Potatoes 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 ye?

It's home to amazing producers...

-My goodness gracious. That is epic.

-Isn't it?

..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.

BOTH: 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.

Without doubt the vegetable that has made the greatest

-impact on the way us Brits eat is, you've guessed it...

-The potato.

Discovered in Peru by the Spanish conquistadors in 1532,

this uber tuber didn't reach our shores until 1600.

But it took a further 200 years for the humble spud to make

the transition from being a curiosity for the gentry

to being an important part of our nutrition.

But once we got our teeth into it, there was no stopping us,

and it took over.

And to this day it is without doubt a national treasure.

So today's show is a celebration of the potato -

its history, its versatility, its sheer deliciousness,

and, of course, how it became central to our cuisine.

The potato's importance to the British diet isn't simply

explained through our addiction to chips, crisps and mashed taters.

Eating this, it's like culinary meditation.

Because our love of spuds has seen our creative nation

adapt potatoes into a bewildering array of dishes and products.

Your barometer of comfort food is going to need to be reset.

So, as well as playing a big role in supplying our nation with

the carbs it needs to go about its day-to-day business...

..the potato has become the vegetable staple

on which we hang many of our meals.

And we grow tonnes of them.

This immense popularity sees many farmers in the UK focus on a handful

of dependable, familiar varieties that now dominate our diets.

But it's not always been this way.

Well, we're in my neck of the woods

in beautiful Northumberland to visit some old friends who have

dedicated their lives to the history and heritage of the potato.

And when most of us think of the humble spud,

we think of King Edwards, Maris Piper or the odd Jersey Royal.

But not long ago, the potato was a much more interesting

and diverse vegetable.

'So, we're here with one of our favourite British potato

'producers, Anthony Carroll, to look into the history

'of our favourite staple, the great British spud.'

Now there's a definition of a farmer -

a man outstanding in his field. Hello, mate. Good to see you.

-Good to see you.

-How are you?

-Nice to see you again.

Anthony, you are so passionate about British potatoes -

where did that passion start?

It originally started by us growing a few potatoes in the garden,

and then as we got into them we found these wonderful old varieties

that are no longer commercial in that they don't yield very much,

they are difficult to grow.

But they give you so much more. The effort is really worth

growing these old varieties. You get texture, flavour, colour - it's just fabulous.

You know, potatoes are so much part of the British heritage,

and you're keeping that heritage alive.

Britain has a wonderful heritage of growing new varieties of potatoes.

It started way back. The great Victorian houses

and estates of the country grew potatoes not for yield,

but for their guests, for their friends,

and therefore taste, flavour, texture

was really key to what they were trying to achieve.

And then we had world wars, and the issue with that was

feeding the population became more important than what

they tasted like or whatever,

so yield and ease of harvesting became more important,

and we lost a lot of the traits that were there in the earlier growing.

So therefore, we are trying to bring some of that back again, saying

the other varieties are fine, commercial varieties are very good, they are cheap, wholesome,

but we have left these wonderful heritage varieties behind.

'The best way to experiment with some of these lesser-known varieties

'is to grow them in your own garden,

'where the fun of digging them up never diminishes.

'It's like digging for buried treasure.'

Gem hunting, isn't it?

-Wow!

-Look at these!

-There's hundreds!

-Ho-ho!

-Oh, man!

-They're like rubies, aren't they?

I love this, it's like vegetable fishing.

They are a fantastic variety of potatoes called Red Duke Of York,

and they are quite prolific.

-Oh, yes!

-Everywhere you look, you strike gold. Well, Duke Of Yorks.

These...are fantastic potatoes.

You can keep digging. There's three or four more acres for you to go at.

Well, at least spuds would be the type of food that gives us

the energy to do just that.

Easily grown, cheap, high in vitamins and minerals,

and amazingly nutrient rich.

You can see how the potato became an important food source

as the UK industrialised.

Back at the farmhouse, Anthony's wife Lucy has cooked up a few dishes

to demonstrate the cooking qualities of these wondrous spuds.

That smells good!

'To start with, she's recreated a classic working-class dish

'of potatoes, onions, cheese and butter Kingy will be more than familiar with.'

-What have we got, Lucy?

-Well, we've got pan haggerty.

-Yes.

A traditional north-east dish which I thought you might appreciate.

-Oh, you two! Go on.

-SIMON LAUGHS

There is as many ways of cooking pan haggerty as there are houses

in the north-east, isn't there? And this is your way of doing it, is it?

-Yes, yes.

-Brilliant.

But it's fairly simple. There's no extras in it.

I haven't added cabbage or bacon or any extras, no.

BOTH: Ahh!

-Lucy, what variety of potato is in the pan haggerty?

-Red King Edwards.

Pan haggerty, made with heritage varieties like these,

would have provided a cheap and nutritious meal for coal miners and shipbuilders from these parts,

who made Britain the industrial powerhouse of the world.

And this is the traditional way to eat it, isn't it, Lucy?

-Out the pan.

-Out the pan, absolutely.

The potatoes are so tasty, it's just heaven.

-It's lovely. It works, doesn't it?

-Good.

-Great.

-Lovely.

-It looks so good as well with the red skin on.

-Yes. Kept the skin on.

That's where the nutrition is. And the flavour, as well.

