Christmas Special Rick Stein's Food Heroes

I've been travelling the length and breadth of Britain

for the last three or four years now, looking for food heroes

and really excellent produce and I was thinking it'd be such a good thing

to get a Christmas hamper of things I really wanted to have as presents or to cook at Christmas.

I mean things like, well obviously turkey, geese, ham, smoked salmon, Christmas pudding.

And for a real touch of luxury, for me, it would be a game pie.

If you're prepared to search for it

you can find really good locally produced food all over the country.

Farm shops, farmers' markets, specialised shops,

dairies and smokers are becoming more popular than ever before.

Well, I have to confess I'm a bit nervous

and I had to give Chalky a bath last night cos I'm at Highgrove.

I'm a judge of the Taste of the West Food Awards and Prince Charles is actually hosting the awards today.

And I think that's a real testimony to how important regional food has become.

And actually, I hate to say this, but I don't really feel I'm quite the most worthy person for being

a judge of these awards cos there's people like Henrietta Green,

who's been championing local produce for years.

But nevertheless, I suppose that's the power of television and,

apart from being a bit nervous I'm very, very proud to have been invited to do it.

A good example of what this programme's all about is Mark Sharman and Debbie Mumford.

They won the Best Producer in the South West with their sharpened cheese.

It's a creamy brie made on the banks of the River Dart in Devon.

They're a small outfit with a herd of Jersey cows, and committed to fine quality food.

And they're now becoming recognised all over the country.

We need, for instance, to remember that the traditional ways

of doing things may not always be the most efficient,

but they may produce the finest end product and be in the greatest harmony with nature.

So, ladies and gentlemen, we have a rich food heritage

and there is, therefore, no reason why we cannot learn from the French and Italians, whose love of

their regional food is ingrained in their national consciousness.

He wants to go. He wants to...

It's a Jack Russell on skates.

Come on, Chalky, meet the Prince.

He does and he was very good. He...

Is it terribly tight for him?

No, I... He just...

Just does it.

Does it eat fish?

He does, he does. Fish and chips.

Chalky, why did you have to cough then?

Being a Christmas programme, turkey comes right at the top of the list.

It's by far the most popular bird for that all important lunch

and we get through 10 million of them every Christmas.

I'm in Lincolnshire at Woodland Farm.

Here, they raise the birds in small groups.

Andrew Dennis, whose idea it is, leaves them free to forage under the trees in his orchards.

It's an experiment that he hopes will grow

as more and more people want to pay a little bit extra for quality.

They look like dinosaurs.

There's a theory that they are descended from the dinosaur.

Of all the farm animals they are by far the most abused

and that's why we have turkeys here because

we're trying to produce, you know, a blueprint for compassionate turkey rearing and breeding.

In this situation, they are grazing beneath the trees because one should always remember that

the turkey is a woodland bird

and they go up to roost at night and express their natural instincts in this way.

They are brought up in very small groups of approximately 200 or less.

Just talking about the unmentionable side of rearing turkeys,

slaughtering them, how d'you do that?

They don't leave the farm during their lives.

They're not sent off to an abattoir.

They're slaughtered by hand, out of sight of each other, so individually in other words,

in a stress free environment, in an old barn, the kind of barn they're used to.

It's the quality of life that's so important. And the quality of death.

And if you can provide for both those things, I think, you know, I'm comfortable with what we do.

I'm driving through the flat fenlands of Lincolnshire.

It's actually also known as Little Holland, and it's beautifully fertile farmland round here,

particularly good for brassicas, cabbage, cauliflower, but above all, Brussels sprouts.

I would not dream of eating turkey or goose for Christmas lunch or dinner without sprouts.

This is the very heart of sprout country.

Sorry, Chalks.

And this is Roger Welbery, the self-proclaimed king of sprouts.

Let's face it, the poor old sprout needs someone to champion its cause.

He thinks they should be called British sprouts.

Why do people think they're a joke? Is it school dinners?

-I think the older people realise a bit more...

-Yeah.

but kids immediately think sprouts, errrgh.

It's that... I think it's...

A lot of the kids I've asked, "We don't like sprouts,"

when I've done some demos and I said "Have you ever tried them?" "No." It's the mates.

They listen to the mates. "He doesn't like sprouts, we don't like sprouts."

But if they're dressed up... I think you've gotta get away from the traditional way.

More adventurous, more...

sexy, if you like, but I don't know how you sex a sprout up.

Why not put chocolate on the sprout?

If they won't eat the sprout, put chocolate on it

or brown sugar, sweeten it up.

I'm not so sure about that but... I will give it some...

I don't care, as long as I'm selling my sprouts and folks are eating them.

In his efforts to promote sprouts, Roger invited a county magazine

to his field to photograph Chalky's big day out.

He's probably, you know... sorry.

Shot of that. Thank you very much.

-Cheers.

-He looked too much like a postman.

Now, what I like in a good sprout is it should be

just ever so slightly overcooked, but only so slightly that it's still got a nice bite to it.

And that's what I like to see in a turkey.

It's taken quite a long time to cook.

Every year, I'm astounded by the detail that you get in

the magazines, the newspapers, about the latest way of roasting turkey.

It's like, you've gotta buy this magazine cos otherwise you won't roast your turkey properly.

And they're ever more elaborate, pages and pages of detail.

