Episode 10 Ready Steady Cook

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Hello, thank you very much indeed.

Wonderful. Now hello everyone and welcome to Ready Steady Cook, the show which gives you wonderful food

in 20 minutes with an unknown bag of ingredients. Let's meet our chefs and special guests.

First up, in the red kitchen joining chef James Tanner, we have newsreader and journalist Jon Sopel.

And in the green kitchen with chef Richard Phillips,

we have BBC breakfast presenter and journalist, the lovely Louise Minchin.

-Jon, how are you doing?

-Great. How are you?

-You're equally lovely, of course.

-Thank you very much.

My wife looks at you and says "I like him." We all have our favourite news presenters.

-You feel comfortable with them.

-You've got to do that news and be quite serious...

So you have a serious face on a lot of the time.

-Are you serious in the kitchen?

-I get nervous in the kitchen.

-I become a bit bossy.

-Do you?

-Wow.

-When I'm cooking.

I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just shouting orders for the sake of it!

-Pass me that, pass me that.

-That's it.

-It's his turn today.

-I know.

-Let's have a look at your bag.

-Let's see what we've got there.

There you are.

-I say, is that a bit of mullet there, Jon?

-It is a red mullet.

Not a 1980s haircut.

LAUGHTER

Mullet. So you're obviously a big fish fan, then?

-Yeah.

-Lovely. Along with pancetta.

-Pancetta, it's a bit Mediterranean, isn't it?

-Yeah, it is.

The asparagus, the pine nuts, stoned olives...

-I don't know what a stoned olive is.

-No stones!

-Yeah, pitted.

We've got the asparagus and tomato, and tatties too.

I think... A lovely bag.

So, how much?

How much? £7.53. Three pence over.

-Shall we let him off, ladies and gentlemen?

-Yes!

Oh, bistro bag here. They already love you here, Jon.

But what about our chef, James Tanner, what does he think?

I think it's a brilliant bag. Lovely taste of the Med.

I love mullet, mullet with pancetta's very good. The pancetta,

the smokiness of it, works really well with this particular fish.

I'm going to take the fillets off the fish, wrap one in the pancetta, maybe do a pine nut crust,

Mediterranean-style roasted tomatoes, crushed potatoes,

lemon asparagus, olive and tomato dressing like a sauce vierge with olives in.

The other side, we can fry it.

Yes, let's fry. I think we're going to fry the other piece as well. With the rest of the asparagus,

we could use the stalks, do a soup,

maybe use some of the stores and do something with them nuts.

-Amazing.

-Yeah. Have we got 20 days or 20 minutes to create this?

He sounds like one of those waiters that come up read 20 things off the menu,

you think, "I don't know what I want, can you say that again?"

-Let's just see how it goes.

-OK. Jon and James, ladies and gentlemen.

-Hello, you! How are you?

-Hello, darling. Lovely to see you.

You look like you dressed for dinner. Doesn't she look wonderfully elegant?

-Yeah!

-To make up for my cooking I think, hopefully.

-Is it that bad?

-It's not brilliant.

Bet your husband's a mean chef. He's got all these gastro pubs around London.

He's very good, and we sort of avoid each other in the kitchen to be honest, otherwise we argue.

-So I do fish fingers and he does really sophisticated stuff.

-Oh, wow.

-I'm hoping to learn something!

-Do you argue with your wife in the kitchen?

No, we argue about everything else in the house. No, we don't!

It's very similar to what Louise was saying, if I'm cooking at home,

t's "Get out of the kitchen, I'll get on with it".

-We're not going to be like that today, are we?

-Come on then.

-Let's have a look here.

-OK. Ready?

-Always ready. Oh, bit of an Asian feel going on here.

-Yes, I think so.

Tell us what you brought along.

So we've got some chillies, we've got a pepper,

we've got some coconut milk, some rice noodles, duck breast,

which I thought might be a bit different

And I love vegetables, actually, so a bit of spinach, and a papaya.

My mum was born in Kenya and I used to eat pawpaw.

-I've only been there once.

-Squeeze a lime on top of it..

-It's beautiful.

-How much did you spend?

I came in at 7.48.

Nah nah nah nah nah!

-You work with each other, does she always try and get one up on you?

-Oh, it's awful.

We've worked together for six years, it's like this all the time!

The competition has already begun. What do you think, Richard?

Yeah, fantastic. I love Thailand and that kind of cuisine anyway,

and it's very simple, very fresh and packed full of flavour.

-So let's think about what we're going to do here. Very large duck breast so...

-It is, isn't it?

Maybe we'll split it into three, do three different dishes with it.

One dish we've got to do a maybe a nice noodle soup,

Thai-style soup. I'll do a dessert with the papaya,

maybe something like a really nice mousse,

but a mousse with a bit of grated ginger and white wine, really works well. And lime juice.

-Fantastic.

-That works really well.

And then the other part of this, maybe just roast it

quite classically. We'll put some spices on top, maybe with chilli,

some peppercorn, and put that down to really embed it into it, get some really good flavour.

I'll make a nice sauce from that, maybe some roasted peppers and chilli into the sauce

to lift it, and obviously a bit of coconut sauce to follow.

-And maybe try to do a bit of a curry as well to go with it.

-Ooh.

