Episode 103 Saturday Kitchen Best Bites

Good morning. We've got some top-class cooking

to get your tastebuds going. This is Saturday Kitchen Best Bites.

Welcome to the show. We've got a line-up of very hungry celebrity guests

waiting to be fed by some pretty great chefs this morning.

French baking legend Richard Bertinet

creates a puffball bread and fills it with tomatoes, Parma ham,

cos lettuce and a Caesar dressing, creating a unique lunchtime treat.

The man with two Michelin stars above the pub door is Tom Kerridge.

He brings Cornish pollock to the table.

He oven-bakes the fish and serves it with radishes,

borage flowers and lardo,

creating one of the most stunning plates you're ever going to see.

The lovely Sophie Grigson pot-roasts pheasant for us.

She cooks it with carrots and Riesling

and serves it with a stunning baked potato, sweetcorn and saffron mash.

And Gloria Hunniford faced her food heaven or food hell.

Would she get her food heaven - scallops - with my decadent gratinated scallops

served in the scallop shell with lobster, or her food hell - rabbit -

with my wild rabbit and morel stew with olive oil mash?

You can find out what she gets to eat at the end of today's show.

First up, Adam Byatt puts a delicate seafood twist on a one-pot wonder.

On the menu is what? Today, we're going to cook a lemon sole dish.

A little one-pot wonder.

We've got some mussels, leeks, samphire

and a bit of creme fraiche to finish it. We're going to make an old-school fish stock as well, which I never do.

It's a lovely lemon sole. Buy it on the bone so I can make the stock.

I'm going to take the fillets off quickly.

With Dover sole being the most expensive one,

it's thinner in shape, really.

I think Dover sole is a bit prohibitive, for me, on the price.

A beautiful fish. It's one of the best fish there is. But prohibitive.

And I love lemon sole. But it's probably got to be four times

the price of one of these little things, really? Yeah.

We use Torbay, we use witch sole, we use megrim soles. We use all sorts.

It depends. They are quite seasonal. It does depend on the time of year.

Now, megrim soles, that's sole that looks a little anaemic.

It's an ugly one, yeah. It's not the most pretty thing in the world.

It's not, no. But these things are bottom feeders,

so you can see, if you turn the fillets over, you have a dark side

which actually blends into the sand, and the white bit is underneath

as they sit on the bottom of the ocean. That's it.

So we'll just take that off.

If you could make some fish stock out of the bones, James.

I know Bill's interested because you're learning all these new types

of fish now you're over here. It's quite different.

It takes a while, actually. We don't have any of that mahi mahi.

Yeah, Hapuku or... Ooja-booja, whatever it is.

And the fish are bigger in Australia. They're like this.

Big and chunky fillets.

Size is not that important, Bill, you know what I mean?

I don't know.

So these, I'm just skinning these sole, James.

I'm just going to get the knife under the flesh

and just move the fish rather than the knife.

So four fillets on a flat fish.

You could, of course, just get your fishmonger to do it.

Now, in here, you've got the wine, you've got the water.

White wine, some water, white vegetables, so onions, celery, leeks,

bay leaf, peppercorns. That's reminded me,

you want a bit of leek in there as well.

A bit of leek, please, mate.

And the reason for white veg is to keep the colour?

You don't put carrots in there. They won't cook in time.

Obviously, you want to cook your fish stock for 20 minutes,

otherwise it goes bitter, overcooks,

there's nothing left to cook after that.

And these, you want them nice and thin?

Please, on the angle, nice and thin.

This is a cracking dish to make at home.

And I wanted to do a dish, my mum said to me,

"Make sure it's a dish I can do at home.

"Don't be doing any of that chef-y stuff." Poncy stuff?

"None of that jus stuff, just give me gravy." That's it.

She don't talk like that.

So we roll these up, like that.

That's just about making sure we've got some density to the fish.

There's a sink in the back there.

So you've got the little fillets there... That's it.

We're going to build this thing here. I've made this hot,

but you don't have to make it hot before. A little pot.

I like things like this, little casserole like this.

Samphire. How is it looking so far? It looks great.

Samphire? Have you ever eaten samphire? I don't usually, no.

It often comes pickled, samphire. It can do. It's called sea asparagus.

This sort of stuff. You can eat it raw... Pop those in there.

A few mussels as well. Nice, large mussels.

All this cooks together at the same time, which is fantastic.

As I said, you want to cook that fish stock.

It's got quite a tang to it. Small asparagus, you see, Bill, look at that! See?

It's got a kind of weird tang to it.

It's salty, because it's basically been picked along the beaches.

Can you replace it with anything?

No. It's got its own taste. It is what it is.

That's the recipe, Bill, that's the recipe.

Don't start messing with it, Bill, you know what I mean?

So this fish stock wants to cook 20 minutes. We cooked some earlier.

Pop that in, nice and hot. A little bit of butter in there, lid on.

Straight in the oven? Straight in a really hot oven.

And that wants, what, three minutes? Yeah, four minutes.

Three, four minutes, that's all. Right, I've got some leek here.

You want me to blend this? I'm going to make a little leek oil.

Just to add a freshness. The whole thing's really fresh and crispy.

A leek oil? Yeah, which just adds to that and keeps it fresh.

And you do that using the green...? The really dark of the leek.

Just the really dark bit. That's good, because when you have recipes with leeks,

it always says, "The white part only."

It's a good way to use the green. We don't really use it.

I'll use a little bit more of this here.

Often, when you do this, you blanch it, don't you?

I don't blanch it but you can.

Stuff like herb oil, you would blanch it a little bit.

Some of them you do. A bit of salt to go with it.

A little bit of salt in there. And just vegetable oil.

Use a neutral oil. Don't use olive oil or anything like that.

Just a nice, neutral oil. On the grapevine,

I've heard that you're opening a new restaurant. Is that right?

I'm trying to, James, yeah. You're trying to?

I think there's a real... Did you do that on purpose?

You started that as soon as I started talking to you! Yeah. I did that on purpose. Go on!

There's a real movement

towards a more sort of simplified food

in this country.

Using the term brasserie or bistro is almost wrong.

But I think what we've got now is a real heritage of food.

And trying to do that on a more simple, mainstream basis

is what I'm trying to do, and we've located a great site.

It's all going through the motions and hopefully that will open.

It feels like a natural progression. We've been open five years now

and it's going really well. I'm going to put some salt into here.

Salt's important because it draws out the moisture.

Stops the leek... We want it to colour really well,

but it stops it burning.

Now, this, it goes a lighter colour when you're blending it.

It's just the air in the oil, isn't it?

And then it'll darken down if you leave it.

More oil, otherwise you'll be there for a while.

A bit more in. Now, these leeks are half-cooked now.

I'm just going to put a lid on it or something to press it down.

What that does is it creates steam underneath and cooks it through.

Ideally, I'd leave that for about 15 minutes. Kind of charring?

Yeah, colour them really well. Pop a plate on top, a little bit of butter,

just cos you're here and it makes you happy.

I don't know what you mean!

A bit of butter. Leave it to sit in that pan

and the residual heat from the pan will cook that through.

All right. I've actually decided I'm not going to use butter

any more in any of my cooking.

Are you not? No. I'm going to use dripping.

LAUGHTER

Good for the lips, not the hips. Yeah, exactly.

Let's have a look. That's had three minutes, bang on. There's your oil.

It will go lighter. That's the colour that you get.

And if you actually leave it, this is what you end up with.

And if you leave it for a long time, this was made yesterday,

you've got three stages, you see.