Some call for a covering in buttered muslin, others call for a bit of foil here, a bit of foil there.

Over on one side, turn around, take your time, lower the temperature, upper the temperature,

in with the turkey, out with the turkey, back in again, out again, down the pub, up here.

One of the things that really

makes me smile is looking at Escoffier's recipe for turkey

which just says - roast in a moderate oven.

This is the full works with sausage and crispy bacon,

fluffy roast potatoes, glazed carrots and bread sauce.

It's the stuff of dreams, especially if you're a long way from home.

This was a bronze turkey that we got from the Copas family who also produce

very fine free range birds on their farm at Cookham in Berkshire.

It's a much larger concern than Andrew's, but it's run on similar lines.

We thought we'd take one of Mr Copas's birds to a hotel

near Carlisle where we conducted our very first taste test - The Crown at Wetherall.

I've come in here because I wanted to see what they looked like.

Now, one of these turkeys is a free range turkey that's lived all its life in orchards, apple orchards,

cherry orchards and the other is a, shall we say, mass produced turkey.

I'm not gonna ask the chefs to parade the turkey out with our

invited staff guests who are going to choose either A or B, so I'm off.

I don't know which is A or B but having looked at them I think I have a pretty good idea.

So we've got two turkeys for you today, turkey A and turkey B.

One of them is a free range turkey that's spent most of

its life outdoors in apple orchards, cherry orchards,

and the other is a battery-raised turkey.

I want you to try and tell the difference.

You want to have a look at the texture, the smell, and, of course, the taste.

If we get it wrong I could be very depressed.

Lastly, let me say that I don't know which is which and I'm gonna vote too.

Smells like Christmas, somebody was saying.

-Everybody finished?

-Mm-hm.

Put them all back down.

And on to turkey B.

I just have to point out one thing, that one of these turkeys, obviously the free range one,

costs nearly four times as much as a battery fed. Is it four times as good?

Let's go.

Now you start to taste the second one I'd like to know whether you can taste a difference.

-Yes, definitely.

-Yeah.

-Good.

The object here is for you to tell me which you think tastes the best, OK?

And I'm gonna vote, but just in case you think

I'm a bit of a smart aleck I'm gonna put up my hand right at the end.

OK, let's go.

Right, who thinks that turkey A is the best?

Oh, gosh.

Well, there's no need for a show of hands, let's have a look at the...

Oh, gosh.

This could be the end of my career.

Turkey A is...

Oh, my gosh, it's the supermarket battery turkey.

It's been a very tough day.

Well done, everybody. Well done, indeed.

And what was turkey B?

Turkey B was Tom Copas, who we were filming with last week.

Do we have to use this piece?

I'm so, so depressed.

Well done, everybody.

I can't believe it but I can see what went wrong.

Basically, I went in the kitchen, I had this idea of

Mr Copas's turkeys being really nice and slim because they were exercising.

I saw one slim one, one nice plumpcious one and I got it into my head that the slim one was it.

I should never have looked at them.

I allowed my sort of intellect, my brain to take precedent over my instincts.

And, of course, all the others worked on their instincts, and they were right.

Well, sometimes in life, things just don't go the way you want them to.

That goes for Jack Russells too, doesn't it, Chalky?

As our autumn months are getting warmer, some vineyards

in East Sussex, like Nyetimber, are producing good sparkling wines from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

I'm here for yet another blind tasting, this time with Oz Clarke,

a friend of mine, and I think he's got the best nose in the business.

We have to taste three wines. Two are champagnes and one is English sparkling wine.

We don't know which is which, but this time I hope to get it right.

-Let's go for A.

-OK, right.

-Go on.

Look at that. Look at the bubbles, I just love that sight.

It's all right. It's quite good.

-I mean, you know, knock you back, easy.

-Yeah.

Hasn't got any exciting characteristics but...

No. No, no, I agree. I concur with that, Oz.

Concur? Concur?

-When was the last time you used the word concur?

-Never.

Right, I shall try and think of something.

It's not... It's not green, it's got a nice biscuity finish.

I like it and I say that's a champagne.

Let's try the others. The obvious thing is this is a much darker colour.

It's because the wine's been aged.

-Yeah.

-Cos when you age your wine, a white wine goes darker.

-A red wine goes lighter as you age it, a white wine goes darker.

-Does it?

And this has got a beautiful, golden kind of colour that...

It reminds me of some of the wonderful chalices

that we have in Canterbury Cathedral, that's the colour they are.

I hope it doesn't taste the same or it'll taste of Brasso.

-Oh, is that star stuff.

-It is nice.

I agree, I love that.

Mm.

Right, lastly...

Fine, but it doesn't look very lively in the glass. You see it?

The first two had quite a lot of bubble going.

This is not much going on there.

-What about the nose?

-The bubbles are a bit lazy.

Lazy bubbles.

Ah, wine maker's fault.

I don't find... Again, this A and C seem to have a reasonably strong relationship

and B just seems to be in an entirely different world.

Oh, I take a little point out of that then, mmm.

B is the English wine, and why?

-Because it's the best.

-Because it's the best, Rick, exactly.

OK then, Oz, it's over here.

What's this? People leaving messages for you on vineyards?

This is Shakespearean, Rosalind and Orlando used to leave...

Yeah, yeah. Listen, I'm getting a bit tense now, let's just...

Hurray! We've done it!

Look! It wasn't just you!

