Episode 10 Rachel Allen: Home Cooking

You can't beat home-cooked food.

In this series, I'll make every meal you cook at home a real treat.

Today on Home Cooking,

I'll show you how to make the ultimate family treat...

fish and chips with home-made tartare sauce.

I travel to Wales to meet Michelin-starred chef Stephen Terry

and help him prepare a family brunch using fabulous local produce.

And I teach my cookery school family how to make evenings-in

go with a bang with my recipes for popcorn toppings,

healthy vegetable crisps and home-made lemonade.

Fish and chips - you know sometimes you just cannot beat it.

Really good fresh fish cooked in a light batter.

Chips which are crunchy on the outside

and a bit soft on the inside.

And then your own tartare sauce with lots of capers, gherkins,

freshly chopped herbs and hard-boiled eggs packed inside it.

I'm going to be using plaice - which is a flat fish -

but I sometimes use round fish.

Whichever fish is the freshest that you can get, use that.

I'm starting with the chips.

I'm going to cut them into nice, long, quite thick chips,

but they can be little skinny chips if you like.

Cut them all evenly in size - and this is important - so they cook evenly.

Once you've cut your chips, dry them to get rid of the excess starch

because this is going to make them sticky,

and prevent them becoming nice and crisp on the outside.

And for the best chips, the trick is to cook them twice.

The reason is to get them crisp on the outside and soft and almost fluffy on the inside.

So I'm going to cook them first of all at a lower temperature in the oil, at about 140 degrees.

Then I take them out, I drain them, turn the oil up to quite hot, about 180 degrees, cook them again.

And that way you get, in my opinion, the perfect chip.

So I'm going to drop the chips into the basket, lower it into the oil.

The oil has been heated up to 140 degrees Celsius.

I'm using sunflower oil, a good sunflower oil which I know is

going to taste good It's just going to slowly sizzle.

This stage of cooking will take about five or six minutes.

While the chips are blanching, I'm going to make the tartare sauce.

Making your own tartare sauce is really easy.

All you need is mayonnaise.

And then, add to that lots of delicious ingredients.

So, first of all, I've got little baby gherkins here, or cornichons. I'm going to chop those.

I like to chop everything quite roughly, not too finely, cos I want quite a chunky tartare sauce.

Capers - I'm going to roughly chop those as well.

I love the punchy flavours from capers and gherkins.

It's a bit acidic, it's a little bit... You get a bit of a kick. It's fantastic.

Take the mayonnaise here.

I've got the capers and the gherkins.

I need some lemon juice. It's going to really work with the fish.

Some mustard, Dijon mustard.

One hard-boiled egg which I'm just going to chop up roughly.

Once you've made your own tartare sauce, it'll keep in the fridge for a couple of days very well.

And, some chives.

And some parsley.

I can hear the chips starting to sizzle now.

A sign that they'll be almost there.

Throw in the chopped parsley.

You might need a bit of pepper.

Stir that all around.

Oh, that looks great.

Mmm! Mm-mm!

Oh, that's fantastic. Now, I'm just going to check on the chips.

Yeah, this is good.

They're cooked. The first stage is complete.

I can tell the chips are cooked cos they're very pale golden brown

but if I stick a skewer in, skewer goes in easily.

Drain them.

Turn the heat up to 180 degrees for the next stage of cooking the chips.

Now, the oil has heated up to 180 degrees,

so it's time to put the chips back in for their second cooking.

They're only going to take a few minutes,

and I'm going to cook them until they're a lovely deep golden brown.

While the chips are cooking, I'm going to make the batter.

For this batter, I'm just making it simply with flour and milk.

I could use water instead of the milk or could use half milk, half water, I could use beer.

There's many different batters.

But what I do want to do is I want to season the flour with some salt.

And some pepper.

And pour the milk in a steady stream onto the flour, whisking all the time.

I normally make a well in the centre like that.

Pour in the milk. Whisking in the centre gradually drawing the flour in from around the edges.

And you need to get a mixture that is quite thick. It's like very, very thick double cream.

Perfect. A few bubbles appearing on top. That's the batter made.

So, check the chips.

Fantastic. The chips are a gorgeous golden brown colour.

Tip them out onto kitchen paper.

And as soon as you do, sprinkle some salt over them

so that the salt kind of sticks to the slightly moist chips.

Yum!

If you are keeping these warm in an oven for any amount of time, don't cover them.

If you cover them, they will become soggy.

So now, I'm going to dip the fillets of fish into the batter.

And then with the basket sitting in the oil,

carefully lower the fish into the oil.