-Delicious.

-Are you feeling hungry?

-Very.

-I'm starving!

Ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for Louise and Richard.

That sounds delicious!

Ladies and gentlemen, the competition has already began

between our chefs, but how will they fare in 20 minutes?

We're about to find out as I say ready, steady, cook.

-OK.

-Right, Jon, if you can get the potatoes on, please.

-Are you feeling confident, James?

-I don't know yet.

-You don't know.

-I never know.

-OK.

-Ah yes, so Jon, if you can cut them in half.

-Yeah.

Get these in a pan,

and I've got a... We use water from the kettle...

Mmm-hmm.

Ains, just bear with me.

-OK.

-I'm just going to get a few pans on the go.

-Rather sharp knives here Jon, so do be a bit careful.

I'll try to keep my fingers on!

Do you like your tools nice and sharp?

I once bought my wife a Christmas present, a knife sharpener.

She didn't think it was the most romantic present she'd ever received.

-They do work, though?

-They make a huge difference.

-I use this.

-Yeah?

-Which is the greatest...

-Isn't that a diamond steel one?

-Yeah, diamond one.

You get it very, very sharp. All you do is you just keep using it.

You sharpen it every time you use your knife basically.

-Give it a quick rub every time you use it.

-Right, OK.

-OK.

-Let's talk fish.

-LAUGHTER

I don't know what they're laughing at!

-OK.

-OK.

So on to the fish. I'm going to use the fillets.

This has been scaled which is great, it's saved me a bit of time.

Off with the head.

OK? And we're just going to get rid of that.

OK. You happy? You know how to do a bit of filleting, Jon?

-I wouldn't dream of even trying that.

-Of course you would!

-Not too much.

Go on! You've got to get them to have a go, haven't we, eh?

-OK. Sharp, flexible knife.

-Yeah.

-OK, very sharp, flexible knife.

You see in the middle, there's the backbone of the fish

so I'm going to use that as a guide.

I'm going to cut with a long incision down the outside.

-The idea is, if I quickly show you here...

-Chef, do you want this on?

Yeah, bung them on over there.

If you can see this there, there are all the bones in the middle.

I don't want them at all so what we do is we just work down

and you just keep going back, and basically if the knife clicks

against the bones you can't go wrong. That's the way I look at it.

I'm just going to cut through the end piece.

-OK? Right, Jon...

-Yeah, what do you want me to do now?

I want you to cut through there and straight down. That way, you'll get one fillet.

-I'm left handed so I'm going to turn it round.

-That's fine. You go for it.

Fingers out of the way.

Just let the knife do the work. That's it. beautiful.

-Pull that through.

-OK.

OK. Lovely.

There we are, there you go.

-That's not too bad, is it?

-Very good. Very good.

Go on, encourage him, ladies and gentlemen, go on!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Thank you.

OK, so when we get to that stage this bit here

is part of the belly fat and also where the insides of the fish were.

We just cut through them, cut off, trim off the belly fat,

and then I'm doing this two ways. We're going to do one

with a salad with a sauce vierge, which I will explain.

Tomatoes, touch of balsamic. I'm putting olives in it as well.

I'm scoring the fish. This way it'll cook more evenly and quicker.

I don't know if you got that, but what the chef did there is give it a bit of a squeeze

as he was cutting it to create that little fanned out bit there

which allows that not to bend up curl up when you cook it.

-Is that right?

-Yeah.

-OK. Very nice indeed.

And then, we're going to repeat that process on the other side.

If I turn this round so you can see.

Repeat that process down the backbone of the fish,

put your knife in, cut through to the tail.

-He needs a job.

-There you go.

-He needs a job

and we're going to have a look at another job there.

We're going to leave the red kitchen and go into the green one.

Here we are, fires, flames, all sorts of things going on here.

This is a real kitchen. Are you getting into this?

Yes, I certainly am. He's quite scary, actually.

-He is quite scary.

-In a good way. He's bossing me about.

You live with a chef. Don't you think chef's are generally scary?

Oh, in the kitchen definitely.

I know. A bit fiery. What are we getting up to?

OK, what have we got going on? We've got the base of the curry here.

-Yeah.

-So the onions are in the pan, just cooking that nice and gently.

Not too much colour, just want to get nice flavours being released, then I'm going to add the duck.

Just curry powder, or do you cook your spices out, like cumin, and grind them down?

Absolutely. I like to. I'm a little bit tight for time today.

-OK, so just straight in with the curry powder maybe.

-Yeah.

-We're going to colour off the duck, then we add the curry powder.

-Mmm-hmm.

-Bit of turmeric as well.

-OK.

-Then we add a bit of clove...

I've got a bit of cayenne here.

Just a small amount of cardamom. A bit of cayenne is good.

Sorry to interrupt, is that too thick?

-Perfect. Now do the same again.

-There we are.

We have some fresh ginger here.

-Yeah, we're going to add that.

-Lovely.

-I'm not there yet.

I'm going to cook these spices down. They're like herbs, spices.

You must get them in early, get them cooking and get them releasing all these lovely flavours.

-So it's not too raw at the end.

-Absolutely not.

You get a bit powdery on the top of the mouth.

-Five minutes gone already.

-You're kidding!

-I've just put the kettle on.

