Herbs and Spices 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, oh, oh! It is so good.

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

ALL: Cheers, everyone.

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

These are my home comforts.

I think home cooking has been transformed

over the last 20 years

by the amazing range of ingredients that we can now grow and buy

in the UK.

Whether you pick them fresh from your garden or buy them

ready-made in the shops,

as a nation, us Brits, have totally fallen for

fresh herbs and fragrant spices.

Whether it's the zingy taste of lemon verbena

or the beautiful sweetness of fresh basil, the options are endless.

It's just a matter of knowing which ones to choose.

Get the right blend of herbs and spices

and you can turn a good meal into a great one.

Today, I'll be cooking dishes from the States and India.

Food historian Ivan Day takes a leaf out of the oldest cookbook

in Britain.

And we meet a woman who forages for the herbs we've all forgotten.

The majority of things that you regard as weeds are actually

wild ingredients.

But first, for me, the Italians are the masters

when it comes to using fresh herbs.

Using basil in the pasta, in the filling

and in the pesto,

my basil tortellini with ricotta and pine nuts

is a celebration of one of the tastiest and most versatile herbs.

Basil has to be one of my favourite herbs

to either grow in the garden

or to use in cooking in general, and I'm going to create a wonderful

little pasta dish, one with a little twist, which I think you'll love.

So the first thing I'm going to make is my pasta.

'I'm using about 200g of fine grade 00 flour.

'Make a well in the middle, crack in a couple of eggs

'and mix it all together by hand.'

Now, I'm not going to add any salt, any oil, anything like that,

just mix the two ingredients together.

Once you've got one egg almost mixed in, then we can add the other.

Now, it's better to do this by hand

because you actually can understand when the pasta's right and

when you need to add a little more liquid or a little bit more flour.

And you can almost tell when the pasta dough is ready because it

actually brings everything together off the bench...

..and the texture starts to firm up a little bit,

and, really, you've got the pasta dough done.

It's as simple as that. It doesn't take very long to do at all,

but what it does need is time to rest.

To do that, just clingfilm it and pop it in the fridge.

Now, I've got one that's in here.

The texture is now perfect.

It goes a little bit more pliable, a little bit nicer to work with.

Now scatter the work surface with flour and you can start

rolling half the dough through one of my favourite kitchen gadgets.

These pasta machines often gather dust in kitchen cupboards

but they need to be used.

Get it out and use it.

The more you do it, the more confident you get to work with it.

Each time you do it, just a small amount of flour.

Too much flour, you end up drying it out.

And then you keep going all the way through your settings.

Every time I use this, it just reminds me so much

of when I was a kid at Malton swimming baths.

But back then, after you finished swimming,

when you were at school, you put your shorts through the mangle.

When your dough's nice and thin,

you can do a nifty little trick with some basil leaves.

Pop them on top of the pasta,

fold them in with the leaves inside the pasta, then roll through again.

And every time you do it, it's kind of stretching the leaves.

Looks fantastic.

Once the basil pasta's rolled out - to the thinnest you can get it -

grab a pastry cutter and we can start making our tortellini.

So, once I've got to that stage, you can fill it with whatever you want.

Basil has some really subtle peppery

and sweet notes that will balance perfectly with the creamy ricotta.

The secret with Italian food, I always think,

is the quality of the ingredients.

It's just simply cooked.

And because of this, you can

really appreciate the flavours of the basil.

And then you want a tiny bit of water.

Just dab almost like half the edge of the pasta dough.

Flip one half over, make sure it's all nicely sealed.

Like that. And then around your thumb or your finger,

you just basically fold this around.

Round that way and round that way

and the water sticks the pasta at either end.

So you've got your wonderful little...

..tortellini.

So, the pasta and the filling are flavoured with the basil,

but where you get the real full effect of the herb, is in the pesto.

Now, traditionally this would be done in a pestle and mortar

but, for this one, I'm just going to use a blender,

cos it's going to really take as long as the pasta takes to cook.