That was me just now, that was made in rehearsal.

If you leave it, that's what happens.

This is like a masterclass in leek oil.

Well, it basically goes clearer as the sediment drops.

We make chive oil. Last time I came on, actually,

I made a watercress oil, and then turned that into a mayonnaise.

We do a lot of that stuff. So we lift all that out.

Three minutes, you could cook this so quickly at home.

As your mum's told you. Exactly. She told me I have to make sure I cook...

I want to reduce the sauce down.

Sole, it really is very fast anyway.

Very, very fast.

If you think, in there now is the fish stock, all the juice

and the mussels which have been cooked, lovely flavour,

and obviously the leeks and the samphire have played their part

and imparted a bit of flavour.

You've got a really, really good, delicious, fishy stock.

I just want to reduce that down quickly.

And then you've got this? Yeah, a little bit of creme fraiche in there.

You don't want double cream? Not really. Are you sure? Not a big fan.

I tell you, it's not actually to do with the fat content,

it's to do with the acidity. It's all about acidity.

It plays a big part in all of this.

We want to add the acidity, and creme fraiche is much better for that.

These things you've got here as well...

It's a little bit of sea aster. I think it just ties in really well.

I put it in ice to crisp it up a little bit. What's that? Sea aster.

See, Bill's learning as well! I know, it's like, what? Sea aster.

I'll be charging you after this, Bill. So tell us, people who have never seen you before...

Sea aster, like samphire, grows on the beaches, on the shore,

and it's just a sea vegetable.

It's really crisp and adds a really nice element.

It's great in salads. A lot of this is crisp. I think that's important.

Cooking nowadays, food nowadays is a lot fresher than it was

when you and I started. And I think that's important.

It's a lovely movement, actually. So the stock in here,

the reason why you only cook it for 20 minutes,

you say it goes bitter? It goes bitter. And after 20 minutes,

there's no flavour left to take out. You just want to cover it.

We add white wine because I think it's really nice.

White bones or Salmon bones you want for this

but not oily fish like mackerel. Don't use the bones from that.

Lift these out. I didn't wash them, which is important.

There's dirt underneath the layers.

But I'm going to peel off the layers and use them, like that. Here we go.

Good job you said that.

No, somebody's going to ask you why they weren't washed.

It's important to wash leeks

but actually what we do is cook them like that. If you wash them before,

they wouldn't colour in the pan, you see? OK.

We had to come up with a way to...

All those lovely leeks and samphire on there

and then we pop the sole round the outside, like that. Really lovely.

I think just rolling it up gives it a bit of density.

That is old school, isn't it?

I haven't done that since I was at college. Really old school.

That is what you would call a paupiette, James. Yup.

Here we go. Like that.

I'm sure you've cooked a few paupiettes in your time?

Yeah, when I was in college, yeah. Exactly.

Nothing wrong with that, is there? Mornay, you used to do it with a cheese sauce. That's it.

And then we just take our...

Another second more there.

Take the outside of that leek off.

Like so. Just pull that off.

It just adds texture and another sort of lovely flavour to it.

You want a little bit of charred in there. It's all quite soft.

Some sauce over the top. And that's just the stock?

That's the stock, reduced down, a bit of the mussel liquor.

Really flavoursome. Huge amounts of flavour.

And I'm just going to finish it with that lovely leek oil.

A bit of that. Going to freshen it up, that's it.

Remind us what that dish is again?

That's my lemon sole, mussels, leeks, creme fraiche...

With a bit of leek oil. Yes. Looks stunning. You can cook at home.

Absolutely fabulous. Look at that.

It's actually on the menu at the moment. It's on the menu?

Another plug?!

Dive into that. That looks amazing.

It looks great, doesn't it? Yeah, but this sea aster stuff,

where do you buy it? You can actually buy it in a supermarket.

You can get samphire in the supermarket.

You can buy sea aster too. Can you? Yes. I've seen it.

Really? I could just see me going down to the beach or something.

If you see it now, you'll identify it if you are on the beach.

We have a guy that goes round all the beaches and picks it for us.

That's lovely. Really delicate. Nice and simple, delicate.

Like you say, that's the sole in there as well.

The most important thing with that is the cooking temperature. Not overcooking it.

It's really delicate, the flavour comes through rather than the fish.

It's great.

That was a great recipe.

Coming up, I will be making a squash pickle for Sharon Corr,

with squash from my garden, after Rick Stein travels to Scotland

for a Bloody Mary and some spoots, or razor clams, to you and I.

My head chef Roy, who's very Scottish, said that

if I was going to Edinburgh, I had to go to the Canny Man's pub.

It's a well-known establishment in the Morningside area,

and it's a must.

He described it as a cross between a pub and a gentleman's club,

and if they don't like the look of you, they chuck you out.

On the internet, it said, "It's been operating since Victoria

"was on the throne, probably to the same bunch of regulars."

But the Bloody Marys

made by the owner's son Tristram are legendry.

It's a misconception.

People think a Bloody Mary is vodka and tomato juice.

It's not. It's vodka, tomato juice

and a whole load of other things, all together.

You'll see the glass is lined, that's just to give us

the exact measurements to get it right each time.

A serious measurement of Worcester sauce.

I take it to the second line. Then you add the lemon juice,

just from the second white line

to just off the top. Just to about there.

And then, on top of that, you have to be careful with Tabasco

because it can ruin a Bloody Mary.

But it does need to have that sort of bite. Great.

And you pour that into a glass with some ice, a slice of lemon

and a fresh piece of celery. Next, vodka.

Always use a good vodka.

Nothing at 38 volume. Always 40 volume.

And then you add the tomato juice.

Then on top, you add some celery salt and some cayenne pepper.

And finally, ice-cold dry sherry.

Tio Pepe is probably the best one for it,

just a little floater on the very top.

And that is how you do a bloody Mary. Cheers, Tristram.

Just have a tiny little taste.

Haunting, I would say. That's haunting.

They only serve Swedish-style open sandwiches here, but, being a pub,

dogs are allowed, and it's the sort of place Chalky loves.

And look at this beautifully rare Aberdeen Angus beef.

Sorry to keep going on about life on the road and overcooked steaks,

but it's a fact.

I think Chalky finds the whole thing a bit of a jaunt, of course.

While we're at it, this is a little glimpse of life on the road.

First of all, most of the time is spent at motorway services with

impromptu picnics, tasting local cheeses, as juggernauts roll by.

And then it's checking into yet another hotel for a nice rare steak.

This is unbelievable. This is the best one I've ever seen!

Thank you.

That's a serious tomato sauce.

That's the sort of stuff you have to eat as a vegetarian.

If that's bleu, my arm is a...

Dogfish. THEY LAUGH

So what is the latest fashion in food?

It's one of those things about big bowls,

it's quite irritating to get your knife and fork in there.

It slopes at the front. You see? Otherwise...

"I am your deep bowl, sir.

"I am sloping towards you to make it easier for you to eat."

That's interesting, they've got a starter of deep-fried "blanchbait".

I wonder if that means whitebait.

The verdict on the fish.

I can imagine people having this as a main course,

and thinking, "I'll go for the steak next time."

I always find that a bit revealing.

You take a fin like that - why's it all bust off at the end?

It's been frozen, it's been knocked around in the freezer.

Meanwhile, back to Edinburgh, and Eddie's Seafood Market.

How come you do so well? Because we have a lot of contacts.

We get fish from the west coast, the east coast,

and lots from the loch as well. We have so much variety.

