What happens, where do they live? In the sand.

So cover them with water, leave them for 20 minutes.

That gives the clams a chance to purge.

What that means is it goes... IMITATES SPITTING

..and shoots out all of the sand and grit and the bit that you don't

want to eat, because there is nothing worse

than an un-purged clam. It's horrible.

I've got a couple of tomatoes here, and we're using good,

British tomatoes, and we're going to make the tomato sauce, so we skim

them first, slash a cross across the bottom, and that's the pan of water

that I'm going to use for the pasta. We might as well salt it now.

Pop those in for a moment.

'And when he says "a moment", 30 seconds should be more than enough.'

And pretty soon, the tomato is going to shed its skin,

going "I'm hot, I'm going to take my skin off!"

At that moment, I grab it, freeze it, rip the skin off.

Now, look at this.

That has got split and wrinkly like an old man's Adam's apple.

Put it into cold water, and it's so easy.

Bring that back to the boil, and that's ready for the spaghetti.

Now, try and get a good quality spaghetti,

because it's one of the main parts of the dish.

Lots of water when you're cooking pasta.

Look at that tomato. Its skin's as easy as a skin thing.

Right.

-Are you going to snap it?

-No.

I'd break it, you see, because what happens is I'd eat that,

I'd start winding on my fork, before I know it,

I've got a lump of pasta the size of a tennis ball,

and it's all over my shirt, in my hair, around my face.

That's why I haven't snapped it.

You swine!

'Now, Kingy's booby-trapped pasta

'will take no more than ten minutes to cook through.'

'..and fingers crossed, that's about as much time as we'll need

'to knock up the sauce.'

'..within which we'll cook our clam-tastic centrepieces.'

Into the pan, four tablespoons of olive oil.

I've got the shallot on, Kingy.

I've got the chilli. Finely sliced.

-Shall we leave the seeds in?

-Oh, aye.

I had my first vongole years ago, when I'd just finished college.

And I'd bought an old motorbike,

and it was in pieces in my mate's back bedroom,

and I rebuilt it in his bedroom, rode it out through the hall,

into the front street, got an MOT, and rode it to Florence.

And then in Pisa, I had a vongole.

When I came home, I tried to replicate it,

and I cooked it with tin clams, little tin baby clams,

that clamato, you know, the tomato juice and clam juices,

and I did it with chilli flakes, and actually, it was OK.

And at the time, when everybody else was still in the spag bols,

I was offering a vongole.

Well, that's you being cutting-edge.

The shallots go into the hot oil. Oh, that's too hot!

We don't want to burn it.

That would be wrong.

Four cloves of garlic, sliced.

In a vongole, the clams are little diamonds of flavour,

but the sauce can be as robust and punchy as you like.

Look at that. Now that's a fair amount of chilli.

This would bring a wonderful ray of sunshine onto a dreary

winter's day, wouldn't it?

-Right, shall we put the tomatoes in?

-Yeah.

And fresh tomatoes, not tinned.

Let's get some heat through that.

Give that a couple of minutes, and then we put the wine in.

'That's 150ml of white wine.'

That really needs to bubble up. You need to burn the alcohol off,

then it's time for Captain Clam to take to the stage.

Now, what we want is this pasta to be al dente.

Which is...

-I don't like it too al dente, though.

-I do.

Not far off.

Right. The star turns.

The palourdes.

Now, then, in we go.

Scotland meets Naples.

Oh!

Just push them through the sauce. They're just starting to water.

Right, stick that lid on, so it intensifies the heat.

The clams are encompassed in that heat,

and they open their little, smiling gobs.

What do you reckon, Kingy? Give it a minute and a shake?

Oh, there we go! You little lovelies!

'The pasta's done. Almost time to combine it with our clams.'

I love pasta! We don't eat enough of it, do we?

No, not any more.

Not since the diet, no.

Nice big bunch of flat leaf parsley.

Just tossed in at the last minute, stalks and all.

Oh, man, look at that!

If the clams haven't opened, don't eat them.

On account of you'll become very untidy, very quickly.

Yes, you'll be heading for a proper calamity.

Do you see what he did there?