To 50g of fresh basil leaves, I'm adding 10g of toasted pine nuts,

a clove of garlic and 25g of grated Parmesan cheese.

Now I'm going to use two types of oil for this.

Always Italian olive oil, of course.

I'm going to use a little bit of extra virgin.

But then, mainly some plain olive oil

because I want the flavour of the basil to come out

and I think the extra virgin is too strong.

Now, to cook the pasta, all you do

is drop it into salted boiling water.

This is going to take about two to three minutes to cook.

At the same time, just blitz the pesto.

That's just about perfect. So the pasta's now cooked.

Drain it off.

Put it back in the pan.

Mix that together, keep it on the heat

and almost finish off the cooking of the pasta in the pan.

Garnish the dish with some toasted pine nuts and some ground pepper.

And then, really, you just want to serve it

exactly like the Italians do.

Not poncey, just relying on the lovely flavour you've got.

Simple as that. And then finally, of course,

just a little flourish of Parmesan cheese.

This dish really epitomises everything that's great

about Italian cooking.

Great pasta, a lovely ricotta, but the key to this is fresh basil.

And the flavour you get from it is just fantastic.

For me, the flavour of basil works on so many different levels.

And when you use it with some simple, Mediterranean ingredients,

you've got the perfect recipe to showcase its many talents.

Now, basil is a very familiar ingredient, but there are still

plenty of great herbs out there just waiting to be discovered.

Lavender is one that's gradually creeping into our cooking.

One of the very few people growing edible lavender in Britain

is Hampshire farmer Richard Norris.

And his love affair started at a very young age.

As a child, I had been very interested in gardening.

Took over part of my parents' garden aged seven.

By ten, I could give you the Latin name of any plant in the garden.

Richard took up lavender farming,

turning his passion for plants into a business.

But we quickly discovered that you really have to,

as the accountants say, add value and sell finished products.

So he created two lavender farms.

One farm produces traditional essential oils

and the other grows several varieties of edible lavender,

with some unusual flavours on offer.

This variety is Blue Mountain White.

Along with a lot of the pink lavenders,

has a vaguely mushroomy scent.

Not unpleasant.

If you use this with something like redcurrant,

infused it in that, to create a sauce to go with game,

I think that would be a very interesting flavour.

In contrast, it's lavender Grosso.

If you were to use this in cooking for ice cream or a sorbet,

it would be incredibly refreshing.

Unlike most herbs, the flavour comes from the flowers, not the leaves.

So here, this bunch is ready for drying,

either to dry and keep as a bunch

or to rub off the stem and use for cooking.

Rubbing the flowers off the stalk in this way, by hand,

is a very gentle process.

It results in very little stalk or leaf in here.

Lovely clean product,

absolutely perfect for using with food.

A whole range of delicious lavender-flavoured goodies

are served in Richard's cafe,

which is right on site within a whiff of the fields.

These sweet treats are flavoured with milk or water

that's been infused with the flower heads.

I've ordered a lavender scone, really gorgeous taste of lavender.

More kind of perfumey of lavender than I thought it would be

-but, you know, really delicious.

-Really nice.

Chef Toby also loves finding new ways to use

the herb in savoury dishes.

I think lavender is fantastic to experiment with.

It's a very versatile herb, it can be put in both sweet

and savoury dishes.

Surprisingly, it goes with prawns and it complements lamb perfectly

without making it bitter or overpowering.

Today, Toby's making a marinade of lavender, thyme,

freshly-squeezed lemon, honey, melted butter

and olive oil for his own take on honey roast chicken.

It brings a depth of earthiness to the dish

and it really complements the meat.

After just 20 minutes in the oven, it's ready for the table.

Well, I chose to have the chicken today.

I like the flavour. It smells nice too,

there's a good aroma of lavender from it.

But when you taste it, it's not overpowering.

It definitely adds to the experience

and leaves a nice taste in the mouth afterwards. Very clean.

