Exotic Foods Hairy Bikers' Best of British

We believe that Britain has the best food in the world.

'Our glorious country boasts some fantastic ingredients.'

Stop eating it, will you?

'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.

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 foody evolution.'

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

BOTH: Quite simply, the best of British!

Us Brits have always had a taste for adventure

and an appetite for the unknown.

HE IMITATES MONKEY

Especially when it comes to unfamiliar ingredients

and cuisines from around the globe.

We've always had a taste for the exotic, from the Christian

crusaders whose bounty included more pepper than gold.

From the Georgian aristocrats who spent a small fortune

cultivating tropical pineapple in our temperate climate.

And, as a nation, we've always been up for challenging our taste buds

and broadening our culinary horizons.

And it's that spirit of adventure

that we're celebrating in today's show.

Do you reckon we got away with that, Kingy?

Aye, it's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

In today's show we're taking a jaunt through the most expensive,

the most luxurious,

the most exotic food around!

We're going to discover how show-off food took our ancestors

across the globe, opening up a whole new world of flavour.

And bringing home exotic dishes that have become everyday eating.

Viva exotica.

It's surprising which foods were considered the height of exotic

and extravagance in the past.

Take this - the pineapple.

Whether in a can, or as a whole fruit, they're cheap to buy nowadays

and recipes they're best known for are perhaps a bit naff 1970s too.

It's nothing like as bad as it looks, though.

But back in the 18th century, pineapples were about

the most expensive and exotic food money could buy.

The "Fruit of Kings" were originally brought to Europe

by Christopher Columbus and supposedly the first one was produced

in Britain for Charles II in 1675.

By the 1700s they were the ultimate food for show-offs

and took pride of place on the dining tables of the very wealthy.

We've headed to Tatton Park in Cheshire

which was a big part of the pineapple craze.

Tatton's Pinery Vinery was once famous for producing prize pineapples

and since 2010, head gardener Simon Tetlow has been growing them

in their reconstructed glasshouse.

'For 18th-century WAGs and hipsters,

'this was the perfect place to see what all the fuss was about!'

So is it true, Simon,

that they very first started cultivating pineapples at Tatton Park

to provide pina coladas for the nouveaux riches Cheshire set?

It is. It was the kind of 18th century new rich.

It was the kind of must-have of the wealthy.

The aristocrat of fruits. The pineapple was symbolic of wealth.

A hugely expensive crop to provide.

To build houses like this was very innovative in the day

and it was the symbol of welcome and wealth.

So you've got pineapples on gate posts.

The carriage drives up the house and kind of says, "We can do anything."

-You have stone pineapples, don't you?

-Yeah.

And there's that house in Scotland that's built like a pineapple.

Perhaps the most committed fan of pineapples was John Murray,

Fourth Earl of Dunmore in Scotland.

He had this 14-metre cupola made for a pavilion at Dunmore House

and even grew his own in a hothouse specially heated by a furnace.

They're quite familiar to us now but in the 18th century they must

have been the most extraordinary looking thing and tasting thing.

Gardeners of the 18th century,

probably a plum would be quite exotic.

They called grapes and peaches exotic fruit,

but then to have this presented to you, something of a Caribbean crop

that requires even light, temperature...

You don't even have a hot water system to heat the place.

You can just imagine some poor old gardener who's used to digging spuds,

making runner beans, all of a sudden gets summoned up to the big house -

"Can you grow that?" - thinking, "Blooming heck, where do I start?!"

There were accounts of sailors coming back from the Americas

saying it tasted like sugared wine, rosewater.

Honey. Anything. They just couldn't describe what they tasted like.

-Yeah, cos you had no reference point.

-No, no.

-I mean, how would you?

-It tastes like pineapple.

Have you had to grow pineapples?

If you can provide the right heat and light - doddle.

But stuck up here in the middle of Cheshire and cold weather winter,

you would do anything to get the heat in the house.

Your job depended on it.

If his nibs was after pineapples for Christmas Day,

you would pile up steamy piles of manure, shove it against the house.

You'd be setting fires inside the walls here, down the flues.

Anything to provide this steamy tropical heat.

Just to get any method for this high humidity you'd get on the tropics.

Originally, there was something like 52 different varieties of pineapple

and there's only two commercially available now

which is the cayenne and the Jamaica queen,

but I think the canning processes went on from the start

of the 20th century, that these pyramidical shapes,

big chunky fruits, turned into these rather squad cylindrical fruits

for the canning process.

-Rings and chunks.

-So where's the other 50 gone then?

I don't know.

'The 18th century gardener had his work cut out,

'but the rewards for the house were worth it.'

'Historic cook Lesley Edwards is going to take us through

'what they actually did with pineapples once they'd grown them.'

Here we are in the kitchen with Lesley,

the expert in dressing said pineapple for a big, posh top table.

So, having grown the pineapple, what would they have done with them?

Well, the pineapple would come down to the house

and then it would be presented on the table.

They were very impressive to display, so you

couldn't have a dinner party unless you had a pineapple on the table.

Now, the people who lived here

and owned these houses also had townhouses in London, so when you're

in London and you couldn't perhaps get your pineapple

from your estates, you could actually hire a pineapple.

-You'd have to pay about a guinea.

-A guinea?

-A guinea, which would be something like £1,000 to £1,500.