This pan and its entirety goes into the spaghetti pan.

And the flat leaf parsley just goes on the top at the last minute.

Let it steam a little bit.

And just toss it.

Black pepper.

Now I did salt the water before I cooked the pasta,

but I think we need a bit more, don't you?

We do, we do.

Fantastic. Look at that.

There's no highfalutin presentation with this, is there, Kingy?

No, there's not, because as the ingredients would suggest,

it's a very simple dish, but it is so tasty and lovely.

And no Parmesan cheese with a vongole, I would suggest.

Oh, yes.

And you don't have to shell out much to make this dish.

How lovely does that look?

Get in. I'm just going to dig in.

Yes. I'm a winder.

I'm a winder, and then a...

I want another day out of this shirt.

You know, this is a great Anglo-Italian relationship, this.

The British vongole.

And you know, I think it benefits from the relationship on both sides.

That relationship is cemented in Florence,

because there is a lad that has the most fantastic delicatessen

and fish counter, and he gets his clams from Cornwall.

God bless British shellfish.

Oh, aye.

And it's the Cornish coast we're off to next.

With a coastline of over 300 miles

and surrounded by water on three sides

it's no surprise that seafood is high on the agenda in Cornwall.

And when you're down here on holiday, it's a wonderful treat to be able

to indulge yourself in one of the most sought after crustaceans

in the country.

The craggy coastline and rocky seabed that makes the Cornish coast

provides the perfect habitat for lobsters,

and catching and cooking them has been a speciality

of fisherman-cum-local cafe owner, Callum, for many years.

Well, the main fishery here for a long time was herrings.

That used to be the big fishery, was a herring fishery, in the winter.

It was the retired guys that did lobster fishing.

But over the years, with the decline of herrings and other fish,

it has become more and more important.

Shellfish is now such an important part of the fishery.

99% of all fish caught here is crabs and lobsters,

and the more value is the lobster.

But as the saying goes, Kingy, a valuable fish is a vulnerable fish.

There was a boom time,

and people did catch everything they possibly could.

But times have changed now.

From this size and scale fishing,

if we out-fished this area, there is nowhere else for us to go.

This is our only patch, in here.

It is such a wonderful resource, and we are an island nation,

so we've got to look after it.

So, to ensure fishermen continue to find lobsters in their pots

so we can find them in ours,

scientists are working together with fishermen like Callum

to preserve the fishery for future generations.

The National Lobster Hatchery in Padstow is a charity set up in 2000

to conserve local lobster stocks.

It rears thousands of baby lobsters to be released into the wild.

And it all begins with the fishermen supplying what they call

buried hens.

Don't worry, viewers, it's not what you think.

General Manager Dom Boothroyd oversees the whole operation.

When a female has got lots of eggs,

it looks actually just like a series of blackberries held

underneath the tail, that's why we call it buried hens.

There's probably 4,000 eggs, something like that, on there.

They can have anywhere up

to about 40,000 eggs for an exceptionally large female.

And these eggs are probably a week and a half away from hatching.

And the reason they have to produce so many eggs

is because as a baby lobster

your chances of survival over the first two weeks are pretty slim.

So in here, you've got some larvae that hatched out

just a few days ago,

and they are being fed on some frozen planktonic diets.

And in the wild, they'd be growing in the surface

layers of the water, they'd maybe move down during the night,

up during the day, and they're quite weak swimmers.

They're very vulnerable during most stages of the life cycle,

so shoaling fish, sprats, herring, mackerel will feed on them

in huge numbers, and what we do is we raise them through that

area of the life cycle, which is probably only about two weeks or so.

Here in the hatchery,

sibling rivalry is the only real threat they'll encounter.

They're so cannibalistic,

we don't want to lose loads to eating each other,

so we put them into these cells here,

and we can hold 4,000 animals in here at any one stage,

and then we can feed them in about ten minutes, whereas what

we used to do is we used to feed them individually by hand,

and that would take all day, and it was very time-consuming

and quite frustrating.

Yep, rearing kids is hard work, but fortunately after three months,

these ones are more than ready to leave home.

And by releasing these youngsters into the wild,

the hatchery hopes to secure lobster catches for generations to come.