If you take the basket out of the oil, put the fish into the basket

and then lower it in the oil as I did for the chips,

the batter sticks to the basket.

And when you try and remove the fish from the basket,

all the batter's left behind in the deep fryer.

This should take about... three minutes to cook.

Don't shake the basket - a good tip.

If you take the basket out and you give it a shake,

the light delicate batter is going to come away from the fillet of fish.

While I'm waiting for the fish to cook,

I can put the chips and the tartare sauce onto a plate. Lovely...

golden chips.

And a wedge of lemon is always good.

Spoonful of your delicious tartare sauce.

The fish is now cooked. It's a gorgeous golden brown colour

and it looks really crisp on the outside.

Gently tip the pieces of fish out onto some kitchen paper to drain.

Put your lovely pieces of deep fried plaice onto your serving plate

and little bit of parsley.

So there is my fish and chips with tartare sauce.

A real family favourite.

Today's cookery school students are the Patel family from London.

This family don't get time to eat together.

I'll be showing them some treats that'll be quick and fun to make and enjoy together.

We are going to cook some great snacks. These are perfect for a Friday night in front of a movie.

We're going to make some popcorn. A sweet, toffee popcorn.

And a couple of different savoury popcorns. Spicy popcorn and then a cheesy popcorn as well.

We're also going to make some healthy root vegetable crisps.

They're delicious but are baked, so they're healthy.

And some home-made lemonade. Fantastic. Do you like popcorn?

-Yeah, I love sweet popcorn.

-Do you like toffee popcorn. Mmm!

I cook, quite often and as a family unless Maneesh's not around, we eat together.

Well, let's begin with the popcorn.

We'll make the toppings first.

And then we can actually pop the popcorn.

So I'm going to give you two some butter which you can melt.

And also you can grate some parmesan cheese.

And also you can add a pinch of cayenne pepper as well.

So first thing you need to do is melt your butter in the little saucepan here.

Now, you two are going to make the toffee popcorn, so you have got butter...

brown sugar.

About four tablespoons of golden syrup. Yum!

And some chopped and toasted pecan nuts which you can add into the popcorn at the very end.

Put the butter, the brown sugar and all of that golden syrup

into that small saucepan and you need to melt it all, stirring the sugar just so it dissolves

and then boil it for about three or four minutes until it gets a bit thick and toffee-ish.

For this spicy popcorn, we have got coriander seeds which I'm sure you've seen your mum using.

And cumin seeds. And we've got some butter.

You want to pop that butter into this little saucepan here.

-Shall I put this in, Anoushka?

-Er, yeah.

Now that's your butter melted, so you can take that off the heat.

Put into this pan four teaspoons of the coriander seeds.

-40?

-Four. Sorry, four teaspoons. And four teaspoons of cumin seeds.

Into the dry pan and these are just to toast the spices.

My chef, Kelan here, putting the seeds in.

That is your cheesy popcorn ready to go.

You've got your melted butter, and your cheese. OK.

I'm turning the heat off under these.

Can you see smoke coming from the spices?

They've got darker in colour and you can smell them now as well.

-Have you ever crushed spices for your mum?

-No.

-Do you want to give it a try?

-Yeah.

-And you get a really great flavour from the spices...

-You can smell it.

..if you toast them.

Now you can turn the heat off, Anoushka, under your toffee sauce

cos that's looking really good and you see it's bubbly, it's thick. Fantastic.

Now, so we're pretty much all ready, so if you all turn on the heat under your popcorn pans.

A couple of tablespoons of oil, like a tasteless oil, can go into the bottom of the pan. There you go.

And then, we can add our popcorn into the oil.

Just shake it out so that it's kind of the popcorn's all level on the bottom.

Fantastic. Now we just need to wait for our popcorn to pop.

I like to cook puddings or like make cakes and stuff.

I enjoy cooking when Mummy's doing a BBQ or something, I love just joining in.

Can you see how it's all started popping? Ours is popping quite quickly.

This one is taking a bit longer here. That's OK, it's catching up.

Now, I know mine has finished popping because it hasn't popped for a few seconds.

So take it off the heat and take off the plate.

Careful, the plate's hot.

Take it off so it doesn't have time to burn on the bottom. It's going to be really hot.

So, melted butter.

Followed by, for you, the parmesan cheese and the cayenne pepper.

And scatter the spices over the popcorn, Kelan.

Your toffee sauce, can you see how it's really thick and bubbling like that? So, turn off the heat.

Now this is incredibly hot.

Maneesh, would you mind pouring? As soon as you've poured it in,

take two spoons and toss it in and as it cools, it's going to set and get crunchy.

