Yorkshire James Martin's Food Map of Britain

My two passions are flying and food.

It's from up here you really get to appreciate the unique landscape

that produces the food that I love to cook.

So I'm taking to the skies

to show you how this land has influenced our larders.

On my journey around the UK,

I'll be meeting the people that work this ever-changing landscape,

revealing how this terrain

has served up some of the country's best regional ingredients.

It tastes so good.

Also, I'll be sharing some great recipes that showcase this amazing land,

that put such great food on our tables.

Today, I'm heading to my home county of Yorkshire.

Yorkshire, God's Own Country...

It's the biggest county in the United Kingdom,

and it'll come as no surprise to you

that I think it's undeniably the best.

As a Yorkshireman born and bred, there's no better landscape on earth.

It really is a spectacular place.

And, believe me, there's a heck of a lot of it.

It's as diverse as it is mighty,

the famous Dales, covered in rich, green, upland pastures.

Here, the hardy Swaledale sheep thrive,

feasting on the grass

and producing some of the best-tasting, most tender mutton

anywhere in the country.

The wild, exposed coastline of East Yorkshire

is dotted with towns and villages, steeped in fishing history.

Whitby, Scarborough and Robin Hood's Bay

are all places of my childhood.

I'd fish for delicious mackerel, herring and cod.

Even in the industrial heartland of the county,

farmers have made the most of the sandy, easy-draining soil

by historically growing liquorice.

But the industrial heartland

is also famous for another Great British ingredient,

and that's where I'm heading first.

A lot of people whinge about the cold in Yorkshire,

but there is one plant that's produced here that really loves it -

it has its origins from Siberia - and that's rhubarb.

Whether it's in pies, tarts, sweets or, of course, the humble crumble,

rhubarb is one of those ingredients that we've all grown up with.

100 years ago,

Yorkshire was the biggest producer of rhubarb in Europe.

It was all grown in a 30-square-mile triangle

between Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield.

The Yorkshire Rhubarb Triangle is only a third of the size it was in its heyday.

It still produces, in my opinion, the best rhubarb in the world.

That's thanks to farmers like Simon Dobson,

whose family have been farming here for more than 200 years.

My grandfather was very, very passionate about rhubarb,

and I can remember, as a child,

walking in the rhubarb with him.

This is him in 1967,

an elderly gentleman even then, but still at work.

In fact, he actually had a pair of working boots

for his 80th birthday.

As a farmer, I don't like to see weeds in crops,

but a saying my grandfather used to have was,

"If you go to buy a farm

"and there is a thistle on that farm big enough to tie your donkey to,

"then buy the farm, because it will definitely grow rhubarb."

I don't know whether it's the fact that I'm a Yorkshireman, but I love this stuff.

There's nothing else looks like it and tastes like it.

But rhubarb isn't actually a fruit, it's a vegetable.

It's picked by hand

from April to September.

On Simon's team, there's a small team of seven pickers,

but today it's going to be eight

as I'm going to need a few sticks to cook my recipe with.

-Simon. Good to see you.

-Good morning.

-We're by a noisy road!

-That's the A1M.

Well, this looks fabulous. How do you pick it?

-It's a twisting-and-pulling action to create a clean break.

-OK.

If you snap it, what happens then?

If we snap it, the remaining product will rot

and then that rot can affect the root itself.

-So you twist and pull?

-Yes, twist and pull.

-All right.

JAMES GRUNTS

Come on!

-I've got one.

-And you've just got a hernia!

THEY LAUGH

What does rhubarb need? Because we've only got a small area of land, the Rhubarb Triangle.

Why is it so good here?

-Here, we have a microclimate.

-Yes.

We've got the correct soil type.

We've got soils which were fertilised

from the night soils that came out of Leeds and Bradford.

That would be, what, the by-product from the woollen mills?

No, the night soil is actually from the dry closets,

going back before we had proper sewage systems, etcetera.

So this was human fertiliser,

going way, way back before the sewage systems.

They used to come out here in thousands of house-and-cartloads, literally,

you know, pouring it on the land, and deep, as well.