-Then we'll add some stock,

then the coconut milk. We're going to finish this off with a bit of chilli

and the lime right at the end, make a really nice, light froth.

-That sort of Thai-style curry is very light...

-Sure.

-Quite runny, the sauce is nice really nice, you can pour on to...

-Lovely.

-The lovely, lovely rice.

-Looking forward to that.

So we've got the other duck breast in here.

Red wine, cardamom, coriander, black pepper,

that's now going to go into the oven, and a touch of honey.

Not too much honey, I don't want this too sweet.

Too sweet or, of course, it will burn, won't it?

-You don't want to put too much on.

-Keep an eye on that.

-It will caramelise too quick.

-Enough, Chef?

-Perfect.

-I think that's wonderful, you've got plenty. That's fine.

You've got two gorgeous girls at home, Mia and Scarlett?

-Yes.

-So when you get home from work, you've been at the Beeb all day long

-presenting the news, do you take them straight down to daddy's pub for a meal?

-I wish!

I wish he'd bring some back, but he never does so it's down to me.

-Always let you down these chefs!

-I know, it's really disappointing.

I do my own homemade fish fingers which I'm quite proud of.

Homemade fish fingers. Quite impressive, that, eh?

They love them, which is amazing. It's quite good for them to eat.

-Can you do that for me?

-Yes.

-Do they have a favourite? Are you comfortable peeling?

They have a favourite. It's, yes, slightly embarrassing, it's tuna pasta. Really difficult.

-Oh.

-So you do pasta, right?

-Yeah.

Get a tin of tuna, mix it with mayonnaise and they love it!

I'm sure! And do you like the transition from radio to TV? You started off in Radio 5, didn't you?

I started in Radio 5, Five Live, which was brilliant.

I love radio. Shall I do that?

You can go with that. It's such a personal media, radio.

It's fantastic. I used to love the listeners as well because you say something wrong,

and in two minutes you get 50 texts saying, "I can't believe you said X, Y and Z."

-I loved it.

-You don't get that same response on TV...

-No.

Is it more challenging? I know you've got to dress up, you've got to have make up,

-the outfit, because you're hidden on radio.

-Yes.

-Do you find it more challenging?

-It's a different kind of challenge.

There is something, it sounds a bit silly, but quite special about that red light that goes on

-and you know that actually between you and everything going wrong is not much any more.

-Sure.

-That's live TV, isn't it?

-Yes. Live.

We forget that, but also famous for Around The World In 80 Days.

The BBC have just re-enacted Around The World In 80 Days 20 years on

and they did six pairs, or people who did it, and I went from Mongolia, through Russia,

South Korea, and hence I'm pleased we're doing Asian cooking.

-That's where you got the idea from.

-That's where it came from.

-I was going to ask you that.

And then on a container ship across the Pacific with Bill Turnbull, which was brilliant.

-Favourite food?

-How's that papaya coming along?

-Oh, look at that!

-I'm supposed to have peeled it and I haven't.

Don't worry about it. Chef, what are you going to do with it? Dice it up?

Yeah. We're going to make a puree in the blender down the bottom.

Dice it up, turn it into the blender...

-and then just puree it for me.

-OK. Blender up there.

Straight away after that, we need that bit of cream, please.

-OK.

-So bossy, aren't they, these chefs?

We love it, we love it! Oh, gorgeous. There we are, Chef.

We ate lots of weird food like borsht.

We went on the Trans-Siberian Express and you know that Russian beetroot soup?

Is the food a bit repetitive?

-Do you find that part of the world...?

-It is when you can't speak Russian.

-You just order the same thing.

-You're familiar with it. I just thought I'd give this a peel.

-Thank you so much.

-That will get you going. OK?

-Yeah. Is that cheating?

OK, I've got to fly back over the other...

Chef, what are you reducing down?

Have you got the coconut in there already, in that broth?

Yeah I put the coconut milk, now I've put in a bit of spinach.

Now I'm going to take it off

and let it just cook through in its own heat for some time.

-It's going to help tenderise the duck a bit.

-OK.

Because duck can be a bit tough if it's cooked too quickly.

If I can pinch a little bit of that papaya, not too much, just a very small amount.

I'm making a cinnamon, honey and papaya...

-..bread and butter pudding.

-Cinnamon, honey, papaya bread and butter pudding.

How does that sound? Ooh...

Ooh!

Oh, come on!

-Oooh!

-Yes, you're feeling it, now, aren't you, eh?

-Keep things on the go.

-All right.

Don't forget, all available on our website.

Let's leave Louise and, of course, Richard.

He's just pouring that eggy mixture on the top year, bake in the oven.

That's going to be really, really nice. OK, halfway, guys, halfway.

We're back over here with Jon and James, see how they're getting on.

-OK, over here...

-Tell us what you're doing, Chef.

A touch of vanilla is going to go into some cream.

And also just make sure I don't waste any,

that goes into the cream with a bit of icing sugar...

-Yeah.

-If I added regular sugar you'd get granules stuck in your teeth.

-That's why we're using icing sugar.

-You're enjoying this, aren't you?

I reckon this is soft whipped. Do you?

Ah, yeah, yeah. Put it down, just a bit more. And that's enough.

-That's it. Lovely, lovely.