You need to keep tossing it so it doesn't all stick together in one clump.

Think we need more spice?

It's perfect.

I think it's pretty perfect too.

Later on, the Patels bake root vegetable crisps, and I show them my recipe for home-made lemonade.

Coming up, chef Stephen Terry invites me round

for a home-cooked brunch using local Welsh produce.

And we'll see if the Patels' film snacks taste as good as they look.

Having spent years in Michelin-starred kitchens,

Great British Menu Winner, Stephen Terry,

left the city pace behind to open The Hardwick, a country gastro-pub in his wife's native Wales.

Stephen's sensational dishes revolve around seasonal produce

and he describes his cooking as simple and honest.

Three mullet on, four including Chris' hair cut, yeah? Service!

But has this change of scenery allowed him more time to cook for his wife and three children at home?

I popped in to see what was on the brunch menu.

-Lovely to see you.

-And my wife.

-Hi, nice to meet you.

-How are you, Jo?

-Yeah, fine.

-And this is little Finn.

-Hi.

-You're going to help us cook brunch today?

-I would love to!

-Let's meet the rest of the family.

-Hi.

-This is Phoebe who's not normally very shy.

-Hi, Phoebe.

-This is Isabelle, my niece.

-Hi, Isabelle.

-Hi, nice to meet you.

-Lovely to meet you.

-One of your biggest fans?

-How are you? Are you great?

-Yeah.

Phoebe is one of the world's best egg-crackers, aren't you, Phoebs.

-She's really good.

-That's great.

-So what are we going to be making?

-We're doing some brunch dishes,

as we don't eat together as a family as much as we should do.

I'm at work and it's trying to get away from work to come back here

for dinner doesn't happen, so brunch is important.

Now, are we going to make some pancakes?

-Phoebe, how do you make pancakes?

-Er, eggs.

-Yeah.

-Flour.

-Yeah.

-Er, milk.

-Right, who's going to crack some eggs?

-Yeah.

-Right.

Great, Isabelle.

Sorry, Daddy!

Oh! All right, ooh!

Good girl.

-Pour it in. Wahey! Well done!

-Well done, Phoebe.

The issue is about time with family,

which is something that now I need to focus on because of my work,

I want to be part of their lives and I want them to be part of what I do as well.

OK, so, going to make a pancake?

-Yeah.

-OK.

So Stephen, what kind of food do you serve in the pub?

It's food that does what it says on the menu.

It's not, you don't need an -ology to read the menu.

Do you get a lot of families... A lot of children?

Especially at weekends we cater for a wider audience, I made a point of that.

OK, this is the last pancake now.

-Yum!

-Mm, yum-yum.

-Slice them up like this.

-Looks like lots of worms.

-Wiggly worms.

-It's like yeah, making fresh tagliatelle.

-Yeah. So... What next?

-We're going to get some eggs cracked.

We'll make some scrambled eggs to go with the smoked salmon, bacon,

chives and fennel tops. If you want to just chop in a bit of each of those.

-Do you have good producers close to you?

-Fantastic.

-The Hardwick has an award for best use of local produce in the UK by The Good Food Guide.

-Wow!

That was for basically just using what's on your doorstep which is certainly an initiative.

When I cook scrambled eggs, I like to let them cook a bit

and then break them up a bit as it goes.

-I don't like to beat it until it's like a paste almost.

-I know exactly what you mean.

The fennel and the chives can go in now cos then they can cook.

-Fantastic. Smells good, doesn't it, Izzy?

-There we are.

-Really nice.

-You're just saying that cos I'm your uncle.

-No, it does!

-So do you think your Uncle Stephen's a great cook?

-Yeah. He's really, really good.

Put that...

-It's lovely.

-..Onto there.

OK, so, time to cook some bacon.

-You can finish flaking off that hot smoked salmon there.

-Sure.

Just flake it up with your fingers.

Lovely.

-Right, it's all ready. So shall we shall go and eat?

-Great!

-Let's chow down.

-Oh, look at this.

-Here we are.

Yum, yum! That looks great.

-Rachel?

-I'd like a bit of everything, please, Stephen.

Isabelle, are you loving that smoked salmon and scrambled egg?

-Oh, yeah, it's a really, really nice.

-Is it?

-I love smoked salmon.

Jo, can you remember what the first meal Stephen ever cooked for you was?

Oh, my gosh. must be a good five, six years ago.

I can remember one of the most memorable meals he cooked was a fantastic risotto

and I think that was very soon after we started going out.

-What kind of risotto?

-Asparagus, peas, broad beans, spinach. Parsley.