We also had shoddy coming out of the woollen industry,

and the shoddy is a by-product of that.

It's the short hairs from the fleece.

What does that impart into the soil, then?

-That gives us a natural nitrogen fertiliser.

-Yes.

Also, the fibrous content opens up the soil

and makes it free-draining.

The days of rhubarb farmers being knee-deep in night soil have long gone,

but some of the nitrogen from it, and from the shoddy from the wool industry,

still remains in the earth today,

helping Yorkshire rhubarb thrive.

This is hard work. Is it always picked by hand?

This is hard work. Rhubarb is most probably one of the most manual crops known to man

and everything to do with rhubarb is what we call manumatic.

Nothing is mechanised at all.

-Manumatic - is that a new Yorkshire lingo?!

-That's rhubarb terminology.

-That's a Yorkshire made-up name, innit?

-It is, but...

-Ooh!

-That's not very manumatic, James.

-There you go.

-Manumatic.

-Manumatic.

There's something impressive about it, isn't there? Look at that.

How would you do this, then? How would you cook it?

-Well, I like the traditional way, but I just don't like lumpy custard.

-Don't say crumble!

I love rhubarb crumble. Absolutely. JAMES SIGHS

But we now need to take rhubarb forward as an ingredient.

It's got fantastic properties, it's healthy,

so we need to include it in modern recipes.

I think I can help you out there, Simon.

I've got a great recipe for a delicious savoury rhubarb dish.

I'm going to use a fabulous oily fish

that I used to catch as a boy just along the Yorkshire coast - fresh mackerel -

and serve it with a crispy rhubarb salad

and a fruity rhubarb chutney.

So often with this, you actually serve rhubarb with a dessert.

It's fabulous with panna cotta and crumbles and fools and all manner of desserts,

but it's brilliant when you actually cook this into a chutney and serve it with fish or duck,

anything that's quite fatty or oily, because it cuts through the flavours.

So for this, I'm basically just going to take the rhubarb and chop it up.

The rhubarb up in Yorkshire is a bit like us.

Some of it's grown indoors - pampered, making it sweeter,

then you've got this outdoor type - subject to all the elements of this fine county -

making it rough around the edges and tart to the taste buds,

perfect for a chutney.

So we've got the rhubarb,

and then just take a little shallot and finely chop that, as well.

And then the flavourings with rhubarb that go really well

are things like ginger, orange and whisky.

The whiskey's gone...

The director.

..so we're left with oranges and a little bit of ginger.

I'm just going to chop this up small.

Now, normally when you're making chutney,

you would throw these ingredients in and boil it for about 45, 50 minutes,

but this is a quick way of doing a chutney.

You start off with a hot pan and some caster sugar.

Throw that in the pan. And then we're going to create a caramel for this.

It's much quicker and, I think, tastes much better.

We're going to add a touch of rosemary to this -

particularly good with mackerel -

and a little bit of orange.

Just as the sugar starts to caramelise,

we're going to throw in these sultanas, which are lovely.

They go into the boiling-hot sugar.

If you keep your eye on this, you'll see them start to almost puff up.

It happens really quickly.

Now everything else gets added.

In we go with the rhubarb, the rosemary,

the shallots, the ginger...

..the orange juice.

And with this, it'll all become quite sticky and quite solid.

Then, of course, what we need to do is deglaze this.

I'm going to use cider vinegar. You can use white wine vinegar.

One thing I wouldn't really use, particularly a quick chutney like this,

is use malt vinegar.

Cook it for at least eight to ten minutes.

As it's cooking, it's going to reduce down.

That reduction will create our chutney, in effect.

I'm going to serve this with a little salad,

which is quite foreign in these parts.

It's a lovely fresh salad, with orange segments...

Get rid of the juice into our chutney.

..celery leaves,

the tips of some red chicory,

fresh dill

and pea shoots.

And then set that aside to tackle the fish.

A lot of people are put off by this as a fish

because they find it too full of bones.

We're going to fillet this. It's pretty straightforward.

