Holiday Favourites James Martin: Home Comforts

If there's one thing I look forward to at the end of a busy day,

it's the thought of getting back to my kitchen at home.

For me, nothing beats cooking some simple, heart-warming food.

Oh-ho-ho!

It is SO good!

The kind of no-nonsense grub that brings people together.

Cheers, everyone.

The dishes I turn to when I want to put a big smile on everyone's face.

These are my home comforts.

Some of my greatest food memories are from family holidays as a kid.

The weather always seemed terrible,

but my spirits could never be dampened.

It didn't matter whether we were stuck in a dodgy caravan in the rain,

we were on holiday, and that meant eating plenty of fish and chips,

and bucket-loads of candyfloss.

Food like this is the inspiration for dishes

that keep memories of my travels alive

when I get back home.

So, I'm going to put a spin on some great seaside grub.

Flavours like this remind me SO much of my holidays.

That is superb.

I'll also be cooking a barbecue classic for a mother-and-son team

who started making award-winning relishes after going to Thailand.

You thought making relish was hard work.

You're slowing down, Finn, you're slowing down.

And food historian Annie Gray discovers

how the Victorians toned their beach bodies

with all the effort that went into making their holiday grub.

There's no bingo wings going on around here.

I'm starting with an easy dish that I first had on a trip to Spain

that involves everything a bloke like me could want.

Food...

fire...

and DIY.

Barbecued sardines

and a salsa I'm making with cucumbers

from the bottom of my garden.

Now, one of the first times I tried something similar to this

was sardines cooked in a wood-fired oven

and I thought it was a fantastic way to cook it.

It brings a whole different flavour to it.

The key to it, really, is the wood which you nail the sardines to.

Sounds a bit weird, but we're going to serve it with a raw salsa,

so it's something really simple, and really quick.

Now, the great thing about this is

you can make it with whatever you want.

When I had it over in Spain, it was just sort of carrot, peppers...

but I think when you've got something as good as this

growing at the bottom of your garden, you've really got to use it.

You can do them with sweetcorn,

tinned sweetcorn even,

tomatoes, it's really up to you.

Sardines are often quite fiddly to eat.

You need to make sure the salsa's nice and small,

so it's easy to eat with those sardines.

That's really the key to this.

Throw that in a bowl and then we can add the shallot.

It's important to use shallot and not onion

because shallot's much more mild in flavour than onion.

Onion's far too strong for this.

I do this quite a lot since I've come back from Spain.

I just thought it was a great way to serve it

and a brilliant talking point as well,

particularly if you want to cook on a fire-pit,

or a wood-fired oven, like this.

It's just a fantastic way of serving food.

So, I'm going to add a little bit of garlic to this.

Now, this salsa only really works with seafood

and everybody knows, when you're on holiday,

particularly when you go to Spain or France,

we seem to eat more seafood than we'd ever do in the UK,

which is a shame, to be honest,

because a lot of the seafood that you have, over in Spain and France,

is actually imported from the UK.

We don't really eat as much as we should do,

so things like sardines, the more we actually buy,

the more demand that we'll get,

and the more you'll actually enjoy fresh seafood like this.

After the garlic is added,

bind the mixture together

with four tablespoons of good quality olive oil.

I'm going to upset the Italians here

cos I actually love Spanish olive oil.

It's not just the Italians that produce really good olive oil now.

Next, add some herbs to give the salsa a punch.

I've got some coriander.

Mint works brilliantly with this.

It's quite unusual, putting mint with fish,

but when you've got fish this fresh,

it really cuts through the flavour, and the oiliness.

You've got a little bit of dill, really whatever herbs you want.

You can just use parsley for this.

The main things is they're classed as sort of soft herbs,

so you wouldn't use things like rosemary or thyme,

which are classed as sort of hard herbs, ones that need cooking.

And then just to bring this all together,

I'm going to take some lime juice.

This is the real key to this

cos you just need a little bit of zing,

so plenty of lime juice.

Finally, some sea salt

and plenty of freshly-ground black pepper,

and that's it.

Now, it's time for the fun bit.

