India & Empire Royal Recipes

The royal family are steeped in tradition,

and throughout history, the royal tables

have showcased culinary excellence.

'In celebration of royal food...'

We know it was the Queen's recipe

because we've got it in her own hand.

'..from the present and the past...'

That is proper regal.

'..we recreate old family favourites.'

Now, the Queen Mother had this really wicked trick with these.

What a mess!

'We sample royal eating alfresco...'

-Oh, wow.

-That is what you want.

'..and revisit the most extravagant times...'

Pheasant, stag, turkey, salmon, oysters

and turbot dressed in a lobster champagne sauce.

-Unbelievable!

-'This is Royal Recipes.'

Hello. I'm Michael Buerk and welcome to Royal Recipes.

This is Audley End, one of Britain's finest stately homes,

built in the style of a royal palace and once owned by a king.

'In the splendour of the gardens,

'halls and kitchen at this grandest of country houses,

'we'll be recreating the food served at the highest royal tables.'

And it all starts here, with this gem,

a royal kitchen maid's cookbook,

the only surviving recipe book of its kind in the royal archive.

This is an exact copy of the original,

which is kept at Windsor Castle.

Inside, the recipes of Mildred Nicholls,

who worked at Buckingham Palace in the early 1900s,

and for the first time in over 100 years,

we'll be bringing these recipes back to life.

This time, we're cooking royal recipes

inspired by the days of India and Empire,

during the reign of our present Queen's

great-great-grandmother, Victoria.

It was the start of a fashion for curry

still enjoyed by today's young royals.

Today on Royal Recipes,

historian Dr Annie Gray heads to the Isle of Wight to discover

how Queen Victoria's passion for the Raj

got us all hooked on Indian food.

But it's fair to say that Queen Victoria was one of the people

to elevate curry to something that truly was fit for a queen.

The chef who was called to Buckingham Palace

to create dishes for the Indian President.

I got massive feedback from the guests

and the royalty as well.

And chef Paul Ainsworth cooks up curry, Prince Harry style.

Prince Harry had this stuff when he was serving in Afghanistan.

And the Gurkhas, they'd cook up fiery goat curry.

In the historic kitchen wing,

we're returning to the reign of Queen Victoria,

and the Indian dishes served on her menus.

We're here in the magnificent old kitchen

with the magnificent old Paul Ainsworth,

Michelin-starred chef!

-Thank you.

-Two... Bah! Two British greats.

Yes. Yeah, Queen Victoria.

Queen Victoria and the Indian takeaway.

And the popularity of the one owes an awful lot

to the popularity of the other. She loved curries, didn't she?

-Yeah, yeah.

-And you're going to cook one of her favourite recipes.

Yeah, one that she really enjoyed, which is a quail and potato curry,

and it's absolutely delicious and really simple.

So, what I've done here, Michael,

is we're going to get going straightaway with a lovely base.

So, we've got some onions that we've cooked in butter, ghee.

Just clarified butter, it's a lovely flavour

and the temperature gets nice and hot.

I've added in the curry powder first

because I want to cook that out, so it's not gritty.

So now we're just going to turn that heat up,

turn that heat up a little bit and really get going.

Some grated ginger, absolutely delicious, nice and fragrant.

Just going to grate that in there like so.

But the key to it is the sauce, isn't it?

-The key to...

-And actually, "curry" comes from the Indian "kari",

which I think means sauce.

Now, this is a really important part of this dish,

this is what gives us that wonderful colour of the sauce, and tomatoes,

I mean, for me, they play a massive role in cookery itself.

So now we're going to add in water, not stock,

because we've got that wonderful flavour.

Bring that to the boil.

And then we're going to add the legs, Michael.

-The legs first?

-Yeah.

The legs are super, super tender,

but they need cooking before the breasts.

And that's it, that's our sauce.

So, Michael, after an hour of really slow-cooking, a gentle,

gentle simmer, these are our legs that we've done earlier, OK?

And we're just going to pick the meat off,

and in the meantime, we've then blitzed this

wonderful sauce that we've made.