It's pretty to look at too, so I've got a pretty lunch!

SHE LAUGHS

I've used lavender in savoury dishes myself,

but I think its flavour has even more to offer.

I've invited Richard over so I can cook him a sweet dish

which works brilliantly with his fresh, fragrant lavender.

This lavender creme caramel with lavender shortbread is

the perfect pudding to showcase the subtle flavours of this

underused but delicious herb.

Now, I've got loads of lavender in my garden, I love it.

Is there two distinct types between the culinary lavender

and the ones you use for oil?

Because I was told not all lavender you can eat.

Is that right?

Some lavenders - you wouldn't want to.

-It's like chewing on a bar of soap?

-Chewing on a bar of soap.

-OK.

-Others have milder flavours.

-Right.

I thought, with this, I'd do a creme caramel with a nice

little shortbread to go with it, something really simple.

The first thing I want to do is get my caramel on.

'Put 150g of caster sugar into a saucepan over a high heat

'and cook it without stirring until it's golden brown.

'Whilst that's caramelising, we can get on with our custard.'

And then, in the fridge, I've got some milk and cream.

I'm using 150ml of whole milk...

..and 300ml of double cream.

I'm going to use some of this fantastic lavender,

just a little bit.

And it needs to go into the cold milk and cream

so, as it comes to the boil, it infuses nicely.

While that's coming to the boil,

whisk four eggs with another 75g of caster sugar.

But why lavender for you, then?

I read an article about the history of commercial lavender growing

in the UK, and the article just said, you know,

"Why isn't it done any more?"

And it was the classic light bulb moment.

That's what I'm going to do.

Then, yeah, I became completely obsessed with lavender.

Right, I'm just going to pour this lovely mixture into here

and actually pop it in while it's still warm

cos as it cools,

it's going to get the flavour out the lavender as well.

There are so many different types.

What type is this cooking lavender, particularly?

Right, that type is called lavender intermedia

and the variety is called Grosso.

We found that it's great in cooking.

It's quite strong, as you may have found,

but you just reduce the quantity you use a little bit.

Now, my lavender's not too bad in the garden.

It's about six to seven years old

and it's starting to look a bit withered.

Do you have to cut the crops down? I mean, how do you treat it?

In the wild, lavender is grazed by animals,

so it responds, therefore, to quite a good, hard pruning.

'Adding a splash of water dilutes the melted sugar,

'making it less sticky and easy to pour.

'When it's the consistency of golden syrup,

'it's ready to go into the moulds.'

Now, what this is going to do is set while it's in the moulds.

'Lavender is a strong herb and I don't want to let the flowers

'infuse for too long, so I'm straining them out with a sieve.

'To stop these caramels from curdling or cracking,

'I'm going to cook them in a water bath.'

So, is it in the same sort of family of heather? Would that...?

-No.

-What family is it?

Lavender's in the same family as mint.

-Mint?!

-Rosemary.

That's why it grows everywhere in my garden then, lavender and mint.

Yeah. And, you know, if you look at the stems,

it's quite interesting, you'll see they're square in cross-section.

You've probably never noticed it before, but if you look,

they're all the same.

So, all you do with this is take the mixture

and just carefully pour it in.

Now, you need to make sure the caramel on the base is set,

otherwise it's just going to go into this dark mush, really,

more than anything else.

Fill up these little moulds like that...

..and then bake it in the oven.

Now, what it requires is a low oven. That's 300 degrees Fahrenheit,

about sort of 150 degrees centigrade, for about 45 minutes.

The reason why I'm doing this recipe in the first place

is that this was my granny's favourite recipe - creme caramel -

and she used to make the most amazing shortbread.

'My gran insisted on unsalted butter.

'Take 175g and mix it with 100g of icing sugar.

'I'm still using her recipe

'but this time I'll be adding some of Richards's lavender.'

So, just to finish off our shortbread,

I'm going to do it the old-fashioned way - with a wooden spoon

rather than a whisk, and you just basically cream the icing sugar

and the butter together so the butter's nice and soft.