I often find these are one of the things

that northerners prefer more than southerners, to be honest.

My granny used to eat masses of these.

I used to eat loads as a kid.

If you're brought up with them,

I think you like and appreciate them more.

We've got these wonderful sardines that have been scaled and gutted.

Now, I'm going to leave these whole, that's the crucial bit, cos what we're going to do...

..is nail these to a plank of wood.

Now, I did say this was a bit weird but bear with me.

We've got these sort of logs here that I've soaked overnight,

and the secret of soaking the wood is you don't get it burnt.

So, the idea is you take a couple of these on each log,

press the nail all the way through and just hammer this...

..in there.

And repeat the process with two more.

When I saw this being done in Spain, I just had to bring it back home.

I just think they're just fantastic. It's just so simple.

But the flavour you get from it,

particularly when you're cooking in this oven,

and you can cook these by the side of a campfire, just on the edge.

You want the sardines to cook

and bring all that lovely flavour of the wood.

There's going to be people just tuning in,

thinking it's a DIY show and I'm making a cabinet,

or something like that, but bear with me.

But you need to make sure you get really good quality seafood.

And we're going to get letters saying, "What type of wood is it?"

It's wood.

It comes from a petrol station, all right?

And then, all we do with that is

we just season these with a bit of black pepper and a bit of salt.

And then, all we do now is just pop these inside the oven,

just pointing towards the fire.

I think they just look spectacular.

Now, if you're cooking these by a campfire,

they'll take about five to six minutes or, in here, about four minutes.

You can lift these out.

Sardines on wood! Who'd have thought it?

Look at that!

This is a dish I only cook at home.

I'd love to serve these in my restaurant,

but I'd end up with a load of people with white jackets and clipboards

telling me that I can't do it cos of health and safety

and nails and planks of wood, but I just love it.

I just think it just looks so fantastic.

The flavour of it is just fantastic because they're so simply cooked,

and that's how sardines should be cooked.

Every time I taste this,

I just get the same memories of this wonderful little cafe in Spain,

by the beach, cooked in a wood fire pit,

but the flavour is exactly the same.

It's delicious.

Holidays are such a great way of getting inspiration

for new food ideas and is something I do all the time.

After taking some time out in Thailand,

mum Sarah came back fired up

to create a range of award-winning chilli relishes.

Made from her and Finn's home near Lands End,

they're now spicing up the Southwest.

I've been making it for years, just as presents for friends.

So, we've got the car park hut here, so I thought, "I'll just make it

"and sell it from the car park hut", and it all went from there.

Hiya. all right? Thank you very much.

Producing the relishes added to a list of jobs Sarah already had.

I've got the car park, I'm a coastguard,

I make cakes, which I sell at the local farmers' market,

and of course I make the relish.

OK, lovie, choose your weapon.

It's a good job Finn is around

to give mum a helping hand with the relishes,

which starts off by preparing some chillies, garlic and ginger.

It took me a long time to come up with the recipes, originally,

just to get the different heat levels.

So, the mild was OK, but I quite like the hot,

but the extra hot's quite variable,

because a lot of the small chillies I grow really differ in heat,

so it's real trial and error.

-Enjoying it?

-Yes.

Peel a mountain of ginger and then you can go surfing.

Chilli relish was originally Sarah's Chilli Relish

and then Finn started to help more.

Having the name on, with me on as well,

makes it feel much more like it's part of the family,

instead of just being my mum's.

I've finished the chillies. How are you doing with the ginger?

All right, I'm just trying to...

-Coming on?

-Yeah.

I just cook them down, then, in the vinegar.

Before potting up, I add the sugar.

It's just getting the balance right between the ingredients,

but it is that simple.

It's thanks to holidays we now take all over the world

that ingredients like chilli, garlic and ginger

are commonplace in many of the foods we cook at home.

Right, so that's it now.

I'm going to leave it for about four hours, just to cook at a tremble,

and then that just lets all the flavours infuse,

and then we'll come back to it and finish it off.

This gives Finn plenty of time to hit the beach

and brush up on his surfing.

Paddle.