-Right.

And that gave you the rights to have it beautifully

displayed on your table, on your vine leaves like that.

If you actually wanted to eat the hired one,

you had to pay two guineas.

-£3,000 to eat a pineapple?

-That's right.

It just seems fascinating to me

that you could actually serve this beautiful pineapple

and everybody would admire it and say how wonderful it was, and then

you might go to Lady Dunabunk's next day

and perhaps the same pineapple would be sitting on the table!

That would be brilliant. It's called turning pineapples.

You know how restaurants turn tables?

You'd go, "I'm sorry, you've only got it till 7.30pm, then it's away."

You'll repo the pineapple!

As it became easier and easier for these big houses to grow pineapples

in their pineries, so you had to move on a bit

and you'd go for the biggest pineapple you could find.

'By the Victorian era pineapples were cheaper,

'but still considered pretty posh nosh.'

'The Victorians used them as ingredients

'in all sorts of fancy desserts, in particular one of our favourites.'

One of the things that was particularly popular was ice creams

and first of all they would put them into ice pails to serve them

and then they moved on to using all sorts of moulds.

This is the pillar mould.

This is the mould that this ice cream has been taken from.

-So that goes in the centre on top of your paper doily.

-Oh, lovely job.

Invented in the late 19th century.

Now, around those as a garnish, you've got your little fruits.

'Cor! Let me get my hands on that ice cream!

'How dainty. It's quite tricky, this.'

'I don't think we'd have been allowed near the pineapple ice cream.'

'Speak for yourself. Mine's perfect!'

Now there is food history on a plate.

And beautifully done by you two if I may say so.

-I'll never take a pineapple for granted again.

-Absolutely.

Over the years, this wonderful fruit

has lost some of its exciting exotic status.

In the 19th and 20th century,

it became increasingly cheap

as high-volume production and imports drove prices down.

So we might have forgotten the exclusive origins of pineapple

and take its sweet flavours for granted,

but the fact it's now affordable

and available to everyone is surely a good thing.

Now, pineapple might not be the highly prized exotic wonder that it once was,

but with a little imagination,

it can become the catalyst to a truly exotic dining experience.

And in the Best Of British kitchen, we're going to make a dish

that would make even the 4th Earl of Dunmore blush!

To pimp our pineapple, we're going to first use the finest of birds -

a guinea fowl - to create a salad that is quite simply sublime.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, British food could have

been described as being a bit bland and boring.

-What?!

-Bit not now! We have embraced the exotic.

We've always liked sweet and savoury together...

-We have.

-..but we've got more and more adventurous

with our use of spices and mixtures and importations from abroad.

Yes, we like a cornucopia on our palate.

Sweet, savoury, hot, cold, sour.

-Oh, all of those things are epitomised here in Britain.

-Oh, aye.

I mean, our fruit used to be apples and pears,

but then, as we've just found out at Tatton Park,

this little fellow's come into our palate,

and this little fellow goes incredibly well with maybe the more exotic fowl.

-And it's a damn sight cheaper now than it was then.

-Oh, I should coco.

These little beauties come from Africa, and guinea fowl has been

an exotic ingredient since the Ancient Egyptians cooked them.

They're out of the ordinary and taste fantastic with pineapple.

Guinea fowl are funny, aren't they? I mean, you see them...

Whereas chickens are all scatterbrained,

guinea fowl are just like this... Meh!

JAUNTY MUSIC PLAYS

..and they used to describe them as "the bohemian of the barn yard"

due to their looks... and the way they behaved.

Guinea fowl is a great thing to eat.

It's a very, very, very tasty bird.

Now, I'm going to show you how to flatten this out,

much the same as if it'd been run over by a steam roller.

To spatchcock means to remove the backbone of your poultry

in order to flatten it.

You'll need some sturdy kitchen scissors and a bit of elbow grease.

So, that's its backbone, and that's the bit that we don't want,

so we can discard that. Keep it and you can use it for stock.

And then...flatten the guinea fowl out like that.

With your hand - even pressure right across the breastbone and...

BONES CRUNCH

..just break that breastbone and push.

-It's a bit like trying to give resus, isn't it?

-It is, yes!

You'd need more than a gentle hand to resus that!

And that's how we have it.

Nice, neat, flat, and it'll cook nice and evenly.

-Tidy, isn't it?

-T-T-Tidy thing.

Right, I'd better get on with the spice mixture.

Half a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of chilli flakes,

half of five-spice powder, and about the same of black pepper.

That'll do us nicely. Right.

Now we put our bird onto a well-greased baking sheet

and cover in olive oil.

Give my beautiful guinea fowl a rub all over...

..before giving it a liberal coating of our lovely spice mix,

and don't be shy - guinea fowl works really well with spices

as it has a strong flavour that holds its own.

And then just massage it into the skin and the flesh of the bird.

Get into those nooks and crannies as well.

Lovely. That's ready to go in the oven.

So, 20 minutes, 180 degrees Celsius.

Making the glaze syrup couldn't be easier.

It's just made up of two tablespoons of soy sauce

and one tablespoon of honey.

This is a classic mix of sweet and sour flavours that goes well

with pretty much everything. It's great!

When the bird has been in the oven for 20 minutes,

get it out and smother it in the glaze!