You almost get it to that sort of texture.

The whole point about shortbread is the fact that it's short,

as in, when you break it, it's quite crumbly.

'To achieve this texture, my gran always used a mixture of flour.

'200g of plain flour combined with 100g of cornflour

'gives the best results.'

This bit needs to be done quite carefully and, in fact,

it's probably better, to be honest, to do this bit by hand.

You just work this all together.

Now, at this stage, I can throw in a little bit of this lavender.

So you learnt this at your grandmother's?

This is Granny's cooking down to a T, you see.

Probably be looking down at me, telling me to do it...

I'm doing it wrong, no doubt, but...

'It's best not to use any more flour when rolling out the shortbread.

'A fraction too much and you can change the texture.

'Instead, just press it into a buttered tray using your fingers.'

And I've set the oven about 180 degrees centigrade,

that's about 350 Fahrenheit, and it wants to cook for about 15 minutes.

Lavender, where's its natural habitat?

Its natural habitat, in the main, is the Mediterranean.

So, hot, sunny climates. Provence, in particular.

'Whilst we bake the shortbread,

'I can turn my attention back to the creme caramels.'

This has just been chilled.

You can keep it in the water, but they're nice and set.

The best way to test it when it comes out of the oven

is just press it like that.

If it's firm on the top, that means it's cooked all the way through.

'To take the creme caramels out,

'run the blade of a knife round the edge of the mould.'

And then, just with the edge of the knife, lift this to one side

and then you can flip it out.

Nice and delicate. You've got a nice, even caramel as well

on the top.

And then, for our shortbread.

The key to this is to cook it without any colour.

And it is so delicate, so delicious, you almost need a palette knife

to lift it off, but you just break this off.

And what I love about this

is you just serve pieces of this

just popped on the side.

No need to add any sugar on the top

because you've got the lovely caramel to go with it.

And there you have it, the cold creme caramel.

-Looks fantastic.

-Looks pretty good.

-But the lavender really works.

-Really does.

I was actually surprised how little lavender you put in.

I don't think it needs a lot, I think that's the key to it.

And that's... I'm hoping that people use more of it

because it is a fantastic culinary ingredient

and one that you can grow in your garden.

It's lovely.

Lavender might not seem the obvious flavour to add to our food

but it really works.

A subtle creamy hint of lavender in the creme caramel is perfect

with the aromatic sweetness of the shortbread.

This is one dessert I'll definitely be making again.

Herbs and spices bring our everyday cookery to life,

and with a number of cuisines available in the UK today,

there are lots of flavours for us to try.

But spicing up our meals is nothing new.

Food historian Ivan Day is at the medieval manor house

Gainsborough Hall, in Lincolnshire, where he's discovering how

top cooks in the Middle Ages created surprisingly exotic dishes.

In the last 100 years, we've learned so much from Indian cooks

about herbs and spices,

but if we go back to the Middle Ages,

the food was just as spicy then as it is in your local tandoori.

I'm going to rustle up a couple of dishes which will show

how medieval cooks used herbs and spices.

A spicy stew and a lovely herby salad.

Both these recipes are from the very earliest English cookery book,

a manuscript which was first written in the 1390s by the master cook

of Richard II.

The book is called The Forme Of Cury,

which really means 'the method of cookery.'

The first recipe is a stew, which is called a brewet of Alamayn,

which literally means a German stew.

This is a very spicy goat stew.

In fact, it will remind you very much of Oriental food

as we understand it today. There's some ginger in it,

which will be familiar to most people but, more unusually,

one of the main condiments in it is this stuff, which is galingale.

It's a very pungent, quite hot, quite gingery flavour.

Generous amounts of both ginger and galingale

were rubbed into the goat meat,

which had been cut into bite-size pieces.

It's looking great.

It's so surprising, isn't it, that in England,

seven centuries ago, we were cooking food like we enjoy now.