Insert the knife in it,

slide it along its back like that.

It's a very easy fish to fillet, this.

I'll do the same with the other side.

Take the bones from this and you just take the knife

and just remove the little ribcage there.

This is a way of actually getting rid of all the bones,

so it's much easier to eat.

You have bones right through the centre.

You can remove these with a pair of tweezers,

but the easiest way to do it is V-cut the fish.

You create a little incision one side

and a little incision the other side

and the bones just lift out.

So, really, you've got mackerel with no bones at all.

I'm going to use a pretty extraordinary way of cooking this fish.

None of your pan-fried nonsense here.

It's time to get the toys out because I'm going to blow-torch it.

The taste of it is fantastic.

But the blowtorch is important. This is a proper one.

This is used to fix your car.

Don't buy these piddly little things, they're a waste of time.

You want a proper blowtorch.

And then basically just score the top of the fish.

This will cook in about a minute and a half.

You get this lovely crispy skin over the top.

Like that...

You season it off afterwards

because the pepper and salt will burn.

A little drizzle of this rapeseed oil, as well,

and you've got your mackerel fillets

done with a simple blowtorch, nice and easy.

We're nearly there. The chutney has reduced down.

Just one more final touch needed.

Just to finish off the salad, I'm going to use this rhubarb here

and actually serve it raw.

Use the world's worst peeler

and basically peel this rhubarb, just shavings of it, really.

A touch of oil, just to finish this off,

a bit of seasoning...

We're then going to take our lovely chutney.

You can see that you haven't touched it, just left it,

and because we've caramelised the sugar beforehand,

you get this wonderful colour, but also the texture.

You've got this wonderful mackerel.

We can just decorate that...

..with a little bit of the salad and this wonderful rhubarb.

Eaten raw as well as cooked, it's fantastic.

As a nation, we should eat more of it.

Don't just stick it in a glass with yoghurt on the top

and call it a fool.

This is what it's all about, because it is fabulous.

There you have it - rhubarb chutney with a rhubarb salad and mackerel.

Easy as that. Yorkshire through and through,

like me.

This dish really does showcase the fabulous versatility of Yorkshire rhubarb.

From fresh in a salad, to cooked in a chutney,

its unique sharp flavour sits beautifully alongside other ingredients,

and it'll always be a real favourite of mine.

What's amazing about the Rhubarb Triangle

is that it's only a small area of land,

but what it produces

is such a fantastic crop of rhubarb.

And in a chutney like this, with fish,

it tastes fantastic.

I'm leaving the industrial heartland of Yorkshire,

with its Rhubarb Triangle, behind now

and I'm heading further north

to the wild and inhospitable Yorkshire Moors.

There's not a lot that can be produced

in terms of agriculture.

There are a few sheep roaming around,

but mainly it's just full of wild heather.

That's the favourite for a little insect, the bee,

and then produces some of the most famous honey this country has to offer.

The beautiful North Yorkshire Moors are far and away the largest expanse

of heather moorland anywhere in the UK.

Every summer, great swathes of purple heather burst into flower.

Ling heather is the most common.

Its tiny pink flowers and unique nectar

are irresistible to bees.

One man taking advantage of this unique environment is Marcus Cordingly.

First stung at the age of four, Marcus is a bee man through and through.

His dad was a beekeeper, so he's always grown up with them buzzing in the background.

Timing is crucial for Marcus.

He's spent the last few months protecting and nurturing his thousands of bees,

building up their strength so they're in absolute peak condition for the job ahead.

He's taking them up to the Moors, where they have just one mission -

to make the most of a tiny window of opportunity when the heather's flower

to create a unique and much sought-after product.

The heather always comes out at roughly the same time

but it only lasts three to four weeks, the flowering.

There's only going to be maybe one week when the bees can actually work, because of the weather.

Amazingly, a week is all it will take

to fill the currently empty hives with delicious honey.

The hives are protected from the wild weather of the Moors

by putting them behind a stone wall,

just a short flight from this precious ling heather,

which his bees will predominantly feed on.