People aren't going to stop eating lobster.

People are always going to want to eat it. It's very tasty.

So we've got to do something to work hand-in-hand with the fishing

industry to try and sustain it. This is just one of the ways of doing it.

This is one which is new, it is a novel approach.

It's creating a shift away from just hunting and gathering,

just going on harvesting, towards farming.

And combined with fishermen only landing suitably-sized adults,

the tide seems to be gradually turning, which is great news

for the lobster, and brilliant news for us.

I've been fishing now for 24 years,

and it does seem to be holding its own,

but this is what's on our doorstep, this is what we should be eating.

And it's so good for you. What's not to do?

Well, one thing we've not done is cooked any.

Back at Callum's cafe, only a stone's throw

from the quayside of Port Isaac, he promised to do just that.

Here you can have lobster all sorts of ways,

but there's only one dish that can really do our catch any justice.

Today we're going to put a thermidor sauce on the lobster.

This is quite a classic dish.

It's all about getting the good-quality products

of the sauce to enhance the flavour of the lobster.

Making a basic thermidor is a lot simpler than you might think!

To kick off, simmer some onions in white wine.

Once this has been boiled down,

you just add it to a cheese sauce of your own making.

Add a spoonful of mustard powder, and in the 15 minutes it takes to

complete the sauce, your lobster will be ready!

Originally invented in Paris at the turn of the 19th century,

a lobster thermidor has always been a dish we associate with posh folk.

Here in Cornwall, Callum's version, using his own catch

and these basic ingredients, are giving this bourgeois staple

a new reputation as a great-tasting food for all.

I do think fishermen are now more custodians of the sea.

We are just trying to maintain the fishery,

and we just are harvesting a crop now.

We just want to take the mature fish and have a sustainable,

vibrant future.

These days, it's not always easy to find great-tasting seafood

you can eat with a clear conscience.

But order a lobster thermidor down here in Cornwall

and chances are you'll be doing just that!

'Whilst the conservation of some of our coastal shellfish has

'taken priority in Cornwall...'

'..on this stretch of the River Thames, an equally tasty

'freshwater cousin of the lobster, the crayfish,

'has multiplied to almost epidemic proportions.'

And we're here to help catch some.

It's a nice day for it, isn't it?

Oh, it is, it is. Wrangling crayfish.

Something the British are good at.

Messing about in boats and a bit of fishing.

'It's a prime hunting ground for a local river legend

'who really can only go by one name.'

Hello. You must be Crayfish Bob.

It is, I am indeed.

Very nice to meet you, Bob.

Nice to meet you.

Where's your limp and your parrot, dude? That's what we were thinking!

Oh! No, we'll be OK. I've got a fine vessel.

'Hey, Dave, I'm not sure about this.'

'He's got grass growing in there, and a tree out the side!

Let's get ready to rumble!

'Eh up, Kingy, three men in a boat?'

'Man, let's hope it stays that way, as we're after an American monster

'that's over-aggressive over-sexed, and guess what?'

'It's over here!'

-Oh, here we go!

-Oh, nice!

-Yes.

-There you go.

-Oh, wow!

-Hey, man, they're great.

They're big, aren't they?

There are some big ones in here, yeah.

These are American signal crayfish,

and that one is probably about three or four years old.

Right.

They're called signal,

not because of the red which they all have on the underside

of the claw, but because of the little white knuckles.

Bob, how and when did these crayfish get here?

Specifically, in 1976, when the Government introduced them

on a scheme, to make money out of exporting them

as a farming product, so they stuck them into aquaculture centres,

fisheries, and places like that,

with the idea of exporting them to Scandinavia.

It didn't work, so after that, businesses go bust, lakes get

abandoned, crayfish walk, people help them, then they get everywhere.

'And that proved to be a big problem for our smaller, timid,

'indigenous breed of crayfish.'

'In some rivers, these bigger, fiercer American invaders

'have outcompeted and outbred our native white-clawed variety

'to become a major river menace.'

'But all is not lost.'

'Bob's on a one-man mission to eradicate this pest

'once and for all.'

Man, it's just never-ending!