Just as many of our favourite Asian dishes feature coconut milk,

this medieval recipe used almond milk as the stock.

It was a very important constituent in medieval culinary art

because it was a substitute originally for animal milk,

but then became established as a really delicious

vehicle for cooking everything in, from fish to meat.

When the almonds had been ground, hot water was added.

Then the whole lot was put through something called a jelly bag,

which was basically an elaborate medieval sieve.

I'm literally milking it and squeezing all of the goodness

out of the almonds into the bowl without getting any nuts in my mix.

Once the meat and the almond milk had been prepared,

it was time to cook the brewet over an open fire.

Onion and the finely-diced meat were fried in oil

and then the almond milk was added.

My brewet of Alamayn is going to take about an hour to cook.

There's one other stage, which is to use one more spice,

which is a rather unusual one called alkanet.

Traditionally, alkanet roots were powdered

and used as a fabric dye and food colouring.

It gives a brilliant crimson and was in use in Europe

well before cochineal came from Central America in the 16th century.

To extract the dye,

a little pot called a chafing dish was filled with embers.

Powdered alkanet and oil were gently warmed over it

until the red dye came out.

While that's happening, I'm going to go

and make what is Britain's very earliest salad.

This recipe is for something which is very simply called salat.

This 14th-century salad contains 14 different herbs.

The one that I like the most is a plant which

I feel could be used a lot more, and it's called purslane.

It's got a lovely, succulent texture and a slightly acidic taste.

The salad also had more familiar ingredients like watercress,

parsley, fennel, mint, rosemary and purple sage.

I can smell that from here and it's really powerful,

but adds a nice bit of colour, actually, to the salad.

The dish was given extra bite by scattering it with garlic,

spring onions, chives and leeks.

The final strong-flavoured herb is this one,

known in the medieval period as herb of grace, or rue.

It's a very, very pungent herb, more used in medicine

but very popular in salads from the Roman times

right through to the medieval period.

The finishing touch was a decoration of bright blue borage flowers

around the edge of the plate.

For a medieval cook in the royal household, it wasn't

enough for their food to taste delicious and exotic -

it also had to look amazing.

For a very unusual and final flourish,

medieval lords like a lot of colour on their plate,

so this is the alkanet oil.

So what I'm going to do is just drizzle it,

see if I can get a nice marbled effect.

My brewet Alamayn is ready, I can't wait to have a taste.

So this is the medieval style of dining,

which is from the tip of the knife.

Mmm, it's really tender.

Gingery.

Very tasty.

There's a slight hint of almonds in the background.

Now, the salad, I think, is incredibly attractive.

And that's as good, if not better, than most English restaurant salads.

A tremendous range of flavours in there.

With all the spice in this stew and all 14 herbs in this salad,

I don't think you can get more spicy or herby than this.

Exploring and copying how our ancestors used herbs

and spices is made much easier when they leave a written record.

But a lot of herb and spice blends have historically been

closely-guarded secrets.

Fortunately, I'm very happy to pass on my recipe for a succulent

and spicy Southern-fried buttermilk chicken

with tomato and sweetcorn salsa.

This has to be one of my ultimate favourite TV meals

that you can just dive into while watching your favourite programme -

a Southern-fried chicken.

'First, we need to prepare our bird.'

And it's quite simple.

You've got four pieces of dark meat, four pieces of white meat

on a chicken, so the first thing you do is remove the legs.

And just crack the legs open,

you end up with this little muscle underneath.

This is called the little chef's eye or a little oyster.

Insert the knife underneath

so you gather that up as well, and cut that through.

You don't really have to cut through any bones at all.

All you're doing is following the joints.

Cut out that little chef's eye again the other side

and you end up with two nice pieces of dark meat.

To turn them into four pieces, find the knuckle, cut through

and you've got a thigh and a leg.

It's much simpler to fillet the white meat.

Just take off the breasts and then cut them in half.

Fried chicken can be a bit dry,

but this next step guarantees that your meat remains moist and tender.