'But you don't just get great tasting dishes out of these heritage

'spuds - you get colourful ones, too.'

This is a salad dish, a tricolour of heritage potatoes.

These are them cooked.

Red Duke Of York, Salad Blue, and Pink Fir Apple.

It's known variations in the potato go back to its distant origins

in South America where they were originally cultivated.

Such variations have been further enhanced by growers in the UK

where, with the help of more advanced plant breeding techniques,

they were able to breed for interest and idiosyncrasies in their potatoes.

And a sapphire blue spud is bound to give you

a bit of notoriety among your peers.

'I wonder what it tastes like.'

That blue potato, there's far more to it than just the colour.

The flavour is great.

And although they are called Salad Blue, in fact

they are quite dry and floury, you can see they are not very waxy.

-Yeah.

-So they are good for baking and roasting as well as in salads.

I've just had a Red Duke, Dave. Absolutely fabulous.

It's just really simple ingredients, but the quality of them make the dish.

-Yeah, they all have their own flavours.

-Yeah.

-Mmm.

You know, it's funny, with mass production

and homogenisation of potatoes, I think we began to take the

humble potato for granted, and it's got far more to offer than that.

Lucy's delicious pan haggerty has inspired us to revive another

northern working-class potato recipe that we know you'll love.

It's a Best Of British classic - it's a butter potato pie.

Dave, exactly that. Butter potato. What goes with potatoes? Butter.

Traditionally they were served in Lancashire and eaten on a Friday.

If you didn't have fish,

being a Catholic you could still have your meat-free Friday,

and thus the butter potato pie became a treat.

We're going to do a mushroom gravy which is brilliant with this,

but this is all about potatoes.

We're going to do these in five-millimetre slices.

Meanwhile, I'm going to think ahead to the gravy.

I'm going to soak some dried mushrooms in vegetable stock.

'For your stock, either add a couple of teaspoons of bouillon,

'or one vegetable stock cube to half a pint of water.'

Pour that over a little pan of dried mushrooms.

These are just the ordinary ones you get from the supermarket,

nothing highfalutin.

-You know, Kingy?

-What?

In 1995, the potato became the first vegetable

to be grown in outer space.

But what for?

Yeah, but, one day when we're going to other planets,

when we're travelling across the universe, you might want some chips.

-Yeah.

-Never mind.

-Must get on.

Take one onion, slice it finely and saute it in butter and oil

until it's unctuous, golden and brown.

Now, put these potatoes in boiling water and cook until tender,

which should be about four to five minutes.

Take some butter, put that in a pan and add some oil.

Olive oil is good for this. And then just saute down the onion.

A little toaty toat of salt, Mr Myres?

Yeah. Not too much.

'Just as your uber tubers soften,

'drain and cool under a tap to stop cooking.'

'Cooking completion will occur when the pie is in the oven.'

We've got a great relationship with potatoes, us Brits, haven't we?

I mean, we absolutely love them.

They are a staple in our everyday diet.

Oh, aye.

Well, in Ireland, of course, the potato famine,

it weren't just a staple of the diet, life depended on the potato.

-It did.

-The potato blight killed millions.

And you know, Kingy, during the Klondike gold rush in Alaska in 1897,

potatoes were literally worth their weight in gold

because of their content for vitamin C.

-Hence the potato variety...

-BOTH: Yukon Gold!

-Si?

-Yes, mate?

-I think these onions are just right. They are just beginning to catch.

-Should I make the pastry?

-Yeah, go on.

You know, we're just going to do a cheesy pastry.

'This is an appliance-assisted really quick, tasty pastry.'

'Simply whiz up 50 grams of grated cheddar cheese

'and 170 grams of butter with 350 grams of plain flour.'

'And blend away until it resembles something akin to fine breadcrumbs.'

'Now beat an egg with a tablespoon of water.'

'Gently add until your mixture begins to form a ball.'

Go a bit steady, because some eggs are bigger than others,

and you may end up with your pastry being too soft.

There you go, look!

-I used to do impressions of kitchen appliances, you know.

-Did you?

-Yeah, what's this one, Kingy?

-What?

Steamer. Er...

Pop-up toaster.

'Thankfully, ladies and gents, we're done with the appliances

'and the impressions.'

'Using hands, we knead the pastry into a ball,

'putting a third to one side to use as a lid.'

Think that should be enough.

'Roll out the rest, remembering to turn it regularly.'

Now, I'm just going to butter this dish.

Give it a right good going over.

What we must do is put an oven tray in the oven now to preheat,

and this is the secret to getting a crispy base to your pie.

You put the pie dish onto a hot oven tray.

That'll be hot, bottom gets hot, pastry gets cooked.

Place your pastry over your pin, like so. Pop that back...

..then just press it quite firmly into there

and leave the edge over hanging, because we'll deal with that later.

'Prick your base and press out the air bubbles.'

Let's build pie!

-First step, a layer of potatoes.

-Indeedy!

A third of the potatoes.

What we do, take our now cool potatoes

and just put them in the pie.

-There we are.

-Pepper...

..and salt. Dot with butter.

Pop on half the onions.

Now, this is a well-packed pie. We want it to grow.

-Another layer of potatoes.

-Season between each layer.

More butter, and now the rest of the onions.

Then finish off with the rest of the potato.