Go on, then, Finn.

See if you can get it.

Good boy.

Surfing over, it's time to see how the latest batch of relish is getting on.

I've added the other secret ingredients to make it just right,

so now we need to grind it up, and then we'll try it

and see if it's delicious enough to bottle up.

-I think that would work, yeah.

-Right, then.

Let's have a look, OK, off.

Good boy.

Looks good. Shall we have a try?

Mmm.

-What do you think? Is that a good batch?

-Definitely.

-Ready to be potted?

-Mmm, definitely.

You always know if Finn's labelled up a jar

cos it's generally a little bit wonky, isn't it, love?

Yeah.

Wonky's best.

After a quick check, they're ready to be sold in shops

all over the Southwest and further afield.

-Hiya.

-Hello.

-Another relish delivery, all right?

-Fantastic. Thank you.

And it's now going across London,

in various delicatessens and butchers, which is amazing.

I think when you're making a product from home,

you just monitor every level of it.

We do it all between us.

Just do a batch at a time.

You're in charge of it and you just get it so it's just right.

It makes such a difference in flavour.

It is an artisan product that takes time and effort.

I love seeing people bring exciting new flavours back to Britain

from all over the world,

and I've invited Sarah and Finn over to my house

so I can cook what I think is the perfect accompaniment

for one of their relishes.

Easy to cook on a barbecue in the back garden at home,

or even after a long day beachcombing,

it's my ultimate burger.

Well, I haven't got the view that you've got from the house,

but you brought the weather with you! No surfboard, I'm afraid...

but I'll do you a deal, OK?

-Now, I know you're a bit of a fan of cars, aren't you?

-Yes.

So I'll show you some cars, if you teach me how to surf.

-Yeah.

-Sounds good?

-Sounds good.

What I'm going to do is, seeing as you're here,

I thought I'd do a simple little burger.

But I know you've brought some of these wonderful relishes with you,

so tell me about these.

What's this one?

The Mumbai Banana.

It's a bit like a mango chutney, but banana-based,

so it's not got the chilli in.

It's just got the curry spices.

The apple, I make with lovely cider apples,

so it's got a real sort of tang, tasty apples.

And what about burgers, Finn?

-Big fan of burgers?

-Yeah, I love burgers.

-On the beach, while you're surfing?

-Yeah, barbecue on the beach.

Sounds pretty good. Well, this is what you can do with it.

Now, the key to this, really, is good quality minced beef.

So, you've got to use a minimum amount of fat,

enough fat to keep it nice and moist, but not too much

cos otherwise it ends up falling through,

setting fire to the charcoal,

and you end up burning the burgers in the first place.

So, all it is, to make really good burgers,

is you just add salt and pepper to it, nothing else.

There's no need to add any egg, breadcrumbs, nothing,

Mix this together,

and we're just going to mould these up

into sort of portion size.

On the grill, easy as that.

So simple and makes the perfect heart for my ultimate burger.

To bring this alive, I'm going to use a couple of sauces -

the mild chilli relish and my home-made mayonnaise,

made with rapeseed oil.

-Have you ever made mayonnaise before?

-No.

You're about to. Made with egg yolks and oil.

What we're going to do is break the egg yolks and then slowly add the oil,

or rather you're going to do that.

Now, I'm going to use your mild sort of chilli relish.

What denotes whether it's a relish or a chutney, then?

Relish is just cooked more slowly, over a longer time, more gently.

-Right.

-Chutney's a quicker cook.

Four hours is a long time to cook something for, particularly like this.

Yeah, I just cook it so gently.

It's only the chilli relish I cook that long. Just, yeah, so gentle.

OK, now gentle. This is how you've got to be with this. You ready?

So what I want you to do is carefully,

-you just need to slowly, slowly pour it, like that...

-OK.

..while I'm whipping it up, OK?

So you've got to put your finger over the end

and then slowly whip it up.

I've got some mustard in here.

That's it, concentrate.

And it all starts to come together into a mayonnaise...

..like this.

So, what's your favourite sort of relish to make at home then, Finn?

Probably the apple.

And who does all the chopping then?

