Episode 117 Saturday Kitchen Best Bites

Good morning.

It's time to get some fantastic New Year cooking inspiration.

This is Saturday Kitchen Best Bites.

Welcome to the show.

We've got some great cooking from some amazing chefs for you today,

with some ravenous celebrity guests more than happy to get stuck in.

Lawrence Keogh pan-roasts ling, and serves it with clams,

perry and curly kale.

One of the best Indian chefs in the world, Atul Kochhar,

makes a Malay lamb korma.

He uses a delicious leg of lamb to create a mouth-watering curry

using toasted spices, garlic, ginger and cashew nuts

and serves it with basmati rice.

Silvena Rowe brings some juicy king prawns

to the Saturday Kitchen table.

She wraps the prawns in basil and a type of finely shredded pastry, then

serves them with a Middle-Eastern inspired tartar sauce.

And actress Claudie Blakley,

who starred in Lark Rise To Candleford,

faced her Food Heaven or Food Hell.

Would she get her Food Heaven -

chicken, which I'd serve as my lemon-y tagine with herby tabbouleh?

Or would she get her dreaded Food Hell -

duck with braised legs and roasted breast,

all served with a red cabbage slaw?

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

First, it's time for Stuart Gillies to get creative with poussin.

Welcome to the show.

I'm surprised you've got time, really, you're a busy chap.

I've always been a busy chap. Yeah, but even more so now.

Three kids, everything else. You know that.

What are we doing, then?

Today we're going to do a grilled baby chicken. Small is beautiful, no?

Well, you would say that.

Baby chicken. So small chicken.

We grill this and then we make a little sauce,

which is called chimichurri. Chimichurri?

Something I came across when I was backpacking in South America.

Many years ago.

It goes great with any meat, actually.

It's actually particularly nice with chicken.

It's a very quick, simple dish. The kids love it.

Now the dressing for the salad, you want sort of a mayonnaise.

We're going to make it with rapeseed oil. We need rapeseed oil.

I think we should use more rapeseed oil. I'm a big fan.

It's a great British ingredient. Fantastic stuff.

You don't just need to use olive oil all the time.

We're using a bit of light olive oil for cooking the chicken,

cos the rapeseed burns too quick.

We just used rapeseed for that,

and that's for the celery salad that you are going to do up for me.

OK, that's with what you call as wet walnuts.

Well, they're fresh walnuts,

so they've only come off the tree within the last month,

so they're incredibly soft and creamy.

What they often do is put them into storage, and they go dry.

So we call these wet walnuts.

So you basically spatchcocked that little chicken

by just removing the underside out of it.

You're just taking out the backbone there.

I've just taken the wings off, which we'll keep for another dish.

We do this at Bread Street with tamarind sauce.

Deep-fry them, tamarind sauce on top - lovely.

You had to get that plug in, cos this is for your...

Bread Street Kitchen. My new restaurant.

This is something very, very different for you guys.

Put this in the oven, James, before I answer that.

Yeah, we've done... Oh, the lemons. Thank you.

I did forget them.

We've actually cut the lemon in half, I put it on the grill...

and they caramelise while the chicken cooks.

This is something new for you, really, you guys. Do you know what?

When we...as we...

As we've been in the industry, we've been in it 25 years as chefs.

Each year, we keep evolving, and the market evolves.

People want new things.

When we're doing a venture like Bread Street,

we wanted to have a lot more fun with it.

We wanted to...really create something that was

more about the experience.

Anna and I were talking earlier, it's about not just turning up

for food and a bit of service, it's actually a bit of fun,

it's an event, it's theatre.

Are you doing juggling or something like that?

I do juggle. Couple of lemons.

People love the whole theatre of cooking, what we do in kitchens.

People always ask, "Can we have a tour of the kitchen?"

So we thought, "Let's get rid of the walls and strip everything back."

Have all the kitchen in the room, room in the kitchen.

We'll have a raw bar and we'll have our wood oven.

We wanted to have a lot of theatre and action.

Do you think it's like an American way of eating?

In New York they do a lot of that. Yeah, exactly that.

We wanted to bring some of that New York energy and atmosphere

and just mix it with some of that East End London and London charm.

That's exactly what we've done.

It's exactly what we've set up.

It's great, because it's all about the customers, as well.

It's not just about the food and drink, what we do,

it's an interactive, noisy, buzzy experience.

It's about the design, the room, the cocktails, the music. It's great.

It's really good fun.

Have you been yet? I haven't been yet. When does it open?

We're open. I know you're open, but when did it open?

We've been open for four weeks, actually.

A bit low-key, actually.