Can I get you to grate me an apple, please?

-Ah, yeah.

-Yeah? Peel it and then grate it.

-A position of trust, this.

So, bit by bit, Michael,

I'm going to add in my beautiful quail leg meat.

-Here we go.

-We're going to add in our breasts.

Like so, and if the sauce gets too thick,

just let it down with a little bit of water.

Now, you can start to see it's coming together,

becoming beautiful and thick.

We're going to add in our potatoes.

Now, these potatoes have just been partly cooked.

Now, if we just take a bit of your apple...

-There it is.

-OK.

-Perfectly done, isn't it?

All we're going to do is just grate some apple...

It is perfectly done, absolutely!

Now, the apple is giving you fragrant acidity, delicious,

especially a lovely English apple like this, like the Bramley.

It's a beautiful, clean taste, isn't it?

And, look, the juices of the apple as well.

It really is a delicious curry.

You've got two pots on there, Paul, what's in the mystery one?

Side dishes.

You can't have a beautiful curry without some lovely side dishes,

so in here, we've got some wonderful spinach, a pinch of salt, butter.

And you can see, we'll just turn it over - see that, Michael?

And then, of course, you can't have a curry without rice,

so we've got some wonderful, just some wonderful steamed rice, OK?

-Is it ready?

-Yeah, let's chop some coriander.

Let's chop some coriander and we're good to go.

Excellent.

-OK, so plenty...

-That bit of finger that you chopped off.

Yeah! Plenty of herbs!

And now, we're just going to move that over here and fold it in,

and let's plate up. If you just stir that in gently for me.

-Yeah!

-I'm going to get the side dishes ready.

So, we've got our wonderful steamed rice, our lovely spinach.

It's good to be right over it, isn't it?

Absolutely. OK. Let's plate up.

-So, we're going to have some lovely spinach.

-Yep.

Do you do much Indian food yourself?

Yeah, I do, especially stuff like this,

I mean, this would be great to do at home with the family, and I love...

Do you know what I love about Indian food?

I love the way that... I love the way that you eat like this,

sharing round the table, everyone getting stuck in,

passing food around.

So, we've got that lovely rice.

This is my favourite style of curry. I mean, look at that!

-And the smell...

-You don't want it sloshing around?

No, you don't, you don't.

-Are you ready to taste?

-Oh, am I ever!

Some lovely rice.

Like so.

It's just the smell.

See those potatoes? Just slightly soft as well.

Cooked all the way through.

Nice bit of breast there on top.

And that lovely deep green spinach.

-And there we are.

-There we go.

Quail and potato curry.

-Happy?

-Ooh, yeah.

Would Queen Victoria have approved?

When you've finished?

Queen Victoria would have been amused.

-Fantastic. Thank you.

-Mm! Wonderful.

Quail and potato curry, created for Victoria,

Queen of England and Empress of India.

There's no better place to explore Victoria's passion for India

than at Osborne House,

the royal family's retreat on the Isle of Wight.

As Dr Annie Gray explains,

it's here that she chose to showcase the imagined glamour of the Raj.

Queen Victoria never actually went to India.

Instead, she had India brought to England in the shape of this room,

the Durbar Room, which was constructed to expand the palace

and give her entertaining space.

But I think if I'd been present at one of those entertainments,

I'd have struggled to keep my attention

on what was going on on the stage,

because my jaw would be too busy hitting my chest

as I ogled all this incredible decoration.

Designed by prominent Indian architects of the time,

the room is like a maharajah's palace,

full of elaborate Indian craftsmanship and symbolic motifs.

And Victoria's homage to the subcontinent didn't stop here.

In 1887, across came the first

of what would prove to be a procession of Indian servants.

But the household did not exactly welcome them.

In the main, most of them were accepted,

but one man in particular grew to be

one of the Queen's most hated servants.

He was called Abdul Karim,

also known as the Munshi, and in the later years of the Queen's life,

he became one of her closest confidants and friends.