Is that something that you do or your mum does?

We share it, mostly.

It takes a lot of elbow grease to bring everything together,

so I'm going to need a little bit of help.

I tell you what, you do this and I'll do that.

Quickly.

Speed it up.

-And you thought making relish was hard work! Quickly!

-Yeah.

Come on! You're slowing down, Finn, you're slowing down.

THEY ALL LAUGH

It's hard work, this, isn't it?

-Is that starting to get to mayonnaise, roughly?

-Yeah.

So, we're just going to finish that off with a little bit of grain mustard...

..and a little bit of lemon.

Right, how does that look?

-Good.

-Looks all right?

-Yeah, definitely.

-Happy with that?

-Mm-hmm.

What about the burgers?

We're basically just going to put a little bit of oil,

a tiny bit of oil, on the burgers to stop them from sticking really.

Now, a hot griddle. You don't need anything else with the burger,

just put it straight onto the coals.

This is going to take about five or six minutes

to cook all the way through.

And I'm going to use brioche buns.

I don't know whether you get many American diners that use brioche,

but in a lot of sort of trendy American restaurants

and American places,

they would use the brioche bun because it's lovely and sweet,

but also really nice and soft.

I'm just going to basically griddle these nicely,

just get a little bit of colour on it, just to toast them.

Too many times, burgers are done with those dry burgers

with burger buns with sesame seeds over the top.

How does that look?

Once the burgers are cooked, it's time to assemble them.

I'm starting with the mild chilli relish.

Next comes some salad

and the burger itself.

On top of this goes some cheese and my home-made mayonnaise,

finished off with some red onion and gherkin.

There you go, dive into that.

-There you go, Sarah.

-Lovely, thank you.

See what you think. I don't know where to start with this.

Just tuck in.

Mm, delicious.

-Is that any good?

-Really, really nice.

Would you pay for it, though?

Mmm...yes.

Don't think about it!

That relish is fantastic with it, isn't it? Not too hot.

-Mm. Just a nice heat.

-Lovely.

I'm keen to get a surfing lesson from Finn.

To keep my end of the bargain, I'm showing him a couple of cars.

Wow.

See, this'll be wicked for your surfing, I think.

You can get your surfboard in the back, put it on the roof.

-Whoa!

-Seat's quite small. It was built for you, you see.

-And then this is the coolest of all. Are you ready?

-Yeah.

Whoa! That's too big a burger you've eaten.

Whoa.

My ultimate burger is a great dish that's simple to make,

guaranteed to please,

and perfect for eating alfresco.

For me, no holiday is complete without some outdoor eating.

It's a British tradition that stretches back years

and is something that the Victorians enjoyed just as much as we do.

Food historian Dr Annie Gray

has been discovering what was on the menu

when the Victorians took a day off

and indulged in their favourite pastime - having a picnic.

The term picnic,

like so much that is fashionable in 18th and 19th century Britain,

is a French term.

Comes to mean a very small, select gathering

with small, sweet, select food,

and it becomes this phenomenon in late 18th century England

among those who have pretensions to the French culinary arts.

By the 19th century, of course,

anything that's small and delicate and sweet

tends to become over-elaborate.

You're going to have a massive spread.

You might have a pie, in this case it's pigeon pie,

and you can tell immediately what it is,

if you don't know,

just by the feet crawling out of it.

Typical Victorian elaboration.

I'm going to cook recipes from either end of the social scale today.

So, you've got your amazing posh picnics with pies and blancmanges,

and things that took days and days to prepare,

but at the other end of the social scale,

this is the period where you really see the growth of working-class leisure.

And, at that end of the social scale, you're also having a picnic

but you're not having quite the same food.

So, I'm going to do some sausage rolls.

You might think, "How obvious",

but this is the Victorian version of a modern day favourite.

And I'm also going to do lobster cutlets,

which are perhaps one of the richest of dishes that you can imagine taking on a picnic.

A posh Victorian picnic may have put the lords and ladies upstairs

in the mood to relax on a rug,

but, downstairs, it was a pretty tough slog to prepare it.