How long ago did you set those traps, Bob?

I put this in last night.

-Really?

-Yeah.

It's an infestation, not a colonisation, isn't it?

It is an infestation.

Some of the riverbed's carpeted with them, almost.

-Really?

-Yeah.

I mean, there are places you can go where you won't see any frogs,

you won't see any dragonflies or anything,

because there's so many of them that they've just...

Kill and eat everything.

Bob, how did you get into this?

Well, I first heard about these guys and the problem with them

back in the early '80s.

I was floating up the river in the early '00s, and I realised that

the problem was bad, and nothing seemed to have been done about it.

I thought, no-brainer, it must be easy.

They're worth money, they're good food. There must be a solution.

Naive, but here we are, nine years later.

'They might be plentiful, but you still need a licence to trap

'American crayfish, even where they are a problem.'

'But fortunately, where you can get one, you can revel in the fact that

'this is one environmental crisis that makes some great eating.'

Strangely enough, the spread of our native crayfish seems to have

been dictated by mediaeval monks,

who introduced the shellfish to rivers all around the UK.

A quality, readily available meat, they were, by Tudor times,

finding their way into feasts hosted by Henry VIII himself.

'And despite falling out of favour in recent years,

'the greater abundance and size of these American invaders has

'reinvigorated our appetite for this once-common dish.'

'And a favourite way of cooking them

'would simply involve boiling them up in a stock.'

But what's in the stock?

Started off as a ham stock, boiled a ham up in it,

and we've just put some local beer in there.

Something around an old traditional British approach to them.

That's them in. What's in the big pot, Bob?

This one, this is the traditional Swedish way of cooking them.

A lot of dill, a little bit of fennel, maybe, some peppercorns.

They're huge.

Aren't they?

Now, what's your technique?

I tend to break them in the middle like that.

Your good Swede will immediately...

Suck the head.

I'm not a head-sucker.

Oh, can I have your head?

These are sweet.

Absolutely fantastic.

'If eating them whole isn't your cup of tea,

'Bob's come up with some ingenious ways of giving these bolshie

'American invaders a little more British finesse.'

Hello, Madam, do you come here often?

'And to help eat the catch, a posse of Thames river folk

'equally committed to Bob's environmental cause.'

'And to kick off with, an amuse-bouche of crayfish ice cream.'

-That crayfish ice cream is stunning.

-Marvellous.

It's spicy, it's tasty.

Chillies at the end, lovely.

'Some potted crayfish to follow.'

'And you don't need to guess

'what Bob's gone and stuck into the quiche, do you?'

'And for pudding, Kingy?'

'More crayfish?'

These are the ones we caught.

What a wonderful thing to come out of the rivers.

You know, everywhere else in the world,

they have crayfish festivals and you celebrate them.

-I think it's about time we started.

-We should.

It starts right here.

It does. We've got a good one going on.

'It might be rather optimistic

'to try and eat our way out of an environmental catastrophe.'

'But given that these crayfish taste so good,

'I'm sure we can pull together and all give it our best shot.'

The Thames might not have become famous for its crayfish yet.

But over the years, one spot in the country has built up

a reputation for supplying a truly special little delicacy.

'Most of the Norfolk coast is flat and marshy,

'but around Cromer the cliffs rise above a chalky seabed,

'and it's in these waters that you find the famous Norfolk crabs.'

'The Cromer crab is particularly renowned for its high proportion

'of white meat and its sweet and tender flesh.'

Gorgeous!

And the area has always been one of the most productive

crabbing beds in the country.

And they've been harvested in more or less the same way for centuries.

'In Cromer, there are two or three families

'who have been fishermen for generations.'

'Sons have joined fathers as soon as they've left school.'

I've got pictures going back six generations now,

so we've been here a fair while.

And now your son is taking over from you, too.

I hope so.

But fishing for crabs wasn't a job for the faint-hearted.

The first one, I'd be seven or eight year old.

I went with my father, and I just remember going,

but I can't remember coming back, I was that seasick. It was terrible.

I feel sick now and again, and so do some of my crew.

'Oh, rough!'

'And getting up for work at 2am

'is enough to make your stomach flip, too.'