We opened it and thought, "Let's just let it build slowly."

Yeah, we didn't get an invite.

No, you didn't get an invite this year.

You were conspicuous by your absence.

Bar bill was a lot less.

Right, so tell us about this sauce then. This is this chimichurri.

Would you mind just turning that chicken? No, I'll turn the chicken.

I'll do what Anna did to you. "Go do this, go do that."

I'll do it. No, you're all right. It's all right. You carry on.

I'll do it.

So, chicken turned over. The dressing, this sauce.

As I said, it goes with any meat,

what it really is, is chopped chillies, chopped shallots,

a little bit of vinegar, some rapeseed oil again

and then lots and lots of herbs. We just put it over the meat at the end.

Rather than it being a marinade that you cook, you can

burn things a little bit, you lose all the flavour.

So we leave it fresh and raw, so it's just pure flavour.

How are the wet walnuts?

So much easier to open a packet.

Wet walnuts are lovely. Where's your love for the food? Artisan produce.

The love's there, mate, but I've got about three minutes.

We'll just chop this up very finely.

Then the chicken is just caramelising with the lemon.

When you cook the lemon like that on the tray with the actual chicken,

with the baby chicken, it just makes it all sweeter,

cos it caramelises all the juices.

It seems to me when you've got all these restaurants and all of that,

they're all around the world, not just in the UK,

you're quite good...let the chefs really decide...

You still keep a control over it,

but let them run free a little bit, don't you think?

For years, we've had teams that have been cooking anyway,

whether we're there or not, we've always got teams.

Anna has a team there,

and that's how we go out and talk to the guests and do other things.

That's how you breed talent - you evolve them

and you mentor them, and then you actually teach them.

We've done that for years. Now in my role, it's just the same thing.

It's developing teams. The teams have...

It's a young man's game, don't forget. At our age... Cheers.

What are you looking at me like that for?

You need those young people, that energy, that enthusiasm.

They're there from the start of the day till the end.

They're just full of energy.

The more you inspire them and teach,

the more they just come back with positive...

What time do you go home at?

It depends. Do you leave at eight? It depends on the day. Sorry?

In the morning.

With three kids, I'm always up early.

You've got masses of energy, you have,

cos you do a lot of this running business, these marathons. Yeah.

Training for a triathlon. I've got... Triathlon! Yeah.

Triathlon. Swimming, bike, running. Is it?

LAUGHTER

Have you ever been to a gym?

You don't know what any of those words mean, do you?

I always liked the idea of it. You like watching it on the telly?

No, I did. I bought a bike the other day.

It's one of these full suspension jobs.

No, it's one of those suspension bike things.

Is that the old ladies' model?

No. The word that sold it for me - it was DOWNHILL racing bike.

You eventually have to get it up there in the first place.

You also bought a helicopter to get you to the top of a hill.

Anyway, I've been out in it.

Where are we up to?

I do look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, though,

dressed in my suit with the hat on.

Anyway, has one of us got the chicken?

How long's that been in for?

The chicken takes about 12 minutes.

I'm trying to think what else would I need. Honey?

Honey in the dressing? Yeah, some honey in the dressing, please.

A little bit of creme fraiche, the mayonnaise base.

There's stilton in there.

Just chuck that in. The parsley.

Just chuck that in and chop through the stems. They're very soft anyway.

It's in there already. The celery...

So when you peel that, as I taught you earlier on...

LAUGHTER

We just peel it in strands, cos sometimes people don't eat the celery

cos they think it's a bit strong, but if you do it in strands really thin,

it just goes really crunchy and is quite light.

You mix it with that, blue cheese and nuts,

it's a lovely moist salad, actually.

The honey works really well, doesn't it?

It's great. It's delicious. It just lifts the flavours.

It's like a seasoning.

Like a little bit of sweetness.

It's like a Waldorf salad. You could put apple in there.

You could put apple. Shave some apple as well. Make that up, actually.

Just adding to it.

Make it up as you go along.

We've done that for years and got away with it.

There you go. OK, right. We've got our poussin here.

So that, we just put on to our board.

That's a little mayonnaise I've made in that dressing as well.

Lemon there. Home-made mayonnaise with that rapeseed oil.

Cloth going on fire.

The char-grill in the lemon is fantastic, isn't it? Yeah.

We see the colour, but what it does, as I say,

it just intensifies the flavour. It just makes it a little bit sweet.

This here, we just put this dressing straight on the chicken, like so.

Just spread that over.

What it does is, it's a marinade, but it goes on at the end.

That's the difference. You eat this with the chicken.

That's got the raw shallots and all that lot in it.