-Perfect.

-Look at that.

Over here, Ains, over here just quickly.

-Yeah?

-If I can show you this. Teaspoon of coffee.

-Yeah. Coffee?

-Yeah, watch.

-Coffee, hot water.

-Hot water.

This is my cheat's way of an espresso shot.

OK. So if you haven't got your espresso machine at home,

-you don't want to pop down to your local coffee shop...

-Very strong.

You get a concentrated bit of coffee. What are you going to hit that with? The cream?

-The cream, yeah. Watch.

-OK.

Now as you can see the cream's quite thick whipped. Take the coffee,

get the bowl to cool it down for you a bit. Obviously I've just put

boiling water in so you think I'm going to melt that cream loose, right?

What's this going to be? What's this going to end up?

We're going to do a coffee whip with chocolate sauce.

-OK.

-And then literally you marble it.

So the idea is you get these streaks of coffee which are very strong, with sweet cream.

-A tiny bit more on the top...

-Right.

-Then we won't touch it. straight into the fridge, please.

-Should we put that in the freezer?

-Is there room?

-Yeah, pop that in there.

That will get really cold. So tell us about journalism, where did that begin?

I don't know, I had to find a job after university

and I had a friend who started doing it and I thought, "This is the life."

I started off in local radio, had a fantastic time in Southhampton.

-I then moved up to London in radio and...

-Yeah, BBC News 24.

BBC News 24, yeah.

Chief political correspondent for them and then became a foreign correspondent, moved out to Paris.

-Thought, "this is the life."

-What was Paris like? Don't quickly whisk over that!

Fabulous. Four years in Paris, except they did send me to Iraq and Afghanistan in that time

when there were wars going on so that was kind of a bit stressful..

-Wow.

-..being in those sort of places.

-This is stressful.

-Is that what every journalist wants?

Do you want to be in the war zones or where the action is, not necessarily a war zone?

You want to be where the big story is. So when people go,

when you get that phone call, and it does happen. "How fast can you get to the airport?"

You say, "Two hours?" You've got an hour and a half, that's when the flight leaves and you...

Can you squeeze some lemon for me?

-Yeah.

-Just the one? What else is going in?

That's going in the vierge, which is here.

Tomatoes, olives, touch of balsamic. I'll put them in at the end.

When you're in these places, feeding yourself is quite a big issue.

-Mmm.

-Having clean water and making sure you've got all that.

-When I was in... I went to Hurricane Katrina...

-Mmm-hmm.

The main problem we had there was because there was no running water, just food hygiene, staying well,

and that was the hostile environment that we had to deal with.

You don't think about it. We see you report on the news, we just accept

they're there, they get on with it.

That's not the case. And I've got to take you to your meetings

with all these famous world leaders, how do you charm them?

The likes of our own Tony Blair, Gordon Brown?

We sit opposite them.

We want to get stuff out of them, they're guarded, they want to protect, don't want to say too much.

You've just got to try and approach them as human beings, try to speak to them normally, and also

make them think that just as we've got an audience, they've got an audience,

and if they talk in jargon no-one's going understand a word they say.

-So I say, "What does that mean just in plain terms?"

-Loosen them up.

-Just try and be a bit more human with them.

-It's not always that easy, is it?

-No!

-When the election gets closer, it's going to become more difficult.

It's like trying to get your chef to cook the perfect meal for you!

-It's all happening here now. Is this a bit of tempura you've got here?

-Yes, it is.

You're gonna take that fish, dip that in there, get that in there.

You're going to pop that into hot oil, wait, it's the lightest crispiest batter...

I know, it's fantastic...

-I had no idea that you use fizzy water for this.

-Oh, what's this?

-That's the pine nuts.

-Yeah?

-Crushed up pine nuts.

-OK.

He's getting that in there. Have a look at this.

The idea is lay the fish away from yourself, take the excess with the pine nuts, bearing in mind it's

ice water, flick the rest on top and by flicking this creates air.

This will give you a crispier batter. Flick the pieces.

What a lovely tip that is. OK... Oi, what you lot doing down there?

Can I just...? Breaking news!

-Yeah.

-Breaking news, I think they're breaking things over there!

Breaking news...!

We're going to go where the action is.

Four minutes to go, and what wonderful colours there, ladies and gentlemen. OK. But guess what?

The top story has now moved, we're going over to the green kitchen and get a report live.

Louise is here. Louise Minchin, what is happening? Oh, my word!

-What has gone on here?

-Don't ask.

-Oh, dear.

-Look, look, look!

I told you I wasn't very good. I can't believe I've done that!

-Are you all right?

-No, I'm fine.

That's all I'm concerned about, that you're all right.

-I'm just concerned about the food.

-There we are, darling.

Oh, Ainsley, that's lovely!

-Are we going to have enough time to put...?

-I'm not saying stop it!

-There you go. Just stop it!

-HE LAUGHS

We've only got a couple of minutes to go.

-Please be very careful, we've got broken glass.

-I'll be careful.

Beautiful. I know, it was a lovely dessert, but don't worry about that.

-But the idea is still in the glass.

-Chef, what can I do?

Just look at that piece of duck, ladies and gentlemen.

Look how gorgeous that duck looks.

We've got about a minute and a half to go. Very, very little time.