And the marinade is really simple.

It uses buttermilk, and it's one of the ingredients that you don't

really use that much, but I love this stuff.

A good pinch of salt and that's it.

There's nothing else that goes in this marinade at all.

You just chuck the chicken in.

Pop this in the fridge overnight.

I've got one done already that we can use right away.

The Chinese call this velveting.

It's actually to soften the chicken before it cooks.

As tender as our chicken will be,

the main event of this dish has got to be

the unique blend of herbs and spices that go into my spice rub.

To start, take 125g of plain flour and grate in the zest of a lemon.

You can vary the amounts of spices to suit your own personal taste,

but after a bit of experimentation, I've settled on

one and a half teaspoons of the following.

For a bit of heat, smoked hot paprika and mustard powder.

And I just love the flavours you get from celery salt.

And this is made just by using sea salt, dried celery bulb

and some cumin, so it's got a little bit of spice in there as well.

Dried thyme.

Oregano, or as they call it, "orig-ano".

And a good squidge of black pepper.

The first time I came across Southern-fried chicken,

I fell in love with it, really, mainly because of the people

that I was with. I was with the Amish community

and I was staying there for about four to five days working.

Everything was ploughed by hand, either by hand or with horses.

It was just unbelievable. They go everywhere by skateboard

and scooter, push scooter, like these things.

But I thought it was just a fantastic sort of experience.

So often in the States, this is just simply deep-fried,

which is fine.

And one of the recipes that I learnt while I was out there

that I ordered at a cafe was deep-fried chicken.

I thought I was going to get this.

What I ended up with was just a whole chicken,

thrown in a deep-fat fryer, that was it.

Nothing else on it - just a chicken, which was interesting.

Now we just lift this out the marinade.

You need some of this marinade on there to enable our spice,

dry rub mixture, to stick to it.

Just wash my hands.

Pour some veg oil in the bottom of a frying pan

and put it onto a low heat.

It's not deep-fried fully, it's almost shallow-fried

and then finished off in the oven. That way you get it nice and crisp.

You've got to make sure the chicken is cooked.

And I find that when you bake it in the oven as well,

it gets it nice and crisp.

And once you've got it frying away like that,

you can take the entire lot, including the pan,

and stick it in the oven.

It's quite a hot oven, about 400 degrees Fahrenheit,

200 degrees centigrade.

This wants to go in there for about 15 minutes.

While that's cooking, I'm going to quickly knock up a salsa.

For this, I'm chopping up 300g of tomatoes and two red chillies.

To cook the salsa, I first need to caramelise 90g of caster sugar.

What you want is a nice, even caramel.

You certainly don't want to overcook it,

because if you overcook sugar, it goes very bitter.

So once you get a lovely golden brown colour like that,

you can get all the other ingredients ready.

So the tomatoes can go in.

Throw in the chilli.

Throw in the corn.

Now keep the pan on the high heat,

otherwise you'll end up with big lumps of sugar.

You can see them already starting to form like that.

Keep it on the heat, they'll all start to dissolve,

especially when you de-glaze it with vinegar.

I like using red wine vinegar and a squeeze of lime.

Leave this simmering away for about eight minutes and it's done.

Now, just to finish off this salsa, throw in the parsley,

a good grind of black pepper and a nice big pinch of salt.

The great thing about this - when you reduce it down,

you can have this hot or cold,

which is going to be perfect for our chicken.

Now, this is what it's all about -

proper, proper Southern-fried chicken.

The sweetness of this salsa makes it the perfect partner

to the savoury spice of the fried chicken.

But you just serve it in a nice little pot like that and then

what I like to do is just kind of pour it over the chicken as well.

And there you have it - Southern-fried chicken,

or certainly my version of it.

So often, with us chefs, we try and do things so fancy

and so elaborate, but...

..let's go back to basics now and then.

This is just fantastic.

Tastes delicious.

Getting the right balance of herbs and spices

is a skill many prefer to keep to themselves.

