Anneka Rice My Life on a Plate

For everyone, there's a taste of food,

or a smell of cooking that zooms you right back to childhood.

It's just like my mum's cake!

I'm Brian Turner...

It reminds me of someone I used to know at school.

..and I'm going to stir up the food memories

of some much-loved celebrities...

Oh, look at that!

..going back to their early years, before they were famous...

Oh, my gosh.

..with recollections of Sunday roasts and school dinners...

-It's time for something to eat.

-Brilliant.

..and celebrating food their home regions are proud of.

-Which way would you like to go?

-Er, this way.

I'll recreate a nostalgic family favourite...

Mmm, you can't beat a crumble.

..and a tribute dish that puts my guest's life on a plate.

Magic, magic.

Today, broadcaster Anneka Rice is returning to

her home county of Surrey.

She'll be walking in her childhood footsteps.

I'm really confused. Where is the tree we used to swing on?

There'll be revelations from her teenage diaries.

Every page I talk about what I've had for lunch!

And I'll be cooking dishes that will unlock long-forgotten memories.

Oh, my goodness, Brian, you have surpassed yourself.

Just an hour from the centre of London

is the Surrey village of Limpsfield, a little jewel of a place.

With its wonderful old houses, quaint pubs and medieval church,

it's my idea of a perfect English village.

And this was where television and radio personality

Anneka Rice grew up.

We're meeting at one of her favourite childhood hang-outs,

the local tennis club.

-Brian.

-Anneka, hi.

-So nice to meet you.

You too, this is great, and what a wonderful place this is!

-Look, the sun's shining, blue sky...

-I arranged it all for you.

-And look at these wonderful tennis courts.

-It's all a backdrop.

-Is it really?

-Yes, there's a factory behind that.

Let's go and sit down and then you can tell me exactly why we're here.

-Come round here.

-Thank you.

Anneka was actually born in Wales, but her family moved to Surrey

when she was just a toddler.

I want to find out what she remembers about growing up here

and the foods she and her family used to eat.

And luckily for me, she's got it all on paper.

I used to write a diary every day from the age of about eight or nine.

I'd write every morning what I had for breakfast,

what I had for lunch - it was really important.

And what kind of things did you have for breakfast?

It was always something like a fried egg on toast,

mushrooms on toast, because behind our house, there were fields

and I used to go out with my dad and we'd forage for mushrooms

and bring them back and fry them up.

And memories of breakfasts and meals at home

are of the smell of mushrooms cooking.

I was left very much to my own devices as a child,

I'd walk to school, I'd walk myself to choir practices

on a rainy evening...

You just sort of did everything yourself, and organised yourself.

Anneka's adventurous spirit took her to Hong Kong aged 19,

where she worked for the BBC's World Service radio.

And these days, she can be found entertaining

the early Saturday breakfast audience on Radio 2.

She became a TV star in the early '80s.

In Treasure Hunt and Challenge Anneka,

she charged around the country with a bunch of mates.

-LAUGHING:

-It's that old trick!

It wasn't so different from her schooldays.

In the road where I grew up, various little boys on the road and I,

we were a great gang, and we'd always scavenge from our fridges

and meet with a battered old saucepan, which was encrusted

with bacon fat, and go and make fires in the woods and cook.

I did read that there was a gypsy encampment nearby.

Oh, Sparky the gypsy...

-It wasn't an encampment, it was just one-off guy.

-Oh, really?

Old, gnarled guy, according to my diary. I had to look it up,

Sparky, who filled us with a mixture of terror and fascination...

And if we were feeling very brave, we'd go up...

He was just... Look... I mean, you can see,

-just in the distance...

-Oh, yeah.

He was just up there in his caravan and again,

it was all to do with smells and cooking,

because he would cook on a little fire and if we were very brave,

we'd nick stuff from home and take him some bacon and stuff

and then we'd sit with him while he cooked it and told us stories.

Just something out of the Famous Five, it was extraordinary, really.

My mum was a very good cook,

so it was all lots of pastry and jam roly-poly

and then the rest of the pastry would go into the apple pie

and the rest of the something would go into something else...