The juices and the residue we get from a guinea fowl and the soy sauce

and honey we mix with lime juice to make a dressing for the salad.

We're not going to waste a single drop of these lovely flavours.

And then that goes back into the oven for about ten minutes.

-Champion! Right, salads.

-Right!

This salad is a celebration of exotica,

and at its heart is a pineapple.

First, you need to skin it, core it and cut it into chunks.

It's a fantastic after-dinner fruit, isn't it?

I mean, it is pudding in itself.

-Tell you what, I'm glad they're not as expensive as they were back in the day. Dear me!

-Oh, in the day.

I mean, can you imagine going out with a lass

and she wanted a pineapple and a bunch of tulips?

-You'd need to be a millionaire!

-You would!

THEY CHUCKLE

And cut them into the ubiquitous pineapple chunk!

Next, a cucumber - peeled, seeded and sliced.

Add this to the pineapple.

One tablespoon of mint leaves, two tablespoons of coriander.

It's quite a cocktail, this, isn't it? It builds up the flavour.

It does. It's great. Now, this is a good bit. I love this bit.

Next, bung in some pomegranate,

and we've got a canny way to get all the seeds out.

Open the flesh out a little bit, like that...

and then hit it...with a spoon.

And do you know, it is said that, actually, when Eve got tempted

in the Garden of Eden, it was with a pomegranate, not an apple.

Then add some red onion, roughly chopped.

Right...

Right... I think the guinea fowl is nearly done.

-I think we're there, mate.

-Brill. Time to assemble.

Can I have all that residue to craft into a dressing?

Cor, this is lovely.

I'm going to try and strain some of the fat off the top.

That's the honey, the soy, the residue from the five-spice powder,

the chillies, and of course the guinea fowl.

What I'll do is, little trick, you put some kitchen paper on there

and that will soak up the oil and hopefully leave the stock intact.

Voila!

Now, into this we want the juice of one lime.

-How is it, Kingy?

-Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

You need to portion the guinea fowl into large pieces for the salad.

Nothing too dainty here!

Platter...

Cucumber and the pineapple.

Our lovely guinea fowl.

The red onions go on top.

The mint and the cori.

Each layer adds flavour and colour,

and none more so than the pomegranate seeds.

-It's kind of like fruit jewellery, isn't it, the pomegranate?

-It is!

And the finishing touch - some of that lovely glaze!

-Oh, yes.

-And this is really quite sparky.

I mean, that would bring sunshine into the saddest

of a Great British winter's day, wouldn't it?

-Fancy a nibble?

-I do. Two forks.

I was just going to use me fingers!

-Is that wrong?

-Um...no, not at all.

Whoa, look at that.

-The thing is, it's still juicy, isn't it?

-Lovely.

That's a really good reflection of how multicultural our cuisine actually is.

Viva exotica!

Before the modern age, exotic food was rare and incredibly expensive,

which meant the rich couldn't get enough of it.

Our Best Of British food historian Ivan Day is going to make

a dish so rarefied it was served to royalty,

and like all exotic food, it was made possible by travel.

We've got a little cookery book here

which dates from the time of Queen Anne.

It was first published in 1711.

It was written at a time when British trade

with the Orient and the Americas was reaching new heights.

All sorts of new foods were introduced at this period.

It is The Queen's Royal Cookery,

so it's meant to be recipes of the sort that were at court.

One of them is a very, very elevated dish called a grand salad.

Butter in a salad? I thought salads were supposed to be slimming?!

You're probably wondering what on earth this is,

but it will become clear at the end of the recipe.

This is a really exotic salad at this period.

One of the ingredients that's mentioned are mangoes.

Now, they didn't have fresh mangoes.

It was impossible to get them all the way from India to England,

so they would have to be pickled.

The salad has a line-up of superstar ingredients

that were as posh as you could get -

British-grown asparagus was rare and pricey,

olives were shipped in from Tuscany,

beans came all the way from the Americas,

and something even more exotic...

One of the most amazing things in the salad is bamboo.

That would arrive in the docks in London,

and people would probably fight over buying it

because it was such a prestigious thing to have on your table.

I challenge thee to a duel, sir...

if you don't get your hands off me bamboo!

Added to all this, Ivan's super salad has capers and anchovies from the Mediterranean...

Oh, and pickled oysters, too!

Our next job is to garnish the rim of the plate.

-Why do plates have rims?

-To keep your food from falling on the floor?

Originally, you put garnishes on the rim,

and these little designs will help you put them in the right place.

When the serving man comes in with the grand salad,

it's the very first dish that's put down on the table.

Everyone thinks, "Wow! That looks really appetising,"

because it's so colourful, so beautiful, and it's also made up

of the most expensive, exotic ingredients that anyone could buy.

I mean, a salad like this on your table

is really the baroque equivalent of having a Lamborghini.

It's just like show-off food.

But we haven't finished

because the final embellishment is none other than laurel.

This is bay laurel,

which we're going to stick in our little lump of butter,

so I'm going to very carefully push that down into the butter,

and that is a grand salad.

I think it's more of a work of art than a dish.

That's an impressive-looking salad!

It's even got a tree in it!

Of course, the people who actually got the luxury stuff for the wealthy

wanted a slice as well.

All this impressive food was only made possible

by sailors carting goods around the globe,

and whilst the rich ate fancy dishes,

sailors' rations were barely even edible.