It might not be subtle, but it works.

This dish was a real holiday treat.

So, once the lobster meat has been extracted,

it was combined with mace, nutmeg and butter, before being ground.

I have to say, after years of working with Victorian food,

there's no bingo wings going on around here.

The mixture was then shaped into miniature cutlets,

and they were coated in egg and breadcrumbs,

and then fried in lard.

Lobsters were really popular for the Victorians.

They were regarded as an aphrodisiac.

One social commentator, Henry Mackenzie, in 1800,

suggested that picnics could be used to nurture budding romances.

There's a sense of playfulness with this dish.

So, you have your meat cutlet shape

and what I'm using is the claws, the miniature claws from the lobster,

just to look like the end of the bone coming out of a meat cutlet.

This is really very much food as art.

It might look good.

It doesn't look good enough for a proper Victorian picnic dish.

Bechamel sauce, which is what this is,

is very popular in the Victorian period,

and it's quite useful for things like this,

because it moistens the cutlets, but it's also quite a subtle flavour.

STILL not good enough.

So, I thought red and green are very popular Victorian colours.

Maybe trickling a little bit of parsley round the edge here,

and contrast nicely with the red of the lobster as well.

It looks nice, but I feel it needs a centrepiece,

and what better than a lobster head?!

Shows what it is.

I think that looks pretty good.

The working man couldn't afford lobster cutlets

or anything fancy like that,

but he could afford some dough, and some sausage meat.

So, pretty much any working-class family could afford to make sausage rolls.

All I've got here is bread dough,

just plain, straightforward, bog-standard, white bread dough.

This is a Victorian bread-kneading trough.

Brilliant idea because you never wash it, you just keep it floured down,

and it really does keep mess to a minimum.

So, all I'm going to do is take some sausage meat,

put it in my bread roll,

so that way, when they cook,

you've got a piece of sausage meat sealed within your bread roll.

Absolutely perfect for sticking in your pocket.

No need for a hamper, or tablecloths, or cutlery, or anything else.

You quite literally stick a sausage roll in your pocket,

get on the omnibus, and off you go.

All the Victorian housewife would have had to do now

is to cover them with a damp cloth,

leave them for about 30 minutes to prove

and then pop them in her oven.

15 minutes later, you're ready to go on holiday, picnic sorted.

It seems to have all got here in one piece,

but that's only half the story, unfortunately.

Being good Victorians, we can't do anything that's even semi-posh

without heavy doses of etiquette

and picnics are no exception.

The writers behind Mrs Beeton's reissued Book Of Household Management, in 1888,

were quite clear on the point of etiquette.

They suggested, "One of the pleasantest forms of entertainment

"is a well-arranged picnic,

"if only a fine day be selected, while nothing is calculated

"to give greater dissatisfaction than a badly managed one.

"To have given people wrong seats in the various vehicles,

"or to have too many ladies in the party, are all often fatal errors."

So, here we are. I feel positively inadequate

being the only lady in the party.

After which, personally, I feel I need a sausage roll.

That is really good.

I like the cutlets but I think, ultimately,

I'm probably the kind that just sticks a sausage roll in my pocket,

forgets the corkscrew,

grabs some ginger beer,

and sets off tramping in the countryside

to throw myself on the ground and scoff a sausage roll.

Picnics are all about making the most of the summer

and memories of holidays in France with my dad

are all summed up in this rustic cake.

This my blueberry galette,

served with an instant chocolate bar ice cream.

Now, if there's one place that I love going to when I'm on holiday

and that's Paris, and I came across this dessert.

It's a little galette. Very, very simple to make.

There's a real key thing you really need to pay attention to,

to get perfect pastry every time, like the French,

and that's what I think needs to be done by hand.

First thing to do is put 200 grams of plain flour into a bowl.

Next is 150 grams of chopped unsalted butter.

But cold butter. It's really, really important that you use cold butter.

Sometimes you can actually freeze this to get it really cold,

and I've actually seen recipes where they actually freeze the pastry

as well to get it even colder.

Throw in the butter to the flour, with a good pinch of sugar.