I think that's a happy buzz.

But whether Marcus will get any kind of return for all this hard work

is still in the balance.

It's farming, at the end of the day.

It's a lot of hard work for uncertain returns.

But if it pays off, it's worth it because heather honey is a fantastic product.

A few weeks have passed since Marcus let the bees out onto the heather

and I'm intrigued to know how they're getting on.

First, I need to get out of these and get into something a little bit more suitable.

MUSIC: "Flight of the Bumblebee" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

It's a right old faff getting this on,

but it'll be worth it for the opportunity to cook with this exceptional honey.

In the 1980s,

people used to go clubbing like this.

Marcus... Good to see you.

-I found you at last! Are you all right?

-Very well, thank you.

Tell us about these hives. They're quite busy, these bees, at the moment.

Well, the day's warming up.

-Go on, then, you'd better...

-OK.

What we're going to do is just harvest a bit of honey here.

How many bees would we have in one particular hive like this?

This is actually quite small

but when they're in full flow, you'd be looking at 60,000,

-but this is about a third of the size.

-60,000?

-Yes.

What I'd like you to do, James, is take one of those frames out

and see what the honey's like - see if it's sealed, if it's ready.

-This one?

-Yes. That's fine, yes. Mm-hm.

Well done. You've got the makings of a beekeeper.

OK. Hold it up.

Just give them a bit of smoke, just to stop them getting too...

-..ratty with us.

-Give them smoke, yes.

-Now what happens?

-What happens now! You can brush the bees off.

-THEY LAUGH

-Brush the bees off!

-Yes!

-Doesn't this make them angry?

-Not if you're gentle.

I don't know how you do this for a living.

You get stung now and again.

-They're off.

-That's it. That's lovely.

I think we can use that for cooking because it's nice honey on there.

What makes this honey so special is the ling heather

the bees collect the nectar from.

It's one of the few plants that can thrive in the tough conditions of the Yorkshire Moors.

It loves the peaty soil, open landscape and acidic ground.

-Marcus, you haven't got any gloves on.

-Right, yes.

Well, you don't have any empathy for the bees if you've got gloves on.

-If they sting you once, you know to give them a bit of smoke...

-Great!

-..whereas if you've got gloves on, you don't know if they've stung you.

-Right.

-You're more in tune with the bees.

-One's buzzing around my head and he's not very happy!

When you read about bees, one bee in its lifetime

produces about a twelfth of a teaspoon.

I mean, a tremendous amount of work these guys are going through to produce this honey,

-so no wonder they get upset!

-Yes, this is their life's work.

But this is actually surplus to requirements.

-Where's the queen in amongst all this?

-She's in the bottom box.

-She's in the bottom bit?

-Yes. She's laying eggs. The top box is where they put the surplus honey.

So, this is like a larder for them, then, the top box.

It is, yes. That's a good way of looking at it.

And they cannot stop working if the weather's right.

Amazing things, aren't they?

They're just good pets, really!

HE LAUGHS

-I've got a dog.

-I suppose there's something for everyone, isn't there?

If we squeeze this, how much honey do you reckon we'd get out of this?

-Two pounds.

-Two pounds out of one of these?

-Yes.

-Is it enough?

-It's definitely enough. I ain't going for more.

-Right.

-You could -

-No, I'm not going to, before they get angry!

It's good to know that not everybody wants to be a beekeeper, James,

otherwise I wouldn't have any work!

I'm going to grab this bit and I'll leave you in peace.

-See you later.

-See you later.

They're going to follow me, I know this.

Fresh honey, straight from the hive...

I can't wait to use it, just as Mother Nature intended.

It's an amazing part of the world, the North Yorkshire Moors.

I thought, up here, I thought I'd do a lovely little raspberry roulade

using this beautiful heather honey.

The sticky, tasty honey will be in the filling for this fantastic dessert,

which is packed with fresh cream and lots of fresh fruit,

so it's not all bad for you.

Instead of doing a conventional sort of Swiss-roll sponge for this, I'm going to do meringue.