These poor guys had to live off the most basic and bland food.

Ship's biscuit - like cardboard.

Salted pork - just soaked for a couple of days to get rid of the salt.

It's just like balsa wood. So, after spending a few months just eating that,

they arrived in the South China Seas

and they found this amazing larder, fantastic flavours.

When they got home, they encouraged their wives and their girlfriends

to try and make them themselves so they tried to counterfeit them.

To make the bad taste go away, sailors wanted a taste of the unusual,

which led to the creation of a national favourite - ketchup!

It's thought to have been inspired

by a Chinese fish sauce called Khet Siap.

Slapping this onto their rations made them far more palatable,

and became known in English as catsup.

I am going to replicate one of these early catsups from the 1740s.

I'm using a recipe which calls for mushrooms.

They were the most popular ingredient in early catsup.

First off they were salted for 24 hours to draw out the juice.

Then they were mushed up to get out as much liquid as possible.

It must have been fun for English people in the 18th century to

make what they considered to be an amazingly exotic foreign sauce

from a long way away from something as everyday as mushrooms.

But the great thing about it is mushrooms don't last long

so this is a really good way of preserving their flavour.

After infusing all that mushroomy goodness you need one of these.

Those mushrooms have yielded at least a quart, I would say,

of black, fungal juice. It does smell really delicious.

The Georgian author of this recipe tells us

that we have got to add to this an equal amount of stale beer.

Stale beer?

There was a beer called Mum which was brewed with wheat

and very spicy but it doesn't exist any more

so I just made it with a very, very dark, very strong ale.

You know, a mushroom-flavoured, stale brown ale

doesn't sound very exotic to me.

Hang on, Ivan always delivers the goods!

We have got other ingredients to add to this yet.

Horseradish, a British native. Very spicy, very, very peppery.

We are getting slightly more exotic here with this Mediterranean plant.

Bay leaves.

As the sailors had no idea what went into the oriental sauces

they'd tasted,

a whole load of spices were used to get that extraordinary flavour.

Nutmeg, mace, allspice from Jamaica, black pepper

and long pepper from Indonesia and also ginger were ground up

and added to the mushroom brew.

And then we will put it on the heat and let it slowly simmer away

until it reduces down to about a third.

Then we will have the first British ketchup.

At the time, one of the most exotic flavourings you could get.

After bubbling away the catsup is ready.

It's not quite what you might expect.

It's thinner and less gloopy than modern ketchups

but the results are worth it.

What they were doing is starting a tradition,

basically, which ends up with such famous things as Worcester sauce

and the other ketchups, the brown sauces,

all those things which we now just take for granted.

They were known as bottle sauces or store sauces

because they could be kept for years.

Just open it, put a little bit in.

But what they were also used for was for putting into gravy,

and into soups just to lift the flavour a little bit.

So, for that poor, fatigued British sailor

on that long voyage from the South China Seas,

with that little bit of black magic in a bottle,

you could add the relish that you just really needed to make

that incredibly bland food palatable.

Relishes and ketchups kick-started

a love of oriental flavours that has stayed with us ever since.

As well as giving us that magical sense of excitement at the dinner table,

exotic ingredients have helped lift our everyday food for hundreds of years.

Whether you're showing off, or just on the look-out to spice

up your life, there's nothing better than a touch of the exotic.

Historically, we Brits have always embraced food from afar

but during the Second World War our menu was very restricted.

And even in the years following it,

we found it difficult to shake off our limited palate.

And the country fell into a bit of a culinary slumber.

But the 1960s brought about a lot of change and, as the years

went on, people were more than ready to try something new.

Especially when it came to our food.

The time - 3pm. The place - Brixton.

And over there, a typical Englishman.

SONG: RULE BRITANNIA

He has reached a crossroads.

For after 36 years of cod and chips, peas and chips

and boiled carrots twice on Tuesdays,

he has decided to fling discretion to the wind

and indulge his jaded palate in an orgy of exotic vegetables.

John Bull is on his way to market.

Back in 1969,

Nationwide chronicled the changing landscape of British cuisine

in this rather quirky little piece.

Here, two cultures meet and here,

the sturdy English potato rubs shoulders with sweet potatoes,

yams, plantains, green peppers, aubergines and chocho.

Suddenly, there was a lot more choice on offer,

as the food market began to cater

to our ever-growing immigrant population.

It comes from West Africa, right,

but they grow yam and that out there.

He eats yam, green bananas, okra and things like that.

You know, okra's a thing that you put in your dinner, you know,

liven it up. Something like that.

But whilst these ingredients could be grown

in plentiful supply in other parts of the world.

Sadly, the British climate meant they all had to be imported

and that was expensive.

Sales in these vegetables here, these Caribbean vegetables,

they are slowly descending, slowly dropping.

Jamaicans and all that, people from the West Indies,

are deciding that it is too dear.

But some of the more experimental Brits were keen to give them a go.

Sweet potato, yam, the peppers, all them kind of things, you know,

you find the foreigners usually like

but British people are going over to it now.

Now that our typical Englishman has gathered together all

the ingredients for his exotic dinner, he still has problems.

How to cook them, peel them, chop them,

toss them in a pan of deep fat.

Or is that chips again?

Luckily, Nationwide had a rather glamorous lady on hand

to inspire us.

So, here you have a selection of Caribbean food

and you want to know what to do with it.

Well, don't be put off by their appearance

because they look a bit strange. They are quite simple to prepare.

Sweet potatoes are very nice candied

and they're very nice to accompany roast pork and dishes of that sort.

Green peppers, there isn't a great deal you can do with them.

They're very nice used as garnish. Slice then cut them into strips.

Take out the hard core or you can lop off the top, stuff them

with mince and they're very tasty.

These days, yams and chochos might still be seen

as exotic in the eyes of a lot of Brits.

But thankfully, the likes of peppers and sweet potato quickly got

assimilated into our ever-changing food repertoire.

So there you are, typical Englishman,

your illustrious ancestors

Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain Cook had

adventure on the high seas and now you also,

ever-adaptable typical Englishman,

can add spice to your life and adventure to your meals.

You know, Kingy, it's funny, there are quite a few kind of spices

and flavours that we are so familiar with that they have become,

well, not exotic but mundane and kind of part of our establishment almost.

But not so long ago, those flavours would have seemed

so revolutionary and exotic, they would have thrilled us.

-They would have.

-You know, like ginger.

-Hey!

It may not look like... I mean, look, it's ugly. Isn't it?

I mean, it's misshaped and it's a bit odd but this is beautiful.

Like ginger parkin. It's old-fashioned and familiar.

Gingerbread, treacle toffee, all those things,

they came from overseas.

And I mean, Whitehaven, Maryport, really kind of Northern spots,

they're full of all this pepper

and stuff because that's where it all shipped in from.

It's like Whitehaven - Fletcher Christian, you know,

mutiny on t'Bounty. He was from Whitehaven.

He was, you know.

Captain Bligh lived on the Isle of Man.

All these fellas were roaming the ocean just to bring back these

exotic spices for us to enjoy.

-And some hundred years on, we take it for granted.

-True.

So we are going to show you a fantastic,

fantastic dessert that is exotic but quintessentially British.

I tell you what, viewers, we've really pushed the boat out

for you on this one!

This seriously decadent sponge has a cheeky kick of chilli

to complement some good old-fashioned ginger,

slathered in a delicious ginger toffee sauce.

And it tastes flipping lovely.

-It's a bit of a palate-blower.

-Right.

We're going to make a sweet syrup for the batter mix.

And it couldn't be easier. Put in 125g of soft brown sugar.

And 125g of butter. That just melts down with the sugar.

And give it a stir.

Then add 125g of dark treacle, which is

about two large tablespoons and the same of golden syrup.

This is tempting stuff.

Sugar has had a massive part to play in British history.

I mean, obviously the tragic stories from the slave trade

but companies like Tate & Lyle were massively, massively wealthy.

Hence the Tate Galleries in London.

That all came from this kind of philanthropy that was

a by-product of the sugar industry but, of course, the suffering

that it involved probably didn't justify the ends, really.

What I have done, I have taken this off the heat so that mixture

of those lovely syrups, treacles, sugar and butter needs to cool.

Oh, the consistency.

Now, we are going to mix eggs in that so it has got to be cold or

else if we put the eggs now, it's just going to scramble your eggs.

Right, I have got preserved stem ginger here

and that comes in ball forms.

And again, this is like another hark back to old methods of preserving

and keeping food because that ginger that was imported,

that would be precious and you wouldn't want to throw that away.

I have got four stem ginger balls here, which I have grated.

I am now going to cut very finely a chilli and a half.

One and a half of these long chillies with seeds removed

and all chopped up,

is just enough to give the cake a bit of zing.

I am going to mix that with my four grated ginger balls.

Now, we want the ginger cake to have a bit of lift

so we are using self-raising flour.

275g.

For even more lift, a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda.

Now some dried spices.

We have got 1 teaspoon of allspice.

That smells of Christmas.

-It does, doesn't it?

-And two of ground ginger.

Look at that.

Even the flour, it looks a bit more exotic and dangerous now, doesn't it?

It's lovely, mate.

Now, put the four stem ginger balls and the chilli into this

and stir it in.

Right. And make a well in the middle.

Into your cooled syrup, pour 200ml of semi-skimmed milk.

Then add three beaten eggs and whisk it all together.

Then add it to the dry mix.

Oh! This is like nuclear fusion in the cake world.

But there's flavour in this,

and it's got all those elements of sweet and savoury.

A little bit of salt as well, it's lovely.

Get it in.

-Lovely.

-And the lovely bits in there, it's the stem ginger.

It's not that it's gone wrong. We're happy with that.

Now we put that into a liberally buttered bowl.

Oooh, yes. You know that's going to be fantastic.

If you struck that in Texas, you'd know you were going to be rich!

That's it. And we pop this into a moderate pre-heated oven,

160 degrees Celsius for about 35-40 minutes.

Which gives us time to make the caramel sauce, which is

a ginger caramel sauce.

I mean, we're gingering up everything in this one, aren't we?

-We are. And quite rightly so.

-I need three bowls of stem ginger.

'While Dave cuts the ginger into thin strips,

'I'm going to get cracking with the sauce.'

So...

In a pan, combine 75g of butter

and 100g of dark brown sugar.

Melt, stir.

It's a real easy sauce this, isn't it? You just combine everything,

-bring it to a frizzle.

-It's brilliant.

And then kind of cool it down and pour it on your cake.

Here y'are, mate, incoming.

Look at that.

'Now pour in 200ml of luxuriant double cream.'

Add heat. Stir till it's all combined.

Job's a good 'un. There's your sauce.

Beautiful. I mean, this isn't for every day, this pudding. It is...

It's very rich and very special, but for high days, holidays,

well, once or twice a week, it's worth giving it a go.

Certainly is.

Oh! Look at that.

Oh, man! What a belter.

That's soft and sticky.

It'll be softer and stickier in a minute,

because that sauce we pour all over the top.

Get in!

And really, by putting the sauce on the top, it turns the cake,

to my mind, into a pudding.

Oh, mate.

'We're going to serve it up with ice cream

'and a bit of grated lime zest for that extra taste

'of far-flung paradise.'

It's like a Martian's toupe, isn't it, sitting on the top!

Beautiful.

Oh!

Do you know, if you're a fan of sticky, old-fashioned puddings,

but you want something a bit more, something a bit special, sir,

-this is the one for you.

-It's a thing of joyous beauty.

You get delicate puddings.

You get a little bit of fruit through this, fruit through that.

THAT's a puddin'!

The texture is awesome, isn't it?

I can't wait to taste that fresh chilli.

Now, this is as exotic as Britain comes.

Of course, over the years, Britons have been far and wide

in search of unusual flavours like ginger.

But there have been times when the exotic came looking for us.

DOORBELL RINGS

Straight from Brittany, madam. Feel the weight.

There's more to an onion than meets the eye.

There's more to an onion man than a beret or a bicycle.

This was Onion Johnny,

and he was just one of hundreds of men all with the same nickname.

Year after year, the Onion Johnnies would travel

to Britain from France, to sell their onions door to door.

And, for decades, proved they really were worth their onions.

By providing the British not only with a taste of the Continent,

but also the opportunity to interact with a different culture.

From Exeter to Glasgow, from Swansea to Newcastle, they zigzag

across Great Britain with a little piece of France on a string.

The Onion Johnny became part of the fabric of many British towns,

but always remained true to their Breton roots.

These are French men who come here for five or six months every year

and they call this island home,

like Monsieur Francois Pere, Woodford and Roscoff.

Every single Onion Johnny comes from the same place - Roscoff.

They are men with two homes.

Claude Tanguy, Roscoff and Edinburgh,

Auguste Coquin, Roscoff and Swansea.

Ivan Grilladere, Roscoff and Glasgow.

For 500 years, Roscoff shook its fist at the English.

Now it sends them onions.

Such is progress.

The trade supposedly began in 1828 with one man, Henri Olivier.

The journey across the Channel from Roscoff actually proved easier

than transporting the onions across France, so more men followed.

The 1920s was the Golden Age of the Onion Johnny.

1929 saw the greatest number of Johnnies - about 1,400 -

and the highest tonnage of onions sent to Great Britain.

Portsmouth Harbour, the only successful French landing

since William the Conqueror.

There were fewer after the two wars, but it was an annual invasion

that continued right up until the end of the last century.

Ammunition - onions. Objective - the British housewife.

Can you make yourself comfortable in here while I put the kettle on?

Thank you.

They might have been wooed by a bit of Gaelic charm.

But at the end of the day, it was really their onions

the British housewife was interested in.

It doesn't seem 28 years since I was here the first time, does it?

Oh, it doesn't. Do you remember how much they were at that time?

A shilling for a small bunch and two shillings for the big ones.

Wonderful.

The women of Britain were happy to pay a little bit more

for the Roscoff onion,

because they appeared to keep for longer and had a unique flavour.

The Onion Johnny offered us a little taste of Brittany

way before most of the population had had the chance to travel.

And they made such a lasting impression, that the image

of a man on a bicycle with onions around his neck would come

to represent all Frenchmen -

well, in the eyes of many Britons - for years to come.

Not a bad day. Not a bad day at all.

Of course, the types of foods that we consider to be exotic

are constantly changing.

There was a time when Spanish dishes may as well have come from the moon.

And Chinese cuisine was a rumour on the lips of far-flung adventurers.

No doubt it will be a long time before we can convert

the British from fish and chips to bird's nest soup.

But with wartime, travel and the end of austerity,

our curiosity about eating food we considered to be glamorous

and exclusive, grew and grew.

And over the years, increasing numbers of Brits gave things a go.

I'm afraid you're eating frog's legs.

THEY ALL LAUGH

Not Kermit, please!

Driven by immigration and inquisitive eaters,

dishes we once thought of as highly out of the ordinary

are now High Street favourites.

So to get something that really stretches the adventurous

British palate requires a flair for the unusual.

And they don't come any more unusual than the recipes

of Dan Creedon at Archipelago.

Part amazing cuisine, part bush tucker trial, Dan is on a mission

to make us try dishes most of us would never have imagined eating.

Our tagline is "explore the exotic" and that's kind of the whole point.

We just want to broaden people's horizons when it comes to food.

Today we're doing what we call the sharing platter,

it's kind of a taster menu.

It's got some crocodile, some alpaca, got some kangaroo.

Hold the phone - did he just say crocodile?!

The crocodile is actually from Zimbabwe.

We mince it up and marinate it with Thai panang curry.

The crocodile is farmed.

Obviously you couldn't eat wild crocodile, they eat things

that have been dead for three months. You'd end up dead yourself.

Good to know!

They're farmed for their skin and the meat is just a by-product.

Of course, eating exotic food doesn't mean cooking up rare species.

This didn't do the Dodo any favours,

and nowadays there's no excuse for eating endangered types of animal.

However strange, everything Dan cooks is sustainably sourced,

whether it's croc or kangaroo. When you're dealing with meat,

or any food that isn't exactly commonplace, you have to pay extra

attention to where it came from.

I'm quite partial to a bit of crocodile, mate.

People always try and say it's like chicken -

they say the same about frog, to be honest,

they say the same about any kind of white meat which they've never tried

before, but it's not particularly chicken-ish,

it's closer to...a very meaty fish.

Aye, it's got a bit of a bite to it, hasn't it?

Oh, dude, did you have to?

At the end of the day, it's reptile. It tastes like reptile,

it looks like reptile. Snake is similar. Other lizards are the same.

-That's what reptile flesh is like.

-Oh, I'm not convinced!

Next I'm going to do the alpaca, which is called ropa vieja,

which is Spanish for "old clothes".

First crocodile, now old clothes!

I thought they were usually more jumpers than dinners.

Alpaca is more farmed as a... like we farm sheep for wool.

At the end of the day,

people in the Andes aren't going to waste anything.

When it's time for the animal to die, they're going to eat it.

This is a lovely, gamey, strong, flavoursome meat, which you

traditionally cook for 8 to 12 hours, something like that,

so it's obviously using old animal.

If you were eating a four-year-old working animal,

it needs a fair bit of cooking.

Apparently, alpaca stew gets its name "old clothes"

from being colourful like a pile of washing, rather than its taste.

I quite like the look of this one.

And the strangeness doesn't stop there.

Next up is some Aussie kangaroo.

This here is the kangaroo.

They are wild animals, they are not farmed.

So this is marinaded in a spice called zhug from the Yemen,

which is one of my favourites,

it's kind of a Middle Eastern curry type spice blend.

I recognise curry. Curry can make anything taste good.

The cooking is as dramatic as the ingredients!

Dan fries up his crocodile dolmades and the alpaca is ready to go.

As you can see, the meat has completely almost pureed.

This isn't supposed to be a stew, it's...

It's more similar to a pate or something like that,

that kind of consistency.

-Nice! That just leaves one last course.

-Erm...

Here we've got locusts and crickets,

which I'm going to fry up with chilli, galangal, garlic,

sauce and that will go on top of the salad.

He just slipped that one in, didn't he? Crickets and locusts!

It's a brave soul that has a go at them.

In many of the countries these are eaten in,

normally they will just fry them up with some flavour, eat that,

but what we do to make them more palatable is we bake them, almost

dehydrate them in the oven first, which makes them dryer and crispier.

It is almost like eating pork scratching or something like that.

As far as I know, more than 60 percent of the world's

population eat insects regularly, and out of the two, the locust

is more acceptable, the cricket is a bit more unusual.

Yes, locusts are perfectly normal eating, Dan!

I think I'll have mine medium rare, please.

Lovely.

Well, dinner's ready!

Let me just get this straight - we've got crocodile in vine leaves,

alpaca stew, kangaroo curry with locust and cricket for afters.

Right you are.

I'm quite looking forward to revisiting some of these.

Unfortunately, it is not us eating it,

but the International Food And Wine Society are.

I hope they know what they are in for.

We go for classic French and Italian, English sometimes,

maybe the occasional Chinese, but for the most part we are fairly conservative.

Has he seen the menu?

I've never come across alpaca before on the menu, and I can't wait to try it.

Well, first up you've got to get past the crocodile.

It's very nice, actually. A bit lighter than I expected it to be.

A little bit fishier.

Interesting!

Kangaroo, I've taken in my stride.

Well, Skippy is a hit too - maybe there's something to it after all.

What about the old clothes?

This is beautiful.

This is...mmm.

Think she likes it. But, oh dear, what will they make of the insects?

First time I ate an insect when I was a child, it was raw

and jumping around, so I'm quite looking forward to trying it.

Right.

-Stand by.

-Oh, that is very crunchy.

Tastes a lot better than it did when I was 10 years old.

-They are actually really tasty and very nice.

-Told you it was tasty.

A very pleasant snack.

The sort of thing if I had a little bag of them

in the car I would quite happily eat.

# I don't like cricket

# I love it. #

Well, that's all food for thought - they might be unusual ingredients,

but all they get the thumbs-up from our diners.

This meal is the most amazing fusion of different continents.

South America, Africa, apparently, with the crocodile,

the insects seem to be eaten on several continents,

so you cannot place this, it is more than fusion, it is

the whole experience, the whole world.

These dishes are about as exotic as you get.

And once you get past the fact you've never eaten them before,

the rewards are more than just novelty eating. They're great food.

There are some special dishes that you might eat on a night out,

but would be intimidated from trying to make in your own kitchen.

So we're going to demystify one school of food, that is

a real treasure when you know how.

-Sushi!

-Sushi!

It is a nourishing and tasty snack.

Whoever thought of putting rice, raw fish, mustardy thing

and ginger together with soya sauce, this taste explosion in your face.