We need quite a big lid, because obviously it's got to stretch

over that potato, like the shirt on a fat bloke's tummy.

-Good, good eggy wash.

-It's pastry glue, isn't it?

-It is.

Beautiful. Firm press.

Tell you what, mate,

it looks like blackbirds are going to fly out of that pie any minute.

'We'll trim off this extra pastry.'

-HUSKILY:

-It's all yours.

-Thank you.

'And hand over to Si, and he can do his thing.'

You're good at crimping.

I know. I don't know where it comes from.

-It's just one of them things. Aye.

-Beautiful.

'Stick two air holes in the lid to allow the steam to escape.

'Finally, an eggy wash to glaze,

'and our picture-perfect potato pie is ready for the oven.'

-That's a pie!

-It's a fairy-tale pie.

-Yeah.

Oven, 180 degrees for about 40 minutes.

On a hot oven tray, which will mean we'll get a crispy bottom.

See you later.

-Right, mushroom gravy.

-I'll chop the mushrooms.

Now, for the gravy, you'll need about ten mushrooms.

Look at these beautiful chestnut mushrooms. How gorgeous.

And what we are going to do is just slice them.

'We'll saute these fresh mushrooms in butter and olive oil for five minutes.'

Right, mate, they are nice and soft.

Right-ho. So we need a tablespoon of flour.

'Mix in thoroughly.

'Drain and chop our rehydrated mushrooms.

'Gradually add the liquid to the gravy.'

We don't want it too thick, we don't want it too thin either, do we?

No, just needs to be...of gravy consistency.

'Drop in your rehydrated mushrooms.'

A bit more juice.

'If you're fancy, add some chopped chives.'

-And I think the pie is done.

-Excellent.

-Ho-ho!

Cow pie without the horns.

It's a thing of beauty, dude.

What a wonderful midweek family meal.

BOTH: It's a shame to cut it.

It's a pie that's not short on filling, and think,

that pastry is cheesy and yummy and unctuous.

-Oh, mate.

-Just a little noggin of spinach.

-Gravy.

-Gravy.

-Oh, man.

-Main event potato.

-Oh! Heaven.

-It's hot, comforting, delicious.

And I think it has made, genuinely,

the potato the main event in what really is an old English classic.

-That mushroom gravy is fab.

-And that pastry is brilliant.

Potatoes - they are more than just a part of our culinary heritage,

they are at the very root of our very way of life.

And when that comes under threat, it demands drastic action.

Which is why, back in 1962, intrepid reporter Alan Wicker

didn't think twice about jumping on a train to head into deepest Wales.

I've come here to report upon a crisis which affects

every home in this land.

The very foundations of the economy are threatened,

and you'll understand why there is this general national alarm

when I tell you that the fish and chip shops of South Wales

are running out of chips.

Howay, man - it cannae be that bad!

It's only a few chips.

If you don't immediately realise the gravity of this disaster,

just think of Italy without spaghetti,

China without rice, France without wine.

Oh... Well, if you put it like that.

The only thing that would be worse is Newcastle without the stottie.

Here the fish and chip shop is the pillar upon which society rests.

Blame the winter for this catastrophe.

Seed potatoes have been frozen and killed in the ground.

The New Jersey crop has been set back,

and Welsh friers must wait for the new potatoes.

# Won't somebody tell me

# How you say goodbye to someone that you really love

# That you can't have? #

Back in the '60s, there were between 13,000 and 14,000

chippies in Britain, with a turnover of more than £1 million a week.

But in a world of chips, Cymru was the capital.

Nowhere are so many chips consumed by so few people as here in Wales.

There are 760 fish and chip shops in South Wales,

or one for every 2,000 of the population,

and they provide the main meal of the day for countless families.

The 69 chipperies frying tonight in Cardiff alone will each get through

five to ten 100-weight sacks of potatoes, and the price has

gone up from around 10 shillings a sack to more than 40 shillings.

For a land at the time dominated by heavy industry like steel production and coal-mining,

the workers relied on potatoes as a cheap and tasty source of fuel.

But in the light of the shortage, it looked as though the chips

were down for the Welsh, and they braced themselves for the worst.

The Welsh Area Council of the National Federation Of Fish Friers

has said that if they can't get potatoes for the next ten weeks,

South Wales will have to revolutionise its eating habits.

But these tough South Walians weren't going to give up

without a fight, and novelist and playwright Gwyn Thomas

gave his own impassioned take on the situation.

We've taken such a number of beatings in our time.

National identity lost, the language lost,

a large part of the religion lost, but I think we'll put on

a Custer's Last Stand for the potato and the chip.

We have relied very largely upon this strange vegetable

for our kind of climactic stiffness.

The chip is what music is to the Italians and statues to the Greeks.

This is the great culmination of human experience.

The chip, this warm, savoury thing which will never betray you as adultery might,

which will never inspire you unduly as art might, the chip is the chip.

It is life itself.

Oh! The only way that could have been more rousing is

if it had been sunk by a full male voice choir.

Thankfully, in the end the crisis was averted

when Britain managed to import potatoes from Europe.

-And the chip shops of Wales lived to fry another day.

-Oh, phew!

We might have had to swallow our national pride

to import our favourite veg from abroad...

..but thankfully these days there are plenty of potatoes to go around.