All thought through in those days.

Yes, so we would have the Sunday roast on a Sunday,

liver and bacon always on a Tuesday, it all got very...

Irish stew perhaps, one night, mopped up with white loaf.

And it's just very basic food, but very, very tasty.

But I have to say, when we were about 12 or 13,

cordon bleu cards came free in some magazine...

-Oh, right, yes, yes.

-..on a Sunday,

and I blame it on this cordon bleu card!

Mum started getting very, very ambitious with her cooking,

which was fantastic, obviously.

Suddenly we got a bit more exotic.

-I was going to say, cordon bleu...

-Yeah!

-..and the way you've described

your food habits, your food experience, it is...

-Chalk and cheese.

-Exactly, so you must...

Cream, you know! All sort of things.

What kind of dishes do you remember that worked well or...?

-Chicken liver pate.

-Right, yes, yes.

Which was very popular.

A lot of boeuf bourguignon, things like that.

Well, it wouldn't be a tennis club

-if we didn't actually have a berry, or a strawberry.

-Aw!

I don't know if you're a strawberry fan, these are local strawberries.

They do look local! They look quite different, don't they?

Mm-mm.

-I don't really remember strawberries at home.

-No?

It was a luxury, unless you found them

in the hedgerows, wild strawberries,

-which are delicious.

-Even better, aren't they?

-Really delicious.

After school, when I was a kid, I used to go up to Wimbledon

and get return tickets from people leaving early

and go and watch matches, because I was so obsessed with tennis

and that's where I remember strawberries coming into play a bit.

I do love a strawberry.

For me, it's the quintessential British summer fruit,

and when they come into season, they're always a reminder

that Wimbledon fortnight is just around the corner.

Every single day during the tournament,

visitors get through over 8,000 punnets of them.

In fact, strawberries are the UK's favourite soft fruit.

To find out the secret to a great strawberry,

I'm visiting a local Surrey grower.

Charles Secrett's family business goes back over 100 years.

It started in 1908.

My grandfather, the venerable FA Secrett,

bought 20 acres of land at Kew.

He grew a sort of wide range of horticultural crops,

-which he took into London.

-Right.

I think at the height of his business prowess,

he had six farms on the go.

When Charles took over the business,

he was one of the first farmers in Surrey to try a new craze

that came over from America in the 1970s -

Pick Your Own.

It was all about strawberries.

You would grow your field strawberries

and just open the gates

and miraculously the hordes would come in and pick you out.

It was very, very...

As I remember it, because I used to go,

-it was a family day out, almost.

-Yes.

-Loads of us would go, loads of mums, loads of kids...

-Yes.

..have a great day in the countryside, eat a couple.

Er...yes. Naughty!

And then pick those and take them home. Well..

-Got to try them first.

-I agree.

Do you still have to bend down to pick them up?

Well, some people do, but an awful lot of strawberries

are now being grown out of the ground, or on raised beds.

You'll see here, we grow table-top strawberries.

-So the strawberries are grown three foot off the ground.

-OK.

The fruit hangs over the side, it's very easy to pick,

but it does encourage good air movement all round the plants,

so the crops are always dry, apart from the irrigation,

which is fed through to the roots.

Innovations like these have helped British strawberry production

to increase by 36% in five years.

We've seen a lot of polytunnels

go up for strawberry production in this country.

The advantage of polytunnels is,

it keeps the rain off the strawberries.

-You don't actually want strawberries to get wet.

-Sure.

The bane of any picker and operator was they've got the crop

all ready for the weekend and they get a wet weekend.

And it will just wipe the crop out.

Some growers are even trying LED lights

to extend the growing season from six weeks to nearly nine months.

Imagine eating British strawberries at Christmas!

And there is nothing like an English strawberry.

With the heat of the sun on it. How many times do people

take strawberries home and put them in the fridge?

Which is what we all do, because it does make them keep longer.

But there is nothing, nothing like

eating strawberries warmed by the sun.

Lead on!

Forget about exotic fruits,

strawberries are one of the original super-foods.