People just keep coming back to buy more fish

and they want to try something new.

They do not want to go to a fishmonger,

they will get only haddock or cod.

They want to try something like sea bass, um, Dover sole,

or some langoustine.

Do you call them spoots or razor clams?

Here, we call them razor clams. They are lovely. Brilliant.

They're are so fresh. They smell of the sea.

They just came today from Oban.

Oban. How would you cook those? Like scallops.

Open it, clean it out,

and then steam it with garlic and black bean sauce.

It'll be lovely.

Actually, Eddie's one of my food heroes

because this is the sort of fishmonger I'd like to see

in every city. Is not just that it's busy, it's also unpretentious.

He's just getting on with it.

Me and the crew are calling him Fast Eddie because

he's here, there, everywhere, buying, selling, stuff coming in,

and it's got this bustle that's really exciting.

What's your favourite fish? I love herring.

A lot of people don't like herring. How would you cook it?

Oh, it's quite straightforward.

Herring fillets, dip in some flour, and then just pan-fry it.

Make it turn crispy and a yellow colour. Yeah. That's it. Beautiful.

I thought I'd do exactly what he suggested with those clams.

I'm just mashing these fermented black beans with a little sugar

and some roasted sesame oil.

I'm going to use them to make this Chinese dish with these razor clams,

or spoots, as the Scottish call them.

I remember, about eight or nine years ago,

I went to the mouth of the estuary

at a low spring tide with a fisherman called Ed the Bass,

and he had a way of catching these razor clams,

'by putting table salt down the hole that they live down,

'or burrow down - it looked a bit like a keyhole,

'and they'd come racing out.'

Very gently, ease him out slowly.

So much strength! That's amazing! Very gently, so you don't break him.

That's him, you've got him. Perfect.

'I was a lot younger at the time, perhaps more innocent,'

but I remember describing it at the time

as being like ships sinking in reverse.

It wasn't exactly how the crew described it! But anyway,

let's get on and cook them.

First of all, I add sunflower oil to a hot pan

and then in goes my black bean paste.

I stir that around in the hot oil to let it cook out,

and then I add some very finely chopped garlic

and the equivalent amount of ginger.

Stir that around, and next for some heat -

some sliced chillies - but I've taken the seeds out of them

so they're not too hot.

And finally, the razor clams, into that hot pan.

Finally, just to increase the amount of steam and flavour,

a bit of Shaoxing wine, Chinese rice wine.

You can use dry sherry, but Shaoxing is exactly the thing,

and just a bit of water to make up the sauce.

Final shake, and on with the lid.

In Italy, these razor clams are quite small,

and you get a whole bundle of them on a plate,

but with these big ones from Scotland,

they are a lot bigger, and three is quite enough.

Leave that to cook for three or four minutes, no longer,

because they want to be nice and tender.

I remember a real razor clam emergency on a beach in Torquay

a couple of years ago. Loads of cut feet and ambulances.

The Chinese would have scooped them up, not stepped on them!

To finish the sauce, just a little soy sauce, not too much,

and then some slaked cornflour, just to thicken it a little.

Stir that in, and that's it.

Just nap that, as we say in the trade,

over the razor clams and sprinkle with some sliced spring onions,

just to give that nice oniony tang at the end.

And I just serve that with some rice.

Quite often the Chinese will serve a single razor clam

as part of a banquet, disconcertingly unsliced,

so you have to pick the whole thing out with your chopsticks.

Those razor clams look delicious.

Always buy them as fresh as possible.

The same can be said about vegetables, and after

the success of last week's tomato crop and the soup that people have

been tweeting about, we have another one of my vegetables from my garden.

This could be a butternut squash, but it could also be a melon,

because the plants got muddled up. Very suspect.

This hopefully is going to be a pickle with some apple -

like, an Indian-inspired pickle.

We've got some black onion seeds,

a little bit of fenugreek seeds, chilli,

turmeric, cumin, that kind of stuff -

simple flavours - with some chicken.

We will take our squash, which is hugely popular now,

autumn squashes.

It IS a squash, so that is good. A sigh of relief from me.

The alternative was a melon pickle!

I didn't know how I'd get out of that one.

Most of the squashes in the UK now, sadly, are from South Africa

at this time of year.

But growing your own is so simple.

Grow them in a compost heap.

They are lovely and moist. See all the liquid coming out?

That's all flavour.

We are going to dry-fry that with all these different spices.

I can't believe, looking back,

it was nearly 14 years ago you appeared as The Corrs

at the Olympics.

But the '90s were a massive success for you. Yeah, they were.

Being Irish, music is in your blood.

You see it all the time on that X Factor thing.

They are pretty good, the Irish, at that kind of stuff.

We're really immersed in it from very young,

and my mum and dad were very musical

and they had a band themselves.

My mum had a voice like Karen Carpenter,

so we were immersed in music from zero.

So that was it, you were just definitely going to go into it?

Yes, I think it was never really a conscious decision.

It was just sort of, you know, air and water in our life.

Music was just a huge thing. But before all that, was it tough?

A lot of bands have it tough, with touring and bits and pieces.

How did it all suddenly happen for you guys?

Well, I mean, we kind of...

we got our stage legs over years and years and years of touring.

In '94, we visited a lot of record companies in the States,

and we'd approached a lot of record companies before then

to no avail, but in 1994, we gatecrashed a session

in the Hit Factory,

with David Foster and Michael Jackson. Like you do.

We literally just turned up.

It's funny how you can work so hard,

and then it's one piece of inspired idea that just tips it.

And so we'd no meeting, with David Foster,

who still is one of the biggest producers -

he has just done Michael Buble and lots of different people.

And he was just curious because we turned up with violins,

tin whistles, bodhran, and we said, "Can we play for you?"

And he was just really interested, so we sat round the piano

and we played a couple of songs, and we were signed the next day.

But it took us about four years to get to that point of signing.

And that was it? 30 million albums later.

Unbelievably, five years ago you decided, that's it. I suppose...

We had toured, recorded albums, promoted them

and toured back to back for 15 years.

It was time for us to... We'd had amazing success

all over the world,

and it was time for us to, I suppose, pursue our individual lives.

We were sort of hemmed in together all the time.

And it felt like the right time,

and within a couple of months I was pregnant with my first son, Cal,

and Caroline already had a little boy at that stage, so it just made sense.

We will work together again, it just was the time to stop for a while.

But in the meantime, back out on your own.

Yeah. It's funny, I was only home for about six months

and I had already had itchy feet to get back out there

because being on the road became more normal to me than being at home.

So during that five years, between that and your new album,

which is due out next week...? Yes, 13th September.

Were you still writing?

Cos you used to write a lot of the songs for the group.

The band all wrote, which was great for us. We all wrote a lot.

That was kind of ideal.

For me, when I came off the road,

the one thing I did not want to lose was my writing chops.

I wanted to keep them up and make sure I was still working on that.

So I did, and I kept writing

and had a very sort of productive couple of years' writing.

Before I knew it, I was kind of recording

the album before I'd decided to do it, if you know what I mean.

It was a very natural thing.

You still kept some of the... not the band with you,

but the backing team with you.

Great names like Jeff Beck, you've been working with on it.

Yeah, that was really cool.

I went to a gig of Jeff's last year in Vicar Street in Dublin,

and the gig was phenomenal.

I went backstage because I knew all the bouncers working the venue

cos I live in Dublin, so I went backstage and said hello.

He's just such a sweet guy and is such an incredible musician.

