West Country James Martin's Food Map of Britain

Two of my passions are flying and food.

And 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'm going to be meeting the people

who work this ever-changing landscape...

..and revealing how this terrain has served up

some of the country's best regional ingredients.

It tastes so good!

'And I'll be sharing some great recipes

'that showcase this amazing land

'that puts such wonderful food on our tables.'

Today I'm heading to the West Country.

The very southwest corner of Britain forms a foot

sticking out into the Atlantic Ocean,

where you can barely utter the word "food"

without saying "fresh" and "local" in the same breath.

The vast and often craggy expanses of Exmoor and Dartmoor

are home to wild-grazing beefstock

such as the lyrically named ruby-red cattle.

The gentle, rolling, fertile soils of the Tamar Valley

provide much of the country with soft summer fruits

like raspberries and strawberries.

And the majestic coastline that surrounds the area on three sides

gives such fresh fish

that even plain old fish and chips can be a delicacy here.

The first stop today on my food map of Britain

is going to be right at the bottom left-hand corner of Devon.

The southwest has to be the ultimate holiday destination in the UK.

You can really see, as the southwest of England comes to a point...

We can see the sea here, and then, looking north,

you've got the sea there.

Just shows you how narrow it is.

In fact, in Devon, you're never more than 25 miles from the coast,

which, as we'll see, has a major effect

on some of the food produced here.

And I'm not just talking about seafood.

To prove it I'm heading a little way inland

to some of Devon's greener pastures, to meet one bloke

who's helping a lot of ladies make a favourite of mine.

These are the girls that live at Langage Farm.

We've got 250 of them, and their job is to turn this green stuff

into top-quality dairy products.

Devon's famous for its dairy, in particular clotted cream,

and Andrew Steadman has been working with the cows that make it

for nearly three decades.

'Getting up at four in the morning is not actually my idea of fun,

'but it's got to be done.

'But just looking after cows to the best of our ability,

'I do find very satisfying.'

There's been a farm here at Langage for over 900 years,

and now that it's got its own creamery,

there's practically no distance between the pots of clotted cream

and the fine beasts that provide the raw ingredients.

We do name them all.

We got Daisy over there. That's Jenny over there.

That, I think, is Ermintrude,

but she will tell me afterwards if I've got that wrong,

and I think we'll have to wait for some more later on,

cos I can't see any other ones that I recognise here.

SHE SNUFFLES

'I'm going to take a look at why the cream here in Devon

'should taste different from anywhere else -

'even if I have to dress funny to do so.'

COWS MOOING

-Good to see you.

-Nice to see you.

-Nice to see you.

So, what makes this so special, the milk from these cows, then?

These are Jersey cows, which you can tell

because they're little brown cows,

and they produce higher-quality butterfat and protein

than your black-and-white cows.

We also quite often have quite a lot of sunshine,

and that's what makes the grass grow down here,

and what we feed the cows is what you taste in the product.

Devon's reputation as a sunny spot is well founded,

partly because it often catches spells of good weather

travelling from the mid-Atlantic that miss the rest of the UK.

In fact, Devon can clock up 200 hours more sunshine

than many inland areas of Britain.

And more sunshine means more nutrient-rich grass,

which means creamier milk.

-So, have you milked any cows before?

-I haven't,

-but I get the feeling I'm about to.

-If you'd like to have a go,

-these girls won't mind. You got to treat them gently, obviously.

-Right.

-So if we go for this one...

-This one?

The unit stays that way round. You press the green button.

Press the green button. OK.

As she drops, put your left hand where mine is.

So left hand... OK.

-And then...

-Sorry!

If she gets too upset, I'll do it. That's it. And the back two.

That's great! We'll make a milker out of you yet.

You've just got to be about ten times quicker than that.

I'll do these ones, then, while you're doing this.

-That'd be great.

-So, green button?

-Green button.

The extra sunshine down in these parts

also increases the amount of something called carotene

in the grass,

which is the same stuff as what makes carrots orange.

And guess what? It does the same to milk,

giving the clotted cream from these cows its beautiful yellow colour.

Sorry!

Go on, then! She's kicking off!

COW MOOS

When we've finished milking,

the cream will be taken down the road,

where it'll be heated then allowed to cool slowly,

making up part of the 150 litres of clotted cream

this place makes every day.

Would you like to press that green button for me? Just before you do...

Can everyone go to the left of the parlour so the cows can go out?

Camera crew's going to get stampeded.

I've the power now, so we could actually lose the director

-if I press this button.

-Right. If you want to press the button...

I can't help feeling the cows will be glad to see the back of me,

and frankly, I think I'm better off leaving it to the experts

and sticking to my day job, which means it's finally time

to get my hands on some of that famous clotted cream.

Now, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you.

When I had the idea about what I was going to cook here,

I was envisaging being in a nice warm kitchen,

and doing an apple charlotte with clotted cream,

stewed apples cooked in butter and bread.

But the production team said, "Come out to the farm."

"Live like a cow," I think they meant,

but we have got this beautiful scenery.

We've got Plymouth over there, Dartmoor just behind us,

and I thought I'd use the bread in a recipe,

but done in a simplified way. I'm using no ovens.

This is a summer pudding with basil and clotted cream,

produced literally by those cows just over there.

A lot of people will worry about how much fat's in clotted cream,

but look - if you put some fresh fruit in it like this,

it's got to be healthy, right?

Seriously, though, if you're going to make this,

use fresh fruit. Frozen or preserved just won't be as good.

Summer pudding. I'm going to create one with just strawberries.

You can use a mix-match of fruit with summer pudding,

but this, with English strawberries, there is nothing better, really.

And I definitely wasn't going to do scones,

cos we're in Devon. Cornwall's just over there,

and it upsets them round these neck of the woods

if a Yorkshireman comes down here and shows them how to make scones.

Good old English strawberries.

I'm just going to break them up like this.

I'm going to just put a touch of basil in.

Often when you make summer pudding, people put mint on the top,

but basil is a fantastic herb.

Use a little bit of the fresh basil,

and we just mix that together, and that's it, really.

Just that. And then we're going to line our little moulds here.

I've got some dariole moulds, or you can even use a teacup,

but the way that you do that is just take some oil first

and just rub the bases around the edge with oil.

Now, this is going to make the cling film stick to the base.

We'll just use some cling film inside the little moulds like that.

So we've lined our little moulds here,

then we can take the sliced bread, and this is where, really,

it's only in the UK where you can get summer pudding,

because over in Italy they do this with ciabatta,

or in France they do it with Pugliese.

You need white sliced bread only. Nothing else. White sliced bread.

And we just remove the crusts, like that.

We'll cut that into oblongs like that.

Then we need two round small pieces of bread...ish.

I haven't got a ring or a cutter.

And then we need two large ones for the top.

And then we've got our sauce. Now, I call this a sauce

because too many chefs nowadays call this a coulis, right?

It's not a coulis. We're in the UK.

This is a sauce, and it's a puree of fresh English strawberries.

Nothing else - no sugar, nothing. Passed through a sieve,

and that's our sauce. And then we can dip the bread into the sauce,

the small bit first.

You're aiming to completely line the mould,

small circles at the bottom, oblongs around the sides,

and no gaps. You don't want a leaky summer pudding.

So, when you've got the moulds lined,

then we can use some of this filling.

Now, I actually love basil and strawberries together.

They really are a great combination,

and taste very similar to pistachio nuts.

Just fill these moulds with the strawberries and basil,

but only halfway, because this is the best bit of it, really.

Proper clotted cream. Fill this full,

and this clotted cream sits in the middle.

It's like a little hidden gem, a little jewel inside this bread.

Now, just to show off a bit, I want to try to make something

that'll remind us of Devon's golden sunlight

to decorate the pudding, and for that,

I need to caramelise some caster sugar.

While that's happening, we can finish off our little puddings here.

This is where you want the large pieces,

or the large circle of the bread.

You want to dip this in.

What you want to do is just press them down.

So the old recipes would then tell you now

to find a brick, and put it in the bottom of your fridge,

and wait for about two days before the summer pudding's ready,

but if you make it like that, particularly with this thin bread,

you can then hold the cling film like this,

and it should in theory just pull away.

So far, so good,

but really, it's probably better to do your cooking in a kitchen

like I originally wanted to do.

Outdoors is, quite frankly, dangerous.

This is the dilemma of cooking in a field, you see?

This is to stop the wind.

That's the price of cooking a summer pudding outside.

Disaster averted by my lightning-fast reflexes,

it's time to get back to the cooking.

While the sugar slowly melts,

I'm putting some more of the strawberry sauce onto the pudding,

and then some of the distilled Devonshire sunshine.

This really is what makes this area so special.

Look at that. Nice dollop,

and then we got some fresh English strawberries to go with it, as well.

We could stop there,

but we're going to attempt to do some spun sugar outside.

Now, to do that, really you get some caramelised sugar

and you spin it over your steel.

What on earth am I doing this out here for?

You got a bit of this,

together with bits of grass.

You just mould this up,

and just finish this off with a little bit of icing sugar,

which is, like...completely wasted my time, isn't it, really?

JAMES AND PRODUCTION TEAM LAUGH

Do you know what? I give up.

Just take a shot of that. I'm going to enjoy the view. I've had enough.

'To be fair, I suppose I should've taken note

'that as well as being one of the sunniest places in the UK,

'this place has to be one of the windiest.'

But if that's what it takes to make clotted cream what it is,

then, I suppose we should all be glad.

From Devon now, I'm heading further west into Cornwall.

Here, the foot of the southwest gets even narrower

as it pokes out into the enormity of the Atlantic Ocean.

Of course, having so much coastline here,

Cornwall is so rich with some of the world's greatest seafood.

Specialities, of course, are the mussels

from the estuaries of the rivers,

but also you got things like Cornish sardines,

sea bass and mackerel, just caught off the coast.

I've come here in search of something absolutely unique

in the UK, something for which I need to find the secluded valleys

of the tributaries of the River Fal near Falmouth.

I've come here because down there is a -

wait for it - a tea plantation.

It's such a surprise.

People come here and they think, "Hang on a minute. Tea?"

"But tea doesn't grow in this country."

But it does, and it has been doing now at the Tregothnan Estate

for seven years, under the watchful eye of Jonathan Jones.

I've always loved tea,

but I never expected to be a part of this amazing story

of actually bringing tea into the UK.

Traditionally, tea is grown in the hot, muggy climes of China

and in the foothills of the Himalayas in India.

But it's been a firm favourite in the UK for over 350 years.

'It's in our veins in this country. This is what makes us British.'

You can't ever see a survey of what makes us British

without finding tea in usually number-one position,

but always top ten.

Now, you might think this is odd,

but I don't actually like tea as a drink.

I can't help thinking I can come up with a better way of using it.

But I'm intrigued by the fact that it grows

in this tiny corner of Britain.

-Hi, Jonathan.

-James! Welcome.

-Good to see you.

Well, it looks stunning from up there,

but down here it looks even better. What an amazing place!

This is the home of the first English tea.

So, what makes this place so special?

As a northerner, I'm kind of used to dodgy weather,

but this is... It's got... You probably can't see it,

but it is actually raining now. Is this sea mist?

It's perfect. We would say this is liquid sunshine.

-But these tea bushes actually think they're in Darjeeling.

-Right.

And it kind of looks and even feels like Darjeeling here.

I bet today in Darjeeling it's about 20 degrees, just like it is here.

It's probably doing exactly this, and tea bushes just love it.

It turns out this is where having ocean on three sides

is a real bonus.

The billions of litres of water moderate the temperature in summer

by trapping the heat, which is then released in the winter,

keeping the place warm...

..which also produces damp air in the valleys,

which form microclimates mimicking the conditions of places

where tea usually grows.

We're known worldwide. In fact, we export tea to China.

-Come on!

-Seriously.

-You're kidding me!

-Do you really?

-The Chinese love English-grown tea.

And we got a different... I assume that one's different to this.

Yeah, quite different. You've already got your eye in here.

Those are original China-type leaf, quite small,

and then you got this hybrid here, which we prefer on the estate,

and these are Camellia sinensis or assamica.

-You can see how much bigger they are.

-Can you eat this raw?

-Of course.

-It's delicious. Try some.

-Delicious?

I don't really like this when it's dried and it's hot, to be honest.

-So just eat it as it is?

-Eat it as it is.

-It's kind of the new rocket.

-A new rocket?

I have this in salads sometimes. And...look, James, hang on a minute.

If I said to you 20 years ago, "Eat this rocket,"

-you'd have said, "What's this weed?"

-Jonathan, I wouldn't.

I'd have gone, "Lovely. That's deli-"... It's got...

-I think it might be wasted on you.

-Wasted?

It's proper gross, I tell you.

HE SPITS

Ugh!

Just because I don't like tea as a drink or straight off the bush

doesn't mean I'm not going to use it.

'One of the things I like most about being a chef

'is finding a way of cooking that brings out the best

'of all my ingredients.'

Now, I know what you're thinking. "Is he going to do a salad?"

No, I'm not, cos this is far too bitter, this leaf.

So what I thought I'd do is use some of this tea

that Jonathan's given me, some random blue flowers

that we've got here. I'm sure he puts these in salads too,

but I thought I'd do a lovely little French dish

which is duck a l'orange or duck bigarade.

"Bigarade" refers to the bitter oranges

originally used to make the sauce for this dish,

and it gives me a chance to showcase the particular bitterness

of the Cornish tea here.

And I'm going to use it to smoke my duck.

Now, it's actually really pretty simple to do.

You're going to use some rice. Roughly you want three parts rice,

two parts brown sugar -

damp brown sugar, cos it is actually raining here.

It's this fine rain - not the rain that soaks you through,

the annoying rain, but it is actually raining here.

So, about one part tea, two parts sugar, three parts rice.

Mix this together...

like that.

And then you need some tinfoil.

This is the most important part of this recipe.

If you forget everything else on this recipe,

do not forget this,

because in ten minutes' time,

you're going to need a new pan,

if you don't put the tinfoil in.

So the tinfoil needs to sit on the base of the pan.

The problem is, you're going to caramelise this,

almost burn it in the bottom of the pan.

That sits in the bottom.

And then we need another piece of tinfoil to sit on the top.

And then we can add our duck breasts.

Now, you can render the fat off if you want,

but fat, in my opinion, is flavour,

and we need all that flavour in this.

Just a little bit of seasoning, black pepper.

Touch of salt.

Cover it over with tinfoil.

Nice and tight, really. That's what you want for this,

or a lid. On the stove.

Ten minutes. Don't touch it. Don't move it.

That's going to be ready for our lovely tea-smoked duck breasts.

So, now we're going to make a little sauce,

but what we're going to do is then really just segment...

and zest an orange first.

But you just want really fine little strips,

or what chefs call juliennes.

The difference between a little thin strip and a julienne...

..is about 15 quid.

'Once you've got enough zest,

'you'll need to cut out the individual orange segments

'into a bowl.'

And then we want all the juice out of here as well.

Take your time, and try to avoid any pips.

But to make the sauce, we want some sugar.

Um, obviously...

..where we've used Demerara for the smoking side of it,

we want some caster sugar for this one.

So get it nice and caramelised first.

It's a good idea to get all the ingredients ready -

the orange segments, orange juice, the rind.

We've got our little bit of sherry vinegar.

I've got some stock. This is, like, dark-brown chicken stock.

Now, as soon as you get to that stage,

we can add some of the ingredients, particularly the orange juice.

That'll stop it colouring any more. We don't want the segments in.

SIZZLING

The sugar will actually set, but if you keep the heat on...

You can see the solid parts of the sugar in there.

These bits will actually dissolve.

And now we can add some of this sherry vinegar.

Just a little bit.

And then you can add some of this stock,

and it creates a nice little dark sauce.

So we reduce this down now...

..with the orange zest,

for about five minutes.

Anyway, enjoy the view while that reduces.

This is really a fusion of a classic French dish

with the tea-smoking of the duck giving it a taste of the Orient.

Now, I thought it would be weird cooking this in Cornwall,

but with this warm rain-cum-mist and lush vegetation,

it really is a bit like being in the middle of China.

The duck is now cooked, so we can lift off...

the tinfoil, like that.

You can see, really, this duck is now ready,

so we just leave that to one side just to rest.

Now, the key to this, like I said, is really this tinfoil.

Now, look. That would be welded to the bottom of your pan.

So that's really important, that you put the tinfoil in the base.

So, we're going to lose that to one side...

..then end up with a clean pan.

I love cooking outdoors. It's brilliant, isn't it?

And then we're going to saute off a little bit of potato, so...

some butter,

and just to finish this sauce now, as it starts to thicken up,

I'm going to add some more butter to this.

This enriches the sauce.

As well, it gives it a lovely shine.

But actually, when you add butter to a sauce,

it will actually thicken it slightly.

And then I'm going to add the orange segments.

Little bit of salt and pepper.

And then switch this off.

Now, I've got some cooked new potatoes that you can warm up,

but this dish goes with anything - mash, anything,

any veg that you want, really.

Just to prove that it is actually raining...

Wipe the plate.

There we go. And then we can really serve this. It's quite simple.

You got the potatoes... Probably put these on first.

Now, the thought of actually drinking tea isn't for me,

but when you think of our fascination with it as a nation,

to think that this is the only place in the UK where it's grown...

..it is fantastic, isn't it, really.

And if you take duck breasts like this and thinly slice it,

you can serve this...

on its own, in salads,

but serve it hot like this, it really is delicious.

You need to put the duck on it like that,

and you got this lovely thick sauce.

Having said that, if you leave it outside for much longer,

it'll be back to being a liquid again.

Duck a l'orange with a twist.

With tea! See, that's bound to catch on.

That in a bowl with olive oil... Nah.

Cooking is all about finding the best produce,

and using it in a way that highlights its strengths,

and the delicious results that come from an unusual mix of ingredients

is mirrored in the land around us.

I'm constantly amazed how nature can mix its ingredients

to give us some truly surprising produce.

Join me next time,

when I'll be showing you how to find and cook some more

of what this amazing land has to offer.

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