They're packed full of Vitamin C

and may even help lower cholesterol - if you go easy on the cream!

Well, this is called El Santa, it has good flavour, good shape

and it yields well and it does travel quite well,

so you can pick it and transport it round the country.

But we're not really interested in that, we want to pick 'em

and eat 'em straight away, because that's when they're at their best

and of course this now, you're going to be eating this with

the warmth still in the strawberry and that's what makes it so special.

The flavour just comes alive.

It's so sweet and that's just...

But then, the thing I like about it is, it's so juicy.

Sometimes people go for the largest strawberries,

but they are not always the best.

The flavour can be more intense in the slightly smaller ones,

so actually, these are a little bit smaller, so I like them,

so, very nice.

-Well, you may have a taste as well.

-Oh, can I?

Well, you've had enough. That's your second punnet.

So, there are three rules for great strawberries that I've learnt today.

Get local if you can, don't put them in the fridge,

and when it comes to these berries, big isn't always best.

Back in Limpsfield, Anneka's brought me

to one of the most important places in her childhood.

So, Brian.

This is St Peter's church, beautiful old 12th-century church,

where I was a chorister, so that was three services on a Sunday,

two weddings on a Saturday.

-There must be many happy memories for you in there...

-Yeah.

..so why don't you go in there and relive those memories?

I'm going to go to the church hall, I'm going to cook you a dish,

which is a nostalgic dish.

-What are you going to do?

-I'll tell you when I see you.

Oh, oh, oh, oh!

-You go in there, off you go in there.

-Lunch!

-Enjoy, enjoy.

Anneka's told me about how her mum

went all cordon bleu in the '70s.

Well, I'm going to make perhaps the classic dish of the decade,

Chicken kiev.

It's bread-crumbed and stuffed with garlic butter,

and that's where I'm starting.

Take some butter, plenty of it.

There we go.

And just give that a bit of a soften up.

Then I'm going to put some parsley in there. OK.

Now... I'm going to take a little bit out

and put that in my breadcrumbs over here.

That's for later.

And the rest goes into the butter.

Clove of garlic.

Garlic really does season the chicken from the inside,

makes it lovely and moist.

And it was, in the day, a very classic dish,

all the large hotels and big restaurants used to make this.

So give this a stir round.

I need to chill the butter until it's solid.

Pop it on some clingfilm, roll into a sausage shape

before sticking it in the freezer.

And this can be done well in advance.

I've got one here. This has been in the freezer.

I've taken it out now and the reason we do that, is so that

it doesn't actually melt straight away when the chicken is cooking.

It softens and then it flavours, so we'll take some of that.

Think that will probably be enough.

Smells delicious.

It's lovely to come here just to have a look around,

because obviously, when I was a chorister, I would be

scrambling along the cobble stones, flinging my bicycle somewhere,

rather late for a service and then there would be

friends' weddings and then, sadly, friends' funerals.

So, big breath, I'm going to have a look.

Wow, here are all the notices... Look at this,

"St Peter's Messy Church for children and families together."

That's a bit of a change from Sunday school I used to do here.

Didn't do anything messy, it was very sensible. Let's go in.

Oh, it's lovely.

There's been a church on this site since before the Normans.

It's absolutely lovely, you always feel you have to whisper slightly.

So we would... As the choir, we would come out of that door

and file round here.

Never had a carpet. What's all this?

Anyway, there's a carpet now.

And then we'd come round,

do a little bit of a nod and this would be my seat here.

And this is when the sweets came out!

More or less as soon as we sat down.

I'm half expecting to see some sweet wrappers on the floor.

Very significant part of my life, this, very significant.

It's very moving, actually, to be back in this beautiful building.

It sort of rubs off on you.

Very, very special place, this.

In the village hall, my nostalgic chicken kiev is taking shape.

We've got a skinless breast of chicken

and we've kept the wing bone on there.

So you may need to ask the butcher for that.

And then just quickly trim off the excess meat to clean the bone...

It's just for presentation purposes, no other reason,

but it does make it look really good.