But cook this tender and tasty fried chicken dish for your mates

and I guarantee they'll be asking where you got the recipe from.

Luckily, I've always believed that when food's this good,

it's far more sensible to share it.

Recipes like this often include herbs and spices

that we could never grow here in the UK.

But the British countryside is actually home to many

surprisingly flavoursome plants that can easily be used to enhance

food you cook at home.

Liz Knight is an expert forager,

who has taken the time to bottle some of these unique flavours

and make them available for us to buy and cook with.

I was a child of the late '70s, early '80s where we were allowed

to go off on our choppers and go out for the day

and, you know, I was one of those children who would chew

blades of grass and would find myself kind of like trying things.

I kind of developed that passion and that love for the detail of things.

And everything kind of is... no matter how small it is,

it's as significant as something that's really big.

It was around the time of the year 2000.

I actually spent a summer just reconnecting back to that child

that was there, you know, picking at blackberries and then

discovering something else to pick and to making things.

And then I started volunteering at a day centre.

The majority of people that went were farming widows.

My role there was to be an activity officer and to teach them,

and I swiftly realised, actually, they should be teaching me.

And so I started learning from them.

And from there, that real passion came for the flavours

that grow in Britain.

There's lots of plants that grow in the wild that you would know,

that you wouldn't necessarily know were food.

Clover, for example, is lovely in sweet or savoury dishes.

Sweet in cordials and syrups and jams, it tastes like honey.

But if you use it as a savoury ingredient, raw,

it's part of the pea family and it tastes just like peas.

The kind of herbs that you can eat don't have to be obscure at all.

The majority of things that you regard as weeds are actually

wild ingredients with delicious flavours.

There's things like this - cleavers, which everybody knows,

sticks to you, you can't get rid of it from your garden.

It's the most delicious kind of peppery-flavoured herb.

When you've gathered the little seed pods, you can use those as a spice.

You can use it as a tea.

They're delicious in salads and just used wilted as a vegetable.

Summer is a particularly fruitful and busy time for Liz.

There are literally hundreds of flavours that can be picked

and preserved.

Today, Liz has picked some sorrel, which she'll combine with

lilac flowers and lavender in a simple home-made jelly

that she's going to try out at a village dinner happening later.

An easy way to make sure that you get good consistency

and thickness in your leaves is to roll your leaves like a cigar.

I use a cleaver for my chopping.

I chop all of my herbs by hand,

just because I think it gives a nicer texture.

So I let the jelly cool down, enough to be able to...

when I put the sorrel in, it doesn't cook it,

it just suspends it in the jelly and will set beautifully in it.

It just transforms anything that you eat at this time of year

into a real celebration of what's going on outside.

Capturing the essence of summer is just one part of the story.

Liz's extensive research has seen her develop a range of unique

foraged products that preserve the seasonal flavours

of the British countryside all year round.

But tonight, summer is in the air.

We're here at Walterstone Village Hall

where there's a wild feast celebrating the beginning of summer.

It's about to start. I think people might actually have even started.

We're running a little bit late.

But in here is the delicious jelly that's going to go with the lamb

and lots of things to garnish what's already a pretty wild feast.

So, hopefully, we're going to make it into a pretty sensational evening.

But will these hedgerow herbs and spices win this crowd over?

The little chive flowers and little bits of clover,

like the red clover that just grows everywhere,

just adds that kind of extra depth of flavour to something

like a simple salad. It's really yummy.

The sun has been out the last few days and over the last weekend,

and that's what you feel you're tasting right here and now.

It's a little...a bit like a mint sauce,

but it's not a mint sauce, it's sorrel and lavender and lilac.

The jelly tastes of flowers.

You can taste the lilac in it, it's beautiful.

It tastes very herby as well. It's absolutely delicious.

It's just unbelievably fulfilling

and satisfying to know that meals like tonight are a way

of keeping the kind of flavours of Britain alive.