Ticking over in my mind is, "Do you think he could play on my album?"

And so I did an instrumental version of a tune called Mna Na hEirean,

and did the beautiful orchestral scoring of it.

I knew if he would be into something,

he would be into a classical Irish feel.

I was brought up playing classical, and moved into traditional,

so I thought that might hook him.

So we sent that to him, and he fell in love with it.

And then I played it with him in the O2 earlier this year

at his gig, with Eric Clapton and himself, and it was great.

He's a great guy to work with. Fantastic.

I'll run through what we've got.

We've got the chicken cooking away nicely,

all the spices in there, apple, onion, a bit of garlic.

We've got things like fenugreek seeds, black onion seeds,

and we always dry-fry them in sugar as well.

I've chopped some mint, coriander, and the final bit going in

is mango chutney, some lime, and that is about it, really.

Talking about your album as well, there's a mixture.

You've got a mixture of the songs you wrote,

but you cover a few songs as well.

Yes, I covered two songs on the album basically because, for me,

an album is like a journey.

The album is what I've been enjoying musically myself,

and what I've been writing, and there are two songs that have had

a big influence in my life, and one of them is the single,

Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime.

I was always playing the violin solo in that song,

but never actually singing it.

Last year I was rehearsing

for the Isle of Wight and Glastonbury festivals

and my guitarist said, "Why don't you try singing it?"

And I did, and it just really suited.

And everybody loved it, so I put it on the album.

And then I did a cover of Bronski Beat's Smalltown Boy,

but really turned it on his head. You sort of recognise the song.

It is relaxing.

I actually fell asleep last night listening to it.

I'm not sure that's a good thing! He was snoring to my music!

It's a compliment! But it's very relaxing, isn't it?

You've back-pedalled, it's OK! I believe you.

It is really relaxing, though.

What's the first one, the wedding song?

The first track? Our Wedding Day.

That's an instrumental,

and I always open my stage show with that instrumental,

and I wanted to make the album like I would make a stage show.

Don't do it while I'm there, otherwise I'd fall asleep.

I'm not putting you in the front row!

There you go. I've got my chicken there, we've just cooked this.

This is our little pickle. This is really simple, full of flavour.

Like that. Looks great.

There you go. A little bit of that. Touch of lime juice at the end.

Sprinkle over the top.

I've nicked some off Sat, a little bit of coriander cress. Here we go.

This is red amaranth. And these are from your garden as well?

No. You can actually grow this sort of stuff, red amaranth.

It's like a trendy leaf now. The pickle cooks in six minutes,

to cook all that all the way through.

That's very fast, isn't it? And Indian-inspired pickle.

Straight out of the garden. They want some over there.

That's a bit of onion, but I'll let you off!

The first time he said Indian, their eyes lit up. It's not that spicy.

You can put green chilli in if you want to spice it up.

Dive into that, tell us what you think.

Mmmmm. Good? That mango chutney really does work.

You sound surprised! Thanks very much!

Thank goodness it wasn't a melon, after all.

If you'd like to try your hand at that pickle

or have a go at any of the recipes you've seen on today's show,

they're just a click away, at bbc.co.uk/recipes.

Now, we're not live today, so instead we are looking back

at some of the best cooking from the Saturday Kitchen archives.

If you thought puffballs were just mushrooms, think again,

because now it's time for a fantastic demonstration

from the master of bread-making, Richard Bertinet.

Good to have you on the show. How are you?

I'm fantastic. I love bread. I absolutely love it.

Pastry chef for many years.

It's not the easiest thing, to make it as good as you guys,

but you're going to show us a couple of tips.

Yes, I'm going to demystify the myth of bread-making.

First, to make good bread, you need a good dough. A good dough.

Which is the title of your book, I believe.

The first one. The second one is Crust. All right. So, some flour.

English flour as well. English flour. How much is that?

500 grams of flour. Some fine sea salt, good salt again.

I'm going to start off with a salad.

The salad is like a little Caesar salad.

Just while I chop the things up.

We've got tomatoes I'm going to cook with some thyme in the oven.

A bit of Serrano ham, so it crisps up, some cos lettuce.

I'm going to make a little Caesar salad. French mustard.

French mustard, sorry. Thank you. Sorry about that.

He's started already. First time. Have you been listening to him?

You started this morning, not me. OK, right, fire away.

You're watching, yeah? Yeast in there? Fresh yeast.

You can get fresh yeast from your supermarket.

If they've got an in-store bakery they'll have some,

or your local baker or food store.

I'm just going to rub it gently in the flour like that. Like a crumble.

But you keep the yeast and the salt separate, don't you? Absolutely.

Otherwise you will kill it.

And then I'll blend all this together,

and then I put my 350 grams of water in there.

Now, generally, when you're taught at college, as chefs,

you're taught to use tepid water and stuff like that,

but you can use cold water, I suppose? It just takes longer

to prove, does it? It will take longer.

The longer it takes to make bread, the better it will taste at the end.

But the secret is not to use hot water. You make pancakes, otherwise.

And now I'm going to turn all this with my scraper there.

Blend all the ingredients together.

Make a very nice and soft dough.

No hands, you just use the...

I try to keep my hands as clean as possible.

When you have children and, you know, things at home,

your hands... You keep them clean.

Just makes it much easier like that.

Right, I'm going to pop this in the oven just to crisp this up.

The dough looks really wet, though.

I use a lot more water than the traditional British baking.

I use for one kilo of flour for 500 grams,

it's better 150 gram, up to 400 grams sometimes.

But different flours absorb a different amount of liquid.

Absolutely, yeah. This flour usually can absorb quite a lot.

So the secret of bread is not the actual recipe itself,

it's being able to see when it's ready. Is that right?

Yes, I mean the problem with a lot of recipes is the dough

is too hard and then you end up making the bread not right.

If you make a soft dough, your bread will be much lighter.

You'll get a nice crust onto it, as well.

I'm going to cheat a little bit,

I'm going to take one that we've done earlier...

So you mix everything nicely like that.

Here's one I made earlier.

One interesting fact that I've got on here, as well...

I love this fact. Our researchers do all this.

96% of British households buy bread,

whereas 95% of British households buy toilet paper.

What do the other 5% use? Not sure.

They buy shirts like that.

What do you do with this now? I'm going to show you the technique.

You are so in for it!

Unbelievable. Right.

So your dough is nice and soft and the technique I use is not the

technique where you use more flour to make your dough harder.

It's not the usual one you...

No, you get your hand underneath that and then you swivel the dough

down and slap it down, trap some air inside, you see?

Look at that! Clever. And then your dough... You make it look so easy.

There's going to be hundreds of people tonight just...

Going everywhere.

But how long do you leave that to prove before you get to this stage?

No, you don't. I'm just going a bit faster there. OK, right.

It takes about five minutes to work your dough with that technique.

Then you end up with a nice soft dough,

and what's on the recipe is what you've got there.

You don't add any flour to it, then you don't confuse the issue there.

So with the wet dough, what you've done is stretched all the gluten,

that makes it come together, rather than it being...like a dry dough.

Taking the everything out. Just putting air inside the dough. Cool.

Just like that. That's it. So when you've got this, at that stage...

Where's the scraper? Gather everything together.

So where did you invent this recipe?

Is it a traditional recipe, or is it...?

No, I was working in the lab, in my little bakery,

and I had a piece of dough left over and I was starving,

so I just rolled it out and put it in the oven

on the hot tray, and it just puffed up. I thought, "Whoa, I like that."