OK, so we've cleaned it there.

Just give it a quick bang there.

Don't throw that away, stick it in the freezer,

use it in the stock, it's wonderful.

Now, turn it over, just cut a nice incision there.

Turn it this way round.

Just make a nice little pocket, a little pouch...

And then I'm just going to make another incision here,

just to push this pellet of butter inside.

Now what we need to do now, is to seal it in and retain the shape.

So to do that, we're going to take these two eggs -

that I need in a second anyway -

for my egg wash on the outside.

Beat them up.

You need two eggs like this...

If you're doing four or six portions, you don't need too much.

So take a pastry brush and what we do now is use a bit of the egg wash...

..on the outside there,

and just brush that across there, like that,

and a sprinkling of flour.

And that just helps to stick it all together.

And to make that work, just think, all the time,

think of this lovely chicken shape.

So now it goes into flour that's had salt and pepper put into it,

very carefully, like that.

We don't want too much flour on there, so we get rid of the excess.

The flour will help the egg wash stick,

and the egg wash will help the breadcrumbs stick on there

so we get this lovely crisp coating.

So, in that goes in there.

Once again, think of keeping the shape of the chicken.

Take this, keep the shape

and put it into the breadcrumbs.

And then smother it in breadcrumbs.

Make sure that everywhere has got breadcrumbs on it

and very carefully lift it out.

Anneka's trip around her old neighbourhood has brought her back

to her primary school, which is now a private house.

To my mind, as a small, you know, four, five-year-old,

going up to the age of about 10, 11,

this was a gigantic empire, this school.

Obviously the garage wasn't there

and you just walked into school there.

Had assembly in the big hall

and a very, very happy place that was.

Best... Best years of my life, probably.

I'd give anything to be five and going back again.

I'd like to live the whole period of my childhood again.

It is obviously something I hold very dear and precious,

so forgive me for being slightly... "Aww!"

..mad!

I'm ready to brown and seal my chicken

before putting it in the oven.

Just a little knob of butter in there,

just for flavour,

but the thing to remember here is

normally you put the presentation side down first

when you've got breadcrumbs, but in this instance,

where it's sealed we want to cook that first

so it actually it cooks together and sets.

Remember, we're trying to keep the butter in the middle

so it just melts when it is cooked.

So, in it goes here to seal it all off.

OK, so, having got so far, now we turn it over.

Look at that lovely colour on that side.

And it does take a little bit of patience, does this.

But you want that lovely colour

so it looks really attractive.

They used to deep fry these

in the big restaurants,

but nobody wants to do that at home.

Look at that, that is a fantastic colour.

So take that, put it onto here.

Just pour that oil and butter over the top.

Oven door open, I'll put that in the oven.

It's about 180 degrees

and it's going to cook for about 10/15 minutes.

We don't want to dry it out

but remember we've got the butter in the middle.

We devotedly, as children, had wildflower books, books of birds

and we never... We never walked anywhere without these books,

and we were just always intrigued to look and see what was growing.

And I don't know what that building is. That wasn't there.

I'm confused. I'm really confused.

Where is the tree we used to swing on?

I think it was there, I think that horrible building...

What is that building that has taken the place of my beloved tree

that used to be there?

Anyway, this then became the playing field for my school,

and you can see the nets there

that have been taken over by the tennis club,

but that was the school and so we'd spill out at break

and often play in this area.

We had our sports day here, and we had nature lessons,

back to the book,

and that stile over there and beyond -

you can see it, it is very much as it was,

and we just used to walk round and go...

You know, just looking for Harebells and sheep's bit scabious,

that sounds quite racy. Nipple wart.

We laughed a lot at some of these pages, we were quite childish.

While Anneka's been wandering over the green fields of home,

I've been preparing a cordon bleu classic, chicken kiev.

I've made some garlic butter with parsley, which I've frozen

so it melts slowly while the dish is in the oven.

I've made a little pocket inside the chicken breast for the butter

and dipped the whole lot in flour, egg and breadcrumbs

before browning it all over and putting it in the oven to cook.

All I need to finish the dish is

a warm salad of green beans and shallots.

-Oh!

-Hiya.

The smell of garlic as I walked through.

-Oh, really?

-Yeah. It's boding well.

That might tell you what we're doing - chicken kiev.

Oh, fantastic!

It's the first complicated dish

-I tried to do to impress a boyfriend.

-Oh, right.

And I got the recipe a bit wrong because I didn't really underst...

Oh! It didn't look like that.

-Oh, I see.

-It didn't look like that at all.

I found it really difficult

to approach the chicken breast on the bone

but I didn't quite understand some of the ingredients.

For example, a bulb of garlic is a bulb of garlic.

A clove of garlic, I found out, is something quite different.

-It's a segment.

-It's a segment.

-It could be a tenth of it!

-It isn't the entire bulb.

So I put the entire bulb of garlic, crushed up,

lovingly, trying to impress, into this one single chicken breast.

They do say that when you've eaten garlic, you should eat parsley,

so about ten bunches, you'd be fantastic.

We didn't know that in 1975.

Right, so, what I'm going to do,

-I'm going to make a little bit of dressing here.

-OK.

So, I've got some French Dijon mustard. Are you...?

-Lots of mustard or little mustard?

-Lots of mustard.

-That looks grand there. Cider vinegar.

-Oh, lovely.

So a bit of cider vinegar goes in.

Very carefully measured out, as you will notice.

Yes, I'm liking the precision.

Perfect. Some rapeseed oil.

-It's got a nice flavour, it's got nutty smell to it.

-Yeah.

We're going to put some salt and pepper in there.

-I do love shallots.

-OK.

Put this into the dressing.

And then we take the beans, which are nice and dried off,

-put those in there.

-Look at those colours!

And I'll know you'll love this next little bit.

Exactly, get the hands in, whilst it hot.

But they'll soon be warm rather than...

Yeah, just chuck it over my trousers.

That's fine too, it's fine!

You came into the kitchen, not me!

-Shall I check?

-Have a taste of that. I think they're lovely.

-I'm going to put a drop more salt and pepper in there.

-Oh!

Aren't they lovely?! I love this rapeseed oil.

-So good for you.

-So nutty.

Let's just put these beans in the middle of the plate.

The memory lives on in my head.

That's the way it should be.

Food is all about creating great memories,

and today is a memory day for you, just...

-It's a bit cheffy, but...

-Quite cheffy.

-Then we just put it...

-Oh!

..on top, and we just take that cloth

cos I've just made a bit of a mess there.

I can so confidently say that mine looked nothing like that.

It was a different dish!

The nostalgic dish I've cooked for Anneka is chicken kiev -

a chicken breast stuffed with garlic butter

and cooked in herby breadcrumbs.

I've also made a warm salad of green beans and shallots

in a mustard vinaigrette.

-Go for it.

-Oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness. What's going to happen?

That looks delicious, that does.

All the juices trickling out - oh, my goodness, that's amazing!

(Look, look, look!)

-Oh, so posh.

-Mmm, mmm. Thank you!

Now keep at it, cos you wanted all that yourself.

I do. Yeah, you're not getting any.

It's just melted into the breast, kept it lovely and moist.

And it smells...

It's so delicate, actually. It really is delicate.

(Don't mind me!)

It's heaven.

Heaven!

I'm really... I am 15, back in the day... I'll carry on.

Please, you just finish that off.

Don't mind me, everyone!

Coming to Anneka's childhood village,

I've been surprised by how green Surrey is,

even though it's so close to London.

And it's home to millions of creatures

farmed for the food they produce.

I'm not just talking about cows or sheep - I'm talking about bees.

Master beekeeper Bob Maurer

is chairman of the Surrey Beekeepers Association.

Surrey is very good for bees

cos there is a huge diversity of flowers.

We have plenty of trees, I think we are

the most wooded county in the country.

Most of the round furry bees we see in our gardens are bumblebees,

which live in nests, often underground.

Only one sort of bee makes enough honey

for beekeepers like Bob to harvest.

Unsurprisingly, they're called honeybees.

They live in huge colonies in hives and, confusingly,

they look a bit like wasps.

Honeybees collect two things from flowers to give them

a balanced diet.

Nectar is a sugary liquid packed full of carbohydrates,

and powdery pollen is a good source of protein.

When the bees return to the hive,

they fill wax honeycombs with regurgitated nectar

and fan it with their wings to evaporate the water content

so it becomes concentrated into honey.

Humans have been taking honey from beehives for thousands of years.

Honeycombs have even been found intact in ancient Egyptian tombs.

But even with the benefits of modern technology,

extracting the honey can be a sticky business.

The first step is to cut away the wax cap

that's sealing the honeycomb.

I've known beekeepers give up

because they just got into such a mess doing this.

I spend a good couple of hours going around with plastic sheeting,

and all the door handles and taps,

anything I might touch, are covered in clingfilm.

It's a lot easier to do that and then whip the clingfilm off

afterwards than spend hours going round wiping surfaces down.

The honey is removed from the combs by spinning it in a centrifuge.

And we start it slowly,

because sometimes when you turn it up to full speed

it may start to walk about.

As it spins, the honey is thrown out to the side,

spatters against the side of the stainless steel drum

and runs down to the bottom.

The honey that you've produced yourself is always special,

particularly the first jar you ever produce,

that's a marvellous experience, to think, "I've done that."

There are over 40,000 beekeepers in this country,

and most are amateurs.

Jill and Maggie are new converts to the hobby.

You can cook with your honey.

I also make mead, which is a drink with fermented honey.

You can add spices, you can use up autumn fruits, you can,

you know, make a nice alcoholic drink.

Not all our bees make honey,

but they all play a vital role in food production.

They pollinate nearly every crop we grow by picking up pollen

from one flower and transferring it to the next one they visit.

So, whether you want to bring bees to your vegetable patch,

or just want to make sure they have enough food to last the winter,

grow plants with lots of pollen and nectar,

and the bees will be as happy in your garden as you are.

Cheers!

Back in Limpsfield, we're about to

get our first glimpse of Anneka's childhood home.

-I could admit to you now that I have stalked this house.

-Oh, really?

Yes, I've driven my car, driven from London and driven

and parked outside and just gazed at this house

in quite a sort of, you know, stalkery way.

And been too shy to ring the doorbell.

Because I'm desperate to get inside - I'm desperate.

But it doesn't look like our house. It was yellow.

They've changed the brickwork and the tiles and everything.

So, can we go in?

So today you get your chance.

You get your chance to walk in there, think about times of the past,

and in the meantime, I'm going to cook another dish for you.

-Oh, pudding?

-No, sadly not.

-Oh, no!

But lovely, you'll love it, just like you did with the first one.

You go and you have a look at that house.

-Thanks, Brian.

-In you go. Enjoy.

Oh, my God!

This is so glamorous.

This is amazing!

I have to come in here, because I spent a lot of time in here.

It's the cupboard under the stairs.

And I just sat in there in the dark because I loved the smell of polish.

While Anneka explores, I've made my way into the back garden

where we've set up my outdoor kitchen,

and I'm going to make her a unique tribute dish.

Anneka loves the outside life,

so I've got a beautiful breast of pheasant here.

In fact, I've got two breasts - a crown of pheasant.

Taken the legs off and I'm going to roast this

and serve it in a mushroom sauce

because she used to go foraging just down there to get lovely mushrooms.

And then I'm going to create a little potato dish

with roast chestnuts, and, just like Sparky used to do, with bacon.

First thing we need to do,

we need to get this pheasant in the oven.

So I put it into a roasting tray.

You can see I've smeared it with butter,

salt and pepper first, smeared it with butter

to give it bags of flavour, and then we just put that in the oven,

comme ca.

180 degrees, 200 degrees.

It's going to take about 20 minutes,

15-20 minutes, but it needs to rest afterwards.

While the pheasant is in the oven,

I can get on with making the filling for the potato cake,

starting with a rasher of back bacon chopped finely.

I'm adding a chopped shallot for sweetness and flavour.

I don't really want to colour the shallots too much.

I just want to get the flavours out.

And now I've got some already cooked chestnuts.

Then put in the pan with our bacon and shallots.

Look at that.

Let's put some chopped parsley in there.

Lovely colours, great smell.

Delicious.

Bit of salt,

bit of pepper,

and I can take that off now.

Just leave it to the side till the potatoes are ready.

Phew. Deep breaths - about to go into my bedroom.

Oh! Oh!

Oh, my goodness!

Crikey!

The thing is, I thought I would be sobbing my way round this house

because the build-up to this moment is so intense.

But the house is so different now.

But obviously the layout's here,

and this was my bedroom, except it was against the wall there.

And the best thing was that incredible view out there,

and I just...

Such happy memories of being a very tiny child

and being snuggled up in bed and my dad mowing the lawn,

and just lying in bed and feeling so safe and happy with

the whirring of the lawnmower and the smell of the grass coming up.

It's just my defining memory of childhood.

Oh, dear, I just wish...

I would just wish my parents were alive.

I've only just lost them

and I wish they could've hung on for this moment

to share with them, because they'd have gone "bloody Nora!"

God, it's amazing, it looks like the Chelsea Flower Show out there!

Sorry, Dad, but it wasn't like that back in the day.

I don't know about the Chelsea Flower Show -

making the potato cake could end up

like an episode of Casualty if I'm not careful!

This is one of the most dangerous jobs in the kitchen,

so mind your fingers!

Even-sized potatoes for the bottom,

which will become the top,

and you'll see how,

so we just lay these now, put those...

Takes a bit of patience and a bit of time, but it is well worth it.

And once you've got this work done, put it in the oven

and you can get cleaned up whilst it's cooking.

That last one goes in there.

Now I'm just going to take my mixture,

and put that in there. Just look at that - it looks lovely.

And what we need to do is we need to get a really nice colour

on the bottom of these, just nice and golden brown,

and then we can cook it in the oven.

We take some more potato, just lean it over to make, like,

a little potato cake, or a sandwich, if you like.

I can see that's starting to colour,

want to make sure it doesn't stick.

Just one more goes in there. Lovely.

And one on top.

Bit of salt and pepper.

And we just leave it for a couple of minutes now to get a lovely colour.

Up in her old bedroom, Anneka's going back in time with the help

of the diaries she kept from the age of eight until she was 16.

This was the first one.

It was meant to be a five-year diary, but I just wrote so much,

and then they expanded and I just wrote, you know,

just page... Look at it - page after page after page.

Every... It's fascinating to read

because it's such an interesting piece of social history.

My kids would be absolutely... Wouldn't believe this childhood.

It's all about being outside and, you know, just your friends,

and letter-writing is so important, and writing everything down.

Yeah, it's extraordinary.

So, today, in many ways, has been a very, very emotional day, in a way.

And every page I talk about what I've had for lunch!

I hope my tribute dish will be worthy of a mention in a diary.

I've roasted a crown of pheasant in the oven.

While it's been resting, I've prepared a potato cake,

first making a filling with bacon, shallots, chestnuts and parsley

then finely slicing a potato, arranging the slices in a pan

and topping them with the filling and another layer of potatoes.

My friend, what are you up to now?

I've created a potato just for you and Sparky,

but what I'm going to do now,

-you need to stand back because it gets dangerous.

-OK.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to put some red wine in there

just to finish cooking it.

So a bit of oil, so that will help it not stick and come out

when I'm ready, and then a wee bit of red wine.

Now, the tip I have learnt doing this

is not to put too much red wine in there,

-to let it evaporate. And all the potatoes go...

-Yep.

..and soak up this wonderful Bordeaux flavour.

So that goes in the oven.

It's all go, Brian, it's all go.

It's all fantastic. How was your bedroom?

Oh, my bedroom!

No, I'm freaked out because I'm walking around my childhood home,

trying to find the essence, trying to find something

that pulls and reminds me, and it's just been so altered.

You know, the room dimensions have been pushed out, extensions.

