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.

Today I'm heading to the West Country.

The first stop today is going to be right at the bottom left-hand

corner of Devon.

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.

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 clingfilm stick to the base.

We'll just use some clingfilm 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 clingfilm 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.