What I like to do is to bring bread and food together,

cos bread's always been left on the side a little bit.

There you go, look at that.

Baby's bottom.

So, that's one there. And you leave your dough to rise for...

But it wants to prove now, so cloth over it. To rest.

Proving is afterwards. OK. So that's what we end up with, OK?

Yeah. With this, I'm going to make the puffball now.

I'll show you. OK. I'm just going to explain what I've got in here.

I've got some garlic, which I've cooked in some white wine

just to take the strength off it a bit. Put that into a blender

with some egg yolks, a bit of Parmesan cheese,

anchovy, a bit of French mustard,

and them I'm going to add some oil,

just to thicken it up into a nice little dressing,

and then bring it back down again with a bit of water,

so it's not too thick.

And my tomatoes and my Parma ham's in the oven. So what next?

What I'm going to do now is divide little pieces of dough

like that to make the puffball.

Roll them nice and tight.

As a Frenchman and a baker, don't you get upset with the English,

the way that a lot of the English buy their bread

and they buy it once a week,

whereas in France, it's traditional that every day you go down to the...

There's a demand for good bread. Everybody wants good bread,

but you don't buy bread just once a week.

In France, you buy bread every day, it's part of your life all the time.

Yes. What annoys me is when you read the ingredients in some of the bread

from the supermarket, you wouldn't eat it. Exactly.

But you just buy it quite blind, really. Yeah.

It is possible to make good bread on a big scale. Yeah.

With no improver, no flavouring, or...

You're going to prove this by cooking it in a domestic cooker.

Nice and thin. Like so. Lovely.

So what's the thickness of this? A couple of millimetres

or something like that? Yeah.

One-and-a-half, roughly.

One-and-a-half millimetres? Yeah. That's precise.

So, in there. Now, this is special, you've heated up a stone in there.

We've got the baking stone in the oven.

You can buy these from a cookware store. In there for a long time.

And then you preheat your oven and the stone stays hot all the time.

Keep the heat into it. Right.

And if you cross your fingers now, hopefully it should puff up.

So that stone, you can make pizzas and stuff on as well?

You can make pizza, even the roast, if you roast your meat on top,

it'll keep a nice heat onto it.

It's really good. I'll leave you to...

We've actually got one we've already cooked,

but you should actually see that start to puff up.

Now, you need to leave that in for about ten minutes

to get it nice and hot. Yeah.

So we're going to fill up the... OK.

You can fill it all up when you're ready.

In here, we're going to put a few bits of salad.

A bit of salad, yeah.

You don't want anything too wet to start with,

cos the crust is so thin, you don't want it to seep through the crust.

That is that for you, sorry. No, that's for you, go on.

Just put this in there. It's like a big salad sandwich.

Sort of. This seems itself, a nice little case,

but I mean, way back in Tudor times, it was served as a...

Bread used to be part of the table setting,

it was actually part of the plates. They used to serve food on it. Yeah.

What annoys me, when you go in a restaurant and they serve you bread

and you have your starter and the bread goes away.

I like my bread all the way through the meal.

Look what you end up with. These are fantastic.

They're unbelievable.

The trick with this one is to make a little hole there

and put all your ingredients inside.

While you make a little hole, look at this.

If you check this out, you can see it starting to rise up.

The secret is, keep it at a nice hot oven, I suppose.

Nice hot oven, yeah.

If you want ten perfect ones, expect to do 20 of them.

Look at that. Whoa!

Hey-hey!

Look at that!

The magic puffball!

You can come back! Right, what's next?

We've got our salad and I'm going to stuff it inside it.

Like so. Do you have your tomatoes? Yeah, they're ready.

If you bring all this in here. Fantastic.

I believe, way back in Tudor times, this was called a trencher,

when they used to serve the bread as a plate, and people would

eat off it and then they'd give the bread to the poor...

The bread was the first thing... ..or the animals.

What are you looking at me for?! I'm just saying.

Full of history, mate, full of history. Some anchovies.

Stuff them in there. Be gentle with my puffball.

I'm gentle with your puffball.

You British men. I don't know. British brutes.

There you go. Get 'em in. I'm not surprised you don't win the rugby.

Get in there.

You've still got to win it yet. I know.

The Australian speaking over there. Yeah, I know, exactly.

Is that enough? Yeah, that should be fine. One more. Close it up.

This is brilliant, isn't it? Are you ready?

I've got my dressing separate, but this goes on at the end. OK.

Here we've got a plate.

Now, look at that. You take it to the table like that, and then?

Take it to the table. You got your dressing ready?

Got my dressing, I'm there. OK, and then you crack it open, like that.

And then you eat from the inside. Here we go. Look at that.

So, Richard, remind us what that is again. The magic puffball.

The magic puffball. Easy.

So, voila!

Fantastic. Right, come on over. Have a dive in.

Tell me what you think. That looks so beautiful.

Are you going to attempt something like that? Erm, yeah!

I'm going to be there all night doing my... Can I taste this? Yeah.

You might want a fork. Yeah, I might. That looks amazing.

You could use it for a variety of different things. Oh, it's gorgeous.

Any filling. Rocket. You can use... Just nice...

Could you put soup in there sometimes?

Well, I make another dish,

it's a bit thicker and they make a soup bowl.

It's baked in a different way, but yeah, you can make a soup bowl with it.

If you want your soup bowl or you want takeaway,

you can serve it in the bowl. Yeah, takeaway.

A lot of work for a takeaway.

What about little ones, like for kids' school lunches and stuff?

Yeah, you can do that. That would be quite a clever thing to do.

You can do a tiny one and cut them square,

and make some mousse inside.

For your little kid. Yeah. You'll be coming back from the West End.

What do you reckon?

Clever, isn't it? Instead of the crouton, you get the bread as well.

I like that. I like the crispy bits. And no fat.

It's great to watch an experienced bread-maker at work.

Now it's the turn of the West Country to get the Keith Floyd treatment.

Today, he bumps into a very young-looking Gary Rhodes

when his travels take him to Taunton.

My unceasing search for regional culinary excellence has become

almost like the search of the Holy Grail,

or as we say in the trade, the Holy Quail.

So I thought I'd come here and see if can get a little assistance.

But as Richard Harris said, "There's not a lot in Camelot."

But is there not?

Could there not be in this sombre castle behind me

a culinary Merlin who could cook for me

an oxtail like you would like to see in Camelot?

First order! Five covers. One sardine,

three cream, one broth,

four liver, one veal for Mrs C, and five veg.

When I've made my second million...

No, when I've finished building my small palace in Provence,

I'll let Gary Rhodes, the chef at the Castle Hotel in Taunton,

take over my job.

His skill and passion has silenced the musical hall jokes,

and put British food where it truly belongs.

Gary was just recently a finalist

in a very important gastronomic competition,

and it had a French name.

I think that's appalling for a British cook.

You know, when are we going to get a grip of ourselves?

Why do we have to be called

the Munier Ouvrier Gastronomie de Grande Bretagne

when we could be called A Really Good British Cook?

Strange, isn't it? Anyway, watch the man. He's the business.

Right, what I'm going to do is just quickly prep this up.

I take off all the fat from the actual oxtail itself,

and obviously retain all that fat, cos I'm a great believer

in putting as much of the flavour into everything as we can.

So if we get started straightaway,

Keith, I've got some oxtail fat that's been rendered here.

Right, Richard, close-up here, this is very important. Oxtail fat, OK.

Cook that down, so I keep the maximum flavour.