One of her attendants did suggest

that the reason she liked him so much was because he annoyed

the rest of the household so much.

And as the Queen grew older,

she needed to inject a bit of excitement in her life.

He may well have been right.

The Indian cooks weren't much liked either.

They introduced Victoria to authentic Indian cuisine

and as a result, the kitchens at Osborne

had to accommodate their ways of working.

We know from the diaries and memoirs of Gabriel Tschumi,

who was one of the apprentices in the kitchen at the time,

that the Indian cook or cooks had their own ingredients sent to them,

live animals, presumably to be butchered by them

in the way they deemed fit, and also whole spices.

Tschumi was very sniffy about this habit

of grinding their own spices from fresh.

He said that the royal kitchens were very well provided for

with the best-quality curry powder,

so why on earth would these cooks from India need to grind their own?

But grind them they did and it appears that the food they produced

met with Queen Victoria's satisfaction,

and the words "Indian dish" appeared regularly on her menus

in the 1880s and 1890s.

Her favourite curries were usually chicken or fish

and her passion for this cuisine

fired up the taste buds of the nation.

But it's fair to say that Queen Victoria was one of the people

to elevate curry or at least Indian food from being a mere leftover dish

beloved of the middle classes

to something that truly was fit for a queen.

The relationship between royalty and Indian food continues today.

And Indian chef Atul Kochhar is one of the latest chefs

to work with the royal family.

Atul is one of Britain's top Indian chefs.

OK, guys. Get on with it. Thank you.

When the President of India was the guest of Her Majesty,

Atul was invited to assist the chefs of Buckingham Palace

as they prepared the menu for the state visit.

Sea bass was one of the dishes.

Pan-fried sea bass, mussels, a great coconut sauce called moilee,

and a masala mash.

So, let's make the sauce first.

So, start with mustard seeds.

And they crackle immediately.

Some sliced garlic.

And I also like to add a little bit of ginger.

And some shallots.

I need green chilli, and the way I like to use my chilli is

I remove the seeds, because they have all the heat.

Turmeric.

Coconut milk. And that goes in.

And a large pinch of salt in this.

Now, believe it or not, my sauce is ready.

So, the masala mash, it's really easy.

Same ingredients but different result.

So, I've just added mustard seeds to the pan.

Followed by a little bit of garlic.

Add a few curry leaves.

Some chopped ginger.

And I've got mashed potatoes...

which go in.

I know the royal family is not keen on garlic,

so whenever I'm cooking for them, the garlic is off the recipe.

It's very simple. That's how you handle it.

I also like to add a dash of red chilli

and a small pinch of turmeric.

Some butter.

That's done.

And we can go and pan-fry our fish.

I'm pressing the fish down so that it remains flat and nice.

And pan-frying fish -

what you want to achieve out of it is A, of course you want to cook it,

but also you want to achieve the skin

to be absolutely crisp and nice.

Just to double-check, I will lift it slightly and see.

OK, that's actually beautiful.

From here, I will need to add the mussels quickly in the pan.

Four or five mussels will do.

A blob of butter.

I think the fish is beautifully cooked.

All I'm going to do is just take the fish away and leave the mussels

in the pan for a few seconds.

And take...

And we're ready to plate.

That goes right in the centre.

A few mussels, you can put them aside.

So, the potato mash also goes...

A mussel can rest on it.

Pan-fried sea bass, mussels,

masala mash and a beautiful coconut moilee sauce.

It's as simple as that.

I got massive feedback from the guests

and the royalty as well.

Atul went down really well. He's hot stuff, isn't he?

He is. Atul is the spice master.

-He really is.

-Right, what are you cooking?

Prince Harry loves a fiery goat curry,

so we're going to cook a dish...

-Is this the one he learned from the Gurkhas?

-Absolutely.

And we're going to cook a dish inspired by that.

So, here we have some onions cooking down, and in Nepalese cookery,

they love to really darken the onions,

and it's fantastic and what happens, you get real deep flavour.

So, you see here, Michael? The reason they're going dark,

see, all that is pure flavour.

That's the sugars that come out of the onion.

They caramelise and that's how the onions get nice and dark.

Apparently, Prince Harry had this stuff

-when he was serving in Afghanistan.

-Right.

He was a forward air controller, and the Gurkhas, apparently,

providing cover, you know, guarded him while he was doing it

during the day, and at night, they'd cook up...

-BOTH:

-Fiery goat curry!

Fascinating. Right, so here we have

garlic, chilli and ginger.

The smell is delicious.

-Lovely, isn't it?

-Yeah.

OK.

So, we get that nice and blitzed up, so it's lovely and fine.

And straight away, we're going to get...

-You like blitzing.

-Cooked down. I do, I love it.

-You're a blitzer!

-I'm a blitzer. Right, get that.

That's really brown, those onions, aren't they?

-Yeah.

-You call them caramelised.

-Flavour, flavour. Yeah, yeah.

You might say burnt, we say caramelised!

OK, so now we're cooking.

Right, over here, this is really interesting,

and really kind of important to this dish is when we dry-fry the spices.

So, again, great base.

-Have a smell of that.

-Oh, wow!

-Pity you can't get smells on television.

-I know, I know.

Here, we've got an array of amazing spices.

-What you got?

-Previously dry-fried.

And the reason for that is spices contain oil.

So, they dance. They come alive.

We've got some asafoetida, we've got some beautiful clove.

-I've never heard of that!

-Yeah, it's got a nice kind of

-almost an onion sort of taste to it.

-That one there?

That's the bright yellow.

Clove, which is really interesting in this dish.

Fenugreek. So, they have been dry-fried,

left to cool and then blitzed like that.

-Have a smell.

-Oh!

-Straight in.

So again, the flavours starting to work in this dish are amazing.

Star anise - wonderful, wonderful kind of aniseed...

-But it looks lovely.

-Yeah. It's gorgeous. But it's really good.

-Aniseed flavour, like aniseed balls?

-Absolutely. Bay leaf.

Just give them a little nip to let those oils come out.

-Yeah, and cinnamon.

-Snap that!

And you can already see, just very quickly,

we've got one beautiful base starting to come together.

Absolutely wonderful.

Here we go with those magic tomatoes,

full of acidity, nice sweetness, they go straight in.

So important in this type of cooking.

Absolutely delicious. Get those all in there.

Now, onto our goat.

This is the shoulder, OK? We're going to add that straight in.

We've just browned it off previously

and that's just again to get that lovely flavour.

-Yeah.

-So, we add that in.

Because in India, I think, they talk about mutton and mutton curry

and things, but quite often, it's not lamb, it's actually goat.

It's goat, absolutely. In with the water.

Like that. Don't...

With any recipes like this, don't drown it in water.

Just enough to cover.

You can add more but don't dilute that flavour.

So that's everything in the pan.

We're just going to put the lid on.

-Get that in the oven.

-Fiery goat curry.

-Yes!

-Now, are they just showing off or is this really going to be hot?

-Is it going to be a vindaloo?

-It's not going to be a vindaloo,

because you've got lovely fragrant spices in there,

but it's going to have a nice bit of kick

with the lovely chilli powder there.

-Right, onto the side dishes.

-Mm-hm.

For me, probably one of my most favourite salads

and it's the kachumber.

You've got this lovely rich kind of curry

and you want something to really clean the palate,

so you've got lovely, clean cucumber, tomatoes,

red onion, some nice green chilli, some garam masala.

We're going to finish that with a little bit of lime

and some fresh coriander, so you can imagine, rich, hot,

and nice temperature contrasts as well.

It's as easy as this.

Make sure everything's quite thinly sliced,

because you don't want it to be sort of big chunks of red onion.

OK? Just a light seasoning, all right? Not too much.

-That's the garam masala.

-That's the garam masala.

-Why are you putting that in?

-It's just a lovely spice, garam masala.

-Smell it.

-Ooh, yeah.

-And it's a clean taste.

-Really, really clean taste, yeah.

OK? Some lime juice.

Delicious. OK.

Some lovely coriander.

And then, just, you know, you can get your fingers in there.

For you, Michael, I'll be very polite.

And just a nice, gentle stir.

-OK?

-Yeah.

Lovely.

And what's that other dish you've got in front of your kachumber?

So, the traditional cucumber raita, this is yoghurt, mint and apple,

and the apple - because you've got the cucumber in the kachumber,

the apple in there is delicious.

That's an interesting variety on the usual raita, isn't it?

-Right, shall we serve up?

-I think we should.

-Yeah? Let's do it.

And over here

is our delicious goat curry.

Look at that!

That's the bit, lifting the lid off,

-putting that in the middle of the table.

-Yeah.

That is magnificent, and do you know what we'll do?

We'll just finish that with some more fresh coriander.

OK? And we're just going to now stir that in.

Wonderful, rich, dark brown.

Look at it. Honestly, it's incredible.

-OK. Now, we're just going to serve up.

-Yeah, come on.

Oh, my word. That looks good, doesn't it?

Delicious, isn't it? Absolutely delicious.

-Would you like some kachumber?

-Yes, please.

-I just like saying...

-I know you do, I know you do!

Right. A bit of kachumber for you, Michael.

OK? A nice bit of that lovely apple and mint raita.

Yeah.

And there, we have my inspired version of the fiery goat curry.

-Here we go.

-Get stuck in.

Ooh, I say!

Mm!

-It's good.

-So rich, isn't it?

-Do you want some?

-Yeah, go on.

Come on.

I think, like you say, it's the richness

and then you've got these things here giving you the acidity

and cutting through it all. It's such a great dish.

I have to say, Prince Harry has got good taste.

Fiery goat curry is just one of a huge range of curries

available to British people as well as princes.

I'm here in the house's magnificent library with Fiona Ross,

who's a food historian who writes a lot about the royals.

We all know Queen Victoria had this real interest in India,

in particular Indian cuisine, Indian culture.

What about her successors?

Well, her successors continued that, very much so -

Bertie, her son, and then his son George V.

George V, despite being rather a dull monarch, at least food-wise,

came to adore Indian food.

-And India itself.

-And India itself, yes.

He shifted position from being the sort of monarch

who would always eat the same thing every day for breakfast,

to becoming somebody who was a real advocate for India,

who felt an enormous sense of responsibility

for the Empire in itself.

Originally, he just hated the idea of leaving Britain, didn't he?

Yes, when he first married Mary,

he insisted that they honeymoon in Sandringham, telling her,

"I've been abroad and it's not good!"

-But then he went to India.

-But then he went to India, in 1905,

and he and Mary travelled 9,000 miles, spent 18 weeks there.

And it was during his reign that the Empire Marketing Board

tried to somehow bring all these exotic foods from Empire

and Commonwealth into Britain.

Yes, they did.

The Empire Marketing Board was established in 1926

and it was headed by the Colonial Secretary, Leo Amery.

They had an enormous budget for the time

in order to promote Empire produce

from the colonies and the dominions of the British Empire.

It was an enormous publicity campaign for its time.

There were over 200 Empire marketing posters produced,

which had brilliant slogans, such as,

"The jungles of today are the gold mines of tomorrow."

The grandly named Women's Patriotic League

focused their attentions mostly on the Empire pudding.

They started the first Empire Shopping Week in 1922

and they managed to persuade Harrods and Selfridge's

to give over areas of shop floor to marketing the Empire pudding,

and the idea was that women could even buy the pudding in its...

ready-made in its bowl, so all you would have to do

is sort of stir it or steam it.

-Not doing anything too dangerous!

-Yes, that's right.

Fiona, thanks.

Look at this, Paul. This is the Empire Christmas pudding.

"According to the recipe supplied by the King's chef, Mr Cedard,"

by "Their Majesties' gracious consent."

And we've got currants from Australia,

sultanas from South Africa,

it's got candied peel from South Africa,

Demerara sugar from the West Indies, cinnamon from India,

from absolutely all over.

The Empire Christmas pudding. Amazing!

This is the recipe book of Mildred Nicholls,

who was just a few years earlier than this,

she was a kitchen maid at Buckingham Palace, as we know.

And one of the most fascinating entries in her recipe book,

which we got hold of, is the plum pudding, the Christmas pudding.

-Absolutely.

-And on one side, this is the fascinating thing about it,

on one side, it's the royals' plum pudding.

And on the other side, it's the servants' plum pudding.

-What's the difference?

-Well, this is the point.

There isn't a difference except quantity.

I mean, look how much more, you know!

It's a small one for the royals,

but the servants', it's got 40 pounds of beef suet, 40 pounds of flour.

It just goes to show how many servants were actually working

-in Buckingham Palace.

-40 pounds of beef!

As a starter. There we are, Mildred Nicholls' plum pudding.

So, what are your ingredients?

We've got that lovely dried fruit, sultanas, currants, raisins,

mixed peel, beef suet.

Demerara sugar, dark brown sugar, nutmeg.

We've got some beautiful cinnamon, breadcrumbs,

some rum and some brandy.

-I was eyeing that.

-So, absolutely delicious.

Very simple, pudding basin.

We've just lined it with some butter.

So, we're just simply going to spoon this mix into here, Michael.

And you can see it's quite a firm mix,

so the important thing is, as you're doing it, push down,

because we don't want to create any air pockets.

-So we've got all that mix in there.

-Well done, don't waste any.

I'm just going to have to get you to give me a little hand,

-because we're going to put the tinfoil on top.

-I'm Mildred now!

And then we'll put the string round.

So, again, like a traditional steamed pudding.

-Really smoothing it off.

-Really smoothing it off.

You've seen my tinfoil, simply on top like that.

Go push it on, so the butter then sticks to the pudding mix, OK?

And then, just, this bit is really important.

You don't want to allow any moisture to get in, or water to get in there.

-OK.

-Shall I hold it up?

Yeah. If you can just hold it in place from the bottom.

Like that, and then I'm going to... That's it. That's fantastic.

-If I put my finger on that...

-Put your finger on there. OK.

-This is teamwork.

-It is!

-That's bubbling away.

-So, in here, we've got a nice, deep pan,

lots of steam and I've got a saucer turned upside down

just to kind of elevate it, so the heat's going all the way around.

And then, just really carefully drop your pudding in there,

sit it on top of the saucer, just like that.

And it's about up to what level?

-Basically, it's about a quarter full.

-Yeah.

Cos we don't want it to move, we just want steam.

Lid back on.

The steam is trapped in there now

and that is just going to steam-cook for eight hours.

-Eight!

-Eight hours.

-A long job.

Tip, just keep an eye on the water, because it will boil dry,

even though the lid's on there. And that's it.

-I'm not going to wait eight hours.

-No, you haven't got to.

Lucky for you, I've been slaving away.

Yeah, yeah. And here it is.

-Here it is.

-Go on, cut it, Paul! Cut it.

You are excited. Do you like puddings?

-I do, actually, yeah.

-Yeah?

-Right, we'll take a nice wedge.

-Yeah.

-Yes!

-You do that so well.

-Look at that.

-Ooh!

-Look at the steam.

-Yeah, yeah.

Beautiful.

Suety pudding stuffed with fruit.

Stuffed with fruit. And do you know what else?

-Brandy butter.

-Well, did I need ask?

-Yeah!

-The low-calorie version.

-You're doing that with a hot spoon?

A hot spoon, yeah.

Just so it comes off my spoon and goes up nicely like that.

Tricks of the trade. Look at the presentation.

I'm not going to look at the presentation for long.

-Look at that!

-I'm not going to look at it, I'm going to eat it.

-Here we go. Are you going to have one?

-Yeah, I am.

Mildred, happy Christmas!

Mildred, I love you.

That's it from our celebration of food from India and the Empire.

See you next week.