-OK, Louise...

-Yes.

-In one minute...

-Yes.

-..get the bread and butter puddings out of the oven for me.

-OK.

-Do you trust me?

-We're going to dust them with the icing sugar...

-Let's just get the right cloth for you.

-I'll do this.

-In front of me.

-Dust them with icing sugar.

-Which is just in front of me.

-Yes.

-Wow, look at those.

That's beautiful. Look at that! He did beautifully!

CHEERING

-One minute to go.

-They're perfect.

Just a dusting of icing sugar. Don't go mad.

Fish. On the fish, around it.

Get them tomatoes off that tray and put them next to it, yeah.

OK, ladies and gentlemen, look at the food, look at it all unfold.

About 20 minutes ago we just had a couple of bags of ingredients.

-We've got 35 seconds for the chefs to get the food on the plate.

-Come round this side.

Audience, you are voting for what the chefs did with the ingredients they were given.

Have they impressed you enough? Think about it before you press that button.

-You come over this side.

-Yeah.

-Mint.

-Mint?

-Yeah, in a bowl behind...

-20 seconds.

-That's it.

Get ready to count down any moment now. OK, here we go.

Ten, nine, eight,

seven, six, five, four,

three, two, one.

Stop cooking!

Well, done, well done.

OK, let's check out today's menu.

In the red kitchen James and Jon have come up with pancetta wrapped fillet of red mullet

with crushed potatoes, roast asparagus and sauce vierge.

Followed by Jon's pine nut tempura of red mullet with roasted tomatoes and lemon.

Roasted asparagus, pancetta, olive salad with poached egg and croutons and finally, marbled coffee cup,

caramel fingers and a rich chocolate sauce.

In the green kitchen Richard and Louise have been equally busy, shatteringly so.

There we have Thai duck noodle broth with fresh spinach and chilli,

roasted duck breast with mixed spices, stewed peppers and red wine sauce.

Thai duck curry with coconut and ginger.

Papaya, cinnamon and ginger bread and butter pudding with lime cream

and finally, Louise's smashing papaya and mousse.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Doesn't the food look good, ladies and gentlemen?

I've got a feeling it's going to taste fantastic, too.

-Pick up your cutlery.

-Dig in.

-It looks sensational.

-Go for a bit of this, yeah.

Tell us what you've done here.

We split the fish in two ways. One, we wrapped in the pancetta, I put some sage leaves in,

crushed down the potatoes, olive oil. We've cooked them first with a bit of mint, olive oil,

salt and then I finished it with a bit of lemon because the rest of the lemon that Jon squeezed

we roasted the asparagus, the tomatoes, the olives as well, added the lemon juice at the end

and some basil and parsley, sauce vierge, touch of balsamic.

-That tastes so fresh, so zesty...

-That's the idea.

-It's the Mediterranean.

-Absolutely.

You feel yourself there with the Cyprus trees...

You can catch all this too, ladies and gentlemen, check out

the website, recreate these recipes yourself. Have a go, please.

-Now you know how to do a tempura.

-I've got confidence now.

I haven't squeezed my lemon. Thank you.

You can see the fish, if we turn this round, the fish,

it's just cooked through, it's how you want it.

It's not too flaky, it holds together well, it should be very light and crispy.

-It's batter, but it's so light, it melts in your mouth.

-It pops.

-It pops. It just goes...

-Fizzy water.

-Extraordinary, the fizzy water combination. I have never seen that done before.

-There you go.

The idea is exactly the soft poached egg.

Oh, look at that over those vegetables.

Croutons in there, the rest of the pancetta,

release the oil from the fat and then use that as the base dressing.

Finish the croutons in it, asparagus.

-This is the poshest egg and bacon I'm ever going to taste.

-Yes!

This is caramel fingers.

So it's sliced bread, hot pan, caramel both sides, you've got to be very careful.

-The marbled mousse, and then I did a chocolate sauce...

-Thank you.

..cocoa powder, water, sugar and then cooked it down really fast,

and you get a really rich sauce.

Yeah, have a bit of that.

-That is so naughty!

-Oh, that is what we like, isn't it?

We like a bit of naughtiness! James and Jon, ladies and gentlemen.

Good job.

-Oh, I nearly ended up in your arms, didn't I?

-Again!

It was all that stuff we've had on the floor.

You pick up your cutlery and have a go too.

Lots of lovely flavours. Shall we start off with the broth?

So, I used my duck trimmings.

I cut the duck down into the two areas, all the trimmings and all the fat.

I cooked down a little bit of onion, some ginger and some chilli.

We extract duck flavours on top, passed that through a sieve

and then that's when we added the noodles, the coconut milk,

a bit of lime juice, coriander, spinach and a bit of fresh chilli.

Are those flavours coming through?

Fantastic. The chilli I thought was going to be too hot, but it's not. It's perfect and it's lovely

and creamy, and you can't call that a broth, it's not a broth.

-It's got to have a more romantic name because it's just delicious.

-Let's call it Louise's broth then!

-Well, yes.

-Roast duck, I cooked half the duck breast...

-I can't do that.

You can, you can do all of it.

..roasted it and then we added some pepper, ground ginger, coriander,

and some cardamom, which I ground down in a pestle and mortar,

put those on top of the skin and caramelised them off, extracted those flavours.

Bit of honey, red wine, nob of butter last minute to create the sauce, and then we let it rest in the juices,

and it's... I had a taste, the end bit, and it's so tender.

Fantastic. Just look at that, ladies and gentlemen. You can see that is wonderfully tender.

Amazing flavours there as well.

-And was that red wine sauce.

-Red wine, yeah.

Beautiful flavours, and tender as well.

Have a go on the curry. We cooked down the onion and the duck, then we added our curry powder,

the cumin, the cardamom, cooked those out for some time to release those flavours,

then stock went on top and then we just let that stew away.

Coconut milk to finish, bit of coriander,

sesame oil, touch of spinach.

Because you had such a large bag of spinach I used it in several areas.

Beautiful. That is creamy, and a completely different taste from this curry.

-Not too spicy.

-Less spicy, but delicious.

-Delicacy in the flavours.

-Well, this will calm you down a little bit.

We've got cinnamon, papaya, honey...

-Oh, excuse me.

-A little bit of ginger in there.

This is a bread and butter pudding, quick and simple.

-Whisked up the eggs with the cream, a bit of milk...

-I love bread and butter pudding.

-Here we are.

-We've served this with a yoghurt, lime yoghurt.

-Very light, very easy.

-There is the papaya. Does it all work well?

I love bread and butter pudding and I...

I'm glad I put papaya into there before it ended up on the floor.

We wouldn't have had that if I had my way.

That is beautiful and I would have never thought of doing with papaya.

-It could go with anything.

-Really tasty.

-Not much of this, however it should taste well.

-You blended the fresh papaya...

-I warned you about my presentation skills,

-but I think that is an improvement on what I smashed.

-The first go. Is that why smashed it?

-No.

-All the way down, go on, straight up there.

We blended up the papaya, bit of white wine and ginger, put that in the bottom of the glass,

and then we whisked up some cream, a bit of yoghurt,

icing sugar and then folded through the puree.

-And the result?

-Delicious and I do wish there was more, but it's on the floor.

Oh, don't worry. Louise and Richard.

APPLAUSE

I agree with you, ladies and gentlemen, the food looks absolutely stunning.

Difficult to tell who's going to win. Is it going to be Jon and James

or Louise and Richard? I have no idea, but all will be revealed in a matter of seconds.

Please, audience, pick up your keypads and will you all vote now. Let's have a look at this.

Are you in the mood for a bit of duck or are you in the mood for a bit of red mullet?

We're about to find out.

OK, the boards are now filled.

Come on, computer, sort this out. Who has won today's 20-minute challenge?

And you can see it's a red kitchen win!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Oh!

Oh!

Stunning, come over here you, there you go.

And there's your Ready Steady Cook winner's plate

and I'm sure you'll be reminding Louise of that for a very long time, won't you?

I'll just present next to her going...

-What about your charity, Jon?

-I'm going to give the money to the Prince's Trust,

which is a fantastic charity that Prince Charles set up and it does amazing work for..

-It certainly does.

-..neglected children who need a lot of help

-so I'd like the money to go there.

-Thanks very much.

-Great to have you on the programme. Well done to you too, chef.

-Cheers.

-Excellent.

-Oh, I feel like I've left chef down.

-When he's holding up his plate

-you could be sipping away at your cup of tea.

-Lovely. Thank you.

-Your Ready Steady Cook mug. Thanks for coming on.

-I've enjoyed it.

-You'll have to come back for revenge one day.

-I'll make sure I cover my toes so I don't mess up.

-We don't mind that. Richard...

-Cheers, thanks.

-Superb food.

Ladies and gentlemen, what can I say? Louise Minchin and Jon Sopel.

APPLAUSE

See you later.

Time for today's quickie bag challenge.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Kate Colquhoun who has quite a serious challenge for our chefs today.

-Tell them all about it, Kate.

-I've brought along my leftovers from last night

and I'd like to challenge you guys to make something worthy of a dinner party.

Wow. Have you had it in the fridge? You haven't left it out?

-It's been in the fridge!

-OK. All right.

-It's properly wrapped.

-Great, she brought a doggy bag.

-Well, give us your bag over here.

-Will you come over and have a bit of a try afterwards?

-I'd love to.

-OK.

But for the moment, ladies and gentlemen, Kate Colquhoun.

APPLAUSE

It's horrible to think what people do with their waste, isn't it?

-You don't know quite what to expect.

-We create far too much waste.

-Far too much waste.

I'm going to have a little chat with Kate about that shortly.

Puy lentils, we've got a bit of salmon there.

Half-eaten cheese, half a bag of lettuce, baby-leaf herb salad.

How many times do we through this away?

-Yeah.

-So many of us throw our little lettuce leaves away.

We want to know something to do with it.

-A banana that's turning a little bit black.

-Mm-hm.

Yeah, and, of course, a couple of nice fresh tomatoes.

But what about our chefs? What ideas will they come up with for Kate so she doesn't have to waste?

First up, James.

Right.

Actually, it's better than I thought

so with this one, what we can do

is spice up the lentils - bit of balsamic, soy sauce,

that kind of thing in there.

Warm the salmon and flake it in there, with the addition of herbs

and a touch of lemon on the salmon at the end.