The secret of this is to actually work the flour as little as possible

and by doing so, the gluten in the flour,

the stretchy part of the flour,

which you knead when you're making bread, doesn't happen.

What you end up with is a very short pastry,

but a very delicate one that just melts in your mouth.

And even my gran used to rub the butter and flour together

to make her shortbread,

while watching Corrie on the box.

And it meant that when you actually tasted this,

you didn't need to bite it, you didn't need any teeth...

..which, in my grandad's case, was probably a good thing.

Using the tips of your fingers, keep on rubbing it in,

until it creates a small crumb.

The more delicate you are with it, the better the end product.

Once it's like this,

add one egg yolk and bind it all together into a big ball.

Because you've worked it, you need to allow it to rest,

so I've got one that's in the fridge, just firmed up.

It'll only take about an hour, two hours, something like that.

Now, I'm going to create the filling for our little galette.

Now, this is so simple.

You can do this with any summer fruit, really.

For this galette's filling, I'm using blueberries.

To this I'm adding some vanilla seeds,

a pinch of sugar and a squeeze of lemon.

What holds all this together is a tablespoon of cornflour.

And this makes sure the liquid from the blueberries,

when it does cook, it doesn't leak out everywhere

and just make our galette look like a big pizza, at the end of it.

What we're looking for is that sort of texture.

It's almost like a wallpaper paste blueberry mixture.

Looks nothing now, but when it's baked,

it just looks delicious, so little bit of that to one side.

You need to roll out your pastry.

Now, the secret with this is...

gentle but firm.

And the least amount of flour as possible.

The more flour you add to anything, the drier it becomes.

Roll it out on a cold surface until it's about 5mm thick.

And then, I'm going to use sort of one of these rings or tins

that I just have in my kitchen.

We're just going to cut these out.

Now, the key to making the galettes is quite simple.

You make it like a crimped pasty.

So, you start at one end,

crimp it,

and work your way round.

You've got these wonderful little tartlets, so simple to make.

And pop them on to a tray.

You don't need to be too fancy. Nothing's too perfect,

that's what I love about sort of French patisserie.

Pop a decent amount of the blueberry mix into the casing,

and put them in the fridge for half an hour,

which I did with some others, earlier.

It's quite important to do this.

It just firms up the pastry nicely,

just enables us to do some egg wash.

You don't need to be too fancy with this.

The final touch is to sprinkle plenty of Demerara sugar

over the top, and then place them in the oven,

at 250 degrees centigrade, for 25 minutes.

While the galettes are cooking,

I'm going to make a great accompaniment for them -

peanut chocolate bar ice cream,

and that all starts with making a custard.

For that, I'm going to use sugar, egg yolks, milk and cream.

Put 300ml of milk and 200ml of double cream into a pan

and start heating it up.

While this is happening,

whisk together six egg yolks and 75 grams of caster sugar.

When this is done, add the warm milk and cream into the bowl,

mixing together and return to the heat, and then start stirring.

I always find the best way is to use a whisk.

And as the bubbles start to disappear...

..the custard starts to thicken up,

and at that exact time,

you take it off the heat, before it boils.

Pour this into a bowl.

If I was using a normal ice cream machine,

I'd be putting the chocolate bars into the warm custard now.

That way, the chocolate bars melt.

And as the machine that you're blending it in

starts to churn round,

it churns it, and cools it and freezes it at the same time.

But I like kitchen gadgets,

so I'm going to make my ice cream in a slightly different way.

So, I've let some of the custard cool down in the fridge.

To this, I'm going to add some whole peanut chocolate bars,

which is then frozen rock-solid.

It's then ready to churn.

All that happens with this is there's a blade in there,

and when I hit this button,

the blade goes down and comes back up again.

While that's churning, it's time to take out the galettes from the oven.

These look like authentic galettes...

which is lovely. It's nice and delicate, like that.

And the pastry just breaks open, like that. It's lovely and soft.

I've got my fancy ice cream,

but a scoop from a normal ice cream maker, or even shop-bought,

will go down just as well with this great galette.

In fact, do you know what?

It's my house... I'm going to take two.