It is lovely.

We're going to show you how

to make a few sushi dishes that look fantastic, taste beautiful and are

a bit fiddly, but a lot of fun and well worth it!

Sushi starts with rice, in fact, sushi means rice,

it does not mean raw fish. It is vinegar rice.

It has taken us ages to get this right in a domestic environment,

this seems like a faff with your rice, but it works.

This is Japanese sushi rice.

It is a short grain rice, it is a bit sticky, a bit firm. It is just right.

It needs treating with respect. First off, the washing process.

You wash it not once but thrice.

Right, we will just leave that to stand now.

Now we need to boil up some water, with - if you can find it -

some kombu seaweed.

We pop the rice in, stir it once, put the lid on,

bring it to the boil, simmer for 10 minutes.

Whilst that's cooking, we need to make some rice dressing.

We start with rice vinegar. 200 millilitres of vinegar.

Put that in a pan, into that vinegar we want four tablespoons of sugar

and four teaspoons of salt.

Heat that up till it dissolves. It won't take long.

Set aside for it to cool. This is what we dress the rice with.

After ten minutes, the rice should have absorbed all the water.

We turn the heat off, and we leave that for 20 minutes,

just to settle in its own steam.

Don't take the lid off.

Cup of tea.

Right, the time has come, the rice is done.

Using a wooden rice paddle, you put the rice into the bowl.

As you can see, it is cooked through.

There is no water in the bottom and no mess.

Now, let's dress the rice.

Basically, you sprinkle it over the rice.

Cut it through with a slicing motion,

but hopefully not mashing the hot rice.

And then it's got to be cooled.

Not in the fridge, but with a fan.

This process is known as pearlising the rice.

It kind of produces this sheen on the rice, so you

want 10 minutes like this, then using the rice paddle, turn the rice over.

Fan for 2 minutes, turn it over for 2 minutes,

then it should be fine to use.

Done this at home sometimes, I've just put an electric fan there,

but it's not right, really, is it?

-It is wrong.

-It is perfect.

Now, you're probably wondering what Japanese sushi has to do with

Best Of British - meet British scientist Kathleen Drew-Baker.

In the 1940s, she did a lot of work in ways of developing

the cultivation of nori seaweed.

Nori seaweed is the seaweed that becomes these sheets that you

roll your sushi rolls in.

She developed loads of ways of making nori seaweed which in turn led

to sushi becoming more available and more popular, and indeed, April 14

in Japan is a day dedicated to her,

and they call her the mother of the sea.

In honour of Kathleen, we're going to make some nori rolls.

How's that rice coming along, Kingy?

That's got to be 10 minutes by now.

Look at that. Stick.

Oh.

-That's the sushi rice we know and love.

-That is it.

It is absolutely perfect.

Take a sheet of nori seaweed and cut it into strips,

then cover your bamboo rolling mat in clingfilm.

Take your nori, now you start with the shining side down.

Now we want to cover, this is a narrow roll.

Up to there with the rice, about two centimetres.

Do not put too much rice in.

Got a good stick but every grain is separate.

Just a little smidgen of wasabi.

Wasabi is a Japanese relative of horseradish and be careful,

it is powerful stuff.

You don't want to create a pocket of wasabi or it will give

somebody a dreadful fright.

Next, add some sliced raw salmon and cucumber.

I've just wet that edge, because I want this to form a seal.

Roll it, try and keep that in the middle.

I will turn it over.

Keep it tight.

With your mat, squeeze it like so.

And...your nori roll.

Just cut into bite-size rolls.

Again, these are fresh and sticky.

A million miles away from the supermarket dried-up stuff.

Another variation using nori seaweed is gunboat sushi.

Simply make a patty of rice, wrap a strip of nori around it,

and then fill it with salmon or herring roe.

For nigiri, or finger sushi, create an elongated patty of rice.

Take your third finger and your thumb, like so,

and you make the shape of a patty.

To go on top we've got tuna, salmon,

and some king prawns on skewers, which I'm going to poach in a

flavoursome mixture of 2 tablespoons of sake,

and 500 mls of water.

This will sweeten the prawns up even more.

It come to the boil, put them in at once,

so they cook all the same time.

Instantly they start to change colour.

-1 minute.

-Out they come.

Now place a dot of wasabi.

Take a piece of fish, this lovely tuna, put it on top like so,

and again, take it back to your hand, third finger and thumb,

and kind of shape the fish around the rice patty.

It is the first finger sushi.

Nigiri sushi is like handmade sushi.

It first started in the 1820s at a sushi stall in Japan

when they used to make the rice in a mould.

The fellow was in a hurry, customers waiting, so he formed it by hand.

Put the fish on top, as simple as that. It caught on.

But nigiri sushi, they say, never eat with chopsticks,

always with your finger.

Happy days.

-And that is home-made nigiri sushi.

-How beautiful does that look?

All right, but get your rice right. The rest of it is culinary macrame.

-They are just fresh. That rice is sweet, it is savoury.

-Fantastic.

This is the epitome of exotic. Fabulous.

Exotic foods are jewels of delight in British cuisine,

that make eating so exciting and adventurous.

And once you give them a go,

they offer tastes you'll never forget.

If you want to know more about the recipes in this programme,

log on to our website to find out more.

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