When it's fried, we're putting oxtail flavour back into the oxtails.

So that's the most important thing.

So I'll stick a little bit of fat in here

and we'll start to get these oxtails on. Right, OK.

Notice - all trimmed of fat now, but the fat's been rendered down.

These have obviously previously been seasoned with salt and pepper,

and in they go.

So, I think that'll do us for now. And what do we do?

We just brown those off...

Brown those off, almost like roasting them on top of the stove.

Get a nice good colour off those, seal the flavour in,

and as I said, using that oxtail fat,

keep as much flavour in there as possible.

So we just let those turn in there for a couple of seconds, all right.

He's going like a train!

What we need is some...mirepoix of vegetables.

Mirepoix! Now, hold on, I'll take you to task now.

We're cooking a British meal

and you use French words like "mirepoix" for chopping vegetables.

It's just something I think you get used to. Chopped vegetables.

Chopped vegetables. Chopped root vegetables.

So, we've got some onions, celery, carrots, leek in here.

All that flavour that we're going to put into these oxtails.

So we'll just quickly turn these.

Turn them over. Getting a nice bit of brown colour onto these,

sealing all that flavour inside. Beautiful meaty oxtail.

As soon as these are actually browned off,

we'll put them into a colander, drain off the excess fat.

One thing I don't want is putting the excess fat into our sauce,

as we'll end up with a fatty-looking sauce.

You're doing a good job with them.

Once these are just nice and sealed, we'll get the vegetables

in the pan to bring off any of the residue from the base of the pan...

Right. ..putting that into the sauce itself.

So we're going to strain that oxtail into here,

then tip the fat back into there again?

Well, there'll be enough fat in the bottom of there.

We may need a little bit.

So if we can get those into there, I'll get the veg. OK.

Now, the important thing here, as the man is saying,

when we cook our vegetables...

Sorry, Richard, were you asleep for a second?

The point is here, when we cook our vegetables,

we're going to cook them in the oxtail fat. That's very important.

At the same time, Gary's making a point for those of you

who are cholesterol conscious, that the fat's going to be drained away

from the meat itself, so the fat does not go into the ultimate sauce.

That's very important. But the fat is used for enhancing the flavours.

And by God, it's hot in this kitchen. It is, yes.

If I can just get these vegetables into the pan,

just enough to take the residue off the base. Right.

We'll fry those off just for a couple of seconds,

and then we'll swill out that pan,

deglazing the pan with a little bit of white wine

to lift everything off the base there, not wasting anything at all.

Right. Now, do we want these to take colour in any way?

Just a slight colour.

It's really to just moisten them in there.

The most important thing here,

cooking oxtails really seems to be a three-day event.

It's not something that you can really just throw into a pan

and neglect and leave. It's something that has to be mothered.

So we start off by making a good oxtail stock, which we have on here.

That stock will cook out for at least a day.

And then we'll just reduce that stock down

until we're left with a good shiny glaze,

which is what we have in there.

It's reduced down like that.

And for those of you who don't know what a three-day event is,

phone up Princess Anne, cos that isn't where it's at, OK?!

So, if we put those vegetables in now,

we take those from the pan, we can put them into here and just...

On top? Yes, on top of there, just draining off that fat once more.

And if we can just take a little bit of white wine...

Oh, right, and this is called rinsing out the pan with white wine.

Or, as we say, deglasser de pouele.

Make sure in our economical way we're not losing one smidgen of flavour.

We've had the fat, we've had the wine to make sure it comes out of it,

it's all there. It's economic and it's delicious.

Right, phase next.

Right, pull a pan in, let's get this on the go. Now, we've drained out...

All the fat. All the fat's gone.

Into another pan, which is slightly warm.

Don't want to put anything into a cold pan, that's the first mistake.

And in there with our deglazed wine.

That's enough.

Now, what I actually need is...

Can you just see him there, I mean on bass guitar laying it down?

I mean, it's like that, isn't it?

What I've actually got here is some tomato.

Again, I only like to use the flesh of tomatoes, not tomato puree,

let's just use the flesh.

You can leave the skins on if you want to,

but here I've actually chopped some up roughly just to put in there.

I just want to get the flesh flavour from the tomato into the sauce.

So we're going to add a little bit of tomato at this stage.

In terms of rock'n'roll, is this Maybelline? Where is this dish?

In your feelings. Is that the heart of the British stomach?

I can't think of a really good question to ask,

the kitchen is so hot. Tell me about this dish.

I really do believe that this is the heart of British cooking.

This is what British cooking is all about.

I think this holds the fundamental elements

of good cooking. It really does.

I think cooking things on the bone, and particularly a thick

bone like this, there is far more skill in cooking this

than cooking any duck or chicken breast that you might get in France.

With this, the degree of cooking for oxtails must be perfect.

It has to be tender but not falling off the bone and stringy,

and you cannot undercook it,

where it is tough and you can't get it off the bone.

All of that takes about three hours. Shut up!

It takes about three hours. You've been bossy enough.

It takes about three hours, my director will dream up some

little interlude, we will have a glass or maybe even a cup of tea,

and we will be back when this is beautifully cooked and tasted.

Look in there, Richard. Slow-cooking in the oven.

# Every morning, true as the clock Somebody hears the postman's knock

# Every morning, true as the clock

# Somebody hears the postman's knock. #

CHEERING

Dans les villages du Devon on se prepare pour la Foire de Caen.

Devant la pub, coin populaire du village, les passiones de folklore

font leur repetition, car cette annee ce sont les generals du Devon,

les Devonians, comme on dit, qui sont invites d'honneur a la foire.

Un, deux, trois!

So, there it is, that was an amusing interlude. Whack the meat on the plate.

What have you done in the meantime?

I have strained out the sauce into there,

added a little diced vegetable, same ones as in there

but nice and small, just cooked with butter, some onion

and tomato, and thrown some parsley in.

I think it is a nonsense to start sprinkling things with parsley,

let's get all the flavour out.

Here we have typical British cooking, very rustic on the plate.

Full of colour and a lovely shine to the sauce.

This is what oxtail can do for a sauce. I am just going to nap this on top

and here I hope we have Britain's signature dish.

Absolutely brilliant.

Richard, sniff into that, if only the camera could sniff.

It smells so good.

If food was paintings, this would not be a Van Gogh.

He encapsulated the spirit of Provence. This would be a Joshua Reynolds -

difficult to define, a bit in the attic, absolutely brilliant and truly British.

In my Somerset jaunt I couldn't resist revisiting my old alma mater, Wellington School.

The last time I came around here was on a push bike and they gave me 50 lines.

Great showing off, isn't it?

Of course, you must be in sixth form to drive on the grass.

But, actually, I'm a bit nervous, I am going to meet a few old chums,

my old masters. They are probably 104 now.

You might think this is self-indulgent,

you might think it is nostalgic, a bit wet, but this is actually where,

30 years ago, I developed my first real passionate interest in food.

After a hard day learning Latin and playing rugby and scoring tries, the school dinner

was what you really looked forward to. But times have changed.

We used to have a drum of baked beans or butter beans, a vat of stew

and that was it. But now look!

You can have baked gammon, roast chicken, smoked mackerel,

tuna fish, assorted cheeses, coleslaw, potatoes, melons.

Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, chicken casserole,

seafood au gratin, cheese and broccoli quiche, beefburger and rolls,

three vegetables, apple tart, stuff like that.

Wine is extra, ha-ha-ha!