We can do a vegetarian with this. We can do like a crushed potato cake,

I've got onion in the stores I can use, some herbs.

We can do some spiced-up broccoli and a chunky tomato sauce,

melted cheese on it, that kind of thing.

Got to be a banana split.

Actually, no, let's do crepes with banana and chocolate sauce.

Oh, right, OK. Very nice indeed.

No mention of the lettuce, no wonder that gets left. All right.

-Salad!

-Richard Phillips, let's see what he comes up with.

Yeah, um, let's take some of the, half the salmon, with the potato,

let's make a really nice herby fishcake, we'll blend that up

-to get a...

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-Pane it, get it pan-fried,

shallow-fry that off.

Bit of tomato, olive oil, lemon juice to make a very quick, simple dressing to go with the fishcake.

We'll make like a rissole with these.

We'll sort of, um bit of grated cheese,

crush the broccoli and the other half of the potatoes,

again we'll pan fry this. A nice vegetarian starter.

We'll do a chocolate crepe with a little bit of banana going through it

and we'll crush the bananas and maybe try and make a butterscotch sauce

-with some banana going through it. and then a nice bit of salad on the side.

-Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Both chefs have come up with some really challenging ideas for our foodie audience today.

Which way will they go?

Will it be James in the red or Richard in the green.

Pick up those keypads and vote now. Let's have a look.

OK, straight away people are making up their minds, others are looking at the chefs thinking, hmm.

It looks a bit James, is it green, is it red?

Computer, who won today's ten-minute quickie challenge?

You can see by one it's a Richard Phillips win. OK.

And your ten minutes cooking time, chef, starts now.

-OK, what can we do?

-If you could make me some breadcrumbs I can pane, please, Ainsley.

So breadcrumbs, bit of milk and some eggs cracked.

That's all I'm going to pane my fishcake with.

-James is getting a few pans on there. If you could make me a chocolate crepe.

-Yeah.

-And we'll make some caramelised bananas to go down the centre of it.

-Yeah.

-Crepe recipe obviously everyone knows out there.

-Yeah.

-It's two, one, one.

So it's two flour... Sorry, two milk, one flour, one egg.

-OK.

-So if you're making a bucket or if you're making sort of a cupful,

stick to that recipe. Similar to Yorkshire pudding.

OK. We've got to go back to Kate and ask her,

how much waste would you say you have on average every week?

Well, I don't have very much food waste at all,

but your average Brit wastes about a third of everything they buy,

so that's one in every three bags just chucked straight in the bin.

I know, it's extraordinary. We've spoken about this briefly

on Ready Steady Cook before, but what can people do about it?

Do you have to start making lists of what you think you might be cooking throughout the week or what?

Yeah, planning's a great idea.

It's thinking about what your granny and grandpa used to do. It's old-fashioned common sense.

You know, make a list, stick to it.

Buying little and often is great because it reduces packaging,

it reduces the cost of your bills

and you don't end up throwing away as much.

It's quite interesting talking to chefs who have restaurants like Richard and James.

Guys, do you have much waste in the restaurant?

I sort of put a bowl in front of my chefs

and they have to put their waste into the bowl

and then we go through it. The head chefs and sous chefs

will go through it and check to make sure they're not creating

-too much waste.

-OK, chef. Flour, egg, breadcrumbs.

-Perfect. Thank you.

I've taken my potato and the salmon, some chopped dill, a little bit of mustard, an egg

and we've mixed all this up with our fishcake. Is there a pan on there?

-There's a pan in the middle here. Are you using that, Chef?

-Yeah.

Can we pinch that? Thank you.

Let's get our fish cake here. It's quite thick.

I like them quite thick so nice and moist in the centre.

-Put that on a low heat.

-That one's really nice and warm.

I've put my lentils in with a little bit of red wine vinegar,

knob of butter, we're going to warm those through.

A touch of chilli flakes in there as well.

Anything else I can use, Chef? The broccoli or anything?

Why don't we saute this broccoli off in a little bit of sesame seed, we'll put it through the salad.

-No problem.

-We're going to make a nice warm salad with the salmon,

lemon, oil. Some good extra virgin olive oil.

I've put a little bit of sesame oil in there too.

And do you want a bit of cheese to go into... What?

Just some peeled, nice peeled slivers...

-OK.

-Just a nice, very simple tomato,

-chopped onion and parmesan salad.

-OK.

-Very simple.

-Lovely.

-Just put that salmon into the oven.

Obviously it's very important when you are using leftovers that things are chilled down correctly,

left in the fridge overnight and then it's imperative that it's warmed through correctly as well.

-James, you all right there, mate?

-Yeah.

-Your pancakes going to come together?

Yeah I'm just getting the pan hot and obviously we've got some bananas here.

Caramel first of all, in with the bananas.

-Have we got some butter?

-Little bit of butter.

-Let's get this in the oven, want to get it coloured on both sides..

-OK.

-Turn it over.

Shall I put a few bits of broccoli in there for the salad?

OK, thank you.

OK, there we are, add a couple more pieces.

Cheers, Ains. Right that's going in there.

All right, we're halfway now gentlemen,

start thinking about how you're going to be presenting this food.

-Tomatoes there, Chef, too.

-Got it.

Let's go over and find out where our quickie question comes from today.

Always encouraging the audience to get involved.

This time it's from Natalie from Hemel Hempstead in London.

-How are you doing?

-I'm fine, thank you.

-Very good.

How else would you cook lentils and what would you serve it with?

Well, we've got some puy lentils there but there's a whole variety of lentils out there.

-Gentlemen, who wants to start on this. You're free there, James?

-Yeah.

Lentils. It's one of them old fashioned things, they were hated

but you can use them in different ways. You can make it into bread believe it or not.

Lentil rolls are really, really nice. My suggestion from earlier

which was balsamic vinegar, garlic in there as well, soya sauce, and you spice them up.

That with a piece of fish or even like a pork steak

or a lamb chop on, it's just something like an alternative.

Richard Phillips, what do you think on lentils, Chef?

Soak them overnight.

So put them into water, soak them gently overnight just in the fridge

and then when you cook them it's nice to add lots of flavour to it.

Smokey bacon trimmings for instance and always add a small capful of white wine vinegar,

it helps to open up the lentil and it takes on all the flavour, just a little tip for you.

-That's quite nice.

-Yeah.

-Looking forward to cooking lentils now?

-I am.

-Good question.

Thank you very much indeed. We have puy lentils here,

slightly different French-style and there's red lentils, brown, all sorts of things.

The choice is yours of course. OK, blend up, OK Chef, no probs.

-Tomato dressing for me.

-All right, lovely.

And anything you want in there?

Just a bit of extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar?

There we go.

And a bit of that then.

Didn't think we had a lemon there but we have a lovely lemon here.

Let's get some salad leaves on the go.

-OK.

-Squeeze of lemon.

-Do you want some fresh herbs or not?

-No, just like that please. Thank you.

-OK.

-So lemon juice, olive oil, pinch of salt.

Always dress your salad just before you're going to serve it otherwise the vinaigrette, the acidity...

-Burns the leaves.

-Yeah, absolutely.

And it goes all wilting, there's no bite to it.

OK James, you're finishing off. We've got a lovely chocolate omelette there, haven't we?

So what we... Yeah, caramel pieces, butterscotch sauce,

touch of cream and then just fed it with a bit of butter at the end,

not too much and that's how you get this lovely rich, gooey sauce.

I'm just going to roll this up, in with the banana,

and because the banana's soft obviously you put it in quite towards the end.

If it was a bit firmer you could put it in at the beginning

but because it's soft and old... There's nothing wrong with it,

just bear that in mind if you are using softer fruits.

OK, you've got one and a half minutes to go guys. Plenty of time.

Ha, ha, ha!

There we are. OK. All coming together now.

These are your lentils and if you put your cheese so the heat

of the lentils just going to slightly start to melt that.

OK, there's your other salad there.

-Lovely, thank you.

-Here's this, I'll just remove the blade.

-OK.

-Could you grab me the fishcakes, Ainsley?

-Say that again. Fishcake coming up now, Chef.

OK one minute to go now, gentlemen.

OK, let's get that out there.

-All right, you going to be there, guys?

-Yep.

-Where do you want your salmon cake, Chef?

-Just on top of the lentils.

-OK, there you go.

-Thank you.

Look at that.

OK. All right then, lovely.

All right, we've got our chocolate, lovely chocolate, there we are, coming out now.

-30 seconds, you're OK with that?

-Is there some there?

I'll get one for you. Here we are Chef.

Oh, we haven't got that... A little bit of that there.

-Lovely.

-OK, there you go.

OK, about ten seconds to go, guys.

-Any last minute garnish? Think about this.

-No.

Nine, eight, seven, six.

Five, four, three, two, one!

Stop cooking!

Oh, that's hot, very hot. Be careful.

-Come on then, how are you doing?

-It's fantastic.

Good to have you here and thank you for bringing

the ingredients along but how do you think our chefs have done?

Using up leftovers isn't usually about making pretty food

-but I think you've made it look fantastic.

-Have a bit of a taste.

I think you're going to go straight for your fishcake.

You've got salmon, potato, I put a little bit

-of broccoli, egg, a touch of mustard...

-Mm hmm.

Chopped dill, chopped chervil.

Mixed together. Flour, egg, into the breadcrumbs, pan-fried that off.

And into the oven so I made quite a thick one, it's good for two, that one.

And then the lentils, just cooked down a little red wine vinegar,

add a few soft herbs and a squeeze of lemon juice and a tomato dressing around the outside.

Just a very, very quick, very simple salad.

We dressed the leaves very simply, lemon juice, olive oil,

and then we've added the warm salmon on top with of the cheese, then just some warmed broccoli.

So simple but it can sometimes work and I hope it has this time.

I mean don't forget the classics, sliced beef tomato, parmesan, chopped chives.

The chives have got an oniony flavour

so chopped chives on top and parmesan to finish.

-You very happy with that?

-Very happy.

This is food that would otherwise be in the bin so well done.

We were delighted to have the lovely Louise and John, come and join us.

APPLAUSE

Come on, guys. OK, enjoy your food?

-Fantastic.

-Thanks for joining us on Ready Steady Cook and from all

of us, see you next time. Bye bye!

APPLAUSE

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