And we are getting very inventive on how to use them.

Herefordshire - the beating heart of rural England...

..a county deeply connected with supplying the British with food

and drink of all varieties.

Whether it's hops for beer, apples for cider or cattle for beef,

Herefordshire's soils have underpinned

the existence of some of the most famous foodstuffs.

William Chase is a maverick farmer who realised its soil also had

untapped potential for the humble potato.

Where potatoes are traditionally grown in the fens, a lot of disease had built up.

But Herefordshire was a relatively new area for potatoes,

so we could find virgin land that had never grown potatoes before

that could grow these beautiful, creamy, smooth cosmetically wonderful potatoes.

Little did he know that his super spuds one day would be providing

the key ingredient to what has recently been judged

the world's best vodka.

So it started with growing potatoes for supermarkets.

Learned how to grow them, learned how to farm.

Then started turning them into potato chips.

Then, travelling around the world looking for equipment for the chips, I actually discovered potato vodka.

And I always thought vodka tasted of nothing,

paint remover or nail varnish remover, so when I discovered

real potato vodka, I was so amazed with it I thought, "I'd love to make this."

'And the more I researched it and tasted different

'products around the world, I found that we could actually make

'a better product, because it is all down in the taste of the potatoes.

'Our preferred variety is Lady Claire or Rosetta or the varieties they

'use mainly for the crisping market, because they are like bullets.'

They are very hard, tough potatoes. If you cut them up and boil them, you could boil them for hours

and they wouldn't dissolve into the water. These are really robust potatoes.

Because they've got so much starch, they are so intense with flavour,

with the Herefordshire soil as well, combine those two,

those varieties make fantastic tasting vodka.

But to get everybody else believing us Brits can make great vodka,

William entered his product to be judged in the ultimate

international drinks competition.

One thing for us, which was the San Francisco World Spirits Competition

because it's totally unbiased.

They have about 250 entrants in white spirits, in vodka alone, a year,

and then we won that, and we actually won the double gold,

we won the highest level that you can possibly get.

It's almost like crowning it, like giving it an endorsement that it is good. It is the best.

And though us Brits have been drinking it widely since the 1920s

and making grain-based vodka since the 1940s,

the wonder of converting a soily spud into the best

vodka in the world in the heart of the English countryside

has always got people interested.

The distillery regularly holds tours to show people how it's done,

and Jamie Baggott is the man in charge of putting

the essence of Hereford potatoes into a world-class vodka.

We process around 60 tonne of potatoes a week.

We peel the potatoes, they then come out of a hopper into

a progressive pump which chops the potatoes in different stages,

squashes them, and everything is eventually forced through a five-millimetre plate.

That then goes into our mash vessel where we directly

inject it with steam to start heating the process up.

And what we basically try to do is make mashed potato.

To this mash, they add yeasty enzymes,

and after about a week of fermentation, you get this.

-So, this is the world's worst potato wine.

-THEY LAUGH

And that's what we're trying to create.

So the next stage really is to get the alcohol out of the potato mash, OK?

And that's where the stripper comes in.

Ho-ho! Nothing to get steamed up about, viewers.

It's a technical term describing how the alcohol is

extracted from this potato wine.

So, that's your spirit, that's around 80% alcohol,

if you want to have a smell. You've heard of moonshine or potcheen, basically that's what that is.

THEY LAUGH

At this stage, the only thing that this moonshine will be stripping is paint.

But what makes this potato vodka outstanding is some unique machinery.

We have got the largest fully copper rectification column in Europe,

possibly the world. We don't know of any that are bigger.

Bigger is better in this game,

as what this rectifier has put right is alcohol.

Raw alcohol needs impurities removing,

and the purer it is, the better the potato vodka.

You think most vodka manufacturers use triple distillation,

we actually pass through 25 distillations at the raw end of the vodka production,

and once it gets into our rectification column, it goes through in total another 94 times.

So altogether we've got 119 distillations going on,

and if you can imagine, each time it distils, it leaves a little bit more impurity behind.

Because of the height of the rectification column, we get to 96.7% purity.

Within those 3.3% that we can't convert,

there are some bitter tastes that you'd need a very good palate

to distinguish, but we go to even further lengths

then to carbon treat, and to 11 times filter our vodka

while we're chilling it to get rid of those bitter notes,

to leave this beautiful spirit behind with only

the tastes that we want to be in there.

And it defines our vodka as one of the most unique ones out there in the market.

Many premium vodkas are actually distilled less than

half a dozen times, so you can appreciate the extra lengths they go to here.

But the real skill is bringing those creamy potato flavours out

in the finished product.

Not only can you drink it cold as everybody else does and neat,

the flavour is good enough to actually let the vodka go a little

bit warm, and then you really start to appreciate the nuances of taste.

It's like a sweet, almost buttery mash taste on the side of the palate.

It's really hard to put your finger on, but you can tell it's there.

A lot of people think you could never drink vodka neat.

You think of it as something that catches in your throat and it's... Urgh!

But you can just drink it neat like you would a fine malt whisky, and enjoy it as it is.

You could quite happily just sip it.

We should just be proud of it, that we're making the vodka,

and it's the best vodka in the world.

That's the one thing that I really like is the fact that it's

totally British, and it's actually making something very, very sexy out of a humble potato.

And I don't think you can get more versatile than that.

Sexy as they may be, Kingy, potatoes are probably most people's

first port of call when it comes to a bit of comfort fodder.

Wait till you've tasted our cobbler. Our potato cobbler.

It is epic, and I tell you something, once you have tasted it,

your barometer of comfort food is going to need to be reset,

because it's that good.

This dish, it's a chicken casserole surmounted by potato cobblers.

In this pan, I have got some potatoes which have been diced.

I'm going to boil them till they are soft and then we're going to mash them.

And that mashed potato, pure and simple,

is what we use as the basis of the cobblers.

'With the all-important spuds under way, we can bat on with the rest of the veg.'

'Two large onions, three good-sized carrots and three sticks of celery.'

'Whilst Dave is on veg duties,

'I'll quarter eight boneless chicken thighs

'and season with salt and pepper.'

Chicken thighs are fantastic for casseroling.

They are juicier than the breasts.

Now, what we want to do in a hot pan with some oil,

we are going to fry these off in batches,

just to put some colour on them so our casserole looks fabulous -

it adds into the flavour.

That's the other thing, make sure that your pan is at the temperature to sizzle.

Now, you see, I like my dumplings submerged so that they are,

like, kind of, mines, you know, bobbing up and down.

But you like yours on the top and you finish them off under the grill.

I love that cos it's soft and doughy at the bottom,

and then on the top it's really nice and crisp and lovely and there's...

Oh, I love it!

As soon as that chicken has got a little bit of colour on it,

take it out the frying pan and pop it into the casserole dish.

Then fry the next batch of thighs.

Do you know where the word casserole comes from, Si?

No.

It comes from the French "casse" which is a ladle-like saucepan.

Well, there you go.

But specifically a casserole is cooked in the oven,

and a stew is cooked on the stove top.

This is a casserole.

I suppose a casserole, it's almost the definition of a one-pot wonder.

Yes. Right, mate.

Bit more oil.

-The bacon.

-The bacon.

-That goes in now. Just let that oil heat a bit.

-That's it.

-It doesn't need to be crispy, this.

It is there for flavour, and it's the fat we want out of it.

To that we add the onion...

and the celery.

And we want to cook this together for about five minutes

until it's nicely coloured, and then that goes into the casserole.

# The mashed potato, yeah! #

'By this time your potato will be ready for mashing.

'A variety like the King Edward will give us

'the floury, light texture we are after.'

There is no butter and cream in this.

The potato in this instance is used in its pure form.

-Beautiful.

-Right, mate.

Button mushrooms in their entirety.

Cook them down for about a minute,

and then add the entirety of this pan to that casserole dish.

Now we toss in the carrots.

-Now some stock. Shall we deglaze the pan?

-Go on.

-Might as well get what we can.

-There's always something left, isn't there?

-Yep.

-Put that in there.

-The rest of the stock.

A tin of tomatoes. One bay leaf.

And two teaspoons of dried thyme.

Take a spoon, give it a good stir.

So what we do now is, we bring that to a gentle simmer.

When it starts to bubble away, we put it into a preheated oven,

180 degrees Celsius for a fan oven for about 30 minutes.

During that time we can get on and make the cobblers.

Why is a cobbler called a cobbler, though?

-Well, I have heard a couple of things. One is to cobble something together.

-Yeah.

But I think it's because when it's laid on top of the dish it looks like cobblestones.

'Combined with our potatoes we've got about 250 grams of self-raising flour.'

'To which we'll add 100 grams of butter cut into cubes.'

A pinch of salt, and with clean hands rub it in.

Just keep working that butter through, and it's great this.

Actually, it's good doing it with your hands,

because you get air in the flour as well.

Because a light cobbler is a happy cobbler.

Just keep going until we've got these lovely, buttery crumbs.

Now we rub in the mashed potato.

# The mashed potato, yeah!

# Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! #

It's beginning to feel really doughy. Now add some milk.

'Then we had some milk. Keep adding until you make a soft smooth dough.'

Now pop this onto a board.

Now, there's enough there for 12 cobblers. That's six pairs.

And we want to form it into, like, a roly-poly.

About five centimetres across and cut.

'Now divide your dough sausage into 12 cobbles.'

Cobbler one.

Cobbler number two.

Look, already that self-raising flour is beginning to expand,

even with the heat of the occasion.

-Just form them. And they do look like cobblestones.

-They do.

It's like Coronation Street on a plate.

Right, I think that's about time to tackle stage two with the casserole.

Excellent.

-Hope we're ready.

-Yes.

-Oh! Wowzer!

-Marvellous.

-Seasoning first, eh?

-Yes.

-Not far off.

-Not far off. Little bit of salt, little bit of pepper.

If we were to put our cobblers on that, they could sink.

'And as much as I like a succulent sinker,

'these cobblers are designed to stay afloat.'

'So, to thicken up the gravy will add somewhat to

'a tablespoon of cornflour.

'And Dave can chop up a couple of leeks.

'We're adding the last or else they'll be boiled to oblivion.'

Right, so we'll just add the cornflour and water

to the casserole dish, stir it in, and that will thicken it.

Has that thickened up? Lovely. Lovely. Pop in the leeks.

This really is a one-pot dish.

You've got all the veggies you want, you've got your potatoes,

in the kind of dumplings on the top.