But I tell you one thing - never mind the vegetarian stews and the quiches,

one thing that hasn't changed is the steamed pudding with chocolate sauce.

That's a part of a real school dinner

and I will have three bowls of this, so it is not all bad.

Great to see the man in action.

We're not cooking live today. Instead, we're looking back

at the mouthwatering cooking from the Saturday Kitchen back catalogue.

Still to come, the Spaniard versus the honorary Italian

in the omelette challenge.

Jose Pizarro meets Theo Randall at the hobs.

Both men could do with improving their times.

See how they get on later on.

Cookery writer Sophie Grigson roasts pheasant.

She pot-roasts the bird with carrots and Riesling

and serves it with a stunning baked potato, sweetcorn and saffron mash.

Gloria Hunniford faced her food heaven or food hell.

Would she get her food heaven - scallops - with my delicious

gratinated scallops served in the shell with fresh lobster,

or a dreaded food hell - rabbit - with my wild rabbit

and morel stew with olive oil mash?

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

Pub grub in the UK can be great,

but when the pub has two Michelin stars,

you expect the food to be outstanding.

Here's the one and only Tom Kerridge to show us

just how it should be done.

What's on the menu?

We are doing pollock, with some radishes from my garden,

grown by Andy Crier, some borage flowers from the garden,

some girolle mushrooms, a nice butter sauce and lardo to go on top.

Sounds good to me. You will use the pollock we have here. It is more sustainable than cod and haddock.

That is it. This is Cornish line-caught pollock.

It's a beautiful piece of fish, very similar to cod.

Very similar.

The flakes are a little tighter. It is quite soft, isn't it, when you fillet it?

That's it, it's quite soft. We are salting it,

just to draw moisture out of it,

just to firm the fish up, make it a little bit firmer when it cooks.

When you look at the fish as a whole, it is like a skinny cod.

Skinny cod is a fair comment, yeah, skinny cod.

OK, this is one we have just done, it's been salted for about two hours.

If there is any excess salt, take off. Portion it up.

Classic beurre blanc - you have shallots, which you strain off anyway,

but you want these nice and finely sliced.

Finely sliced. We strain it off. Pollock goes into a pan.

I've put it on butter paper, you can use baking parchment

if you like, but if you have butter paper hanging around...

I am sure you have 20 packs at your house, Mr Martin.

It's not true! It's not true! Straight into the oven.

I have actually gone on to dripping now, mate.

Does that come in packets? Yes, it does.

You get it in a 25-kilogram block as well now.

We have our shallots in there.

White wine vinegar, white wine, some thyme and some peppercorns.

Don't chop your finger, James Martin. Don't chop your finger.

Thank you very much, Gennaro.

Just in case.

Little bit of beurre blanc. Classic French-style sauce.

Classic French sauce. We will bring this down to a glaze. It gives it

a richness that goes through a butter sauce that we will serve with fish.

I'll prepare our radishes. Tell us about the mushrooms.

Girolle mushrooms coming into season now, they are fantastic.

The Scottish ones are around now. The English ones

will start growing very soon. With the weather like this, it will be pretty much now.

Fantastic. Gennaro told me that they smell like apricots.

Yes. I am not convinced. Smells like pollock. You haven't washed your hands!

Actually, the name is apricot scented mushroom.

And I know for sure. When you pick them up

and go like that, they have a lovely sense of apricot. An orange.

With the colours. Sounds good to me. Fresh mushrooms are delicious.

Coming into season now, particularly with the weather.

But you are not a fan of scrubbing these, you like to wash them as well.

Wash them. There is a fallacy about mushrooms that you can't wash them

and they take on too much water.

We're poaching them almost in a mixture of warm water

and butter, like an emulsion. Bringing it together. All those lovely flavours will come through.

A lot of the mushroom water will come out. Bit of salt, beautiful.

The fish, we should give it a couple of minutes before turning it over?

Yes, about three minutes either side, probably.

Butter in the pan, little more butter. There is butter everywhere, it is why I keep inviting you back.

I love it! OK, so we've butter and radishes.

These radishes are beautiful, they are peppery, they are fantastic.

They're lovely and moist.

You can see all the water in them.

The problem we discussed earlier, coming from supermarkets, sometimes they come out of the ground too early

and they leave them there, and the leaves are fantastic to eat, and they dry out.

We are just going to gently sweat them down.

Cooked radishes are delicious, particularly when you eat them

fresh from your garden. There's so much water in there. Absolutely.

As well as these guys, Olly is doing his festival

I've done my festival. You are doing a festival. Where are you this summer?

I am doing Jimmy's Harvest Festival.

I'm doing a festival!

You are supposed to do it. I didn't ask you!

Everyone has to except me?

I am doing it. That is in the September, isn't it? That is in September.

It's like Olly's V Festival, there is one in Suffolk

and one in Oxfordshire, although I'm probably not going by helicopter.

I wish I was! Some double cream in there.

Some double cream, we will reduce it down.

Classic beurre blanc would not have double cream. No. I have it in there to stabilise it,

so that when you put the butter in, it holds it together.

So you can make it, if you are making it at home,

you can keep it warm on the stove for an hour or so, so it doesn't

split, otherwise you will serve it straightaway so the butter stays.

So, tell us about your place.

It is a one-Michelin-starred pub.

It is not one of those hushed temples of gastronomy.

It is one of the places where you can go... Proper grub.

Proper food in an environment... You can come in

and spend £300 on a bottle of wine, which would be great,

but if you want a pint of beer and drink local ales

and have steak and chips, then that is fine as well.

We're just adding butter to this. Just a little bit.

Just a little bit. Just a little bit. The secret of this is...

It is OK with the cream in it,

but the idea is that you do this on a lower heat. Exactly. Almost off the heat. A gentle heat.

Just emulsifying the butter, give it a pinch of salt.

That only wants, what, five minutes? Five minutes at the most.

Not 20 minutes, because it is not covered.

You know, we do the harvest festival, me and you. Be careful.

OK, so the butter is in. We will pass that through a sieve.

Then we can use this for a variety of sauces. Orange zest, all kinds of stuff. Absolutely.

Exactly. You can use it as a base for everything.

Nothing else in there, just the butter on the radishes?

Just the butter on the radishes, a pinch of salt.

You can see they are still crisp and just wilted down a little bit.

Butter sauce ready.

Fish is about... Another minute-and-a-half.

So we will start slowly plating up, then.

Some butter sauce, two different types of radish.

You can let this go almost cold, can't you? Yes.

You can let it almost go cold but if you try and reheat it,

it will split out again. You don't really want that.

These are the breakfast radishes from your garden.

Breakfast and round radish from the garden.

Which is a new addition this year so we are growing courgettes,

beautiful courgette flowers. The veg guys charge so much for them.

I don't understand... In Italy, they use courgette flowers all over the place.

I don't know why you can't find courgette flowers

in the UK. You can in certain places...

I remember when I first came to England, there was

a next-door neighbour who was growing courgettes,

he had the flower and threw them away,

so I did not know how to tell him, "Can I have the courgette flower?"

That looks terrible. So I said, "Can I have those courgette flowers to bring them inside the church?"

I stuffed them and enjoyed it.

On top of the fish, which is in the oven, we have this. Tell us about this.

Lardo. This is an Italian cured pork back fat. This is one I have done this myself.

Have you heard of Mangalitsa pigs? The hairy ones? The hairy ones.