'The crab boats go out to sea at dawn, six days a week.'

'Each boat has its own set of pots to look after, and the pots have

'to be hauled in, emptied and filled with fresh bait each morning.'

The design of the all-important pots was based on years of know-how,

and perfect to trap any curious crustacean.

'Richard has 150 pots to look after, and once they've all been cleared,

'it's back to home as quickly as possible.'

'Fresh crabs mean money, and if they're exposed to daylight

'too long before they're boiled, they start to go off.'

But landing their catch was just the start of it.

A fisherman's work is never done.

'The fishermen themselves clean, boil and deliver their catch.'

Within hours, the morning's crabs will be on their way

to plates full of salad throughout Britain.

Without the fishermen's hard work, we would be deprived

of one of the greatest British shellfish of all time.

One that's kept us hooked for years.

For seafood lovers and fishermen alike,

it's definitely a case of once bitten, forever smitten.

Could you do any other job?

I mean, if they tried to put you in an office somewhere, on land?

I'd be sweeping it!

Did you get that, Kingy?

Not really, but I got the distinct impression

he'd rather carry on being a crab fisherman.

'And fair play to him, because without his endeavours,

'one half of our final dish would still be scuttling around

'on the ocean floor.'

-Oh, mate, this is one of my favourites.

-And me.

It's a scallop and crab mornay.

-It's a wonderful recipe, isn't it?

-It is.

We make a great, traditional sauce with infused milk.

Proper cooking, the scallops are prepped properly,

the crab's picked-through fresh... Use the brown meat, white meat,

whatever crab meat you want, then we bake it with a golden, crispy,

cheesy crumb on the top.

Now, are you going to do the sauce?

Oh, aye. I'll get saucy, you get cracking.

Right. Now, this recipe doesn't call for the coral, and that's

what this bit's called here, so it's really, really simple to remove.

You just pull it off like that.

There's lots of lovely little recipes you can use with the coral.

You can saute them off with a little butter and some capers,

so don't waste it, don't throw it out.

This is the bit that we're interested in,

and then we're going to slice those into three discs.

Do you know, I love the texture.

I'm making some infused milk, so I've got 500ml of milk in a pan,

half a chopped onion, and a bay leaf.

Bring that to the boil and wait for it to cool.

Now, we want to chill these scallops, right.

The reason that we do that is that when it cooks in the oven,

we still want this to be sweet and succulent.

If you don't chill them down, they'll overcook.

Cover this plate with clingfilm, put them in the fridge,

and that chills the temperature of the scallop down.

I've got some gruyere here. I'm just going to grate some off.

I want some gruyere in the sauce, I want some gruyere in the crumbs.

It's lovely!

Now, we're going to keep these shells,

because these are going to be our little serving dishes.

That's lovely, isn't it, a lovely thing to do.

What I'm going to do is I'm just buttering them.

'And if you haven't got any shells to play with,

'some shallow gratin dishes will do the trick.'

As soon as this milk's come to the boil, turn the gas off,

and we'll leave that to cool for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, I'll make my roux.

'Most of your classic sauces will be based around a roux.'

'Here, Dave's simply adding some flour to about 30 grams

'of melted butter, and one and a half teaspoons

'of English mustard powder.'

What I'm doing is I'm cooking the flour a little bit with the butter,

just to cook the flour in and that mustard.

While that settles a while, I'm just going to strain the onions

and the bay leaf off the milk.

While Dave's doing that and straining his onions and milk,

because your shells rock and roll,

I've just put a little pile of sea salt on the tray, and what

we're going to do is rest them on that sea salt, and guess what?

It stops them rolling about.

Let's just whisk in this infused milk.

Into the mustardy roux. We don't want lumps.

This is a smooth, sophisticated, soft sauce.

I'm just going to give that a whisk.

We want this sauce to be more affectionate than

the feel of an angel's glove.

Look at that.

Now we add three tablespoons of white wine,

and we've got a nice, English, dry, white wine.

Now, two tablespoons of cream go in.

It's lush, this, isn't it?

I love seeing the sauce come together. It's gorgeous.

Add about 25 grams of gruyere. That's about that much.