Raw shallots in it, raw chillies, oregano, parsley, thyme.

You could put some coriander in there. Whatever you want.

Then your salad. Lovely.

Like so.

See how stringy that is. Lovely colour as well.

You put all the leaves in.

It's very important you put the celery leaves in

cos they're incredibly... They're a great flavour. Great for fish.

Remind us what that is again. There we go.

A grilled baby chicken, our chimichurri sauce,

grilled lemon and celery and blue cheese and walnut salad.

Looks great, doesn't it?

He's off with it. There we are. Right over here then, Stu.

This is for you.

Dive into that one. Wow, that looks amazing. Great.

Those little poussins readily available.

I saw them in the supermarket. You can get them everywhere.

It's not hard to find.

But you could do that with a whole chicken as well,

exactly the same thing. Take the backbone out,

open it out and put it in the oven till it's cooked.

Takes about 30, 40 minutes. Cook it on the bone, it's more juicy.

Mm.

What do you reckon?

HE MUMBLES

It's that kind of proper, proper good. It's lovely.

It's really a lip-smacking dish.

It's so tasty, and it's vibrant with the lemon as well.

It's with chicken, a lot of people, you can actually get away with some

game you could actually spatchcock and do that sort of stuff as well.

Yeah, you could do that with a little partridge, actually.

Even a grouse, if you want to.

Whatever you do, just spatchcock the whole thing. Quail as well.

I don't like celery, but that's fantastic.

Celery was on my list of potential Food Hell, but that's fantastic.

Yeah, it's only because he did it. Yeah, there you go.

But it's basically just thin. Just really thin shards.

It's a bit soft, just put it in ice water

and it makes it really curly and crispy.

It's always great to see Stuart cooking in the studio.

Coming up, I'll be making a good old-fashioned

spotted dick and custard for Matt Allwright,

after Rick Stein spends a bit of time in Benjamin Britten's county -

that's Suffolk, to you and me.

I'm at Aldeburgh, a place I've always wanted to visit because of

Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes, which is, well, a sea in music to me.

The fact that the fishing here has seen better days almost

adds to the slightly reflective, melancholic atmosphere of the place.

This is Benjamin Britten's house.

I like to think of him gazing out of his window on scenes like this

as the inspiration for Peter Grimes.

I know I keep banging on about simplicity,

but the elemental act of buying fish on a beach

straight from the sea is something that's got to be preserved.

But I had a sinking feeling that this activity is not going to last.

They didn't seem very optimistic, either.

But life's not all depressing.

Chalky was really impressed with the statue in Aldeburgh to

a famous Jack Russell.

But back to the prospect of cod for lunch.

The interesting thing about cod is that where it swims determines,

with all fish, what their flesh is like.

Herring and mackerel that swim through the sea need

lots of muscle and lots of blood going to the muscle,

that's why they have darker, oilier flesh.

But the cod and all the cod family just sit at the bottom of the sea

and virtually wait for their food to come to them.

They have great big mouths.

They virtually sit there with their mouths open.

Then when a fish comes, it's wallop! A great sort of burst of energy.

But that's all they need.

So their flesh is very open textured, and that's what's great about cod -

the fillet just falls apart in these lovely big, white flakes.

When you're talking white, they're almost sort of luminescent white.

I suppose I do worry a bit when you look at the size of this cod.

They do catch bigger ones, but this is a bit typical.

You look at these sheds here, these lovely romantic sheds,

and you see an air of dilapidation about it all, and you think

that this is a life that's passing rather fast, that so are the cod.

Cod are victim of over fishing like probably no other species in the sea.

One can't help sort of worrying that in 20, 30 years' time,

would you even be able to get a cod of this size?

This whole series - the Seafood Odyssey -

has been about travelling all over the world,

but the whole thing about a seafood Odyssey is the homecoming.

I was thinking, "Where is the most quintessential English county to me?"

And it's Suffolk. It's almost lost in the '50s, it's so unspoiled.

The dish - well, it's cod with beer, bacon and cabbage.

What could be more English than that?

First of all, we just start with the cabbage.

I'm going to blanch it in lots of boiling water.

All you need to do is just bring the cabbage and water back

up to the boil, and then just take the cabbage off like that...

Straight into that ice-cold water, and now that can stay in there

while we get the braising ingredients together.

So a couple of good tablespoons of ordinary vegetable oil in that

very hot pan, and now the bacon.

It's really good, British bacon.

I'm just going to keep stirring that until it's starting

to catch a nice golden brown.

Now the onion. About one medium onion.

Just ruminating about my style of cooking.

I was listening to Keith Richard on the...