They've a really high fat content

so we have taken the fat off the belly and we have cured it for about

three weeks, washed it and dried it, hung it up in the beer cellar, which

really pleased my restaurant manager, she was happy about that,

and then sliced it very thinly on a gravity slicer

so we have this beautiful, thin cured flavours of pork coming through.

You could eat that with salad. On toast!

Just a little of that on toast with some Parmesan, or any cheese, on top.

It's fantastic. I love this dish.

The fish is now cooked.

The fish is cooked. OK.

Fish into the middle of the plate and on top of that, a little piece

of this home-cured lardo. And if you don't have that, then some Serrano would be fine.

It just goes transparent straightaway. Cures down.

Then onto that we put some borage flowers that are also fresh from our garden.

It's very pretty. It's a pretty dish.

The flowers taste of cucumbers and oysters.

Cucumbers and oysters mixed into one. There we go.

You can use the leaves of the borage as well.

And this is pollock- line-caught Cornish pollock - with radishes, girolles

and borage flowers. Told you he was good.

Looks delicious.

I know it will taste delicious, so, Olly, you get another turn.

It is a pretty dish, isn't it?

I don't want to ruin it.

When you salt the fish like that, you change the texture.

Makes it quite firm, always quite meaty, which is

why the pork...the fat goes with it really well. Good mushroom.

Taste that with the lardo. It is really thin, almost like clingfilm.

Good? Yes. He is happy with that, I don't think you will get a look-in.

That's what I like to see - plenty of butter.

Both men could improve their times

but could Theo Randall and Jose Pizarro improve their omelette-making skills?

I did have my fingers crossed.

Let's get down to business. All the chefs who come on the show

battle it out against the clock to see how fast

they can make a three-egg omelette. Boys, respectable times, very close.

27 and 28 seconds, but a long way to beat Mr Rankin with 15.12 seconds.

Can you beat that? I don't know how he does it.

You can choose from the ingredients in front of you.

You've got to make sure it is an omelette and not scrambled eggs.

We have Italy versus Spain. Let's put the clocks on the screens, please.

Three, two, one. Go!

There you go.

Looking good so far, level pegging.

Look at the concentration!

Make sure it is an omelette.

Pretty good. Still pretty good.

Theo has half of his on the stove.

And Jose still has half of his in the pan. That's all right.

At least I can eat it.

It is all right. You always criticise my omelette!

Jose, this was supposed to be three-egg.

It is three-egg there!

Doesn't look good to me.

Not this time.

Sorry!

I have more shell than I have omelette.

Right, Theo, I am still chewing on it!

You were quicker. Was I? Yes. And it is an omelette. This is killing me.

You did it not in 27 seconds, but in 23.48. So there you go.

Claire and Mr Aitken there, on there, somewhere. Jose.

You did it quicker.

21.80.

Pretty good. But of course, there is more shell than there is omelette.

Not going on the board.

They were one-and-a-half egg omelettes not three-egg omelettes. And Jose?

Leave the shell off the plate next time(!)

Now, Sophie is fully in charge and is embracing the game season

armed with a pheasant and a bottle of Riesling.

So, it is meat and veg. But it is pheasant we are talking about.

It is pheasant. What's the dish we are cooking?

I'm going to be cooking... Can I get started while I am talking to you?

Fire away. Oh, fingers. What am I doing? Chuck it in.

I am cooking pheasant pot roast

and pot roast is just the best way of cooking meat, with...

Let's get rid of that. ..with Riesling and carrots.

It's funny, when you think game,

a lot of people tend to think red wine, dark.

But pheasant isn't that dark actually. It is quite a light meat.

By the way, James, can you do a bit of work for me?

Could you slice some onion and chop some garlic?

Pheasants are bang in season at the moment, aren't they?

They start October 1st till February,

you can get pheasants nowadays. I was wondering about this today and

I forgot to look it up before I came.

What is it that starts its season on September 1st? Pheasant is October.

It is not grouse, that is the glorious 12th. We all remember that.

It is not pigeon because they are all over the place.

Let's give up on that question and move on.

Somebody will phone in and find out.

Now, normally, I would take this quite slowly

and really brown the meat,

and the browning gives lots and lots of flavour,

it caramelises it. Now, you are cooking two in there.

So, one hen, which is normally smaller,

and the cock bird, the male, is normally larger.

Some people prefer the cocks - more flavour and more meat -

but the hen is delicate. So, if you get both, you can have a good choice

and a good mix, but it depends how

you get your pheasant, really, doesn't it?

Where do you think the best place is to buy pheasant from?

Really good butchers, I think,

because you know exactly where it is from. How are you doing over there?

I'm doing fine. I need those now. Shall I pop a little bit of butter...

I'm not trying to rush you or anything there.

Have you done my garlic? I'll do your garlic. Give it me here.

Take the garlic. Give me... I'll have that. Excuse me.

Yeah, good game dealers, much better actually than a supermarket.

You can get them in the supermarket, but they are more expensive.

Much more expensive,

and a lot of the game dealers will actually give them away, won't they?

If you are nice to them.

If you are very nice, and if you shoot or have a husband or friend

who shoots, then you can often get them for free, actually.

Fantastic.

But you do have to face plucking and hanging,

but if you've got a good friendly butcher, they'll do it for you.

The secret is to hang them but not too much.

My grandad used to get these and hang them

till the neck dropped off...

Are you working on those? ..horrible things. No, no. You don't.

Those old folk tales about hanging them

till the maggots are dripping out and, urgh! Disgusting!

Pheasant isn't like that. It is actually quite a mild meat.

It is really not that much stronger than chicken.

It's very, very similar.

Your hotel that is due to reopen,

I mean, sort of, a year of renovation.

You cook much game on the menu? Yeah, love game. It's fantastic.

This time of year we really start to use a lot of game,

as we seek to have more comfort foods

for the winter and autumn.

What do you think about pot roasting?

It is a great technique. It is not used so much these days

but it is great for home cooking. It's fantastic. Brilliant.

Do you not use it in restaurants at all? Not really. Why not?

"Why not?!" Why not? What's wrong with it?

We slow cook, but, yes, we do. I mean, it's not to say we don't,

but we generally use a lot of slow-cooking techniques these days,

but we tend to cook medium rare, rather than well done,

long braises, but we do do braising.

We do pot roasts with belly pork and things like that. Lovely.

What else are you up to? I have just put my PEASANTS,

my PHEASANTS back in. If I was doing this at home,

I'd cook the onion really, really slowly.

I think a lot of people fry onion too fast

and it needs to just gently develop its natural sweetness...

Ooh! Chuck the whole carrots in?

Carrots can just go straight in. Pop those in.

I've put some seasoning in and I'm also putting in

some whole sprigs of tarragon,

and this is a herb that I just love. Quite a strong herb.

It is a strong herb and we all know that it goes well with chicken,

but it also goes well with pheasant.

I have put in some white wine, you don't need a lot of liquid

when you are pot roasting because the actual birds themselves

and the vegetables will produce quite a lot of liquid as well.

And you just leave that to simmer away very gently for...

I don't know, 45 minutes or so, give or take, and that miracle of chicken...

Miracle of chicken! Miracle of television.

I'm taking these out for your mash, is that right? You are. Good.

Yes, I notice you are doing really well there.

Can I just show you? These have been simmering away for quite

a while now and I am going to add a little bit of cream around them.

In fact, I am also going to take my birds out

so they get a few minutes to rest. Have you got a spare plate?

Spare plate, yes. You bake your potatoes for your mash? I do.

My mum always did and I always do too, and it is great

because it gives a really nice, dry flesh that absorbs the milk