It's the way to a woman's heart. And Jo, are the girls good eaters?

They are good eaters but sometimes they like different things

but they do eat well, don't they?

My father went spare with my brother and I because my mum cooked two different things for us.

He used to say, "It's not a restaurant. You either eat what we're eating or don't eat."

He's got a fair point.

-Thank you so, so much, Stephen and Jo.

-Mmm!

-And Isabelle and Phoebe,

for letting me come and cook with you and eat with you.

Thanks for coming along and giving us a hand and sharing our family brunch.

-This is a great way to start the day.

-Yeah, absolutely.

Now it's back to cookery school and time for the Patel family to make some more yummy snacks.

We've got some different root vegetables here for our crisps.

Kelan, what vegetable would you like to use?

Can we use beetroot, please?

We can, absolutely.

So beetroot for us. What vegetable would you like, Maneesh and Anoushka?

-Sweet potato, I think. I like sweet potato.

-There you go.

-Celeriac.

-Celeriac.

Now you'll only need about a quarter of this. A tiny little bit.

First we need to peel the vegetables so our hands are going to get nice and purple.

You could wear rubber gloves if you like.

I don't cook a lot, mostly because I don't have the time to cook

and when I was younger, I never had the interest to do it.

So as things stand, I need to free up some time and develop an interest again.

I'm sure Neeta would like that.

We have all got one of these. A little mandolin or Japanese slicer. Put the beetroot here.

And we need to stick the spikes here, this is that the guard which is actually very useful.

Once it sticks into the, the beetroot like this, you just go...

You run it up and down quickly.

You have to keep momentum...going.

And you see how you get all these lovely slices?

The ovens, meanwhile, are pre-heated to 220 degrees.

Sometimes beetroot, like potato slices, can be a bit wet, there's a bit of excess starch.

So just give them a pat dry and just pop them all into a bowl

-and then we're going to drizzle them with oil.

-Do you want pieces like these?

Yeah, even those little ones can go in.

And just toss the olive oil in with the beetroot

with your fingers, just rubbing it in to all the different slices

and then we can lay them out in a single layer on a clean roasting tray

and then put them into the oven to roast and they all take four or five minutes in the oven at 220 degrees

and you know that they're cooked when they start to kind of you know curl up a little bit at the edges.

Some of the paler vegetables will go golden.

Does that mean you have to watch them all the time?

Yeah. You have to watch them all the time.

These do go from being under-cooked to burnt in kind of the space of... about half a minute.

-While the vegetable crisps are cooking, shall we make lemonade?

-Yeah.

-Great!

I'll cut some lemons in half and then you can all squeeze a lemon each.

Lemonade is just made up of lemons, water

and then something sweet. Either honey or a sugar syrup.

So into a jug I'm going to add some syrup, I might not add it all.

You don't need it all. All the lemon juice can go in.

-This one's done.

-Fantastic. That can go in.

And then... Stir it around.

We can add some ice.

-Great!

-Loads of ice.

-Lots of ice.

So a few lemon slices in there will be nice.

And some sparkling water.

Fantastic. So that's the lemonade ready.

Now, we can dish up the vegetable crisps and then we can bring the food out and give it a taste.

-Mmm! Doesn't everything look great?

-Yeah.

Wow! Some lemonade.

-Yum!

-Fantastic.

We just need the movie... in front of us.

Tip some onto your plate.

Do you like the vegetable crisps?

These are nice.

Would you like some crisps, Rahul?

Look, these are the ones you made.

What do you all like?

Toffee popcorn.

-Toffee popcorn.

-Toffee popcorn.

I really enjoyed making the snacks today.

I felt that everything was homemade, healthy and there were no additives or E numbers.

I knew where all everything was coming from.

Do you think this is better than buying your own snacks in?

-The odd time, you know, you could make them.

-Yeah.

-The popcorn definitely.

-Definitely.

When you make a really nice meal and eat it,

-I think you like it better than if you didn't make it.

-I think you're right.

Mmm. Anoushka, which of the vegetable crisps do you like?

I like the beetroot one cos they're like smaller and crispier.

In the past I've always made the popcorn, out of a packet in a bag,

so next time I might try it and do it this way cos it took no longer and it tasted much better.

Eating healthy is very important to us.

Also when the kids' friends are over, it'd be a fun thing to do.

It would take 10 minutes, the mess will be minimum and the kids will have a mini-adventure.

-I would say they're all nice but the toffee wins.

-Toffee wins I think for everyone.

-Well, thank you all so much for coming.

-Thank you for having us and we have certainly learnt a lot.

A lot, yeah, absolutely.

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