-And you as well.

-Look, I did say it had a nice finish.

-OK.

-Ahh, I tell you what, we're back on...

-We can come again?

-Yeah.

So cheers to the boys that made the Nyetimber.

Oz, what is so special about sparkling wines from the south of England?

The south of England, for a start it's got the same soil as Champagne.

There's the Paris basin, Paris sits inside

this limestone ring and it goes right round from the Loire Valley, Sancerre to Chablis to Champagne to the cliffs

of Calais, the cliffs of Dover, the North Downs, the South Downs, right round to Portland Bill.

It's the same soil. So we have the same soil as Champagne.

We've almost got the same climate.

Every year it gets warmer. Every September, every October we have the hottest one ever.

It's almost the same climate as Champagne.

We've got the same grapes, the chardonnay grape,

the pinot noir grape, the pinot meneae, the same grapes.

They grow here beautifully on much smaller crops, by the way.

And we've got wine makers who use the same methods

as champagne to make the wine sparkle but they use it with such passion.

Do you ever get fed up with wine, Oz?

Do you ever get fed up with haddock?

-I love haddock.

-Well, I love wine.

But sometimes I do get fed up with wine.

In a week I might taste 1000 wines.

Sales of smoked salmon soar at Christmas time, and one of

the best and oldest cures comes from Foremans here in London's East End.

A lot of people think that it's an ancient Scottish tradition

because this fish comes from Scotland.

But actually, traditional cold smoking of salmon, and this is a cold smoked salmon,

came over to this country roughly 100 years ago from eastern Europe.

And it was people like my great-grandfather that brought over those techniques of salmon curing.

They didn't even realise there was a salmon native to

this country, so they would import salmon from the Baltic in barrels of salt water.

The three month journey in salt water

didn't really do much for the fish.

And they then discovered this wild salmon coming down every summer to the fish market from Scotland,

started smoking that fish because they thought if we've got a native fish here, let's try it.

The quality was so outstanding that smoked Scottish salmon started to take off.

This fish would have taken about five years to grow to this size,

whereas the farm fish would have got to this size in about a year.

So, you know, a lot of difference.

-Could you cut us off a slice of that?

-Absolutely.

Here we are. So let's go for the...

-This is really interesting for me.

-..farmed salmon first.

That's lovely. It's really...

I see what you mean by the London cure, it's really mild and sort of subtle really.

The art of successful salmon smoking is to buy the best quality fish

you can get and do as little to it as possible.

Just a touch of salt to cure it and a touch of smoke to enhance it.

-You don't want it to be too smokey.

-The London cure?

That's what we call the London cure.

-Let's try...

-Try the wild.

Let's have a go here.

I think they're very different.

I would compare them to a sort of a nice,

light chardonnay compared to a sort of, a full-bodied Bordeaux.

They're both great, but they're really quite different.

The wild smoked salmon was delicate.

It's a bit like the difference between a native oyster and a Pacific.

Actually, one of the best farmed salmon around comes from the Outer Hebrides.

It's so good it's almost like wild.

A bit like the weather here.

Well, as ever on the Hebrides it's turned out nice again.

I'm on my way to a hotel where some Hebrideans have laid on some local seafood for me, but the lady

in the hotel where we're staying said I must stop off at this tower.

See it there? You may just be able to see it.

Well, it's actually a Victorian folly but before then

there was a castle, in which lived a chap called Paul of the Thong.

What he used to do was invite his enemies over as dinner guests

and then strangle them with a long, thin length of leather.

I sort of hope I'm in for a better and more hospitable reception this evening.

As it turned out, they couldn't have been more hospitable.

That little glow in the distance signalled a blazing hearth,

good local food and whisky, lots and lots of whisky.

The laird laid on a splendid display of produce from the islands.

All I had to provide was an appetite.

Well, I have to say, this is some very, very interesting seafood to me.

First of all, a lot of people would never believe

you can eat a sea urchin but they're extremely nice and Fergus was just saying, describing

the flavour, which I think is perfect, is a cross between peach and iodine.

But some of these other things, right?

Now, I've always wanted to say this. This is a squat lobster

and I regard it as the Gollum of shellfish.

And you can see why, cos they've got these very long, gangly arms.

They're lovely, they're a by-product of fishing for langoustine or prawns, as they call them up here.

We had hot and cold smoked salmon, smoked, actually, in peat, which is delicious.

The chef, John Buchanan, was turning out really good dishes of seafood all evening,

including langoustines, scallops and turbot, all with light sauces which complimented them so well.

Everything seems so abundant here. I mean, how would you...

What would you say about the food, particularly the seafood of the Western Isles?

We get the best raw ingredients.

It's raw, it's natural and we don't want to add too much cos it'll spoil.

This is the best. We get lobster, langoustine, scallops, turbot.

It's fantastic stuff.

Do you realise how lucky you are?

Yeah. Every night when we cook this stuff. We're really pleased with it.

I'm a bit fussy about my turbot, but this was cooked to perfection.

Tonight, we've had everything that's best about the Hebrides.

Lobster, langoustine and grouse, there's loads of game here as well.

So, I've just got to thank Langass Lodge

for such perfect and such simple food, which is what I really like.

So cheers.

-Cheers. Cheers.

-Fantastic.

My main quest in coming to the islands was to see Angus Macmillan's organic farmed salmon in Benbecula,

which you can now buy in some supermarkets.