Right, mate. I've just got this sorted.

All I'm going to now do is add some of the crab to the bottom,

and then it's ready for the sauce and the scallops.

Just take that sauce off the heat now.

And I want the heat just to be off that before I put

the scallops in there.

What I love about Britain, and these days more than ever,

there's places like Cromer that's famous for its crab,

Craster for its kippers, Morecambe Bay for its shrimps,

and actually, people begin to realise just what treasure we've got.

Never ceases to amaze me,

the massive market that we have in Europe for our seafood.

They demand our seafood because it is of such a high quality.

That's the great thing about the seafood round our shores.

Because the water is so cold, they work harder for their living,

thus intensifying the flavour, and are tastier, I think,

than warm water seafood, you see.

That does smell lovely.

This could be one of my death row dinners, you know.

Right, mate, I'm going to go and get those scallops from the fridge.

Right. I need some chives.

A tablespoon will do.

But all this is, is the dressing

for the fabulous British crab and scallops.

Scallops go in.

Treat them with the reverence they deserve,

so don't just dosh them off the plate into the sauce.

Oh, no.

-Just place them, and then we can fold them in.

-Yeah.

Shall I fold?

Absolutely.

Fabulous.

That's punchy, as well!

Over to you, hero.

I shall make the crumbs.

So, what we're looking for is three of the discs per portion.

But not only do we have the bed of crab, the unctuous sauce,

the succulent scallop, we've got a crispy, crunchy, cheesy topping, too!

Get in.

So, to make that, I've got my gruyere, goes into a bowl.

Some breadcrumbs.

And I want some chopped curly parsley.

Every other recipe you seem to get used to say,

"And topped with flat leaf parsley".

What happened to the curly fellow?

But it's a different flavour. I kind of think it goes better with fish.

I do.

That goes into the mix.

I love this recipe. Apart from the amazing ingredients,

there's a lovely bit of alchemy, isn't there, Si?

There is, there is. It's beautiful.

-There we go.

-Great.

And a nice spoonful of this parsley, cheesy crumb.

Do you know, Si,

this dish contains most of the elements of cookery that we love.

Yes, indeed, it does.

There's respect to the ingredients, there's different textures,

there's presentation.

I mean, it even comes with its own crockery.

There is nothing nicer than receiving that at the table,

you know, a scallop shell.

There's something mystical and lovely about that,

and it adds to the theatre of your dinner party, doesn't it?

Do you know what?

I think we're only 20 minutes away from a taste of paradise.

Yes.

Preheated oven, hot, around 200 degrees Celsius

for about 20-25 minutes, just until it's crunchy.

Go on.

-Oh!

-Yes!

Oh!

How fantastic.

That's perfect.

We did think about offering a slice of lemon with this,

but then we thought no, because with all the mustard

and all the wine, the lemon could be too acidic.

Indeed.

Oh, nice!

It's fair to say, seafood is our favourite foodstuff.

And this is really simple, but I think that bit of good cooking,

it really shows it off to its best advantage.

Absolutely.

Well...

You feel it's a treat, don't you?

I do.

That scallop.

Look at that. How lovely is that?

Yes?

What we need for this, Kingy, is a little spoon.

-You just take a delicate little bit.

-Yes.

-You don't want anything as vulgar as a fork.

-No.

And you get the crab.

That's it. You've got to cock your pinkie, because it's worthy of it.

And you blow.

Can't wait.

But the way this dish is put together is brilliant.

That super-fresh crab in the bottom, use the brown meat as well.

The classic sauce, the really fresh scallops,

and that lovely, crunchy topping.

Bake it together, it's perfect.

What's not to love?

Great British shellfish.

'We've always been spoilt for choice when it comes to the quality

'and variety of shellfish that are available to us in this country.'

'So it's reassuring to know that over the years we've evolved

'equally varied and imaginative ways of cooking them.'

'Whether you want to have a bash at some traditional British recipes,

'or embrace some of the continental concoctions

'that our shellfish enhance so well.'

'You can rest assured that you'll end up eating a healthy,

'tasty and sustainable product that we should all be more proud of.'

Subtitles by Red Bee Media