It is so, so good.

You have to make this at home.

The holidays that hold the best memories for me were by the seaside,

riding up and down Blackpool Beach

and tucking into fish and chips afterwards.

Traditional seaside food has always been very close to my heart

and one that I really love is the salty sea plant samphire.

It used to be an effort to get hold of the stuff,

but now people are farming it,

meaning more of us can enjoy its unique taste.

In South Devon, Joe Miller has been harvesting samphire

for the past three years.

A recent addition to the cattle and veg his family already farm.

As kids, we used to pick samphire,

walking along the local beaches and estuaries,

which is a common thing for local people to do.

Joe's samphire grows in the Erme estuary,

a short drive from where the cows graze.

The really unique thing about samphire

is that it can grow in very salty environments,

where other plants just would die.

It's a salty sea plant or estuary plant.

It's not a seaweed because it has roots and it grows in soil.

So, although it doesn't actually need the salt in order to survive,

the salt gives it a competitive advantage

because it can live where other plants can't.

It's a bit like...

a very salty, marshy wine gum.

It was never Joe's plan to farm samphire.

In fact, it's all been a rather happy accident.

These fields are called Orcheton Marsh

and for 200 or so years they were just normal fields,

used for grazing cows.

Then, ten years ago, this wall burst its banks

and the sea started flooding in

and killed all of the grass,

and it killed all the trees, as you can see.

And for about two or three years it just looked like mud,

it looked horrible.

But then, gradually, the samphire,

which is sort of a pioneer plant,

it's always one of the first plants to appear

when land has been flooded,

it started to grow and it greened up again,

started looking more like a sort of useful, attractive,

nice piece of countryside...

and we got this great crop we can sell.

So, what at first seemed like an absolute disaster

has really turned round, and it's thanks to the samphire.

As it's wild, there's no planting to be done, just the picking.

Picking samphire is quite hard work.

You end up bending over for a long time.

You end up getting muddy.

Traditionally the samphire season starts on the 21st June,

somewhere around the longest day of the year,

and then really only lasts for about three weeks.

We normally have about three to four people picking down here

and, very often, it's my family who end up shouldering the burden.

It's legal for anybody to pick samphire,

and you might find some if you go down to your local estuary,

but you have to remember not to pull it up by the root,

because that's illegal.

And, of course, you must be on public land.

We want to avoid any of the woody stalks at the bottom,

just the nice fleshy bit at the top.

That looks nice.

Once picked, Joe's samphire goes into a national veg box scheme.

It costs about a pound for 100 grams, which is quite expensive.

But, yeah, I think it's definitely worth it.

It reflects how much it costs for us to pick it.

It's delicious and you really don't need to have very much of it

because it is fairly strongly flavoured.

What I love about this little veg

is that you can eat it in so many different ways.

It can be a snack, a starter,

or a great accompaniment to a main dish,

and, in my opinion, it's just as tasty raw as it is cooked.

If you're ever barbecuing down by the beach, or on an estuary,

and you happen to find some, it's fantastic just thrown into the pan

and cooked very briefly in some butter,

and you can serve it with any meat and it'll be delicious.

Today, Joe's cooking up a feast to reward his hungry workers.

I think the best way to use samphire is in relatively small quantities,

mixed in with other things.

Samphire is very often used with fish

because it has that nice taste of the sea.

And I've cooked it with lamb today, which also works very well,

and it's also delicious on its own.

It's really nice just heated through.

You want it to retain that nice crisp succulence

that it has when it's fresh.

Works with everything.

I'm going to use some of this great salty veg in my last dish,

an update of some classic seaside grub,

using what I used to have on family beach holidays.

It's British seaside chowder or, as we call it up north, fish soup.

I've got some cockles, some clams, a little bit of whelks here.

This is how you usually get them,

in those polystyrene cups with the plastic fork that you munch on.

So delicious and accessible all around the coast of England.

They're just wonderful little things to eat, these.

With the clams and cockles like this,

we can cook them straight away with some white wine.

You cook them very similar to sort of mussels, really.

So white wine into our pan, a decent slug.