Given the variety of flavours that are growing on our doorstep,

it's ironic then

that the spices we use most here in the UK are usually Asian.

Marinated using chilli, cinnamon, cumin and garam masala,

my tandoori king prawns with butter sauce is the kind of dish

that can take these spices to another level.

You can't do anything with spices without doing something Indian,

in my opinion, and I'm going to do an authentic-style

tandoori prawn dish, which is wonderful.

It's all about the marinade and how you cook it,

and it's actually really simple to make.

Start the marinade off with a teaspoon of garam masala...

..another one of cinnamon, one of chilli,

and half a teaspoon of cumin.

The whole point about tandoori food is what you cook it in.

Normally, it's done in a tandoor clay oven,

but I'm going to cook it in something slightly different

cos this is great on the barbecue as well.

But the whole point about this

is the lovely marinade that goes with it.

Taking time to marinate the ingredients

infuses the full flavour of the herbs and spices I'm using.

Here, I'm grating in two inches of root ginger and two garlic cloves.

It's a good tip that my Indian mates told me,

you get almost like a puree out of the ginger and the garlic

and it actually absorbs into the meat a lot better.

And the liquid element of this is some natural yoghurt,

and I always think this is a great starter for Indian cookery.

If you really want to do something for the very, very first time,

then have a go at this because it's relatively easy.

And the great thing about prawns like these

is you can prepare them in seconds.

All you do with these is just peel them.

And the best way to do that is actually to squeeze the tail

and the shell just comes off.

Keep the head on because they look really nice,

but also there's tonnes of flavour in this as well.

You don't want to get rid of this.

Seafood flavours are generally quite mild

but this marinade will really build on what's already there.

You can leave this for as little as 20 minutes

but you get far better results if you let it infuse overnight.

Now, while they're in there,

I'm going to create a lovely little sauce to go with this.

And anybody that knows me, particularly my Indian mates,

will know that I love that butter sauce

you get from Indian restaurants.

Start it off with onions.

And this is really the key part, I think, to authentic Indian cookery.

I'm going to fry these onions in what else

but a good-sized knob of butter.

So start to colour the onions in the butter

and then you can make this as hot and spicy as you want.

I don't like things too hot, so it's only one red chilli,

and a couple of cloves of garlic for me.

The best way to do this is just get a touch of colour

on the onions first and then, after they're coloured, add the garlic.

If you add the garlic too early, it can burn,

and once it burns, it goes bitter

and you'll never get rid of that taste.

Going to add a touch of spice.

One of my favourite spices here in my kitchen is cumin.

Then add the chilli and chop up three tomatoes.

Now, I'm using fresh tomatoes.

You can use tinned tomatoes for this, which'll do the job,

but I've kind of got an abundance of tomatoes at the bottom

of the garden, so it's a good way to use them up as well.

When the tomatoes have softened, add 200ml of double cream.

And grate in a couple of inches of ginger.

Then give it a quick stir.

But just to finally add a touch to this,

I'm going to add some fresh coriander.

Some black pepper, a good pinch of salt.

Now you can prepare our marinated prawns for cooking.

Make sure you skewer them in two spots so they don't fall off.

Now, traditionally these would be cooked on a tandoor oven,

which is a clay pit, very hot clay pit,

but you can do this at home.

You can use a barbecue but I love this fire pit.

The flavour you get from it is fantastic.

'These juicy prawns will cook in a few minutes,

'but I'm not just relying on the fire pit to flavour them.

'The herbs and spices have done all that hard work for me.

'As tasty as they are, it'd be a bit greedy of me not to share them.'

It's all right, isn't it?

There's loads of flavour in there.

You may only use a small amount of different spices

but the flavour you get from the marinade is something else,

and cooked like this, it's just off the scale.

Getting the best out of the dishes you cook at home is far easier

when you've got the right ingredients to hand.

Whether you're looking to enhance the flavour, heat,

or colour of what you're cooking,

a few well-selected herbs and spices will always do the job.

You can find all the recipes from the series on: