26/11/2017 Saturday Kitchen Best Bites

Good morning. We've got a tantalisingly tasty menu lined up for you today,

with a serving of guest chefs, a slice of omelette challenge and a sprinkling of celebrity faces.

So, finish off your breakfast, grab a cup of tea and get

settled in for another helping of Saturday Kitchen Best Bites.

Welcome to the show.

Over the next 90 minutes we'll be bringing you some of the best

moments from the Saturday Kitchen archives.

Coming up - actor Tom Ellis gets into the Christmas spirit

as he tucks into Christmas apple tart.

Our favourite Brummie, Glynn Purnell, is here

with a succulent lamb stew.

He braises the lamb before slowly roasting it in the oven and

serving it alongside a red lentil stew, and parsley and anchovy salad.

Michael Wignall is here making a blue cheese mousse.

He serves the mousse with confit chicken wings,

pickled pumpkin, chestnut and seaweed seasoning.

Friends become enemies in the omelette challenge

as the Hairy Bikers battle it out for the top spot.

And then it's over to Vivek Singh, who's turning up the heat

with a tandoori pigeon dish.

He marinades pigeon breast in yogurt and spices before cooking

in the tandoor oven.

He then serves the pigeon with black lentils,

kachumber salad and fresh naan bread.

And finally, Strictly star Anton Du Beke faces his food heaven

or his food hell.

Will he get his food heaven - poached pear, brioche

with vanilla creme Anglaise?

Or his food hell - cumin and coriander crusted monkfish

with pomme puree?

You're going to have to wait until the end of the show to find out.

But first up, Jun Tanaka is here with salt-baked venison.

-Welcome back, Jun.

-Good to be back.

-You've been on your travels as well. We'll talk about that in a minute.

Firstly, what are you going to make for us?

I'm going to do a loin of venison and cook it in a spice-infused

salt crust, with caramelised chicory, orange and mint.

If you can start by making the sauce.

It's a straightforward venison jus.

The trimmings for this, you want me to brown those off first of all.

-I'm going to put a little bit of port in this as well.

-Yeah.

And into there I'm going to add some carrots, some onions, port,

red wine and beef stock.

OK, we'll start sealing off the beef anyway. We'll get that on.

For the salt crust, I've got black peppercorns, juniper berries,

star anise, some cinnamon sticks.

I'm going to grind that up

and then make like a bread dough out of salt, water, egg white and flour.

Now, I've done your salt-baked fish and bits and pieces,

never really had salt-baked venison before.

It's an amazing way of cooking any kind of meat which is lean meat.

-You know lean meat, if you cook it in the oven, it can dry out.

-Yeah.

This dough protects it from drying out

and also it infuses it

with this wonderful flavour of the spices and the salt.

But like the fish, you don't touch the crust, you just eat the inside.

Exactly. Unless you've got a mother-in-law you don't like

and you just don't tell her.

-That's nice!

-Not that I have one of those.

-Right.

-You're digging yourself a hole there.

-Yeah!

-See.

-I think he has, actually. There's no way out of that one.

-No.

Spices, I'm keeping a little bit of the spices just to coat the venison.

Venison has to go in the pan.

I was going to say, you've just come back from America

but no doubt you'll be going back there again tonight after that.

Possibly. I don't think they get Saturday Kitchen in Thailand.

-So, America. You've been over there.

-Yes.

I was out there doing a show for the Food Network.

And so, it was a cooking competition called Chopped.

I mean, the simplest way to describe it, you can relate to this,

it's Ready Steady Cook on steroids, basically.

-Is it?

-It's that kind of thing.

So, it's a mystery box, erm, four ingredients

and then it's a knockout competition and you have to kind of,

essentially, chop the other chefs out of the competition.

You won one bit and then won the entire lot.

Yeah, I ended up winning the entire lot. Half of it was luck, I think.

It was, because one of the main courses was,

and they put really weird ingredients, was...

What was it?

Frogs' legs, tofu, orange and a bottle of gin.

You've got to make four plates in half an hour.

And then it was a main course dish,

so I prepped up all the little bits of frogs' legs,

five per portion, I thought they'd take about two minutes to cook,

picked up the bowl where they were marinating

and I dropped the whole lot onto the floor.

I did Ready Steady Cook for seven years

and the worst bag I got was a tea towel.

That's all they gave me. I had to use the stuff from the larder.

Right, the stock's gone in here.

We've got some red wine, some port,

the veg has gone in there with peppercorns, thyme

and we'll reduce that down, which I've got in here for you anyway.

You cook that. So, what are you doing with the venison now, then?

Because the venison is going to cook inside this crust,

it's not going to colour up in the oven, so I'm giving that

caramelised, roasted flavour before I put it inside the crust.

-OK.

-With the crust, once it's together, just wrap it in clingfilm

and then I'm going to rest it in the fridge for about one hour.

Just wrap it up.

It does work with all sorts.

You can do this with a roast piece of beef,

with lamb, but you'd take out the spices, you can add rosemary

and thyme, so it's quite a versatile recipe.

And the cut of venison you've got there, what are you using?

-The saddle.

-Right.

-The saddle of venison, really lean...

The key to that, really, you don't want to overcook it.

That's the whole thing you're on about.

Yeah, and also, you know with big pieces of meat,

you need to rest it once it comes out of the oven

and by the time you rest it, it's gone cold

and then you have to put it back in the oven again.

You get rid of all that problem because as it comes out of the oven

and sits in the salt crust and rests, it absorbs the flavour

of the salt and the spices and also, it keeps it piping hot.

In here, I've got some butter and sugar gone in the chicory as well.

Yeah.

-You're preparing this, then.

-Rolling this out.

Now, I've mentioned, well, last time you were at the restaurant, Pearl.

-You've left there...

-I have.

-..in search of a new place.

Yup, so I've been working on it for the past year,

getting the project together,

and I'm going to open it up with a very good friend of mine, Jim.

And I've been looking for a site. I'm close to securing...

Well, I'm looking at a couple of sites, close to securing it

and, hopefully, open up in autumn next year.

But it's going to be completely different from my last restaurant.

It's going to be a very relaxed French restaurant

-with Mediterranean influences.

-OK.

All the dishes made for sharing, super-casual atmosphere

and a lot cheaper than my last restaurant.

You've got a little stock going in here as well.

You're cooking that with some orange and some lemon in there

and I'm going finish off with mint. But what are you doing now?

So with the salt crust, I've rolled it out

to about half a centimetre in thickness, cut it into a crust

and then I'm going to just wrap it

completely inside this crust.

And just press it together.

And it's really easy to work with.

Because all you have to do,

if there's any holes, just squeeze it all together, like that.

The idea is, it's got to be airtight, that's the key to it.

Exactly. And then I'm going to put a hole in the top

because I'm going to use that to tell how the venison is cooked.

Right, OK.

Into the oven, 225 for about 11 minutes.

But for Christmas, you could make this in advance,

-pop it in the fridge, cook it when you need it.

-Yeah.

That's the key to it.

I mean, the great thing about this recipe, you can cook it

for one person. For four, it's just a bigger piece of meat

with a bigger salt crust.

Right, that sauce has been reducing down a minute now.

I'm going to finish that off with a little bit of butter.

Look at that, you can imagine bringing that out

to a Christmas dinner table.

Everyone's going to be impressed, aren't they?

Even the vegetarians?

THEY ALL LAUGH

Until you open it.

And you open that up and smell that.

It's just got this amazing...

It does smell great, with those Christmas spices in as well.

Just take it out, make sure that you don't serve the salt crust.

And then... Oh!

Before you do that, while it's resting,

stick your metal skewer into the hole...

-Before you open it up.

-Exactly.

Essentially, it goes in the middle,

leave it for ten seconds for the metal skewer to absorb the heat.

-Is there any kitchen roll?

-Yes.

And then take it out and touch it to your lip.

It should feel warm, that's medium rare.

So, the more it's cooked, the hotter it will be.

-If it's well done, you'll burn your lip basically.

-OK.

Bit of salt and pepper on here and we're ready to plate now.

-This chicory looks great just in this pan as it is.

-Yeah.

Like that.

And then I'm just going to slice this.

And because it's been cooked in that salt crust,

it's quite a gentle heat and you should get this edge-to-edge

pink colour because it's been cooked at a gentle heat.

Three slices like that, straight onto the plate.

Does look fantastic as well.

-There you go, there's the chicory.

-Beautiful.

Orange and venison is just perfect...

..together. One more piece.

-Like that.

-There's the sauce for you.

That's reduced down, that's the liquid that we had reduced,

added a little bit of butter to it, salt and pepper.

Straight over the top.

-That's it.

-Looks delicious.

Give us the name of that dish.

So, that's the loin of venison cooked in a spice-infused

salt crust, with caramelised chicory.

Look at that, it looks brilliant.

-This is what you have left over as well.

-Yeah.

-This little crust here.

-Right.

-Cor.

-You get more. And of course, no need to season this, of course.

-No. Wow.

-Look at that.

-Dive into that.

-That's amazing.

When you say it's spice infused, what have you got in there,

in the salt?

You've got salt, peppercorns, juniper berries, star anise

and cinnamon.

Mm. You get a big zing of spice there.

-Nice, isn't it?

-Mm.

-Delicious.

-Great way to cook it. There you go.

A great autumnal dish there from Jun to start the show.

Now, coming up, actor Tom Ellis enjoys a festive apple tart

but first, Rick Stein's tasting the delights of the Spanish countryside.

Pamplona is in neighbouring Navarre.

It's much-loved by the Americans and the British, mainly because

of the famous running of the bulls at the height of the summer.

In the main square is the famous Cafe Iruna.

Next to the Cafe Iruna is the equally famous Hotel La Perla.

The head chef is Alex Mugica, who's reintroduced a menu

from a famous former Pamplona restaurant of the '50s and '60s

run by nine bourgeois sisters who regularly played host

to people like Hemingway, Sinatra and even Franco.

Their most popular dish was this.

-So this is called rabo estofado.

-Yes.

It's a typical dish here in Pamplona.

Every year, in the San Fermin holidays,

all the people come here to eat this.

-Really?

-Yeah.

What Alex does is to dust the individual pieces of oxtail

in flour before frying them off in olive oil.

At the height of the San Fermin,

they'd be using the tails of the bulls killed in the ring.

I can quite imagine Hemingway eating this.

It doesn't take long for the oxtails to get a nice golden colour.

He then takes them out and in another pan,

he fries loads of garlic.

I suppose there must have been about six or seven cloves roughly sliced.

And then he adds onions, carrots and leeks.

He softens the garlic, onions, carrots and leeks

until they caramelise, and now he puts in brandy.

That's quite a lot, at least a double.

Now some wine. Navarre wine of course.

And then he gives it a stir for a couple of minutes.

This is important, because he has to cook out the raw alcohol.

And once that's done, he returns the oxtails to the saucepan

and then he puts in a really well-reduced beef stock.

-Now we have to go very slowly, OK?

-Yeah.

-Very slow.

Halfway through simmering the oxtails,

he takes them out and blitzes those vegetables

and all that lovely stock into a thick, silky gravy.

This is the secret to the dish, of course.

It's the enriched sauce, made richer with the juices from the meat

and that wonderful stock and the wine and the brandy.

It's now simmered for practically another hour

and the colour gets darker and darker

until it almost looks like chocolate.

And then it's served.

As dishes go, this is as butch as it gets!

You can easily see Hemingway tucking into this.

Ever eastwards.

The sun is three times as hot now as it was in damp,

rainy Galicia, where I started my journey over a fortnight ago.

Navarre is blessed with an extremely fertile landscape.

It has the damp west wind from where I've just come from,

the protection of the Pyrenees to the north,

and the warmth of the Mediterranean breezes coming from the east.

To top it all, you've got the water from the mighty River Ebro,

and that's why the region is known as the vegetable capital of Spain.

The flat land of rich, alluvial soil

has been chopped into small plots called huertas.

Today, I'm meeting Florin and his wife Mercedes, vegetable-growers

who supply some of the top chefs in the restaurants in Spain,

chefs who really put Spain on the culinary map.

-Artichokes.

-Alcachofas.

-What is it in Spanish?

-Alcachofas.

-Alcachofas?

-Alcachofas.

-These are beans.

-Broad beans, I love them.

Yes.

Florin and Mercedes have the perfect dish to show off their selection

of vegetables - a minestra, which is like a thick soup

made entirely from young vegetables.

There are runner beans, which take about 30 seconds to blanch.

And Florin chops up some borage stalks.

That's a new one. I've only had it in Pimm's!

He then blanches those too.

Next he shows me how he prepares the young, freshly picked artichokes.

They're soft enough to be peeled

and the flower part of the tip removed and then split in half.

These artichokes we cook yesterday.

Good Lord. How come they're sort of turquoise-green?

-Just water and salt.

-Water and salt?

The water have to be 2,000 magnesium, is the word?

-And more.

-Erm...

And the water from here have this...

I don't think I can do a recipe for it!

The asparagus will take about five minutes to soften,

and Florin is ready to start the final part of the process.

He's frying off onions, again, picked a minute ago from his huerta,

along with some young, tender garlic stalks,

and all, at that stage, straight out of the ground.

Now he adds flour, because a minestra is quite thick.

That will absorb some of the oil while it cooks out,

and then for the stock.

He uses a cup full of water from the asparagus

and another from the electric soup.

I mean, that is great.

It looks a bit like something out of science fiction but that will

give the finished minestra such a lovely green spring-like colour.

Now he puts in the artichokes.

The thing about this dish is, you use whatever is in season,

when it's just at its tippy-top best.

And I think it's a great thing to cook in an allotment,

that is, if you get the weather.

I like these baby broad beans, sweet and tender.

They'll take seconds to soften.

And now for the asparagus.

The Spanish love their fat white asparagus.

Look at that green now.

Just the water? I just somehow can't believe it.

Then more runner beans, one of my favourite vegetables,

fresh and young.

And lastly, tiny peas, which Florin calls the caviar of the land.

It's lovely watching this in this allotment.

Lovely cooking outdoors.

It seems right you can go and pick the artichokes or the broad beans.

You know, the queen of the vegetable, right?

The king! King, I'm sorry.

Well, he has long hair so maybe...

THEY ALL LAUGH

Well, it's time for lunch and that, I'm pleased to say,

means a glass, or possibly two, of wine.

Although not as famous as its neighbour Rioja, I think the

wines here in the Navarre are just as good.

You see what I mean about this dish? It is just like a thick soup.

-Salute.

-Salute.

-Salute.

-Cheers.

-To Ricky.

I hope to see you next time.

You have your house here.

Well, mi casa es su casa, that's if you're ever in Padstow.

Great stuff there. Now, it's Stir-up Sunday this weekend, apparently.

I'm not a huge fan of Christmas pudding

but I thought I'd show you something else that you can make this Sunday

and give you a little masterclass on it.

It's a puff-pastry tartlet done with apple

but you can make it tomorrow and freeze it.

You can have that for Christmas Day

-because it can be cooked from frozen.

-I'm going to do it.

It's one less thing to worry about.

First thing we're going to do is we've got our puff pastry here.

Now, the producer of this show said,

could I make some puff pastry using a rough-puff pastry.

We've got butter, flour, water, but obviously people will just go

and buy some, which is...

This is rough-puff pastry, but the most important bit of this is,

it's got to be made with butter, all right.

Now, I do keep going on to the show about butter but with pastry,

it's so, so important, particularly with puff pastry,

cos it's laminated.

Basically, if you layer the butter and the flour together,

that creates the layers.

It's the butter that melts, creates the steam, trapped in between

-the layers of puff pastry, hence the "puff" in puff pastry.

-Wow.

Rough-puff pastry is, the layers are actually mixed.

You can see the pieces of butter in there.

You don't get an even rise with this...

as to forming the whole butter all at once.

But what you can do, you can use this sort of pastry

to make these little tartlets.

What we're going to do is take these and just cut them out.

Also, with these, you can re-use this pastry

but just cut it nice and thin.

That's the key to this one.

You can actually re-use this as well.

I'll put that to one side. And then we'll grab our tray.

With puff pastry, with this tartlet in particular,

you dock it with a knife not with a fork.

You want bigger air holes in there to allow the steam

in the centre to evaporate out

and stop you getting a soggy bottom to the tart.

That's the key to this one.

What we're going to do is make the filling.

This is the Christmassy sort of feel.

You've got sultanas in there, we've got some brown sugar.

We've got a mixture of spices, nutmeg and cinnamon, in there.

And then we grab some butter.

So not only have you got butter in the pastry,

you've got butter in the filling in there.

We just mix this together...

And this creates just a nice sort of wintry spice base

to our little tartlet.

You can just sprinkle this on the top.

Now this is where you could, like I said, you can make this tomorrow...

..easily.

You've got time to do it.

You don't have to make ones as large as this, you can do smaller ones.

And then we grab the apple. Now, these are Granny Smith apples.

We slice these through and then slice them through.

If you're wondering why I did that, that is not this in rehearsal.

That is Christmas decorations yesterday.

Can you believe it? It needs to come with a health warning.

You love Christmas, don't you?

I ripped all my knuckles off with Christmas decorations.

It involved baubles, Christmas lights, a step ladder and my dog,

who thought the bauble was an apple,

who leapt, grabbed hold of the bauble, which spontaneously exploded

in his mouth so not only did I have to do that, I had to go to the vet.

As I fell off the step ladder and scraped my knuckles

all the way down with lights hanging above my head.

-Nice.

-I love Christmas, it's great, yeah.

But you can slice these, you see, like this, all the way around.

This is where you can take the time. Now, I don't peel the apple.

I think it adds to the texture as well as the presentation of it,

like that.

You could leave it like this, even with the butter on,

and freeze them as you want.

And just have those bases in the fridge, like this.

What you do is, you take this,

and this just holds the ice cream you serve it with.

You can brush with a little bit of butter on there, over the top.

Then all we do is we freeze it.

So this can go in the freezer, as it is, straight in the freezer

and then, when you want them for Christmas,

take the whole lot out and they don't go brown.

Chuck the whole lot in the oven, 12 minutes.

We have got one in there, which is a little bit longer.

We can just cook it from frozen, like that.

So that's that one done.

Now, first of all, I said congratulations on two hit shows.

Mmm.

It's not been a really easy ride for you in your career because you

were, you know, we've seen you bits and pieces, you've had part roles.

-Yeah.

-You played the doctor in EastEnders.

-Yeah, I did.

Disappeared for a while

but where did you go in between that?

-You always wanted to be an actor, didn't you?

-Yeah, I did.

Well, yeah, I did always want to be an actor from about the age of 17

and, um, I don't know, really, I kind of...

-I was doing bits and pieces.

-Right.

Um...I don't know.

I was always kind of working.

I was making a living out of it but that sort of role eluded me

-for a while.

-Cos you did bits and pieces, you were alongside, you

know, part roles with Heather Graham in films and bits and pieces.

-Yeah, have you seen that film?

-No, I've never seen that one.

You're not on your own.

LAUGHTER

Did you see it?

I saw it in the bargain bucket at Woolworths.

Yeah, that's the thing, I've sort of made a living out of it,

which you can do as an actor, you can do bits and pieces

and people go, "I know you from somewhere."

The weird thing was when I did EastEnders, I did it for six months,

and people after that sort of knew me

and something medically related to me and my face.

-Right.

-So people would stop me and go, "I know who you are.

"You're, um, hang on, hang on. Holby." I would go, "No."

And they'd go, "Oh, Casualty, then."

And I would go, "No."

I was the doctor in EastEnders for six months. "Oh, yeah!"

But was there like something get in a show like that,

does that put you on the map, for instance?

Does that make it easier in terms of going for roles?

-Obviously, you don't want to be in it too long, otherwise you get typecasted.

-That's the thing.

I mean, the reason why I only did it for six months was,

I didn't want people to think of me

as the doctor from EastEnders for the rest of my career.

Yeah, it's a difficult one.

If you go into a show like that, you get a lot more media attention.

-Yeah.

-I don't know whether, professionally, people think

more of you, or whatever,

but it brings you into the public conscious a bit more.

To do that... Also, in your career, you've done serious roles

as well, but comedy has always been part of your career,

-in some form or another.

-I have always loved doing comedy.

Weirdly, the first job I ever got, from drama school,

was a guest on a thing called Kiss Me Kate,

-it was an old sitcom with Caroline Quentin.

-Right.

Um, and yeah, it's something that I have always enjoyed doing.

I enjoy having a laugh in real life, making people laugh.

Because we have seen you on Miranda, of course.

Yeah, a chef, weirdly.

We have seen you on Miranda but the big thing that you are doing

now as well, at the moment, is... Tell us about Crickley Hall,

because this is the new drama.

You have to say, the BBC can only do this right

because it's fantastic - fantastic script, great acting, as well.

The basis of it is, it's taken from a successful novel by James Herbert,

which means in place, already, we have got a fantastic story.

The difficulty was translating that on to screen and being able

to do what we could do without doing a disservice to the novel.

There is bits in the novel we just couldn't put in

because it is a very, very dark piece of writing.

But it's quite difficult to get it dark

and also to put it out on air at that particular time.

It is... I've seen the first one.

It is scary, though, isn't it?

It is scary.

It is scary and the subject matter, you know, is not nice,

-it's not pleasant.

-Cos it starts off, unfortunately, both yourself

and the character that your wife plays... Suranne Jones.

-Suranne Jones plays Eve, yeah.

-Your son goes missing.

-Yeah.

Then basically a year anniversary later, you then go...

-you booked this holiday.

-I get a job... No, it's not a holiday.

I get a job offered up north

and I think it's possibly a good time to help the family

move on in the healing process, to take them

away from where we have been living for the last year.

So we go to stay... I go to take this job and the place that

we end up staying is this house called Crickley Hall.

It becomes quite apparent very early on that this place has got

a very dark history.

The interesting thing about it as a piece of drama is it is

told in these two parallel narratives. There is one in 1943

and there is the present-day story that we're in.

It sort of flits between the action between '43 and present day.

-It sounds complicated but it's actually easy to follow.

-Yeah.

No, it is. I think, again, that's a credit to Joe.

Because in the novel...

-Has that broken up?

-Yeah, it's me, made a mistake.

-Oh, don't worry.

-Don't worry, it's Christmas.

-It all goes down the same way.

-Carry on.

Yeah, in the novel, these are just kind of like little, brief

flashbacks that were alluded to, but what Joe has managed to do was

because he was given three episodes, rather than a one-off film,

he was able to explore that story in '43.

I think it really adds another dimension to the whole piece.

It certainly does and that makes it even more dark than

-what it is normally.

-Absolutely.

And you were very kind to me about it this morning.

Thank you, very much. And even kinder now with this in front of me!

We have got sort of wintry spices with the apple

and everything else with the ice cream.

It is everything that people love - apple, ice cream,

winter spices, toffee sort of sauce to go with it.

-That is a mouthful of Christmas.

-As good as Christmas pudding?

-Better, I hate Christmas pudding.

-That's two of you!

-What is the point of Christmas pudding?

-Don't look at me!

You eat the heaviest meal you have eaten all year and then,

"I know what I'll do, I'll have the heaviest pudding ever invented afterwards."

So whether it is Christmas pudding,

Christmas cake or James's apple tarts, why not give one of them

a whirl for Stir-up Sunday? After the show, of course!

There is still plenty to come on today's Saturday Kitchen Best Bites

but first it's over to Glynn Purnell,

who is not giving lamb the elbow.

Lamb on the menu.

Lamb - is it shoulder, is it ankle, what is it?

Well, basically, I think it is an elbow.

I know sheep haven't got arms. I know.

Well, they kind of have.

It is the front shoulder. I always visualise them.

When you see them in the butcher's, they are always hanging like this.

-Right.

-So I always think it looks like an elbow.

That is what we are going to call it.

What are you going to do with it, are you going to braise it first?

I'm going to braise it down.

-If you crack on with a bit of chopped veg, a bit of mirepoix.

-OK.

-Again, this is a fantastic dish that is perfect for the season.

-Yeah.

Sort of like a real warmer.

Now this is different to what I've seen you cook before on the show.

You're very into the Michelin-starred refined food.

This is much more brasserie, sort of thing.

-Yeah, this is a dish that is on at the bistro at the moment.

-Yeah.

Which has been slightly changed from the Asquith's.

I've still got the cocktail bar but now I've got the bistro.

So it is sort of like the cooking I do at home, really.

Sort of quite hearty, nice sort of sized portions.

Cos this cocktail bar that you have,

you do some pretty unusual cocktails.

We do. Actually, we do a roast lamb cocktail, which is nice.

We fat wash rum with lamb fat, and we do like a Sunday dinner.

Yeah, a fat wash. Explain fat washing.

For fat wash, you bring up the temperature of the alcohol

with the fat and then you set it.

You do that a couple of times.

-I'm happy with that.

-Yeah.

In the past, we have done, like, a duck one with Cointreau.

Um...

You know, it's a little bit unusual but it's challenging

but also, it's a talking point.

-It's something a little bit different, yeah.

-Yeah.

It tastes good, too, I've tried it.

Yeah, yeah...

That's on at the bistro. This is dish is on at the bistro.

I wanted to showcase some classic cooking, really.

Right.

So if we brown these off.

-Like that.

-Yeah.

So the secret is to get some colour on this, that's the main thing, yes?

Get some colour on them.

Now, most people looking at a piece like that would use the lamb shanks,

as well, which used to be one of those things

that you almost gave away.

-Exactly.

-15, 20 years ago?

-Yeah.

You couldn't really get rid of 'em.

I think this one is slightly cheaper than shank

-because no-one knows it's an elbow.

-Yes, you're right.

I can't wait to order 15 elbows of lamb.

It's from the shoulder, that's what we reckon.

It's from the shoulder, so you could do the same dish

-with a whole shoulder.

-Right.

Or the shank.

We basically...

..we are going to do a little red lentil stew, as well,

with a little bit of ras el hanout.

You want me to get that on, as well, don't you?

-If you get that on.

-I'll be dicing the...

-Dice carrots for me.

Yeah. OK.

So colouring the lamb does two things -

not only to add flavour but it also gives the stew a bit of colour.

-That's the key to it.

-Exactly, the colour of the sauce.

We are going to cook the lentils in the lamb sauce.

We are going to take the lamb out.

While that is sort of relaxing,

we're going to use the cooking liquor

-to cook the actual lentils.

-Right.

So we've got a full-on 100% lamb flavour.

Really hearty, no waste and it makes for a flavourful gravy,

-also as a carbohydrate on the plate.

-OK.

So we've got the ras el hanout here, which is a...

Tell us about ras el hanout. It's that sort of Moroccan spice.

It's a Moroccan spice. It's quite common to go with lamb.

We have it in lamb tagine.

-But it is a mixture of spices, isn't it, really?

-That's right.

-Yeah.

-It's got rose petals and all sorts in there.

If used as it is, it's perfect.

We'll chop that.

When you said Adam was multi-talented,

you forgot to say he was proper smoking, as well.

What a treat for the audience at home.

Three of the most best-looking geezers in the studio.

Yeah? What do you reckon, James?

-And you.

-And me.

I didn't want to say that.

My mum will phone in, you know that.

She'll phone in. Funnily enough, my wife thinks Adam's amazing

but also my wife thinks Sat smells the best of all the chefs

she's ever met. He smells the nicest.

She always says it to me. "Why don't you smell like Sat?"

So now we've got the wine in.

It's proper easy cooking.

-So wine and stock.

-Wine and stock, ras el hanout, vegetables, all in.

It's that easy.

The stock you're using there,

it's quite difficult to get lamb stock nowadays.

-Chicken stock would do?

-Chicken stock's fine, veg stock is fine.

-Because it's cooking on the bone.

-Yeah.

You will get that massive lamb flavour, anyway.

So put that in the oven.

A bit of seasoning in there.

So that will cook for about 2½ to 3 hours.

Turn it down and cook it for four hours, a lot lower, if you want.

Go, take the dog for a walk, have a couple of pints

-and come back and it's ready to go.

-I'm assuming, if you use the

shoulder, you'd cook it a little bit longer, maybe a whole piece.

If you want to do a slightly bigger piece,

you can slow-roast a joint and use the lentils

and make a sauce after.

So this is one, obviously, we've cooked before.

Just bring that over so you can actually see inside there.

It looks delicious.

And smells fantastic, too.

You've got a bit of rosemary in there

-and then you're going to use the liquor for this.

-Yeah.

Basically, we've blanched...

-Basically boiled the lentils up to the boil...

-OK.

-..taken them off, washed them off...

-Right.

..so the lentils are sort of part cooked.

And then we're going to push on with that.

So...

Right, and you want me to do this...

Little bit of chopped parsley for the lentils.

Now the lentils, you know, you use them quite a lot in your cooking...

I remember being up there, to your restaurant, you use them

with monkfish as well, in a lot of dishes.

Is that cos you like the Asian flavours up there?

Definitely, and also, I like the texture of them,

cos they start breaking down like a puree,

whereas sometimes you have puy lentils,

people don't cook them all the way. I find them a little bit too...

I think that's why people are put off with lentils,

-they don't cook them enough.

-Yeah. So if you put in...

-We put our red lentils in...

-Using tinned lentils as well, you can use.

You could do, yeah, definitely.

Or you could do it with white beans, or with butter beans.

You could do...

We just basically want to use the cooking liquor from the, er...

from the lamb. Like so.

-Now...

-You mentioned if people want to go to your restaurant

that you're up at The Good Food Show at the end of the month.

-Yes, we are, yeah...

-On stage...

-With yourself, I think.

-I think so, I'll be there, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, we're doing that and...

It's always great, The Good Food Show...

It just comes to Christmas, everyone's getting all excited,

Christmassy, everyone's thinking about how they're going to cook this and cook that.

Obviously, the most question you get asked is, how do you cook a turkey?

Every time, it's like, you know...

People ask me about sprouts but I can't stand them,

-so I don't comment.

-See, Adam, we have a stage, as well.

-Yes.

All it is is a stage in a shed. A big shed, but it's a stage.

It's a massive shed, it's called Birmingham.

LAUGHTER

No, it's not.

It's strange, isn't it, James? Come on, it used to be...

Well... It used to be full of people like me.

I tell you what, Birmingham has changed an awful lot.

-Yeah, it has.

-Incredible, yeah.

I was walking through the German market yesterday,

it arrived yesterday, it seems a bit early, but you can't help but...

smile, the gluhwein, that sort of stuff, it transports Birmingham

-into a winter wonderland.

-Yeah.

-If you'd said that 15 years ago, I wouldn't have believed you.

So it really, really changed, and obviously me

being the Prince of Birmingham...

LAUGHTER

The Prince of Birmingham?

-Well, nobody else will have me!

-Right, OK.

-So...

Can we explain what's going on here?

OK, so we've got the lamb, that's cooked, ready to go.

It's all glazed up nice, the lentils are now coming down,

-with the carrots, er, a little bit more ras el hanout there.

-Yeah.

With the carrots, the celery, little bit of garlic,

lentils in there, chopped parsley.

-Yeah.

-We've got ourselves like a really nice...

Like coarse stew.

Now, you've taken the juice out of this lamb here.

-Yeah, which is here.

-And you're using that.

Yeah, so we're just going to reduce that down

so we get a nice sort of consistency.

In here, we've got the shallots, which have been...

..with vinegar, anchovies, capers, a little bit of parsley.

-Have you seasoned that, James?

-No, not yet.

-I can season that.

-Little bit of salt.

-I suppose it cuts through the fattiness, as well.

Yeah, most definitely, most definitely, so...

-OK.

-OK?

-We're ready to start, ready to go.

You can do the ceremony, as I like to, erm...

-Oh, right, you do that at the end.

-You do that at the end.

-We do it at the restaurant, as well.

-Do you want me to...?

-You do that.

-And then you can do your...

-Give it a bit of garnish at the end.

-Right.

We're going to put on his plate here,

so we're going to start dressing. So...

You could put a bit of smoked bacon in there if you wanted. Or, erm...

Right.

Touch more seasoning.

A little squeeze of lemon in there, if you wanted to.

-Sounds good. Even those lentils on their own, lovely.

-Beautiful.

-Yeah.

-Just like, erm...

-Put more liquid in it, you've got a soup.

-Looks lovely.

-Exactly.

You know, it's really sort of like, we're in the middle of autumn...

It's a proper winter, autumn-winter warmer.

-You know...

-And then this is the final bit.

This is when we set the studio on fire.

Little bit of...

-Ready?

-Just a little bit of that lamb liquor...

This is where you tell us what the name of the dish is.

This is elbow of lamb with red lentil stew,

parsley and anchovy salad.

-With...

-You do that at the end, then, I take it?

At the end, nice little smouldering smell,

-we set the studio on fire...

-That's what it is.

-Brilliant.

-Let's go.

-Look at that. Leave it there?

Easy as that.

He was wandering off with it.

It's great, that, though, isn't it?

Look at it at the end.

-This is fantastic.

-There you go.

The whole... It just smells of rosemary.

-Dive into that, tell us what you think...

-The perfect breakfast.

-On top of the barbecue.

-Barbecue thing, but it's...

It's a great way to smell the restaurant and everything else.

Definitely, just perfumes the studio, beautiful.

Adds a bit of theatre to it, as well.

Dive in, dive in. Don't...

-Literally dive in?

-Yeah, yeah, dive in with a case of lamb, as well.

If you eat all that, you'll be rolling that...

THEY LAUGH Yeah!

I think, erm...

Lamb shanks, if you're going to buy them slightly smaller...

You can probably serve that for two, actually, break it down,

-flake it at the table.

-Good?

-I love lamb, too. And that's really good.

The ras el hanout, I think works with the lentils, as well.

The self-titled Prince of Birmingham

there with a wonderful winter warmer.

Now it's over to Keith Floyd, who's wandering around Wales.

And I saw in the turning so clearly A child's forgotten mornings

When he walked with his mother Through the parables of sunlight

And the legends of green chapels.

That was Dylan Thomas.

You see, it's easy to become so quickly influenced

by this old, strange land.

But without being bogged down by history, by poetry,

or a 27-year crash course in Welsh mythology,

it's very hard to sum up the enchantment of this place

in a few seconds but, here, you can feel it.

I was walking on the beach with my old chum Colin Pressdee.

He's a kind of a professional beach bum, if you like.

I mean, well brought up, well educated,

but his days of happiness are strolling along the Mumbles coast,

under the black clouds, looking for winkles, looking for cockles,

digging for crabs and enjoying himself.

WELSH CHORAL SINGING

They seem to be about right. Are they about right, Colin?

Yes, they're coming to the boil nicely. Looking rather good.

Let me just try one there, because...

Tell me what have you done with these little winkles in here?

Well, they're boiled in a really good court-bouillon

with plenty of flavour,

onions, carrots, celery, the standard three,

but I've put fresh lovage from the garden

and a few other fresh herbs, bay leaves, plenty of salt

and pepper, to really give them a good flavour.

If you can, even boil them in sea water...

-Would that not be too salty?

-No, no.

I will say that the water for winkles should be as salty

as the sea. Mm.

-And they are jolly good, too.

-They are, absolutely splendid.

Listen, we've got a lot of problems here, in the ebb tide,

that song, I'd love to sing it, don't know the words,

the tide's rushing in, the table is sinking in the sand,

and I have to cook something really brilliant.

As you can see, we've been collecting cockles

and mussels and all that kind of stuff, so I thought I'd make

a brilliant cockle and mussel chowder, a soup of potatoes,

onions, carrots and things that you can pick up...

By the way, do you mind if we let people know

that you pick up things from this beach? I mean, are you afraid that hordes of,

the dreaded Perfidious Albion will descend on your lovely Welsh coast

and rape it clean of the...?

Well, this is always the worry, but the great thing is, the beaches

here have got abundant supplies of cockles, mussels, winkles.

I'd be a bit more secretive about showing you too many

of the lobster holes, or where we catch the bass,

but cockles, mussels, winkles, there are plenty of them and they're good.

Rabbit on a bit, these Welsh people, don't they? Anyway, usual business, Richard here.

Quick spin round the ingredients, close-up right down here on your right, first of all,

finely chopped carrots, onions, potatoes, cubed rather like that.

Across to your left a bit, camera left, we call it,

cockles and mussels, which we... Back up to me, please.

..we've already boiled in a little water

and kept that water to one side, and we've shelled

the cockles and mussels down over here, so they're like that.

Totally fresh cockles and mussels, OK?

The next thing we did, back up to me again, please,

don't linger too long, into this pot, we put some butter,

we melted the butter, we put the chopped onions,

the chopped carrots, let them soften.

Then we added the stock from the mussels and the cockles,

pay attention, cos I want to ask questions afterwards,

then we added the potatoes, let them simmer for about 20 minutes

till they were soft and delicious.

Then we go on to our next phase,

which is very simply to add...

..some cockles, OK?

A few spoonfuls of these beautiful fresh cockles.

A few of the mussels, as well.

I've done that the wrong way round, you see?

I hope you're all paying attention there.

And then we add a drop of milk.

And it isn't easy, doing these things...

Richard, thank you. Not easy doing these things on the coach.

It's not the coach, is it? The day we went to Bangor.

You know, on the coach, we were doing all of that, the wind's high

and the weather's coming in, the table's sinking,

you know, it's very difficult to do, so we now put some milk in.

OK? Milk, like that.

Some lovely fresh thyme...

goes into the pot.

Some fresh marjoram goes into the pot.

My old chum here, Colin, is chopping some parsley,

that goes into the pot. We'll add a few little chives, as well.

And this is, don't forget,

something you can all do, not exactly at home,

-but on your merry hols.

-HE LAUGHS

On the beach. Remember that awful novel? Something terrible comes out of the sky and blows everybody up.

Anyway, that goes on,

just one last quick, lingering look at that, Richard.

That goes on for about 20 minutes and we're going to go

and catch some bass, or try to do something like that.

-Maybe even catch a lobster. Shall we go and do that?

-Let's go and have a try.

-Let's spin off into the sunset, over the, erm, over the rocky shores.

-Right.

GENTLE MUSIC PLAYS

The sun isn't the only thing that's sinking in the west today.

The table has all but disappeared.

But it doesn't matter, because our soup, I think, is ready.

-What I'd like to do...

-Looks good.

-It looks good, doesn't it?

Looks OK, it's bubbled up nicely. I don't know if you want to see that really close, Richard.

I've taken a lot of trouble, under very difficult circumstances, OK?

My finished soup for the punters, please. OK.

But this is spectacular, isn't it?

I mean, this has cost us nothing to make, apart from

a few potatoes, a drop of milk, a bit of onion and stuff like that.

-The rest we have pillaged...

-From the sea.

-From the sea, indeed.

-Here it is.

-From the seashore itself.

Tell me about this soup now.

Mm.

As I would say, "Le gue de la mer."

The flavour of the sea, the French would go mad over it,

and here it is, it's all on our very shores here.

You don't have to go to France, it's here.

THUNDER RUMBLES All on the shores of Wales.

And beautifully cooked, I must compliment you.

Wonderful, the flavour, I love this style of soup,

I think it's something which really does give

that wonderful flavour of the sea.

-As natural as it could be.

-A big problem we have... There's the thunder again.

One of the big problems we have is, they can't taste this.

You lot can't taste it. Try to explain.

Imagine you're a wine critic or something like that.

Well, the colour is superb.

The colour is superb. Look at that. The mixture of colours.

The colour of the cockles, the mussels,

the chives and the milk and those little dots of butter on top.

And then...

Just the aroma, the aroma is of the sea.

That wonderful flavour of cockles

and mussels and the herbs, all mixed together.

Is this Wales on a plate?

This is, to me, what it's all about, because this is the seashore.

I was brought up on the seashore, and I love it.

And this is the flavour of the seashore.

The French would go mad over this.

Do you want to go back to work tonight? Or shall we go and do something else?

I think we'll go and do something else, yes. Yes, who wants to work?

Work is a very, very hard thing to do,

when you can enjoy something like this for nothing.

Here it is on the seashore. Just here.

There we are, Bill and Ben, the Flowerpot Men, on the coast,

from Swansea, goodnight.

Not really goodnight, cos we're going back in a second.

FLOYD LAUGHS

These programs ought to be renamed Gullible's Travels.

I keep meeting fishermen who shoot me a line.

They tell me their river or their stretch of coast

is heaving with fish, and I'd set my heart on a plump bass,

but as the tide ebbed and the sun set,

I returned home with just a bucket of seaweed,

known here as laverbread.

I was going to open this section of the programme with the

much-maligned Welsh rabbit, but I couldn't be bothered,

because when I came into Colin's wine bar here in the Mumbles,

and the Mumbles mean things like that, you see,

really nice things, work on it,

I was impressed by the fact that this isn't only a little wine bar,

it's a place where great artists used to come.

Wynford Vaughan Thomas used to come here.

He wrote to me once cos he had trouble with his pollocks,

and I replied and told him how to cook them properly.

Kingsley Amis comes in here quite frequently,

and he wrote one of his books here in the Mumbles,

which became a fabulous film, Only Two Can Play, remember?

Those bloody stags on the walls... And all that stuff.

Anyway, we haven't come there for all that.

We've come here for something very special, cockles.

Richard, right in on the cockles here.

Now these aren't little things in jars of vinegar, packed in Holland

500 miles away and left stewing on some supermarket shelf for 10 years.

These have been picked. What are you doing there?

These have been picked... You didn't do that right, did you?

Back on here. These have been picked by loving, caring people.

They haven't been salted or vinegared.

They're absolutely fresh. Up to me, Richard, please.

They're sweet and succulent and delicious.

The other brilliant things

from the Mumbles and around here is stuff called laverbread.

Laverbread... Look at this, Richard.

You've seen how we do this already.

This has been cooked for about six hours

and it's kind of like slimy spinach.

It's very, very nice and very, very good for you.

Colin here makes a fabulous little dish, a gratin of cockles

and laverbread. It's very easy to do. Richard, pay attention.

Spin round the ingredients, some simply poached cockles,

some fresh breadcrumbs with a bit of waungron,

Welsh cheese, grated into it,

some laverbread and a bit of garlic butter which I've got down here. OK?

Can you look at me a bit? I am talking to my...

We're having a lot of trouble with Richard today. Always gets excited. Anyway, here we go.

A bit of laverbread into one of these little gratin dishes,

which are very simple, like that.

We put lots of lovely, lovely fresh cockles on. Like that.

We sprinkle our breadcrumbs and cheese over the top.

Like that.

A little bit of garlic butter and... Up to me again, please, Richard.

We pop that under the grill.

You all know what a grill is, so you don't need to even look at that,

that goes into the gill for three or four minutes, till it's golden, crunchy and delicious.

In the meantime, have a look at this. It's...

Really interesting, and do pay attention,

because I'll be asking questions afterwards, OK?

Now to the gentle art of cockling.

Well, it should be the gentle art.

All you need is a humble rake, a plastic bucket

for the filling of, a vast expanse of unpolluted shoreline

and a sixth sense of knowing where the little monkeys are hiding.

But I didn't know that you also needed a licence.

I think it's a bit mean, not to say excessive,

of the White Fish Authority

to call up the cockle-busters in their specially developed

twin oyster UB40s to drive these worthy citizens from the beaches.

One of the important things about us, when we're making a television programme,

we don't interrupt their business by locking the door and closing

it down for three days, customers must come in, life must carry on. Absolutely true.

Anyway, you've enjoyed the cockle beds, you've enjoyed all of that

and I have to tell you, you know, when I first came to Swansea,

I quite frankly thought the Mumbles was a television puppet show.

-Never mind.

-LAUGHTER

Anyway, we must now go back to the very important thing, laverbread.

Imagine, like the guy who first tasted an oyster,

who was the first man to eat a piece of laverbread and why did he do it?

Anyway, enough of that, you'll find the answer on page 94, as usual.

We've stewed the laverbread for about six hours,

it's been rinsed in water, and as you remember,

I put it into the little gratin dish with the cockles on top,

the breadcrumbs, the waungron cheese on top, garlic butter,

and now, about five minutes later,

and four or five bottles later, it is in fact ready.

Right, and the proof of all of our... Ow!

Burnt my fingers again.

Close up on that, Richard.

I really want them to see it sizzling.

Look, it's beautiful, it's delicious, it's golden,

it's crunchy and I'm going to have some.

Now, you look at me because they really love me eating.

-Great, isn't it, ladies?

-Yes.

-Absolutely supreme.

-Ooh, boy.

-Mm.

-Mm.

Anyway, that's really good.

These are my new friends.

Television's a great way to pull birds.

On to the next sequence for you. I'm going to enjoy myself.

Anyway, what are we going to do tonight?

And now the sensible bit.

Here at the village of Llandybie,

where Margaret Rees has cooked me a wonderful dish -

a plump farmyard duck

which has been salted for about 24 hours and then gently simmered.

A legacy of traditional Welsh cooking

from before the days of the deep freeze.

Now, the trouble is I've got to lift this heavy pot off the stove,

but quite frankly, dear gastronauts,

you are looking at a wounded Floyd today.

Yesterday I was stupid enough, at the age of 43, to play rugby

and in fact I was the only English cook ever to score

and convert a try at Kidwelly in South Wales.

And considering that my normal exercise

is running for a bar stool, I think I did quite well.

So, it might take me a second or two to get this over.

Goodness knows how you managed this, Margaret. Gently...

I am not putting that on.

You know, the BBC don't insure me, they don't care about me.

I'll just lift the lid off if I can. Now, we should come in close here.

I think you know the form by now.

There is the stock, there is the duck.

The onions have been sitting in there, you see.

Now, you won't eat this broth or drink it, I should say,

because it is terribly salty and, of course, that has had the effect

of taking the salt out of the duck and leaving the flavour

of the spices that Margaret's used to marinade it and cook it.

Now, I've got to lift this back out the way again, I suppose.

All we need, then, Margaret, I think is to try this, don't we?

Can we get a fork?

Right, I can only cut this once, because we've only got one duck, OK?

And look at that - it's pink and beautiful. My goodness me.

Can I have a little quick sliver of that?

That's brilliant.

That is really superb.

Unlike any other duck I've tasted,

it has a succulent and juicy flavour.

And do you know what you drink salted duck with?

You drink it with Margaret's elderberry champagne.

Elderflower champagne, sorry!

Which is also quite unlike anything else I've ever tasted in my life.

It's brilliant.

This, then, the next bit, is my contribution to vegetarian cookery,

something really close to my heart.

Ha-ha, get it? Can't stand the stuff.

Anyway, it's a Glamorgan sausage,

an ancient Welsh recipe made from tangy, tangy goat's cheese.

Have a really good sniff of that.

It's wonderful. Wonderful.

You chop that up, you add it to some chopped onion, bind it with egg

and breadcrumbs and you end up with some stuff that looks like that, OK?

And you form it into little sausage shaped things - get it?

That's why it's called a Glamorgan sausage.

And you roll it in the breadcrumbs and Margaret tells me

she sometimes puts chopped nuts around it.

And it ends up looking like that. So come around here, Richard.

One of those fluent panning shots, whatever you call them...

Erm... It's a tracking shot, actually, Keith.

A pot here which I have greased with a wonderful piece

of traditional salt bacon, very, very important, that.

Couple of twizzles like that, get a bit of grease into the hot pan

and then pop these in for about three or four minutes on each side.

Now, how many sides does a sausage have, I hear you cry?

Several, is the answer.

Anyway, this is a coracle, the most ancient boat known to mankind

and here in Wales they use it late at night, two of them in fact,

a man in each one, with a net stretched between them

to catch the sewen or the sea trout or the salmon.

Well, I refused to go in one of those

so we're not doing that in this programme, OK?

Especially after my wound sustained while playing rugby,

so in the meantime, I'm going to have a little slurp

of this excellent elderflower champagne...

..while I get Margaret to come and give me a hand

because something here's been fascinating me.

Something which she cooked earlier.

Look at that. It's very beautiful, but what is it?

That is one of my latest creations. It's laverbread roulade.

The laverbread, as you've probably heard already, is the seaweed

found on the sea shores of Wales and that is a black mess.

Doesn't look all that appetising.

Now, that is combined in with eggs and...

Just eggs, and made into this cooked sort of souffle which is then

rolled and filled in this instance with low-fat cream cheese

flavoured with a little orange, maybe you could put some ham in.

Vary that as you wish, but it's used as a starter,

-or as a nice buffet dish.

-Absolutely splendid.

Do you mind if I just savage the end of it a bit?

Have a little taste.

This laverbread is really good news.

-Have a whizz round here...

-Another whizz round?

..and see how the sausages are getting on.

I think it's time to turn them over.

Yes, close up on this, Richard, please.

So we can all see what a little golden brown sausage looks like.

That was a couple of minutes on each side.

I think it's time for me to taste one.

I think it's time for me to say "Diolch yn fawr," which means...

Welsh for thank you very much to Margaret and how do I say goodbye?

Goodbye?

-Prynhawn Da.

-Prynhawn Da.

Which is good afternoon.

That's Irish, that's not Welsh.

Thank you very much indeed.

Great stuff as ever there from Keith.

Now, we've been digging around the Saturday Kitchen archives

and there's plenty more still to come.

Coming up, it's the battle of the bikers

as Si King and Dave Myers take on the omelette challenge.

Vivek Singh fires up the tandoor oven for a spiced pigeon dish.

He marinades pigeon breast in yoghurt and spices

before cooking in the tandoor oven.

He then serves the pigeon with black lentils, kachumber salad

and fresh naan bread.

And Anton Du Beke faces his food heaven or his food hell.

Will he be getting his food heaven -

poached pear brioche with vanilla creme anglaise?

Or his food hell - cumin and coriander crusted monkfish

with pommes purees? You're going to have to stay tuned

until the end of the show to find out.

Now it's over to Michael Wignall who's whipping up a mousse,

but not as you know it.

-Let's go, how are you?

-Good, thanks.

-Good.

So, tell me what your dish is called and what you're going to do.

And let's talk through the ingredients.

-So, it's blue cheese mousse.

-Yeah.

Bit of Stilton in there, bit of cream and butter.

This is the blue cheese and this is to make the mousse up.

-Yeah, Colston Bassett.

-OK. Then we've got the chicken wings.

Confit chicken wings, so we just salt them for an hour,

-wash them off in cold water...

-Fantastic.

..then slow cook them in oil for about two and a half hours

so they're really nice and soft, pull the bone out, press them

-with a nice hard press.

-Right, wow.

-And then colour them in the pan after?

-Yeah, nice and crisp.

What have we got with this one?

That's our version of, like, a togarashi,

a Japanese seasoning, but it's all our own things.

So, we've grown kale in the garden, sesame seeds, black sesame,

nori, wakame and a little bit of sweet paprika.

So that's going to be a little seasoning on top of stuff?

Yeah, just to give it a little bit of umami on the dish.

Fantastic, and then we've got pumpkin here.

Yeah, so we've got pickled pumpkin.

We're going to do a bit of a puree as well with all the trimmings,

so just a light pickle, nice and crunchy,

nice bit of bite in there and then finish it off with grated chestnut,

a pumpkin crunch which is quinoa, sesame seeds...

-Oh, these ones here? Yeah.

-All that, yeah.

Nice bit of crunch on there and then a bit of pear on there as well.

Right, there's a lot to do, Michael.

We'd better get cracking. What do you want me to start with?

-So, if you start, Angela, with the pumpkin.

-Brilliant.

So you just do, like, a half centimetre dice.

Little dice there, brilliant.

-Peel the pear as well and do the same with that.

-Perfect, OK.

And I'll get on with the blue cheese mousse, so I'll just get my cream.

So, you have just...

Let's talk because it is your first time on the show, isn't it?

-It is, yeah.

-As you've recently moved down to...

I say recently, at the beginning of the year,

you moved down to Devon, didn't you?

-Yeah, we've been there now for ten months...

-Yeah.

..at Gidleigh, which is absolutely stunning.

And that was previously Michael Caines's place.

Yeah, it was, yeah. So, yeah...

And then, obviously, the great thing is because, you know,

the Michelin and all the rest of it, you've retained the stars

-because it came out in October.

-Yeah, in October,

-which was a massive relief.

-Yeah?

-It's always a bit of a risk

when you move somewhere and, obviously, my food's...

Yeah, but you did have two stars, so, you know, you are competent.

Yeah, but, you know, ten months is not that long to sort of do it,

but I moved all my staff down with me as well, so that part was easy.

And have you enjoyed being down there?

I mean, are you getting involved

-with all the local suppliers there and stuff?

-Yes, it's amazing.

It's a beautiful part of the country.

It rains a little bit too much, but I'm used to that,

-coming from the north.

-That's just the country, isn't it?

I don't think that's anything to do with Devon.

So, I'm just getting my... This is the pickle as well.

Right, and you could pickle this stuff ahead, couldn't you?

-You don't need to pickle it on the day.

-Yeah,

it'll be fine for a couple of days.

It will start breaking down after that.

And are you quite into that? Because I've noticed

you've got the umami flavours with your seaweed and stuff.

Are you into the pickling things and doing all that sort of stuff?

Yeah, definitely. All the sort of brining and everything.

You know, we brine most of our meats

and then it's perfectly seasoned, it cooks better,

it doesn't bleed out on the plate and it's just consistent

and that's what we're looking for, you know?

We're just looking for consistency of whatever we do, really.

-Oh, brilliant. That's what you want then, isn't it?

-Of course it is.

OK, and you like it. And how have you changed the style of food there?

Because obviously, Michael was a two-star and all the rest of it.

-Has it changed much?

-Yeah, it's changed a lot.

I mean, we've redone all the restaurants.

So all the restaurants are a lot more contemporary,

-a bit more minimalistic.

-Did they do a whole refit as well then?

Just the three restaurants,

so we've got three small restaurants all interlinking.

It's still got the beautiful country house feel to it.

-Yeah.

-Michael's food was amazing.