-This is it.

-Just push them in.

-And now...

-Because my friend here used to lay pavements...

-I did.

..in Gateshead high Street...

SI CHUCKLES

..I think it's quite appropriate that he should lay the culinary paving slabs.

-Should I?

-Over to you.

'Hopefully this floaty, light potato paving will give us

'the crunchy crust I'm after.'

-This is going to be brilliant.

-Don't worry about them overlapping.

-No, don't.

-Overlapping is a good thing.

-Certainly is.

-It is like a potato duvet, isn't it?

-It's lush, I love it.

Beautiful thing.

Pop that back into the oven, which is 180 degrees Celsius for a fan oven,

for a further half hour with the lid off,

and your cobblers will be golden and fluffy and high as a kite.

Oh, man!

Huzzah!

-Let's have a potato off.

-Right.

-Right.

-Yukon Gold.

-Arran Victory.

-King Edwards.

-Sunbeam.

-Redskins.

-Cyprus.

-Charlotte.

-Maris Piper.

Oh, you win.

Could've had a Dunbar Rover.

Oh!

-Wait till you see this.

-It's all right. There's a couple of sinkers.

Other than that, we're laughing.

Oh, man!

-And you know what, Kingy?

-Yes, mate?

Just steamed off a little bit of cavolo nero.

-We don't need it, just a little bit of colour.

-Why-aye, why-aye.

Now remember, it's potato.

Look at this.

Oh, man! Beautiful.

-Ooh, they're light, aren't they?

-Aren't they just?

Look at that, look - a forkful of perfect potato cobbler-ness.

They're great, aren't they? It's so comforting.

Eating this, it's like culinary meditation, isn't it?

I think that's what the potato does. The potato's always there for you.

There's a potato to suit all moods.

But when you want an afternoon in front of the telly

and a big sleep, make yourself a chicken casserole, cobbler-topped.

Heaven.

Whether baked, fried, boiled or roasted,

the potato has provided us Brits with a solid savoury base on which

to hang many of our main meals.

Starchy and full of carbs, it's however been sparsely deployed

in the pudding department - and perhaps with good reason?

Jane and Fiona are two sisters who've specialised in the dark art

of making cakes out of root vegetables.

And if they can conjure up yet another of their fantastical creations out of the potato,

they'll add yet another product line to their already impressive roster.

-We've used beetroot, parsnip, carrot.

-Sweet potato.

The one we haven't used is the humble potato.

Yes, we've shied away from that one a little bit, haven't we,

because I think we're concerned that it might just be a little bit bland.

Now we all know you can get chipping, roasting,

mashing and baking potatoes, but what makes a good caking potato?

Brian the local greengrocer has been supplying Jane and Fiona

with their usual root veg order for years.

Fortunately, when it comes to spuds, he knows his onions.

Morning, Brian. Now, we're going to try a new cake based on potatoes.

But we are just a little bit worried about the starch, so have we got

something that's perhaps a little bit lower in starch and the others?

-More floury would be your Shannon Red Skin.

-Right.

That's a good all-round potato.

But imagine your chipping potatoes which would be your Victoria,

and your Pipers, they'll be quite starchy potatoes.

We're actually planning on doing a new one.

Chocolate and potato and orange cake.

-Honestly, Brian, it will be delicious.

-Well, it sounds mingin'.

Well, it's something...

I like potatoes and chips on my Sunday dinner, nice bit of pork bit of chicken, beautiful.

-Not in a cake.

-Well we might just prove you wrong.

-Well, you never know. You might.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, isn't it?

-So we'll definitely give it a go.

-Do you want to try some Shannon?

-Yes, if you don't mind.

-We'll take the Shannon.

-OK.

Brian might not like the sound of it,

but we've actually got form on doing sweet things with spuds.

Some of the earliest recipes using potatoes treat it

more like a fruit than a vegetable.

Back in the 1600s,

the potato would have been a novelty item rather than a staple foodstuff.

Recipes show gentry often combined them with rosewater, currants, raisins,

cinnamon and sugar in a curious combination

of sweet, savoury and spice.

I'll be curious to try it, but fortunately the sisters are hoping

to use their spuds in something we're all a bit more familiar with.

What we're hoping to do is actually make potato, orange and chocolate cake.

In theory it should be a nice cake because a chocolate orange cake always is lovely.

But a chocolate, orange and potato cake?

I'm sure it'll be delicious too.

However, looking at it at the moment it doesn't look too good, does it?

But it will do. It will.

-They don't sound convinced, Kingy.

-I'm not sure I am, mate.

But sugary root veg like carrots and parsnips

impart some interesting flavours,

and, if used correctly, they bring other qualities to baked goods.

They give the cake a certain moistness which is really, really nice.

I also think that the potato will make a difference

to the texture of the finished product.

So would be to pop in the potato to the margarine

and the demerara sugar that's already been creamed.

You can see the potato is actually mixing in quite well.

Can you not make it go a bit faster?

No. It will all splosh out if I do that.

So that mixture is great. We're still going to add flour.

We're probably adding less than you normally would.

I thought with the addition of the potato the texture would be a lot closer,

it would just look heavier, but in actual fact, to me,

this looks like a sponge cake, really.

Yep, there are plenty of things that look nothing like a spud

but have got potatoes in them.