Throw the cockles and clams straight into the pan.

There's nothing else other than white wine.

And because I haven't got a lid for these damn pans...

I'm going to use another one. DIY lid.

What we need to do is bring this to the boil,

and it only takes about three, maybe five minutes

to cook these and open up.

While that's going on, I'm going to start chopping the veg,

starting with a shallot.

And make sure they're quite small

cos we're not going to blend this.

So when you're actually chopping everything,

you think, "Well, can I eat it with a spoon?"

If not, chop it a little bit smaller.

A little bit of garlic here,

just as a nice little flavour.

And we're just going to take our leeks.

Keep your eye on these now.

And they open up quite quickly,

and they all should open up roughly together...

and the smell you get from these is fantastic.

You don't want to overcook them, otherwise they go like bullets,

so just literally open up and drain them off.

And just leave those to drain,

and we can start to then start frying off the rest of our ingredients for this.

So, you want a good knob of butter.

What we're going to do is sweat the shallots

and the garlic, not frying them.

We don't want to add colour to this, so I'll do this on a low heat,

which enables you to prepare the rest of our ingredients

and one that I particularly love.

This is fennel.

So often this is sort of underused, but in France they braise it.

You can have this raw in salads,

it's fantastic to grow in your garden as well,

but in soups like this, it really is superb.

It's going to add a lovely aniseed flavour to the chowder.

And you can turn up the heat now,

once you've got the fennel in,

and we can really start to impart flavour into that.

For that I'm going to use two spices, including saffron.

It's one of these things when you do go on holiday,

particularly to sort of markets like Tunisia, Morocco,

when you see cheap saffron in these big piles in one of those markets,

it's NOT saffron, it's the outer casing of the saffron,

so don't buy it. There isn't such thing as cheap saffron.

Only a small amount needs to be added - too much will spoil it.

Take the juice of our lovely clams and cockles here

and just carefully drain this through.

As soon as you get to the bottom,

you can see where the little bits of grit...

I'm not really selling this!

..but there is little bits of grit underneath there.

You don't want that in your lovely chowder.

Next, I'm going to add a whole star anise,

building on the aniseed flavour of the fennel.

To bulk this out a bit, I'm going to use some chicken stock.

Now, the reason for chicken stock basically is

that it's too fishy if you use fish stock.

It sounds daft,

but chicken stock like this adds a nice little mellow flavour

and what we're going to do is just bring this to the boil.

While that's happening, I'm going to cut up some potatoes,

the same size as the rest of the veg.

This will help thicken the chowder.

This dish reminds me so much of going on holiday to Scarborough.

It was a wonderful, still is a fantastic seaside town,

and I suppose it was really Scarborough that taught me luxurious ingredients.

It may sound daft, but things like cockles and clams and mussels,

I'd never really tried them before and, for me,

it was sort of a revelation really.

The potatoes will take three to four minutes to cook,

so while that's happening, I can get all the meat out of the shells.

It seems like a lot of work for just a small amount of gain,

but the flavour you get from this...

is just everything you need into our soup.

I've got that and the whelks, which is wonderful.

These are almost ready to add, but before that,

I'm going to put some double cream and some samphire into the pan.

It cooks in record time, really, and what you need to do with this

is just add a little bit and then you can add some tomatoes.

And at the same time your tomatoes go in,

we can turn this heat down and then add our wonderful seafood.

Just stir this, just to warm it through,

and you can see everything starts to thicken up

and you get this wonderful soup.

What you have to do, you've got to hunt for that star anise.

It's in here somewhere.

There.

And get rid of this little fellow

cos if that sticks in Granny's teeth,

she ain't going to be chuffed.

I'm also going to add some chopped chives.

My finishing touch is a garnish of some celery leaves and seasoning.

That is delicious.

Flavours like this remind me so much of my seaside holidays.

That...is superb.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

ALL: Cheers!

Holidays have given me so much inspiration over the years,

from windswept British beaches to exotic places further afield.

And these dishes have kept the holiday spirit

alive and well in my home.

You can find all the recipes from the series on bbc.co.uk/food.