I'm going to separate five eggs

and make just a simple little meringue.

I would separate them by hand.

And then you need to whisk this up.

Now, contrary to popular belief, Yorkshire does have electricity,

so I'm not using that. We're using this.

What you're looking for really

is light peaks to start off with, and then you can add the sugar.

Cookbooks would tell you to slowly add this,

but you can get this in as quick as you can.

That's it, really. The texture should be nice and light.

The meringue mixture needs to go into a lined tin,

with a little bit of oil in the base to keep the paper in place.

Push the mixture right into the corners to keep the roulade nice and neat

and then scatter with flaked almonds.

And then this goes into the oven.

We've got one we've done.

Now we're going to do a lovely cream and fruit filling

together with that delicious honeycomb.

For this, we're just going to use some full-fat double cream.

Because in this neck of the woods, we don't use single cream

and we don't use low-fat creme fraiche or yoghurt, right?

Over here, it's double cream, proper stuff.

I'm going to whisk this up with a bit of fruit.

So we've got raspberries in there. Sorted.

Putting the raspberries in the cream will give it a little bit of colour and a light flavour.

It only needs lightly whipping, just so it holds its shape.

Now, to roll up your roulade,

it's easy to use a damp tea towel.

Sprinkle it with some sugar, just some plain caster sugar,

and then just tip out your meringue.

The meringue was baked at 180 degrees for eight minutes,

and then in a cooler oven at 160 for a further 15.

This gives it a nice sticky middle and a crispy outside.

And then you've got this wonderful cream, which you're going to place in there.

A decent amount of filling, as well. Swiss rolls should be indulgent.

I'm going to use a mixture of different fruits that we've got,

strawberries,

a few more raspberries, as well,

blueberries,

a few blackberries, as well...

..and then some of this spectacular honey.

Now, this is really special, I have to say.

You can see the wonderful purple colour here.

It only flowers for about four to five weeks a year, this stuff,

but what it produces is this amazing honey.

Just look at that!

It's just one of the joys of nature, this sort of stuff.

It's been around for thousands of years.

It never goes off, honey, as well.

It's one of these ingredients that's got its own preservative.

Because it's warm on a day like today,

it just literally pops out the honeycomb.

We can put that... Just dot it around in here.

You can see the colour of it, as well.

It's really unique is Yorkshire heather honey.

I know I keep going on about it being God's Own Country, but it kind of is a special place.

Some of the best people in the world come from this neck of the woods,

you've got the best honey in the world,

but you've also got the best fish and chips in the world,

just from over there in Whitby.

That is proper!

I'm going to put more on it. That is delicious!

And then to roll it up,

you just basically tuck it in to start off with

and just gently roll it.

Carefully fold it in.

HE CHUCKLES

Check that out!

All this scrumptious pud needs now is some decoration -

some more fresh fruit and, of course, more of that delicious honey.

Sprigs of heather are optional, of course.

Add a light dusting of icing sugar,

which is easier said than done out on the Moors,

and the dessert is done.

It looks delicious. One thing I found fascinating about today,

a bee's life only spans about six weeks

and a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey, that's all it produces in those six weeks.

So when you see it on a shelf, love it and respect it a bit more

because that is Yorkshire gold.

The taste of North Yorkshire Moors heather honey

is much stronger and more pungent than other honeys,

so its flavour really punches through the cream and the fruit

in this delicate but rich dessert.

Whilst flying over this country of ours,

I've seen how diverse the ingredients are that it has to offer.

Down on the ground, I've collected a wealth of fantastic foods,

from the dairy cows in Devon who give us milk for the indulgent clotted cream,

to the delicious langoustines in the calm waters of Loch Fyne...

Just beautiful!

..deep-fried on the shoreline...

..and the huge pea harvest...

..cooked in the wide-open spaces of the Fens.

From cherries to raspberries... That is really delicious.

..and from beef to salmon... You've got to love this place.

..the diverse landscape of this nation

really has shaped the foods we love so much.

It just goes to prove,

nobody does it better than Britain.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd