27/12/2015 Saturday Kitchen Best Bites

Good morning. For fabulous and flavourful ideas to see you into the New Year,

stay exactly where you are, as we've got the perfect menu just for you.

This is Saturday Kitchen Best Bites.

Welcome to the show.

The next 90 minutes is brimming with top chefs, fantastic food

and a large helping of celebrity guests, too.

Coming up on today's show...

the fabulous Bill Granger cooks roast lamb which he serves with

a torn bread, apricot and caramelised chicory stuffing.

Rick Stein gives us a flavour of Spain

with his amazing Iberico ham and chicken croquetas.

Just thought it'd be nice to do some croquetas at this chilly time of year.

They are deep-fried and served with a tinned tuna and asparagus salad.

Atul Kochhar serves a delicious spiced venison with

a pear and apple chutney and parsnip chips.

He pan sears the venison before finishing it in the oven

with honey, mustard, lemon thyme and spices.

And Downton Abbey star Brendan Coyle faces his Food Heaven or Food Hell.

Would he get his Food Heaven -

turmeric spiced prawns with omelette pilau?

Or would he get his dreaded Food Hell -

coffee and chestnut chocolate meringue cake?

Find out what he gets to eat at the end of the show.

But first, Bryn Williams serves up an easy-to-follow festive plate

of pan-fried salmon with chestnut, butternut squash and marjoram gnocchi.

Sounds good.

-It's the brilliant Bryn Williams.

-I didn't write that.

-Yes, you did.

-I'm from the North.

-It's near enough, anyway.

-Near enough.

-Right, what are we cooking, then?

-Pan-fried Salmon with a butternut.

We'll make some gnocchi

using marjoram and roasted chestnuts. Very festive.

Very seasonal at the moment. You want me to get into this, then?

Cup that into about a centimetre dice.

-What I'm going to do is make some gnocchi.

-OK.

We've got cooked potato, in with the cooked potato.

I always think gnocchi should be made with potatoes.

Some people make it with choux pastry.

Chef, are you into the potato?

-I like potatoes.

-You like the potatoes?

-BRYN TALKS OVER MICHEL:

-If the chef likes potatoes, we're all right.

-Breathe a sigh of relief!

Add the egg yolk into the flour.

-Yeah.

-I'm just going to mix it all together.

I'm just going to grate a little Parmesan in the end just to give it

some of that nice little cheesy flavour.

And we're going to pick some marjoram into this.

Marjoram, chestnuts, butternut.

Bang in season, very festive.

All those lovely flavours put together.

I suppose you could use butternut squash, like we've got here,

-or you could use pumpkin.

-Pumpkin is good.

-I think with butternut squash...

-About that big?

-Fantastic, yeah.

I think butternut squash is a little bit better roasted.

Pumpkin can be a bit wet sometimes.

-Yeah.

-OK, so we have mixed the gnocchi.

A little bit wet there.

-It makes a great ice cream, this, you know.

-It does.

Makes a great ice cream. Even a pumpkin makes a good one.

-A bit of ginger and stuff.

-We're going to roll out the gnocchi.

-Ever had pumpkin ice cream? CHARLIE:

-Never.

She is looking at you thinking you're mad.

Charlie is thinking, "What on earth are these two on about?" It does.

If you roast it off with some ginger and blend it to a puree

-then mix it together with ice cream in a food...

-Wow.

-It's fantastic.

-..ice cream machine, it is great.

We just rolled the gnocchi out.

-Michel is writing it down for his new restaurant menu.

-I've got it.

-He's done it.

-Right.

He should be teaching us, not the other way around.

-Here we go.

-You stick that in there.

-Do you want some oil in there?

-Yeah.

Let's put some oil in there. OK.

We're just going to cut the gnocchi... Into that boiling water.

We're going to cut the gnocchi into little bite-sized pieces.

We're going to put the salmon in. This you can cook in real time.

It's not that hard to do.

Is this something you would predominantly cook at home

or is this a restaurant dish?

This is similar to what we do in the restaurant, to be honest.

It is a dish that we do a little bit different.

Obviously if people are going to cook it at home,

you've go to simplify things.

You don't want people to think that we've got

a team of chefs behind us all the time doing all the work.

I think, salmon, there's plenty of stuff around at Christmas as well.

Yeah, I think salmon is a very festive piece, smoked salmon, normal salmon.

So the gnocchi is in.

-We're going to season...

-Turn that up.

Just taking all the pin bones out of the salmon. Let's just check,

because if chef Michel gets a bone eating his lunch...

-MICHEL GASPS

-..I'll be in big trouble.

-You'll be in big trouble with a lawsuit!

-I'll be in big trouble!

So, salmon in, skin side down. There we go.

No black pepper on there?

No, just going to put some salt on it and that's it.

So basically now the only thing we've got to do

is bring it all together, in a sense.

-We've got the butternut roasting.

-Yeah.

I'm going to pick some of the marjoram.

We'll add the marjoram at the end

cos if we put it in too early, it'll lose its colour, lose its flavour.

You could keep the gnocchi, couldn't you?

Would you freeze that or put it in the fridge?

You could roll it in clingfilm and keep it in the fridge,

and cut it as and when you need it.

That is a good way we do it in a restaurant,

so we can make it in a day and it keeps all day

so we're not making fresh gnocchi twice a day, just making it once.

-Ever tried making your own gnocchi?

-Never, no.

-Never.

-It's the simplest thing in the world.

People think making gnocchi is really difficult.

Italians do it at home all the time, every day.

-Every day.

-It's like pasta, isn't it?

-Yeah.

I don't know why people have a kind of stumbling block on the gnocchi.

It's very easy and it's so healthy. Healthy food.

You haven't seen the amount of butter he's going to put in there!

He's French, loves the butter. OK, we're going to put...

-Butter and Parmesan in.

-That's good. These are cooked chestnuts.

You could cook them yourself.

-Don't go home and use the chestnuts off a tree.

-No, no.

-The conkers, you mean?

-Not a good idea.

-Not a good idea.

They don't cook, really, do they, to be honest.

OK, so, roasting away. Add a little bit of butter into it now.

We're going to make a sauce.

-And you spend the rest of Christmas on the loo.

-True, yeah.

Not good. Right, look at the butter, there you go.

It's really healthy, this(!)

This is going to be what the sauce is going to be made of.

We're going to add the gnocchi to the butternut, the chestnuts.

At some of the liquid, as all true Italians would do.

Now, the last time you were on, you were refitting Odette's.

-You've done it now.

-We've done it now, all new chairs,

most of the yellow has disappeared.

-You've been spending the money, then?

-Spending the money.

Is this a different look to the menu or is this a similar menu?

Same menu, just different look for the restaurant.

We have tried to cosy the place up a little bit,

I think is the word we're trying to use.

We take the gnocchi out of the water, into the pan.

We're just going to add a little touch of the water.

This is the important bit, isn't it, really? You can emulsify water.

Emulsify in butter together.

It won't make it a creamy sauce, but it will emulsify things together.

-More butter.

-More butter.

This is why I invite him on the show, you see?

You like butter, I like butter, chef Michel loves butter. He's French.

Albert loves butter even more than I.

-This is your brother, likes butter?

-Yes.

In with the marjoram, keep the colour.

Now I'll just take the heat off, let it all come together.

Not too great for you, Charlie, cos you did that fitness video. SHE LAUGHS

-Yeah, that's true.

-But you could eat this then do the video afterwards.

-I think the diet's out the window today.

-Exactly, yeah.

We turn the salmon over.

I might put a knob of butter in just to keep the chef happy.

-And that's it.

-We keep basting that over the top.

Yeah, just keep basting.

We're going to add a little bit of Parmesan to the dish at the end.

You could just serve that as it is, couldn't you?

You could serve it as a vegetarian dish.

I think Italians would eat that as a vegetarian dish.

That gnocchi has literally had, what, a minute and a half, two minutes?

Two, three minutes. The potato's already cooked.

All we're doing is getting the heat through the potato

-to cook that egg yolk.

-Yeah.

-And then it's all in here.

It cooks twice, in a way.

You've got cooked potatoes, you cooked the egg within the water.

-You actually serve this nice and pink, don't you?

-Nice and pink.

Pink in the middle.

Just get a nice little spoon

and we're ready to go.

-You could actually serve this as a dish if you really wanted to.

-Yeah.

A bit too much there.

Make sure we're getting all the chestnuts in there.

A little bit of the butter, the sauce.

This works well with sage, as well. Sage, butternut.

-I thing sage is great, but it's quite a strong herb.

-Very strong, Yeah.

Unless you cook it, it is very thick, as well,

-it's very tough to eat.

-The best way is to fry it.

If you deep-fry the leaves, the sage leaves

and you serve it around the gnocchi - mamma mia!

-Deep-fry it, you see?

-See, we all learn something.

And that is my pan-fried salmon,

chestnut, butternut and marjoram gnocchi.

You can easily do that for Christmas.

There you go. Have a seat over there. Dive into that.

-Tell us what you think.

-Thank you. It's very exciting.

It might be a bit hot, straight out of the pan.

-Great with chicken, that, fish.

-Yeah, if you're not a fan of salmon,

-the dish by itself is beautiful.

-I love salmon.

The butternut, gnocchi, chestnuts.

-Charlie is in heaven already, we're only on dish one.

-Mmm. Mmm!

-Good?

-That is absolutely...

-But it's so simple.

-It's very simple.

I think around this time of year you what simple food at home.

-Go on, Michel.

-You've got chestnuts always around at Christmas,

-the butternut is around. Nice piece of salmon.

-Nice on Boxing Day.

It would work with salmon, chicken, but most fish, I suppose. Cod.

-Cod would be great.

-It's that butternut squash and pumpkiny sort of flavour.

It's got that richness to it without being too heavy.

-It's all about the flavour.

-And the marjoram is the key.

Lovely gnocchi, too. I love the gnocchi.

The Parmesan was just right. Well done.

That's my Christmas present, he says it's OK.

Trouble is, I'm cooking next!

It's like a test for us two, isn't it?

What more do you need

when you have the great Michel Roux's seal of approval?

Coming up, I show Sunetra Sarker three ways with puff pastry

after a tasty tour of Vietnam with a certain Rick Stein and a noisy dog.

How do you do?

'They said I couldn't leave the north of the country

'without coming here to Cat Ba Island in Halong Bay,

'especially if I enjoyed seafood.

'Which is an understatement, in my case.

'Most of the people who live around here

'do so on floating villages, and fish is their only livelihood.

'The best way to see this part of the world is from the deck

'of an old junk, and Huyen San was my guide for the day.'

There are two kinds of floating village here.

The one that we passed by near Cat Ba Island is just

where they have the fish farm and they raise the fish there.

But their family live on the land,

and the children, everybody,

they all live on the land, studying, working on the land.

But the other floating village is the traditional one.

And we don't know exactly how long it has existed.

And as I know, the whole family,

they live there generation to generation.

And what they do for life is go fishing.

And the children, they live there.

Most of the children in this floating village,

they don't go to school.

The only way for them to travel is on the small boat,

the bamboo boat. They can go from this family to other families,

and that's the way to the children to...

The children are out of the school,

and because they don't go fishing with their parents,

so they have a little boat and they try to sell the small clams

or the things that they can catch

for the tourists to take as a souvenir gift.

-Can we buy some clams?

-Yeah. I think we can get in and buy some.

-DOGS BARK

-OK, and she will keep the dogs off?

-THEY LAUGH

'This area is famous for Cat Ba oysters,

'something I'd never heard of before.

'They're grown in baskets suspended in the clean water

'of the bay on a rickety framework of fish pens.

'Some have fish in, and some have these famous Cat Ba oysters.'

-This net is for the fish, the other over there is for the clams.

-OK.

'But what worries me is that the whole structure has been

'designed for the light and nimble frames of the Vietnamese people.'

-You see, this is the special clams that they use.

-Oh, yeah, yeah.

'Clams? I thought they were oysters.

THEY SPEAK VIETNAMESE

'I must say I was a little bit worried about falling in,

'it was very, very rickety.

'But it was fascinating the way they were growing them.'

WOMEN SPEAK VIETNAMESE

That'll probably be about enough, yeah.

Everything I see in Vietnam is about practicality.

-DOG BARKS

-I mean, they are just the most clever people at doing things.

And in fact, I saw these clams,

they call them oysters here for some reason, they certainly aren't.

-But they fetch really good...

-DOG BARKS

Shut up! Shut up, dog! They fetch really good money.

-Can we buy?

-Yeah, sure, we go back over there.

I think I'll go this way.

-SPLASH

-Oh, my God! We've lost a dog!

Come up, doggy!

Doesn't seem too fussed.

'This very new hotel prides itself on cooking these Cat Ba oysters,

'but they're not really, they're clams.'

I was thinking of stir-frying these on the boat,

but the weather closed in and I'm very pleased it did actually,

because what I failed to notice was they've actually dropped these

briefly into boiling water to take that rather unpleasant-looking

outer skin off, and now they look totally delicious.

And he's stuffing them with a mixture of shallots,

spring onions, peanuts and fried onions,

and there's just a little bit of colour in there.

I think it's natural colour.

I'm just going to try and find out what it is.

I've been really looking forward to this.

So good, this kitchen.

So much activity - look at that guy over there.

He's a real Top Gun chef, the one on the wok.

Heaven knows how much gas it uses.

Oh! Apparently, you can only get these clams

around here, around Cat Ba Island.

People come from all over North Vietnam, South Vietnam,

-the whole country, to eat them.

-CAT MIAOWS

-There's a cat in the background, there...

-HE LAUGHS

But I can see why. They are very, very good. They fetch high prices.

Incidentally, that little colour they put in at the end

is called annatto seeds.

They use them in Mexico, too. It's just a natural red colour.

And so this is how they serve them over here -

along with a sculpted carrot.

They are strictly for the serious seafood lover,

they are just a little bit tough.

If I was cooking clams the South East Asian way,

and let's face it, we've got plenty of clams,

I'd do it like this -

hot oil, say peanut oil,

and then chopped garlic and matchsticks of ginger

and a good, generous helping of chopped red chillies.

Well, I like a bit of spicy heat.

Now I'm going to put in a black bean paste.

I mean dried black beans that I have chopped up,

not black bean sauce, which isn't quite so good.

I love this - it's really nutty and goes well with the ginger.

This is how I went about making them.

They are fermented soya beans

and they've been salted and left to ferment

and during the process, they go black.

I sprinkle them with sugar and chop them as finely as I can

before adding some sesame oil

and then smashing them up with a spoon to make the paste.

They really give a nice, toasty, dark undertone to the dish.

Now, the clams go in.

I'm using carpet shell clams.

When we were leaving that floating raft,

I asked the lady how she would cook them,

and she said she liked them cooked in beer.

So, why not?

Now for the beer. South East Asian beer.

The right thing - not too much.

Oh, my God...!

HE LAUGHS

Oh... I feel like one of those Formula One racing drivers!

HE CHUCKLES

Sorry about that.

If I can get something...

If it is possible for something to go wrong, it will.

Anyway, there's the beer in there.

So I'll just put the lid on there now.

Let them steam away.

'While we were out on that junk, something quite unusual happened.

'I noticed a flash of white

'coming from the base of one of the islands.'

What are they doing?

-I think they went out with a small boat, a bamboo boat.

-Oh, yeah.

And there is a problem with the boat, it sinked.

-The boat's sunk?

-Yeah.

'Fortunately for them, it was low tide,

'and even more fortunately, we just happened to be passing by.'

It sank, it sank just around the area.

They swim from this, where the boat sank,

back to that mountain, that rock...

SHE SPEAKS IN VIETNAMESE

The two women and the baby, they cannot swim.

Oh, poor things.

THEY SPEAK IN VIETNAMESE

So, there we are.

We'd come all this way to make a cooking programme

and end up saving the lives of this entire family.

Anyway, back to the clams, which have opened.

All we've to do now is throw in some chopped spring onions -

they don't need to cook - and dish the whole thing out.

A fitting memory to a great place.

I have loved it all -

the differences between the North and South are pretty apparent to me,

but I think it's the smell of the street food

which will be a lasting memory...

The sort of thing that will bring me back time and time again.

Now, for today's masterclass, I thought I'd do a bit of baking,

and with New Year's Eve around the corner,

the perfect opportunity to show you some simple, savoury snacks

or biscuits that would work really well with champagne

at a New Year's Eve party.

You can actually buy these. You could bake your own.

Alternatively, I'm going to do a bit of both. I'm going to cheat.

I'm going to cheat by using ready-made puff pastry -

the secret of ready-made puff pastry is you can do so much stuff with it

and I am going to do three different ideas,

all using two pieces of ready-made puff pastry.

But you've got to buy the all-butter puff pastry.

The first thing I'm going to do is little palmiers,

which is a classical French dish.

It uses butter, sugar, cinnamon and puff pastry,

traditionally done with sweet palmiers.

Yeah. Correct.

But it's the way you actually fold the pastry,

but you can make savoury ones.

I'm using this stuff,

which is gentleman's relish, which is anchovy paste.

-Now...

-That's nice with it.

-Some people love it, some people don't like it.

-I really like it.

But this anchovy paste, my grandad used to smother this on his toast.

It's one of those ingredients

that you kind of walk past in the supermarket,

not knowing really what to do with it.

But it's actually a great ingredient that you can use for this.

So this is a nice little paste that we've got in here,

and all I'm going to do is paste it

with a little bit of double cream, all right?

Just to smooth it,

because it's too thick to be able to use straight away.

So what you can do is just mix this together and then,

using part of the puff pastry, we can then spread this out.

-For an aperitif with champagne, James, it's fantastic.

-What's that?

With champagne, for aperitif.

You start off with the puff pastry like this.

The way you make palmiers is think of it like a book.

You fold over the book, like that...

So you fold it over.

Then you spread more of this mixture on the top.

This would be normally butter and sugar and spices

that you spread over this.

Then you fold your book over.

-Like that.

-It's lovely, that.

-Very good.

-Palms are really nice.

Now, you can go to the fridge, pop this in the fridge to firm up.

-Uh-huh.

-And then we've got... Made a slightly larger one here.

But...you've got a larger one.

It's just the size of the sheet of pastry that you do.

You need to chill it, because when you cut it through...

..you end up with these.

If you didn't want to use the gentleman's relish, James,

could you use anchovies - sorry, not anchovies -

olives in there, black olives?

You can use whatever you want. Paste, I suppose, really.

The idea being it is so simple for people to do at home,

and you've got this paste in the middle,

and as they cook, they open out into, like,

-a heart shape, and that's what...

-Oh, really?

..where palmier comes from, you see?

-Oh, I'm going to impress the family with this.

-You are.

I'm going to do the cheese straws.

We'll do a tomato tart, I'll just explain...

But, how you started into acting, how was it for you?

Is it something you always wanted to do?

Oh, no. No, I started as... I was a child actor.

No, don't protest, but, yes, I was.

I was 15 and I got dragged into Brookside

without having a clue about acting, and I was shocking.

I was awful. I don't even know why I'm still here!

I didn't know what I was doing, but I think they were quite

low on numbers for Asian Scouse actresses at that time.

1988, whatever, there wasn't many girls they could choose from.

So I think they went scouting round schools

and bus stops and dance classes, and I was at a bus stop,

and I was one of those lucky people -

"You've got the right face for this character on Brookside.

"Come for an audition." I was like, "Yeah, right. As if!"

I didn't have a clue. I wanted to be a candyfloss seller.

-I had big plans.

-You had big plans, right?

-I never knew that.

-Yeah, so I got dragged in.

Three episodes became three years, carried on doing school,

then thought, "Why not? Give it a go."

Went off to university, had a whale of a time.

What's it like doing that at school? What did the kids think?

I always found that, when people do something like that,

and you have to go back to what is the normality of school,

-how is that?

-You know what? It's strange,

because from my point of view, I missed out on all the fun classes,

so I'd have filming during Art, Sports, Free Time...

That was when it was scheduled for me to not be at school.

-So I missed out on all the laughs.

-Right.

Whereas my mates at school were like, "Where are you going?

"Are you going off to do Brookside? Are you going off to film?

"Oh, my God! What's it like?" I was so young and green to it all,

I didn't really know what I was doing,

and I'd just come back going,

"Yeah, they're going to pick me up and take me off to Wardrobe,

"I've got to learn these lines."

-It was a bit of a novelty.

-I was on a pig farm,

-I didn't think I'd be doing this for a living.

-I bet you didn't!

So, we've got our little tartlets just to show you that -

puff pastry, a little bit of basil pesto, bocconcini,

which are these things over here, these little fellas...

-You being a lover of Italian food...

-Absolutely, yeah. Gorgeous.

-These are actually made in Hampshire.

-Really?

These are made in a place called Laverstoke Park, which is...

-It's got its own buffalo herd. Amazing.

-Mmm!

Little bocconcini, cherry tomatoes on top.

Pop them in the fridge and cook them when you want.

Then we are just going to do some simple cheese straws.

I mean, Casualty, going into something like that,

-particularly for the length of time you're in it...

-I know.

That must take over your life, that show.

I often think the script must be a nightmare when you look at it.

I'm dyslexic, I have trouble reading this autocue, let alone...

Some of the words that you have to read...

-Oh...

-..and understand.

They just go in and out, the short-term memory,

I can't hold on to them for longer than a couple of days,

so I don't actually learn my lines until the day before,

which is...my way of doing it.

A lot of people like to do it earlier.

There are some guys at work who are so thorough,

they will get their lines down weeks beforehand.

For me, cos of the length of the words,

and because also, it changes so much in the moment, medically...

You've got a medical adviser on the floor,

you've got your lines which you've learned,

and if you learn them too thoroughly,

you've got no room to add... "Can you pass the syringe?"

Or, "Can you do this?" Or "We need 5mg of...naloxone",

or whatever it is.

You...you get told to add things along the way.

So if you've got it too fixed in your head,

you can't then be flexible enough to change it,

-do you know what I mean?

-You directed a bit of the show.

What can you tell us about 2013 with Casualty, then?

Oh, it's going to be exciting.

We come back on air on January 5th, I think it is,

and we've got four new student nurses joining

so we can all... We've got a bit of prey to...

-Ooh-la-la!

-Ooh-la-la!

We're all standing there, making them look silly,

while we look like we know what we are doing.

That's the main point - bringing junior nurses in

just to show how great we are.

Do you still go to the hospitals and get experience from that?

I spent a lot of time in hospitals, working with,

you know, particularly the nurses and patients with hospital food.

I found it a fascinating mix, and somehow,

they look at, like, comedy to get away from...

-Oh, yeah, yeah.

-..the day-to-day...

I've been playing doctors and nurses and stuff like that for years.

I mean, I was a nurse on No Angels.

I was a nurse on Brookside, ironically.

Then I was a doctor on Casualty,

so I could have actually got a medical degree in the time

I've been on television playing a doctor.

I was going to say that, actually.

Imagine people in the street, something happens,

they say, "You're a doctor - could you help?"

My father is a doctor, a lot of my family are doctors,

so I'm sort of flying the flag, slightly, in that way.

So did they have something to say when...?

No, they don't believe a word of it. They don't believe a word of it.

Right, there's your little, sort of, puff pastry canapes that I've done

literally in this amount of time.

You've got your tartlets here

with your pesto, roasted tomatoes, bocconcini.

We've got poppy seeds - salt is the key to this,

a little bit of...salt,

because you need people to drink more at New Year.

So salt is the key to that. That's why they have these bar snacks...

-covered with salt.

-I missed you twisting them.

How did you twist them into looking like them?

That's a trick of restaurants.

Twist, twist, twist.

I stick back to there, otherwise they shrink and unravel.

Wow. OK.

Do that with the tray, then basically just bake these in a really hot oven.

The easiest thing with these, I suppose, you could actually

pop these in the fridge and bake them when you need to.

The secret with that, I think, anything with puff pastry,

you need to serve it warm.

If you make them...

All I've done is warm these up.

Now, I haven't shut the oven door with this wooden board in,

which my mother did last year,

and these wooden boards are glued together.

We had a giant Jenga to put back together.

-It all fell apart.

-They become that?

Yeah, so, these little sort of palmiers

become this sort of heart-shaped thing, they expand.

-That's so amazing.

-They've got the anchovy in it,

so that's a really simple little thing.

They do look like shortbread biscuits,

like Scottish shortbread biscuits.

What happens to these, when you have them warm...

It's crunchy, people love that.

Try that - I think...

There's nothing worse than cold puff pastry.

-Oh, yeah, it's got to be warm.

-Really?

If you just warm them through...

They are so delicate.

When it's warm, you feel the feuillete as well.

-This is cheese.

-All I've done is grate...

You can put either Emmental or Parmesan...

I just put a little bit of Parmesan, some poppy seeds,

-egg wash to make it stick together.

-White egg wash? Or...?

Just a little bit of egg yolk, but the secret is that salt,

because the salt really lifts your palate.

Salt, poppy seeds, and grated cheese and egg wash.

Easier to say than a script from Casualty!

Give them a go if you're entertaining this New Year.

Just remember, they are best served warm.

If you'd like to try cooking any of the studio recipes you've seen on today's show,

all of those are just a click away at bbc.co.uk/recipes.

Today, we are taking a look back at some of the tastiest dishes

from the Saturday Kitchen store cupboard.

Now, next up is the brilliant Bill Granger, with roast lamb,

a torn piece of bread, some apricots and chicory,

all mixed together in stuffing - it's a good dish.

A man who made his culinary name in Sydney,

but now is over here, in West London.

-Yes.

-Living over here in West London.

-How are you?

-It's Bill Granger. I'm very good, very good.

-This is my second cold Christmas. I'm quite excited.

-Are you excited?

I am. It all makes sense.

Most of us want to go the other way.

I know, but I grew up with my grandmother's hot roast dinners

with gravy like your mother's, from the packet, in 40 degree heat.

It doesn't work so well, so I'm quite excited.

-Anyway - what have you got for us?

-I'm going to do roast lamb.

-Right.

This is an alternative Christmas, because I don't know about you,

but every Christmas, I do the cooking in my house

and I always think, "I'll be organised, get everything stuffed the day before..."

Do you do turkey?

-No.

-I'm not a big fan. See, everyone wants it.

I know, but people want it.

Look, I only have turkey one day in the year,

but you've got to have it at Christmas.

-It's horrible.

-No, no, you can't say that.

-Norfolk Black turkeys are brilliant.

-No...

-I like turkey breast.

Yeah, no, turkey breast is good,

it doesn't dry out, it's not too bad.

For years and years up in Yorkshire, you've been cooking them wrongly.

We were farmers and we said,

"If it's ugly when it's alive, it's worse when it's dead."

No amount of cranberry sauce will make it taste better.

No idea what you're talking about, you chefs.

But thanks for inviting me.

LAUGHTER

So, I've got some lamb here.

A leg of lamb, a bit of salt and pepper, some cumin seeds.

But you can use this idea for a roast chicken or a turkey breast.

If you want to try turkey and you haven't cooked it before,

-a breast is a good way to start.

-Or the crown, isn't it?

-Yeah.

It's just hard to overcook and...

Pop that in. That's going to take about an hour and a half on 190.

There's a sink there if you want to wash your hands.

-Thank you.

-I'm doing the veg with this.

Most people would have sprouts and all that kind of stuff.

-Not you.

-Well, I think it's cos it's rich.

I always think I want to do a stuffing with apricots and nuts

and I always think of Christmas food as being quite sweet,

all those great, sweet flavours.

I think onions and some chicory, with some chilli,

balances all that out.

-You nicked my knife.

-Have I?

-It's all right, I'll use this.

Dice an onion up - for the stuffing, just dice the onion.

The good thing about this is

you don't need to actually put the stuffing

in the bird or... whatever you're doing.

-This is for the veg.

-The veg.

-That's for the stuffing.

-Yeah.

What do you want me to do with this?

Drizzle that with a bit of olive oil, some vinegar,

some chilli flakes and salt and pepper.

-Just to really lift that up.

-Right, chilli flakes, there you go.

-Throw it in the oven.

-That's it?

-Yeah.

-How long do you cook this for?

-Half an hour.

-Half an hour.

Yeah, half an hour. Fry off some onions.

I've put a bit of salt in there now, that softens them up a bit.

Then we're going to do the stuffing. Some breadcrumbs.

Rather than using really fine breadcrumbs,

I just get a loaf like this -

ciabatta or sourdough - and then...

..just tear it into chunks, because what you want...

You haven't been over here long

but what do you think of our white sliced bread?

-I'm not a fan.

-Oh, come on, Bill!

No, especially with stuffing, it just dissolves...

We built the nation on white sliced bread. It's the best.

-Rubbish, I like this.

-No, no.

Bacon butties - you can't do it in ciabatta or...

-Ciabatta, it's great.

-No!

-It's crunchy...

-You've ruined it, Bill.

-No, no. Not with you on that one.

-White sliced bread?

No. I've got to go with Bill, I'm really not...

We don't eat white bread in our house.

Once you've eaten stuff like this, you can't go back to that.

-I...

-Although I must say, with a bit of Marmite, butter - or Vegemite...

Now you've killed it. As soon as you mention Marmite...

You're gone.

OK, so just tear the bread like this.

You don't want it too fine, because what I'm going to do...

This is almost going to become a side dish.

-Would this be in your new book?

-Yes, it would be.

-Easy.

-Easy.

It's very easy. It's an easy Christmas.

-You don't have to do it the night before.

-Right.

So what is...? It's based on, what, 16 ingredients, is it?

LAUGHTER

I always cook pretty simply.

Just easy, straightforward food. Just...

Your core, is it 16 ingredients that you've picked - chicken, lamb...

Yeah, absolutely. I always start with...the way I shop,

I start with a chicken breast, a leg of lamb, like this.

-But...

-You've built your whole reputation on eggs.

On eggs, I know. I was interested to watch the scrambled eggs before,

because I do eggs completely differently.

I take about 20 seconds to make them.

-How do you do your eggs, Bill?

-Hang on a minute.

How do you do them?

LAUGHTER

Cream, salt - you didn't even add salt to the eggs...

No, cos it discolours them.

No - I just add the salt, the cream and cook them in a hot pan

with a tiny bit of butter for about 20 seconds and they are done.

Don't worry, Bill, it's how 55 million other people

living in Britain do them as well.

And it works. A bit of dried chilli in there.

-Some cumin seeds.

-Do you want these in there?

Yeah, pistachios. All the nuts -

-this is what I think of when I think of Christmas.

-Yeah?

Some onion - I'd go a little bit further. That'll do.

And just give that a mix with a...spoon.

-You want a spoon? Right.

-Yeah. And so then all you need to do...

This is what you think of Christmas, then, when you...

-It's easy - you don't have to...

-Yeah.

-You can do it in the morning

which I think, if you haven't got time, you're working late...

-Where's the brown sugar going?

-The brown sugar is for the onions.

Did you forget? Throw it on.

So what you need to do - how is that in there?

Yeah - that's because the chicory can be bitter.

It's bitter, and I think, again, that idea of Christmas food,

that sweet...like mince pies,

the sweetness and the sourness with the vinegar in there.

When the stuffing is done, all you need to do,

after the lamb has been cooking for about an hour and 20 minutes,

-put the stuffing in the bottom of the dish...

-Ah, right.

..and it's going to absorb all the flavour of the meat.

-Cook it for 15 minutes, then let it rest for 15 minutes.

-Yeah.

What's going to happen is you get this - see this?

-You can see...

-A proper portion - look at that!

-Yeah...

-You keep going on about that...

What I love about this, it's really crunchy on top

and at the bottom, it collected all the juices, so it's all...

Do you want to carve it?

-Are you the carver of the house?

-I'll leave you to carve.

-My dad always did the carving.

-Have we all got one each, or is...?

Yeah. I'll get these chicory, sort of, stuff as well.

-The restaurant is going as well.

-Yeah, yeah.

You've been winning awards in the restaurant.

Yeah, Notting Hill, we've won a design award,

for the Delaunay, and...

Yeah, it's great, it's fun.

It's fun having a restaurant in London, it's great.

OK, you can see that lamb, look at that.

I like all the crunchy...

-You can see all of this bread...

-I do like the look of that.

..and that crumbles.

We'll pop that there. Get out the chicory.

-I'm doing a Galton Blackiston portion.

-Look at this.

I have to say, James, I can see

you've been having a few large portions just lately.

Isn't he mean? I know, your poor mum.

Do you help her at all? Do you do the washing up?

All we want is a bit of that on it - look at that.

-Flowers. Do you feel at home now?

-It's the way forward, James.

-It's the way forward.

-When you talk about mint sauce, the vinegariness,

I've got vinegar in the onions,

so that gives a bit of that idea, you can pour that over,

and if your mum is doing it, she'd pour the gravy over.

She'd have to have gravy with that. Tell us what that is again?

We've got roast lamb with a torn bread stuffing.

That looks delicious.

It looks good. I know it's going to taste good. Do you know what?

-I'll bring this over as well.

-Yeah, and a knife.

-Wow.

-Dive into that.

-Oh, look.

-There you go, Galton.

-Oh, thank you.

-You need a bit of grub in you.

You need a bit of feeding up.

-Between two bits of bread.

-Exactly. Dive into that.

-This looks fantastic, by the way.

-Like you said, no mint sauce.

You've got all the flavours in there.

Yeah, the sweetness of the apricots and the crunch of the nuts and...

You get all that great juice from the bottom of the pan.

That's incredible. It really is unbelievable, isn't it?

We didn't even use a sieve, look at that.

LAUGHTER

A terrific plate of food there from Bill.

Now it's time for the charismatic Keith Floyd, and today,

he's back in the Basque country, on his flavour adventure.

Take it away, Keith.

Let me introduce you now to my two new chums,

Philippe and Martin, who, in their time,

have cooked for presidents Pompidou and Mitterrand.

Now, they run a small restaurant near Biarritz

and they are terribly proud of this dessert - and why not?

You only need to add some whipped cream to some home-made custard,

pour it over the fresh fruit and pop it under the grill.

Top it off with a mint ice cream and chocolate palm tree

and you're in business.

One thing I really like

is to get myself stuck into some real fish

and this is piece of cod -

a piece of cod which passeth all understanding.

I'll explain why - because we are not going to make it

into one of these horrible, unidentified frying objects.

We are going to cook it in a traditional Basque way

here in the restaurant that my friends, my new chums,

my new chums francaises, Philippe and Martin,

and we are going to cook it brilliantly

with these wonderful ingredients - Clive, come on in.

Finely chopped shallots, that's wine, salt,

behind the wine, some peeled, skinned and de-pipped tomato,

little pieces of smoked bacon, freshly golden breadcrumbs,

little baby capers and the piece of cod itself.

So, off we go, no further ado.

We whack that straight into the poele.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle.

A couple of seconds each side to make it really succulent.

We don't want to overcook this particular piece of fish.

Then, while that's cooking away, I have to place this...

Because this is Philippe's recipe, I have to cook this

little bit of breadcrumb along just one side of it.

Dear, oh, dear - knock things over.

Always the same in a strange kitchen, always a little problem.

Like that.

Then it's got to go under the grill for a second or two.

They told me to leave it in the pan while I put it under the grill,

but I'm not going to, cos I've got only one frying pan and I need,

at the same time, to be frying these little pieces of bacon in there.

They go in like that.

While they sizzle away, Clive,

if you could come over to the other important part of the sauce,

which is... Come down here.

This is a fish stock - fish heads in water and white wine,

reduced until it's almost become a jelly, strained,

then you add cream and butter and liquidise it,

pass it through a sieve and make that smooth, creamy sauce.

That, you do well in advance of preparing the fish itself.

Then you add a little tiny drop of soya sauce -

just a little drop, for a little bit of flavour.

You add a few little pieces of chopped shallot,

to add flavour again. They're not going to be cooked.

They're going to be slightly raw inside the sauce,

and also a few pieces of tomato, like that. A quick...

-C'est bon, le poisson, la?

-Oh, yeah, ca marche.

Thank you very much.

Stir that around a second or two, like that. Check our little lardons.

They should be nicely golden, slightly brown on the edges.

Thank you very much, Philippe.

Pop those over there, turn off the gas,

if I can find my way around.

Then, with my ladle, a little of the sauce around...

..like that, with the pieces of tomato and bits of shallot inside.

OK, then my little pieces of bacon on the top,

so that they sort of shine through the sauce,

like little jewels studded around this island of pure white fish,

freshly... Excuse me, Clive. Sorry about that.

And finally, a couple of little capers.

He'll probably tell me off for bunching those together,

so I'll stick my fingers in, separate them a bit.

-Philippe, could you come and have a look?

-Oh, yes.

How does that seem to be?

Oh, the sauce is nice. Can I taste?

Oh, it's very nice, yes. Just a little bit more salt.

A little more salt.

I always forget to add a little bit of salt. They always tell me off.

But I haven't done too badly, have I?

They've been busy in the background, doing other bits and pieces as well,

to present you with a rather super Basquaise meal in a moment,

But in the meantime, I'm going to have a slight slurp...

..cos I'm trembling - I always do when I cook for people like that.

I must say, thank you for letting me borrow your kitchen.

Were you fairly happy with the way that I prepared your dish?

Yes, I am. You're a good chef, actually. A very good chef.

Tell me about these other things. Look, Clive, come down here.

This is black pudding - Lancashire, Yorkshire, all that business.

It's quite different here. What is special about the black pudding?

Can you explain that dish to us?

This black pudding have prepared my father, you see?

Just normal black pudding with...

-avec du sang.

-With blood.

With the blood, yes. And with onions.

-Your father killed the pig?

-Oh, yes.

-And he made the sausage?

-And he made the sausage.

That's superb, isn't it?

It's here cooked with deep-fried apples, very sweet apples,

and chopped tomato.

Very simple, but wonderful.

Then - now, here is a really brilliant dish, in my view -

a fillet of hake, lightly steamed,

served with a creamy red pepper sauce,

very simple to make,

just fish stock, red peppers and cream,

liquidised and strained,

then these things that look like poppadoms

are in fact very thin slices of celeriac,

deep-fried celeriac chips, a little basket of potato,

with fresh noodles and, of course, the ever-present piment rouge

that is very typical of the Basque region,

used in much of the cooking.

And, of course, no need to dwell upon the culinary masterpiece

which I have created myself brilliantly a little earlier.

But the real thing here is Philippe.

Philippe, what is Basquaise cooking all about?

Basquaise cooking, I think there is the three colours at the beginning -

red, green and white.

We can say white for the onions, we can say red for the tomato,

we can say green for the pepper.

So with these three things,

we are thinking to make all the time something new,

but something from the region, you see?

I think, with these three things,

we have to make something new all the time.

SLOW PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

I'm not sure about this music -

it reminds me of waiting for the B feature to start.

I'd rather have my chums the Stranglers.

RECORD SCRATCHES

MUSIC: Hangin' Around by The Stranglers

That's much better, thank you.

I can do my commentary perfectly, now.

This is Biarritz and it's a bit like Bournemouth, really,

but all the chateaux and apartments are firmly shuttered against

the Atlantic winds and waiting for the summer parties to start.

And if any place is synonymous with parties, this is it -

Edward VII, Noel Coward, Sarah Bernhardt,

Mrs Simpson, the Aga Khan,

old Uncle Tom Cobley and all used to meet here.

Of course, times have changed -

the rich and famous might be a little faded these days.

My next victim, Mimi, for example,

whose relatives built the Suez Canal and whose father was the mayor,

now turns a penny by giving cookery lessons to television presenters.

-Pauvre petit...!

-THEY LAUGH

-Un peu plus rapide...

-OK, OK.

-Voila, voila, c'est comme ca,

parce que sinon, les oeufs, s'ils sont pas battus,

sont pas battus, ca sert a rien.

Cha-cha-cha-cha-cha...

Nous avons un "right one here", as we say.

Pas comme ca qu'on fait une piperade, hein?

Ma petite piperade, silence pour l'instant, s'il te plait.

Moi, je suis pas tout a fait, tout a fait d'accord.

D'abord, deja, pour commencer...

Tout ca, c'est pas tres... Mm-mm-mm.

Non, mais c'est bien presente pour mes...

-Oui, c'est ravissant devant la television...

-SHE SPEAKS VERY RAPIDLY

Understand that? She said I'm really handsome.

-Tout a fait autre chose, hein?

-OK.

Look, this is the piperade, it's made from the colours of the Basque countryside -

-green, white...

-Pas du tout d'accord.

-Pardon - c'est fait des couleurs du pays basquaise.

-Oui.

-Blanche, verte...

-Pas basquaise - BASQUE.

-Basque.

-Pays Basque.

-Pays Basque - blanche, verte et rouge.

-C'est ca. C'est ca.

-Red, green, and white, this dish is made of.

The fruits and vegetables of the area.

No fruits in this, but the pepper could be described as fruit.

Come down here and I'll show you what they are.

A quick run-through the gastronomic traffic lights, here.

Salt, fresh thyme, garlic, pepper,

sliced onion, fried in lard, fresh parsley,

fresh tomatoes, chopped, de-pipped and skinned,

and red and green peppers.

That's all you need apart from the eggs

and a little glass of wine.

If I don't become an alcoholic after this programme,

with this charming lady, chere madame, Mimi, my "friend"...

Mm-hm.

..another time, I shall want to know what's happened.

Anyway, over to the stove, please, Clive.

-Ca brule!

-Ca brule... It's burning.

-Ca recommence.

Ca recommence, mais si je la verse la-dedans...

MIMI EXCLAIMS

First of all...

Difficult to know who's cooking, c'est moi ou toi?

Ecoute...

Laisses-moi faire a mon facon...

Je vais te dire une chose, c'est que si les pauvres Basques,

devaient faire la piperade comme ca,

et devaient au debut preparer toutes les assiettes comme ca

pour faire la piperade, eh, bien, je t'assure que...

Real Basque people would not go to this ridiculous detail

to prepare what is a perfectly ordinary,

simple scrambled egg and tomato dish, she says.

-Les pauvres.

-Les pauvres. The poor...

Qui veut faire une piperade sophistique,

mais la piperade, c'est un...c'est un plat qu'on mange dans les fermes

du pays Basque, que les paysans prennent

quand ils rentrent des champs.

Tu crois qu'ils ont le temps de faire tout ca?

C'est pas sophistique - je suis oblige...

I'm obligated to cut it up and put it like that so you can see...

-Non, non, non. Tu n'es pas du tout oblige, non. Pas du tout.

-OK.

The essential thing is that you get into the pan

all these bits and pieces, OK?

The onions, the red peppers, the green peppers, now some garlic,

some pepper, some salt, like that, all sizzling beautifully away,

soft, not too soft - I like it a little bit...

-C'est la Floyd piperade.

-C'est la Floyd piperade, oui.

-Ca, c'est mon tablier, egalement.

-Non, maintenant, c'est le mien.

-C'etait le mien.

-Maintenant, C'EST le mien.

-OK, then...

-Je regrette. Maintenant, il m'appertient.

-OK, good. Now...

-Je n'ai pas l'habitude de rendre mon tablier.

-No.

-Encore moins a la BBC.

-THEY LAUGH

Je ne rends pas mon tablier a la BBC.

Now, you let that simmer away for five or ten minutes or so.

C'est pas bien, tout ca.

-She says it's no good.

-Non.

-Well, I'm going to say that it is.

C'est pas comme ca qu'on fait une piperade.

And then you put the eggs in, just like ordinary scrambled eggs.

-Doucement!

-Je le fais doucement.

-Doucement.

-Stir the eggs around...

Toute a l'heure, tu vas... "click-click-click!"

Maintenant, tu es comme ca, comme ca, comme ca, comme ca...

Parce que tu m'enerves, c'est pour ca.

Parce que tu fais mal les choses.

-Rien a voir.

-Rien a voir.

-Rien a voir avec une piperade.

Doesn't look a bit like a piperade, she says. Not a bit like a piperade.

There are a lot of restaurants in England that will be very disappointed to hear that,

because that is how they all make it.

Dans un poele demi-brule - uh-uh!

It wasn't demi-bruled at all. Anyway, Clive, this is...

Demi-brule...

That, with some nice little pieces of fried bread,

a good glass of wine, makes a superb snack,

as I am now going to demonstrate, right now...

-Ca m'etonnerais.

-It's lovely.

-Ah, bon?

-Goute-le.

Je doute.

Je vais essayer de gouter, mais...c'est difficile de gouter,

parce que vu la facon comment tu l'as fait,

ca donne pas tres envie de gouter.

Parce que c'est vraiment pas tres fameux, hein?

-Tu comprends?

-Oui, je comprends, mais je traduis...

Allons, traduit. Vu la facon comment...

She has no real interest in eating it

because the way I cooked it was so off-putting

that she knows already it's going to taste absolutely awful.

C'est pas mauvais. Les piments sont crus.

The peppers are raw.

-Il n'y a pas assez de sel.

-There's not enough salt.

-Il n'y a pas de poivre.

-Not enough pepper.

Ca ne sent absolument pas, les herbes, ni le thym,

-ni le laurier, ni rien de tout ca.

-In brief, it's absolute rubbish.

So, madame, c'est a vous.

Allez-y, fais-le. Faites comme chez toi.

-Je vais essayer de faire comme chez moi.

-Oui.

That is not a piperade.

That is a piperade, you little piperade, you.

HE SNIGGERS

Voila. Deja, pour commencer,

moi, j'ai tous ensemble cuit a l'avance.

She has already cooked hers all together,

whereas mine were all apart, just to refresh your memories

of the little mistakes I've been making, OK?

Have a look at that, Clive. Not me, I'm embarrassed.

Merci.

-Je peux dire que tu as oublie le persil?

-Non.

-Pas de persil.

-Pas de persil - no parsley.

Le persil est dedans. Il est deja le persil.

C'est delicieux. Tu as tout a fait raison.

-La reine de la piperade, c'est toi.

-C'est moi. Merci.

It's absolutely true. I mean, look at that rubbish, there -

heavy, lumpy, nasty, British Rail-style scrambled eggs

with a tin of old ratatouille stuffed into it.

Jolly awful, whereas this, with these lovely,

crunchily sliced and fried slices of jambon de Bayonne

and the beautiful, soft ochre colours, magical flavours...

We should go off somewhere together, shouldn't we?

Bye-bye - Mimi and I have got things to do.

THEY LAUGH

Classic stuff from Keith Floyd, there.

As ever on Best Bites, we're looking back at some of the best recipes

from the Saturday Kitchen library.

Still to come on today's Best Bites...

Nick Nairn and Matt Tebbutt go head-to-head

at the Omelette Challenge hobs.

See how they both get on in just a few minutes' time.

Atul Kochhar serves venison with parsnip chips

and an aromatic pear and apple chutney.

The venison is pan-seared and finished off in the oven

with honey, mustard, lemon thyme and spices.

And Brendan Coyle faces his Food Heaven or Food Hell.

Would he get his Food Heaven,

turmeric-spiced prawns with omelette pilau?

Or would he get his dreaded Food Hell,

coffee and chestnut chocolate meringue cake?

You can find out what he gets to eat at the end of the show.

Now, in-between all of his jetsetting and culinary adventures,

Rick Stein flew in to pay a very welcome visit

to the Saturday Kitchen studio.

Here he is with some cracking croquetas.

It's the great Rick Stein, of course, but not cooking fish.

-We mentioned that at the top.

-Absolutely, James.

I just thought it'd be nice to do some, sort of,

croquetas at this chilly time of year.

-This is a Spanish-inspired dish.

-It is Spanish.

The main thing that I love about this dish is this Iberico ham,

which comes from the Iberico pig.

Which is kind of like the black-footed pig, isn't it?

The black-footed pig from Extremadura and Andalucia.

-Yeah.

-They're fed on this diet of acorns and I think, sort of,

aficionados of ham will say that the really important thing

about it is the taste of the fat.

It's quite fatty meat,

but because it's cured, you eat it in very thin slices

and seriously, it's the fat I love.

I'm just going to actually make these croquetas, put the fat...

Sorry, put the ham in first all...

Can we use prosciutto, Italian prosciutto?

-I tell you what...

-LAUGHTER

I knew you were going to say that. But I have to say -

I hope you won't take this wrong, Gennaro -

but no.

Iberico ham is the best ham in the world.

-Oh, mamma mia!

-I do agree with you.

I think it's the best ham in the world.

It really, really is.

It is - it's just that diet of acorns

for the last couple of months of their lives,

they're fed exclusively on acorns, and grass, of course.

-No comments.

-They produce these in Italy, so...

-They do.

I mean, I've just brought that up, actually.

It's a sort of seasonal...

It's actually a radicchio, isn't it?

Not too much information, now, Gennaro.

He knows everything, everything about...

-Castelfranco.

-Yeah, Castelfranco.

What is really nice, I wish we did more of them in the UK,

those lettuces, they've got this slightly bitter...

Not lettuces, truly, but they've got a slightly bitter finish to them

and in this salad, it's going to taste really nice.

You can grow these, you can grow the lettuces in the UK as well,

you can produce that in the UK.

You can, but no-one seems to do them.

I think it's something to do with the way they blanch them,

it's quite technical - you've got to go into, sort of,

darkened rooms with a water bath and leave them there for weeks.

Gennaro was talking about this earlier on,

but it is so complicated, I haven't got time.

THEY LAUGH What are you doing, there?

I've just cooked out some butter and flour

and I'm adding milk, now.

This is the basic...panada, I suppose you'd call it,

for the croquetas.

Like you said earlier on, quite often, you use potato,

mashed potato, but I particularly like these,

because you get a much lighter finish

with flour and butter and milk.

It's creamier inside as well.

It's creamier, and that's what I want, because the great thing

about croquetas is when you bite into them, you've got this crisp -

because we are going to fry them in breadcrumbs...

-Are they quite easy to cook?

-They are very easy to cook, Nicola.

-They really are. You just need a deep-fat fryer.

-Yeah.

But everybody loves them and they are really good, I think.

I chose them at Christmas for a drinks party.

Pick them up - yum!

Cos they do melt in your mouth, sort of stuff, really.

-They do.

-Tell us about the salad, then.

You've got tinned tuna and tinned asparagus.

Well, I know, but it is a classic Spanish salad,

and all those ingredients just go together very well.

And actually, I rather like tinned asparagus -

it's that blanched asparagus they have in Spain, where they, again,

a bit like the Castelfranco, they starve the asparagus of light,

they put them in dark polytunnels, and you get this slightly...

You don't get that greenness of the British asparagus,

but it's very nice.

Tuna, well, I like a tin of tuna. Who doesn't?

-In Spain...

-Nicola, are you all right with the tuna?

-Yeah, yeah.

-Good stuff.

I think, to be honest, it makes it, you know,

a lot easier for people at home to cook it, you know?

You can just get the tuna from a tin and...

You know, it's quite easy to do, isn't it?

Yeah...

You don't have to go fishing and catch your own tuna first...

Don't make me do that!

But tuna is...

Preserved tuna exists since Roman times,

so it is good, it's got that flavour, that texture,

which you can't get with a fresh one.

-The Italians invented tuna now!

-Well, they probably did.

Thank you very much! You said it. It was not me, you said it.

But what he is saying is a good point - preserving -

because of course tuna, being an oily fish,

no refrigeration, doesn't keep,

so unless you are going to have it straight off the fish, char-grilled,

undercooked, much better to cook it in olive oil, normally.

-It is indeed.

-You can keep it a bit like you do your tomatoes in Italy -

-you can keep them all winter.

-Exactly the same - you boil them,

you dry it and put it inside olive oil

and they last for a year. It's fantastic.

Now, this is the total opposite of where you have been recently.

-You've been in...

-I have - just before I talk about India,

which I love to talk about,

I'm just going to put some cooked chicken and...

you have very kindly chopped up some boiled eggs for me as well,

into these croquetas.

We're actually filming all over India at the moment,

in search of the perfect curry.

What we were sort of thinking -

that's me and David, that I always work with -

was, "Do you get better curries in India?"

I can't answer that question.

They've got really good restaurants...

I've been to India, I think you probably can.

Thank you.

We don't need to go any more! I won't go any more, it's done.

I think you can get perfect curries in India, yeah.

Oh, how funny! Anyway...

-Have you been there yet?

-Yeah, no, I've been.

We've been out there for about two months, going back in January.

Don't need to go back! LAUGHTER

But it is... I mean, it is a sensational country.

I wouldn't say it's always easy,

if you know what the expression "Delhi belly" means,

and I had plenty of that, I am that soldier.

And some of the cities are really tough to work in,

but I love the Indians, I love their sense of humour, their...

Even when things are tough, in very difficult circumstances -

you see a lot of poverty - they still manage a smile.

I think they are an inspiration to us all.

And their curries, I love.

I just think curry is our favourite food, I think.

It is an amazing country, really - rich with so many different things.

It is, and of course, they...

Their food is entirely different from one part of India to the other.

Now, then, that needs to go away -

-what I was going to say about that...

-Go away?

Go away into a fridge for a few hours.

You've already got one - thank you so much.

-We basically chill this mixture down, don't we?

-We do.

We chill it down and then we mould it up into little balls,

and then little balls into...

-Gosh, it's quite soft!

-It's a soft one - it'll be all right.