It's reckoned that less than 50% of potatoes

grown worldwide are actually consumed fresh.

Processed potato food products can include potato chips,

noodles, hotdog sausages, even ice cream.

But how will our potato cake turn out?

-That's great. It's turned out, anyhow.

-That's good. Really good.

-Can I have a bit?

-SHE LAUGHS

-The moment of truth.

-Hot chocolate potato cake.

Really nice!

But the proof is in the pudding, and the best way to see if this

new recipes going to be a hit is to try it out on the local cafe crowd.

I think it looks like a chocolate cake, so that's a good thing.

It doesn't look like a potato anymore.

So I'm hoping they'll just look at it and see it as a chocolate cake

without even thinking about the potato.

-Hi.

-Surprise, surprise!

Potato, orange and chocolate.

Honest opinions, please.

Still a little bit warm, mind.

Mm! It's lovely.

I would never have guessed there was potato in that cake. Not in a month of Sundays.

-What my daughter would say was flavoursome.

-Yeah.

The second but probably went down as well as the first, actually. It was great.

In the war my mother used to make potato cakes,

but they were scones, so I thought it was going to be

a cake like that that you put butter on, not a proper cake.

But it worked so well.

But will greengrocer Brian warm to the girls'

novel use of his top-quality tatties?

Like I said this morning, I though veg should be on a dinner plate,

but that was really, really nice. I enjoyed it.

Very light, fluffy beautiful cake.

-I'll have another one of them from me.

-Would you?

-I would for me.

-First on the list, then.

-And I'll give you the tatties.

-We'll start the list.

We thought it was a very bland vegetable and a little bit boring.

-We were wrong, weren't we?

-We've been proved wrong, yes. Definitely.

Mash up a spud and it'll successfully find its way into all sorts of dishes.

And although the rich starch of potato

has proven a fantastically adaptable foodstuff, us Brits are probably

more fond of it in a form that we can identify with more clearly.

Yet to us, the potato's most successful alter ego

is the slightly slimmer stable mate of the chip, the crisp.

It's estimated that we munch our way through

over ten billion packets of crisps and savoury snacks a year.

More than any other European country.

And it's a love affair that's been going on for quite some time.

They look good, they taste good, and as long as you don't eat too many,

they may even do you just a little bit of good.

Mmm, crisps aren't exactly known for their nutritional attributes,

but they do taste good, and we Brits have always been suckers for them.

-Do you like the taste of crisps?

-Yeah.

-And do you eat these type of things yourself?

-Yes.

-How often would you say you ate them?

-Erm, every night.

Even Blue Peter presenters were partial to a bag or two.

I really like eating crisps

and the other day, I actually discovered how they were invented.

Apparently, so the story goes,

it all started in America about 100 years ago

when a very temperamental chef became so furious when his very fussy

customer complained that his potato chips were too thick

that he grabbed a knife and chopped them very, very, very wafer thin,

and that, so the tale goes, is how crisps were born.

Today, crisps are more popular than ever.

Now, the potato chip might have been an American invention,

but no-one did crisps quite like us Brits.

Smith's began mass-producing them in individual packets,

complete with a sachet of salt back in the '20s.

But the business really took off in the years following World War II

with the birth of a couple of giants - Golden Wonder in 1947,

and Walker's in 1948.

Golden Wonder was the first to come up with ready salted crisps,

but it was the Irish brand Tayto

which introduced Britain's favourite flavour -

cheese and onion.

These are the same crisps given a sprinkling of flavouring powder -

bacon flavoured, cheese and onion, half a dozen different varieties.

1.25 million bags of crisps every day.

And over the years, the crisp market just grew and grew.

And to stop things getting stale,

the companies were always searching for the next big thing.

As a result of 12 months' intensive research,

our technical boys have developed this potato ring.

Gentleman, we've called it Hula Hoops!

CIRCUS MUSIC PLAYS

APPLAUSE

Well, thank you very much, Sarah. It just shows what Finnish girls can do.

Well, times have certainly changed

but our passion for crisps is as strong as ever

and that's because this little deep-fried beauty

has been reinvented more times than Madonna.

Sometimes more successfully than others.

What flavour's that?

-Crisp?

-Hedgehog, you see.

SHE SPITS

Goodness gracious!

LAUGHTER

These days, the trend is for posh crisps

with flavours like rock sea salt,

-Balsamic vinegar.

-Jalapeno.

but call me old-fashioned,

but you can't beat the classic combination of cheese and onion.

The potato might not be native to these isles,

but it's been around for so long,

it's become part of our foodie furniture.

And though this means that many of our classic dishes will be about for years to come,

this shouldn't discourage you from trying to be inventive.

We're going to take the potato where it's never been before

as we create what we believe is a future British classic.

It is our potato crusted pork chop.

And we're going to have some lovely, lovely braised cabbage,

and then we're going to serve all that

with a lovely, creamy mustard cider sauce.

'Right, now, this is quite an indulgent dish,

'so I'm trimming the fat off our pork chops.'

I've just covered the chop with clingfilm,

and give it a little, gentle beating, just to flatten it a bit.

Whilst Dave's tenderising the meat, I'll get on with the cabbage.

First up, chop up a medium red onion and saute in butter.

Then take half a red cabbage...