What we reckon is that every time we talk about fish farming I get a sheath of emails

from people saying this is devil's stuff, this is devil's work, you know.

It can't be like that. It's like all farming, isn't it?

I mean, there's good uns and bad uns.

Well, I mean, we know that the wild fish is just not available now,

-there's over-catching, over-fishing.

-Yeah.

And aquaculture's here to stay.

-Yeah.

-What we have to ensure is that we do it in the best possible way.

-Yeah.

-First of all, so that we look after the fish that

we're growing, their welfare is to the highest degree.

But more importantly, you have a product that is in tandem with nature.

Well, Angus has just told me that he's been standing on that land just over there, looking

at these cages and not being able to see them because of the waves going right over the top of them.

This is the first time I've actually been at a fish farm which is truly out at sea, and suddenly

you can see what they say about being out in open sea.

There's water rushing down here all the time.

And constantly, you're getting clean water.

And that is the main thing about organic salmon, it's not only that but the cages

are well spaced apart, and I'm sure a low density of fish in the cages.

I mean, it just makes sense to me.

I know people are gonna start writing to me saying, "You shouldn't be covering fish farming at all,"

but there's good farmers and bad farmers and it's the same with aquaculture.

They don't have any electronic feeding machines here.

They deliberately feed the fish by hand so that they only get what

they need, and there's no excess food on the bottom polluting the water.

You've got two.

Well, this, to me, is a very attractive fish,

a lovely colour, as you can see, and it's also nice and sleek.

And the thing that I always look for in good farmed fish are the shape of the fins.

This is used to swimming a great deal.

And one of the things that Angus was saying was that because the fish here are out in

a strong current their muscles are being engaged actively all the time, and you can feel that.

When I just go like that, the actual fillet is really firm.

The other thing that people worry about is lice,

sea lice, and there are no lice on this fish.

Again, that's because the fish are in low densities and they're out here in the current.

Yeah, I'd quite like to do something with that.

Eat it, in other words.

Now, this is roasted salmon with salsa verde but unusually, I'm going to actually stuff the salmon

with salsa verde and roast it on a bed of tomatoes.

I sprinkle the sliced tomatoes with a good handful of capers

and then two or three coarsely chopped cloves of garlic.

Next plenty of fresh thyme and a good amount of sea salt.

Drizzle olive oil all over everything and then a little bit of water as well.

Lay the fillets of salmon on top and don't forget to season them on the inside.

Look how lovely and pale the flesh is.

That's because there's no pink dye in their feed.

Now, to make the salsa verde stuffing using mint, parsley, anchovies, garlic and capers.

This is actually my own dish, but it's just the sort of thing I'd like for Christmas,

probably on Christmas Eve, something a bit different from turkey or goose on Christmas Day.

It's actually based on Italian ideas of cooking.

First of all is salsa verde, which I made really stiff and dry so

that it makes a nice stuffing, but also the tomato that's under there,

and the water and the olive oil is a way of cooking the Italians call aqua patso, which means mad water.

I don't quite know why it refers to that but maybe as it's boiling

briskly like this it's going bonkers.

But it produces this lovely emulsion which'll work really well with that salmon.

Oil the top of the fish and sprinkle with chilli flakes, some more thyme and a final bit of seasoning.

That goes in the oven for about 25 minutes, a hot oven.

20 to 25 minutes is more than enough for cooking a fish like this.

Let's face it, come Christmas Eve, you don't want to be locked away in the kitchen all night.

And an elegant and simple dish like this frees you up nicely to enjoy the festivities.

Those tomatoes have cooked in the juices from the fish

and have softened in the oil and become sweet.

This is a 6lb salmon and it'll feed a dozen people.

And do you know, it goes really well with a good glass of sparkling English white wine.

Finally, before we leave these hospitable islands,

I must just mention the smoked salmon of North Uist.

Because they don't have any trees in these parts the fish are cured and then smoked with

local peat, which gives them a distinctive flavour, reminiscent of the Jura and Islay whiskies -

tarry and sweet and, for the connoisseur, well worth the journey.

I don't know if it was the '60s or early '70s, but about the time

of The Good Life that everybody started getting chest freezers.

And the reason for it was all your garden vegetables could go in there.

Your runner beans, broad beans, peas, even carrots.

And you put them in little packets and if you were clever you

labelled them, but I never did and they stayed there for three years, then you threw them away.

And it's actually a lot easier to make chutney and certainly a lot more stylish and, to me,

nothing sums up better the whole joy and anticipation of Christmas

than chutneys and pickles with the cold turkey

and, in my case, always with lovely, crispy baked potatoes.

So, where better to explore and celebrate the fruity delights

of English pickles and chutneys than the heart of the WI?

The nerve centre of this esteemed movement

in Denman College in Oxfordshire, where I met the ladies who really understand the art of preserving.

I made this programme in France last summer and

I don't think the French have any idea about the quality that there is here.

I think they're slightly disparaging of our food anyway, but just to show

them what these ladies can turn out and just to get them to taste it.

And also just to get to taste it with the cheese

and the ham and turkey, I think they'd be incredibly impressed.

Right, well here, this looks interesting.

Crunchy courgette pickle. What's in here, apart from courgettes?

Onion, just a little bit of onion, mustard seed and sugar and that's...

-It's so nice.

-Yeah.

-Cranberry and orange?

-Yes.

-What's in it?

-Fresh cranberries...

-You can make this about a week before Christmas.

-Really?

It doesn't need to mature like a chutney.

And it's just fresh cranberries, sugar and a fresh orange,

grated zest and the juice.

Extremely simple. That's lovely, obviously, with turkey.

Yeah. And a lovely colour.

I'm thinking turkey sandwiches.

-I like this.

-Yes, it's Moroccan preserved lemons.

Oh, good.

There's some very good instructions here.

Rinse well and chop, add to rice, couscous, salads and fish recipes.

Quite right. Well, I'm not...

No, it's going to be very salty.

-Do we need to rinse it?

-No, no, it's fine cos I'm very used to them.

Just try the juice.

Lovely. I think people put too much other flavours in Moroccan lemons.

Just trying to break a bit off here.

-It's gonna be very salty.

-Don't worry, I do 'em myself.

-Excellent, excellent.

-Mm.

-OK. Jules, isn't it?

-Yes, it is.

-So we've got mango, is that what it is, mango?

-Mango.

-It's very posh writing.

Can't read it.

-And prune.

-Prune, yes.

-It says "great with ham".

-Great with ham.

-Right.

-Yeah.

-So, let's try the prune first.

It's...

That is seriously committed chutney that. It's really good.

I mean, really thick and...

What would you like to eat that with, apart from ham?

-Strong, mature cheddar...

-Yeah, yeah.

-And, um...

-And this?

I always put that with coronation chicken.

What a great idea. Cos it's mango chutney.

Yeah.

Indeed.

It's very delicately spiced.

-Yeah.

-That's beautiful.

Do you like making chutney? What's so special about chutneys to you?

I sort of got into that just by mistake and that's

just been something I've been doing for the last two years.

And it's just something I've been doing with, you know, the Fulham WI.

-Fulham WI.

-The Fulham WI.

Well, that's very posh.

I see. Now it goes with the writing.

I can't stop thinking about the Fulham WI.

But, Chalky, these chutneys are really good and I know precisely what they'd go well with.

Now I mentioned right at the start of the programme game pies.

I love them at Christmas.

I've tried many over the years and deep in the heart

of the Devon countryside you'll find one of the best there is.

It's made here in the village of Silverton by Dave Haggett, who uses local game.

It changes depending on what's available but usually it's venison, wild duck, partridge and pheasant.

He makes it with red wine and a mixture of dried herbs and pork forcemeat to hold it together.

And that's put into a hot water pastry case, very similar to the casing on a pork pie.

They take a lot of care over their pies and they did this one for us to show how it was done.

Pies mean prizes for Dave and his boys, and in the world of pies

it's very important to look pretty and elegant.

I know some people find game pies far too powerful in the domain of plus four-wearing, claret-swigging,

modern day country squires, but what struck me about these pies

was that they weren't too gamey but were moist and luxurious.

Lastly, the seasoned jelly is added while the pie is still hot, and that sticks to the pastry and meat.

So many sad little pies are made without jelly these days but this ain't one of them.

This is a real bite of the countryside and

what better to have with it than the best of British pickles, piccalilli.

Well, I've bought about six or seven piccalillis from the shops just to see how to make the best one.

And generally they were either too weak

and just yellow with no flavour or too acerbic, too salty, too coarse.

What I'm looking for is subtlety really, a good mustard flavour, a bit of chilli in there too

and a touch of sugar but not too much sugar, it had to be slightly more salty, and a good texture.

You prepare the veg and put it in brine until you're ready to cook it.

That helps to keep it crisp.

Well, it is a lovely late September day and it's the sort

of time of year, as a cook, I love the best because you've got so many vegetables ripe, so much fruit ripe.

And it's the sort of time that I think preparing for Christmas is the most satisfying

because making something like piccalilli,

where you're taking the abundance of vegetables and chopping them up

in anticipation of that lovely piccalilli on Boxing Day

and eating it with maybe some cold roast goose or some game pie. It just...

There's a sense of building up the excitement for Christmas even three months ahead.

Dissolve some sugar into a pan of distilled malt vinegar and add three cloves of crushed garlic.

When the sugar's dissolved, put in the veg and bring it gently to a simmer.

Now add flour and the main flavourings - mustard powder,

ginger powder, turmeric, allspice, cayenne and a grate of nutmeg.

Add some vinegar to make a paste and then loosen it with a ladle full of stock from the cooked vegetables.

Take the veg out of the stock and keep to one side and put

the paste into the hot liquor and allow it to thicken.

Then put all your veg back in.

They say that the word piccalilli comes from India and it's an amalgam of pickles and chilli.

Recipes like this were all the rage in the 18th century...

Or all the Raj!

Er, sorry about that.

This doesn't look like a ham shop but I'm told it's the right address.

The family here are the Craven-Smith-Milnes and they make really good hams from

an old-fashioned recipe named after the village of Alderton in Suffolk.

It was originally made there by a colonel who discovered the method over 100 years ago

across the Atlantic in Virginia, a place well noted for its fine hams.

-Is this the right place?

-Absolutely.

-The hams.

-Charlie Craven.

-Charlie...

-I'm Richard.

Very nice to meet you.

'I came here to meet father and son team, Richard and Charlie,

'who continue the tradition in their stately pile in Nottinghamshire.'

Well, I must say it looks lovely.

I mean I haven't... I've heard so much about the ham and...

Let's see what you think.

We'd love to hear what you say about it.

Well, I mean, need I taste it when it looks so wonderfully moist?

-And I'm sure this...

-Have a bit.

I'm going to taste it to see.

-Good?

-I shook my head in wonderment.

The original recipe came from Colonel Dickinson, who was a great character,

and we've developed it slightly.

We think it's a very good product and we simply love it.

We eat an awful lot of it ourselves, I'm afraid, and...

Cos it's wonderful if you've got people staying or if you go for...

I mean, we go for sort of what one might call self-catering holidays and it's wonderful to take a ham.

I never get tired of it. My wife says I mustn't eat too much of it because she says it'll make me fat but...

It doesn't seem to have done, I have to say.

The family have converted one of the outbuildings on their estate and produce the hams by first

steaming them and then removing the rind, revealing a fine layer of fat underneath.

This, they plaster with generous quantities of marmalade.

It's this that gives the sweet and sour taste which is so attractive.

Then they're roasted and come out amazingly moist.

Long may Colonel Dickinson's Alderton ham continue.

But the home of one of Britain's oldest hams is here in York.

It's said that the first hams made here

were smoked in the smouldering remains of the original minster.

Scott's butcher's is the centre for York hams, Barnsley chops and crop of beef.

That's a nice name for a rib joint.

Morning. Morning. Morning.

The current owner, Stephen Bailey, showed me the age-old process.

These days people buy them for Christmas parties

and things like that where before it was a method of not refrigeration,

but preserving them. So they used to come off a very big pig in the farm,

they used to be cured and then hung up in the kitchen for the rest of the year

and people taking slices off them as and when they want them.

Oh, I've got a great image there of hams hanging from hooks in the ceiling.

Big guys coming in from harvests saying, "I want some ham and I want it now."

Big knife, slice...

How would you cook it then?

Sliced, fried, proper lard

and nice fried eggs cooked in where the ham's been as well.

I thought York hams were smoked.

No, there's been a load of theories about 'em being smoked but no, they're not smoked.

I mean, people used to say they were smoked from the wood from the minster, but no.

We've still got the minster and it's still got all its wood.

Well, that only goes to show, you've gotta talk to them as know.

And them as knew back then would take generous quantities of this product,

something I could do with right now to keep me healthy, bright eyed and slim on this gastronomic journey.

Next on the agenda is the famous Pudding Club in the village of Mickleton in Gloucestershire.

And here, a party of stalwarts are waiting to test seven popular puddings, mostly from supermarkets.

The first of seven Christmas puddings this evening, a big welcome please for pudding A.

Pudding A is from Aldi.

Pudding A is from Aldi.

That looks yummy.

It's got whole nuts in it.

Very agreeable that one. Sorry, I shouldn't be...

I mean, I don't know but...

It tastes good but it's crumbly. It's not rich enough.

Very light. And it's not got enough alcohol in it.

And a big welcome please for tonight's second pudding, pudding B.

Pudding B is from Tesco.

Pudding B is from Tesco.

Very... It's quite treacly, isn't it?

Nice and moist but too overpowered by that flavour.

That's a bit too heavy, I think.

I'm enjoying it very much. It's the sort of palate that I like.

It's funny cos the first one I was thinking

I would want more. I really wanted it.

This is like Christmas pudding as we all know it, it's really... It's dense and sticky and rich.

It's good. I'm not, you know, cutting corners.

A big welcome please for the third pudding this evening, pudding C.

I think that one's small.

Pudding C is from Marks & Spencer.

Pudding C is from Marks & Spencer.

Too sweet but better than the one before.

-Nuts.

-I like this one because it's not got so many nuts and it's much more moist.

That one's got the best flavour so far. More plummy.

-Yeah, yeah.

-More traditional.

Ready or not, here we are with our fourth pudding this evening, a big welcome please for pudding D.

Pudding D comes from The Authentic Bread Company.

Pudding D comes from The Authentic Bread Company.

That looks like it's out of a plastic bowl.

Oh yes, it does.

I haven't had a chance to try it yet.

-There's no wow factor to it.

-None at all.

I think it's a little bit like bread pudding, slightly.

Everybody's saying this is a bit bready.

But it's got a lot of fruit in it and it's not over-alcoholed, you know.

So it's quite attractive.

Give a big welcome, please, to your fifth pudding tonight, pudding E.

Pudding E comes from Waitrose.

Pudding E comes from Waitrose.

A whole nut, a whole nut. That's very nice actually.

It tastes like my mum's Christmas pudding.

So that's a good vote.

It tastes of alcohol, so I quite like it.

It looks Christmassy. Some of them haven't looked like Christmas.

A big welcome please for your sixth Christmas pudding of the evening. A big welcome for Pudding F.

Pudding F...

comes from Sainsburys.

Pudding F comes from Sainsburys.

-It's quite...

-It's a bit stiff, isn't it?

-You can tell by the...

-It's a bit dry.

Dry.

It's just not quite as nice as the last one and number A.

It hasn't got any sort of like, individual sort of like flavour.

Some of the others had some sparky flavours.

And I'd like a big special welcome, it is the last one, for Pudding G.

Pudding G...

comes from Somerfield.

Pudding G comes from Somerfield.

Success, Martin. No doubt about it.

They've saved the best till last, I think.

Not too sweet.

It's a film. Kodak made it.

How many people are gonna vote for Pudding A tonight? One, two...

Pudding B? Is that your favourite?

OK, so how is table...

Pudding C going to do this evening? How does pudding C do? Pudding D?

Pudding E. How many are going to vote for that?

What about pudding F? How has that one done tonight?

And finally,

what about Pudding G?

I think this one could be popular.

Have we got a winner? One...

Well, let's see if we can make some sense of that.

In third place tonight,

Pudding C,

made by Marks & Spencer.

Second tonight, and I have to say it's a very close second,

it's only two votes behind the winning pudding, second tonight was Pudding A...

..which comes from Aldi.

Remind me, remind me, which was the table where everybody voted for that one?

Do you remember which one it was? I can't remember who it was.

Big round of applause for tonight's winning pudding, which is Pudding G.

And Pudding G comes from Somerfield.

I'm not doing any more of these taste tests. I quit.

It's end... It's all over.

This is Judy Goodman's farm in the heart of Worcestershire.

She is totally besotted with her birds and believes that the goose

should be the most important bird at Christmas time.

A goose, to me, is just something so special.

Because it's a seasonal bird, geese have never been messed around with, never bred all the year round.

Christmas, superb, because it's got its winter coat on and a little bit of fat under the skin.

The turkey always had that image of being dry.

-Yeah.

-So a goose isn't dry.

It's that dark meat. You've got no white meat, you've got crispy skin.

If you pepper and salt it and a bit of flour to make it crispy.

And the goose is just...

It's small, it's compact, it will feed eight people, ten people.

But it's the passion of walking into your dining room on Christmas Day with something so special as a goose.

And let's remember that the cottage people always had geese.

-Who?

-The cottage people.

-Right, sorry.

-Anyone who lived in a cottage.

So the goose, to them, was something very special.

Guard dog, the feathers, the quills, when there were no pens.

The goose meant so much to them.

And then to celebrate with one of their own birds for Christmas was fantastic.

That looks exquisite!

Well, this is what I've always wanted to do, Rick, is to cook a goose for someone special, like you.

-Now, what we're going to do is we're going to turn him over...

-Yeah.

..because the back is not cooked yet.

-And then we prick that fat gland down there...

-Yeah.

-And down that side there.

-Yeah.

And then you prick it slightly round the parson's nose, there,

and the thigh, to get the surplus fat off that bird there.

And then pop that back in the oven for about 20 minutes to half an hour cos it's a small bird.

And there's the fat there for the roast potatoes.

So you can use that fat in there, it's not too burnt?

Oh, goodness, no. What you do is you drain it off...

-and you can use it for your roast potatoes.

-Yeah.

Put it in a jar in the fridge and it'll last a few months.

You used to rub it on your chest for colds?

That's right. I get people phone me up who have horses, you know, who've got

a bit of arthritis in their fetlocks and they rub on the old goose fat and everything.

It's just amazing stuff.

'My favourite food writer is The Guardian's Matthew Fort.

'He thinks the joys of cold goose are infinite.'

They just look so magnificent, you know.

The long, streamlined shape and that whole glistening, bronze, that oil of fat on the outside.

You just wanna eat it. You can feel it doing your heart good.

-But remember the Gascon paradox, you know the Gascon paradox?

-No.

Well, the Gascon paradox.

The Gascons have the lowest heart disease in Europe.

And they eat more goose and duck fat and goose and duck flesh than anybody else.

This is this huge intake of saturated fat and yet they have a very low level of heart disease.

So I assume, therefore, that duck fat and goose fat and goose flesh are all very, very good for you.

I think you're right. So, we can eat plenty of roast potatoes cooked in goose fat?

I think actually you could fry

an old telephone directory in goose fat and it would just be heaven to eat.

Matthew's a jolly good cook and he came up with this idea of a salad to complement the goose.

It's made with a chopped fennel bulb which has got an aniseedy

flavour and mandarin oranges. Blood oranges would do.

You just take out the segments.

He peels and slices them into segments, making sure that only the sweet flesh goes in,

and then dresses it with plenty of olive oil and flaked sea salt.

He got the idea when he went round Italy on a Vespa.

There you are, Rick, a bit of cold, roast goose.

-And it doesn't get much better than that.

-Oh!

Look at the fat on it.

Come here, you little bugger.

For a little piquancy, he adds his own pickled cucumbers from the garden but you can use gherkins.

And, funnily enough, the texture is like really fine roast beef as well.

It's got that very sort of closed texture, so it's got a certain density to it.

-But it has its very own very distinctive flavour...

-Yeah.

..which isn't beef and it certainly isn't turkey.

And it has real sort of depth and length and goes very well with all these things, you know, which

are very clean and nice and easy to eat on the day after Christmas.

You get to Boxing Day, and you're feeling,

now your liver's pounding as if someone's trampling all over it.

You realise you should never have had a third helping of pudding.

But, you know, you eat this and I think it sort of brings peace and tranquillity to the...

-Absolutely, and you'd wake up in the morning on Boxing Day and think "Yes, cold goose!"

-Mmm.

Whereas not, "Oh, turkey", you know.

Bloody turkey. Not bloody turkey.

Sorry. Turkey, I think, can be, on its day can be a fine bird.

-Yeah.

-But it is not, in my view, in the same class as a goose.

At Christmas time, the most popular cheese by far is Stilton.

And here at Cropwell Bishop in Nottinghamshire, they produce an award winning one.

No, Chalky, sorry, it's a creamery. We can't have you in there.

Having just made a series in France, I can tell you that the one British

cheese the French are willing to say nice things about is Stilton.

-Is that OK?

-Yeah, yeah.

-You're a dab hand at that, then we'll wash our hands.

-OK, fine.

Is that it then?

-Er, no, after that I think we've gotta use the hand sanitising alcohol.

-OK.

Oh, my gracious, this is thorough.

Andy's just been saying the hospitals should have been doing this years ago.

He just said, "If it's good enough for cheese, it's good enough for humans."

I agree with that. Oh, it's really nice.

Once the curds are separated from the whey, they're salted and placed in moulds to form a truckle.

One of the things I really like about doing these food heroes

programmes is that I'm actually learning all the time.

And the thing about Stilton is it's not pressed. It's not a pressed cheese like Cheddar where

you get this really hard cheese, it's just allowed to sort of knit together under its own weight.

What they're doing is that it's been left to settle at one end and it will have knit together.

They're just turning it over so it'll then knit together the other end so you get a proper truckle.

The great thing about it is that there's still plenty of moisture in and it's still fairly

open in texture which will allow the blue veining to spread through the cheese very efficiently.

Stilton can only be made in this region and Howard Lucas is very proud of it.

I've done this all me life, since I was about 17 and I like to see every cheese come out perfect.

You can only make it in a certain area

so people from this area are proud that it comes from...

Stilton is a world cheese really, king of cheeses and it comes from this particular area.

A traditional cheese, it should be fully blue, marbled effect

or a spider's web effect right to the outside.

And now to taste it.

This is a really young one.

The veining always starts from the middle and works its way to the end.

You can taste it at this stage.

Just take a little bit off.

-It's not fully flavoured, it's still like a curd.

-It tastes...

-Acid.

a bit... Yeah, a bit raw.

A bit raw, yes.

-It's nice.

-That's seven weeks old.

Yeah.

-So we put that back and then we go right to the top of the range which is an 11-week-old cheese...

-Right.

Hopefully you should be able to see the actual different flavour.

-Thanks. Can I try some?

-Yeah.

Just tasting the flavour on that one.

-It's a much...

-Amazing.

-..smoother flavour.

A few years back, I came to the village of Stilton, to The Bell Inn,

an old coaching inn on the A1 which made the cheese famous.

The actual cheeses were made in the village of Wyemandon, further north, by the landlord's sister-in-law.

The travellers in the stagecoaches couldn't get enough of it and so it became really sought after.

And as for the taste, one of the first things that gets you is its extreme creaminess and you...

it's...so you think of rich, green pastures because it's really, really creamy.

But the blue veining in it gives it a...a tartness.

It's almost like a lot of food, it's sort of point and counterpoint

and that's what makes it so satisfying.

What they eat with it around here is...

is a sort of sweet plum bread, which again emphasises this point and counterpoint which I love so much.

The only question that remains is do you pour port into the centre of a stilton?

Some say that simply ruins two very decent products. I totally agree.

Now this is the famous Stinking Bishop cheese,

loved by all my chef friends, and it's proudly made by Charles Martell on his tiny farm in Gloucestershire.

A lot of people I know are put off by the name so where does Stinking Bishop come from?

It comes from these pears.

That's a Stinking Bishop. It's young and green but it'll grow bigger.

Named after Mr Bishop who founded them, probably about four or five generations ago.

He was an unpopular man, so the present Mr Bishop tells me, and so earned him...

himself the name Stinking Bishop which got given to the pears.

And we wash this cheese in perry. Perry is like pear...

I won't say pear cider because it's much more like champagne.

It's too good to be grouped with cider.

We...we wash the rind in that which makes it become sort of smelly,

brown and smelly, like some French cheeses.

This...this whey is...is the...

-Yes.

-..by-product of the Stinking Bishop.

By-product of the cheese-making.

They thrive on it then, Charles?

They'll kill for it. That's why they're so fat.

They are fat little puddings.

Pigs in a Gloucestershire orchard drinking the whey, that's so traditional.

I think whey was invented for pigs.

I was in Yorkshire the other day, in York, and there was a lot going on

about Wensleydale cheese because, as you probably know, there's a new Wallace & Gromit film coming out.

-Oh, yes, yes.

-...and Wallace favours Stinking Bishop.

We don't know what the storyline is yet but I think there's gonna be a war.

Yes, I mean, but they're a very different setup to us, they employ 200 people, £10 million turnover.

Here there's just me and two cheese makers and we're making about a hundred 3lb cheeses a day.

So everybody says "Oh yeah, cash in", well how, you know? This is my home.

I don't want to bulldoze this orchard and build a factory. It's my life

and I love it and I feed the pigs and milk the cows and I don't want to change it.

Go on, old things.

Get on.

Go on. Get on.

I've been very privileged to travel all over this country and it's obvious to me now that it's

the farms and small producers that make the countryside the way it is.

So it worries me that we all seem to want ever cheaper food.

What's the real price of cheap food, I wonder?

Well, I want a country full of producers like Charles Martell and

his cows and I know there's loads of people who feel the same way.

So my Christmas wish would be that everyone tried to buy local food as much as possible.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd, 2005

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