It's so zhooshed up, it's an amazing house but it...

And the garden - where's my sandpit?

You know what I mean? What's going on?

The only place I can find myself as a child

is if I stand at the end of the garden

and look out to those fields, and that makes me...

That's where I'm... That's where I get the lump in my throat.

See, that's why I'm glad,

-cos that's where Sparky was, around there, wasn't it?

-Yeah, yeah.

-So, Sparky land.

-Sparky land.

-Got it.

But you have elevated him into some sort of mythical creature.

Remember he had no teeth, so eating was tricky.

This pheasant will be so tender even Sparky could have eaten it.

Now, I've got some button mushrooms and the trick is to actually

get them into the pan and cook them so they get bags of colour.

So, nice hot pan.

It's got a lovely golden colour. We've driven some of the moisture out

so it's concentrated mushroom flavour. They look lovely.

-So now we're going to put a little bit of dry sherry in there.

-Yep.

I think this works.

-I've got my stock here, bit of chicken stock.

-Ooh!

-Goes in there.

-Looks good.

So what we have made here is a sauce.

I'm going to put some double cream in there, I'll do that now.

Not too much.

Oh, lovely.

Just look at that.

Let that sit and see, look, it's starting to bubble now.

It's just listening to what we want, it's coming on.

And the nice thing is now, we've managed to leave this.

That's rested nicely.

It's rested, and just need to let it sit there so it tenderises,

and it keeps the moisture going.

Let's have a quick look at the potato here.

-So you've got that, see how it's all sticking together?

-It's beautiful.

That's what we want, and those little hints of red wine there

which will add fabulous flavour.

So I'm going to take this breast off here now.

Sit there carefully.

Trim it off.

OK, so, get that out the way.

And there's a trick to doing the potato.

-You see how now the red wine's totally absorbed?

-Yeah.

So there's no liquid there so hopefully I can't hurt myself.

Oh you're going to do an upside-downy.

Going to do upside-downy, quite right, so you just put...

Get a plate like that and all you do is just...

Oh, what...?!

-Does that look good or...?

-That looks amazing.

Good, and underneath it has got those lovely roast chestnuts.

God, look at the glaze and the colours!

And it even stays in one piece! Clever.

Yeah, I thought for a minute when you said that it was going to move.

That's incredible.

So we take now this lovely bit of pheasant

and I've kept it deliberately not too thick.

-Mushrooms.

-Oh, my goodness, look at you.

Over the top.

-Slight dribble down...

-That's it.

-Oh.

Just not too much sauce,

a little bit just round the outside there.

-Have you done this before?

-Never.

-No.

My tribute dish for Anneka is a crown of pheasant -

the perfect dish for a woman who loves the great outdoors.

I'm serving it with a potato and chestnut cake

with bacon and red wine,

and a mushroom sauce, as a reminder of happy days foraging with her dad.

Brian, can I just say I'm so honoured to have you cooking

for me, and touched you've gone to so much trouble of sourcing

childhood memories and putting it all together on a plate.

-Quite clever.

-Well that's very sweet of you,

but I really hope you've enjoyed this little trip down memory lane.

-I have.

-Thought back to wonderful times, Mum and Dad, family.

-I know.

Houses, schools. No! Don't.

Have a try of that.

That's too good to eat.

Oh, I must have some of those gorgeous, juicy potatoes.

Oh, my goodness, Brian, you have surpassed yourself.

Oh, sweetheart.

No, the crispiness of that, after the fleshiness of the pheasant

and then the creaminess of the mushroom.

So have you enjoyed your day?

It's been an amazing day, Brian, thank you so much.

Not only the, you know, real treat of hanging out with you

and tasting this delicious food,

but, you know, having the opportunity

to trawl round my childhood and re-live my diaries and...

-Oh, yeah, re-live your diary years.

-Yeah, the diary years.

And wow, I mean, a big day. A big day for me.

-Good on ya! All we need to do now...

-Thank you.

-..is finish it off..

-Is carry on eating, yeah.

-Off you go.

-No problem there.