Look at that! The plant world

and vegetables are brilliant, aren't they?

It's like a Jimi Hendrix album cover, that!

'Take out the core and remove the tough outer leaves

'before slicing nice and thinly.'

Me chops have been tidied, and flattened a little bit.

I'm going to grate all those potatoes onto there.

This really is like the basic rosti recipe.

It's like potato candy floss.

Now, I'm using Maris Piper potatoes for this

and Maris Piper is the most popular potato in the UK today

and it's been around since the 1960s,

and it's been described as

the ideal chip shop potato.

Right, now, that's the tater.

Now, prepare to be astonished.

We want these potatoes to be crispy.

If we were to kind of pack these taters on now,

we would end up with an awful lot of sludge and mess.

If we take the fluid out of these potatoes,

we're going to have nice, dry, crispy rosti. Watch this.

-By God, there's a lot of water in those spuds.

-Yeah.

Get a good wind on.

Look at that.

I'm just going to melt some butter

and it's the butter that holds the rosti together.

Unwrap your taters.

Now dry, and they'll fluff apart.

Season.

And pepper.

Swirl that melted butter

and pop this onto your potatoes

and give it a stir.

The butter will help it go golden when it cooks,

it'll also help it to hold together.

Now, this is really rosti,

and if you want to make rosti, just pack this into a frying pan,

cook it till it's crusty, flip it, cook the other side and you have a big rosti cake.

But this...is going to coat the pork.

Right, back to the cabbage.

Once the onions have softened, add a cinnamon stick.

And about a quarter of a teaspoon of nutmeg.

All I'm going to do now is add the cabbage to the pan.

Don't forget...

a bay leaf.

And then we're going to start to add the liquid in a minute.

150ml of cider.

Two tablespoons of white wine vinegar.

And now, we're going to temper that acidity

with three tablespoons of muscovado sugar.

And then, tight-fitting lid, cover...

and cook slowly

for about 40 minutes.

Season our chops with plenty of salt and fresh ground pepper.

Now I want a teaspoon of mustard,

wholegrain mustard, on each pork steak.

This is for flavour and also to help the rosti stick.

Just spread it nice.

It's a lovely recipe, this.

We're covering both sides of our chops here,

but our rosti is only added to one.

Take some potato, place it on your pork,

and pack it, and you want that covered.

Looks good, that, mate.

It's one of those things you watch, and you think,

-it's going to be quite nice, that.

-It's brilliant, man.

Heat some butter and oil in a large frying pan,

then fry your rosti for two minutes, or until golden brown.

Then flip and take another two minutes,

cooking the meat side to seal in those flavours.

Oh, oh-ho! Look at them!

-As you can see, the potato does stick nicely.

-Perfectly done.

But all that pork flavour goes into the underside of the rosti.

So there's nothing wasted. There's method to the madness.

It's like having pork chops and chips all in a oner.

And once all four are fried, they're ready for the oven.

Pop these out to join their chums on the tray.

Now, I bet you thought that potato was going to fall off.

Well, it hasn't.

What we need to do now

is to bake that in a preheated oven, 180 degrees Celsius, for a fan oven,

for 15 minutes, to make sure that's golden and crispy

and the pork's cooked through.

Which gives us time to finish the cabbage

and make the lovely mustard cider creamy sauce for the top.

Now, look at that.

That's come right down.

Now, we're going to peel an apple, core it,

cut it into centimetre-thick slices,

and this is a dessert, an eating apple.

Put it back in there.

Stir it through and cook

for another five minutes.

Now for our sauce. Finely chop one shallot.

And we're doing that in the pan that we sealed the crusted pork in.

We're going to use all the butter and flavours, the salt and mustard,

it's all going to help when we make the sauce.

Right, they're nice and translucent.

So I'm going to put in a tablespoon of flour.

Mix that in and just cook the flour out a bit.

To this, we add some cider.

And it goes with the pork, it's just lovely.

So we want one teaspoon

of Dijon mustard.

One teaspoon of wholegrain mustard.

One teaspoon of muscovado sugar,

just to temper the sourness of the mustard.

And one tablespoon of honey.

Oh!

And it should bubble like a good 'un

until the volume's gone down by half.

Once that's reduced by half, add some cream and reduce again.

-That pork should be done now.

-It certainly should.

-Ho-ho!

Lovely! It's like a potato armadillo.

Our lovely...

..red cabbage. Ho-ho-ho!

Beautiful.

Look at that.

Indeed.

The pork's cooked through nicely.

That sauce is perfect with it.

The potato is kind of sticky with the pork juices.

There's something about the method with the potato

getting all the goodness from the pork that really works.

And that just goes to show the versatility of the great British tattie.

-And we've only just begun to unpeel it.

-Yeah.

Potatoes might be the ugly duckling of the vegetable world...

..but dig 'em up, give 'em a wash, and they'll be well on their way

-to becoming a swan.

-Beautiful.

Easy to grow, and abundant,

they've not only been central to some of the dishes

that have underpinned the growth of our great nation...

It's hot, comforting, delicious.

..but as tastes have evolved, their versatility and dependability

have cemented their popularity

with food lovers up and down the British Isles.

It's just heaven.

Ladies and gents, you can't go wrong with a spud.

If any of these potato dishes have taken your fancy,

log on to...

and follow the links.

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