There we go, stir that in a bit.

..on the radio the other day, he was talking.

Somebody said, "Well, he plays his guitar

"so hard during a song that it goes out of tune."

Somebody was saying, "Do you think we ought to go through that

"and tune it up again?" He said, "Nah, just leave it like it is."

That's the same way with my cooking, in a way.

Just, you know, a bit too much onion, too little, nah -

just leave it like it is.

Just a little bit of garlic now, just a pinch.

I know this sounds odd, cos it's English cooking,

but garlic has its place in English cooking as well as everywhere else.

Now for the cabbage.

It doesn't matter if there's a little bit of water in the cabbage,

cos you're going to put a lot more liquid in there afterwards.

Now for the most important flavouring ingredient of the whole dish,

this is beer. But it just ain't any old beer, it's Suffolk...

Whoops!

It's Suffolk beer, which I love. I love it.

Actually we're in this pub here at a place called Snape,

which you may have heard of because the maltings

at Snape, Benjamin Britten, Peter Grimes, all that sort of thing

it's here. But, above all...

..just fantastic beer. The beer of Old England.

It's great to be back. OK, now some chicken stock.

There we go. About half a pint of chicken stock.

Just a little bit of seasoning.

Just leave that now to simmer away for about five or ten minutes

just to reduce down nicely and get a lovely flavour of cooked-out beer.

Can't beat it.

I've salted this cod about 20 minutes ago, just on the flesh side.

It's a really good idea with cod, cos actually it improves the flavour.

I'm just going to cut that into two nice fillets.

Little bit of butter in the pan there. See it's smoking hot.

Although I said this was a roasted cod dish, in fact,

you have to start it off on top of the oven,

cos otherwise you don't get the colour and the crispness in the skin.

So let's have a look at that.

OK, that's fine.

A very good way of cooking fish, this.

Straight in the oven.

So that needs to be in there about seven minutes, I should think.

It just needs to be...almost slightly undercooked in the middle.

Now to finish the cabbage, the braised cabbage,

and make it into a bit of a sauce.

Quite a lot of butter - about 3oz. Just let that melt.

Now, loads of parsley. Look at all that parsley.

Now, well... Let's just serve the dish up.

So, what do you think about a dish like that?

I mean, if I came into a pub like this and had that, and some

of that beautiful Suffolk bitter, I could be in a three-star restaurant.

Funnily enough, I think it was Alain Senderens, this very famous

three-star chef in Paris, who started cooking cod about ten years ago.

three-star chef in Paris, who started cooking cod about ten years ago.

Before then, nobody would have dreamt of putting it on a first-class menu.

But what's wrong with that dish?

Gone are all those, sort of, flimflam garnishes and purees

of peas and beans and bits of deep-fried whatnot on the top of it.

In its place is something substantial,

wholesome and just totally delicious.

I liked it up in Suffolk. In fact, I took Chalky there on holiday.

Now, I don't know exactly what goes through a Jack Russell's mind,

but I'm pretty sure rats and rabbits are high on the priority list.

Anyway, I left Chalky to his rabbiting and went

and had lunch in the Crown.

Their speciality is seared scallops,

cooked for about a minute on either side, and served with samphire,

which is perfection with simple seafood -

salty and with a lovely crunch to it.

A light, slightly garish, but very nice tasting Bloody Mary sauce.

Well, I wasn't quite so sure about that,

but we'd had a late night, and it was just what I needed.

One of the oldest dishes around the east coast is potted shrimps.

The best place to catch them is at the mouth of the Thames

at Leigh-on-Sea, which is a haven for good seafood.

I went out on this beautiful little shrimper with Ted Potter who's

been fishing the Thames for God knows how long.

During the war I started with my grandfather and uncle and that.

They'd just turned from sail to engine. Really?

Yeah. There used to be over a hundred boats shrimping there.

In my grandfather's day.

They was big boats, too.

If there wasn't enough wind, they used to row them. They were tough.

Yeah. Tough. Yes, they were made of iron, them days.

Have the catches declined a bit, then? Oh, terrific.

I mean, there's nothing like it. You can see what we've caught today.

Nothing, really.

You could get 100 gallons in 20 minutes then, down there.

How come you're boiling them at sea then?

Well, they've got to be cooked alive.

If they're dead, they cook straight.

It is the last kick, when they curl up.

So you've got to get them straight in there.

They've got to be cooked as quick as possible.

Ah, shrimps just cooked in sea water for about a minute

and left to cool down in the sea air. But another dish, potted shrimps.

We have to peel the shrimps. About a pint will do.

Take your time. It's good fun.

Then you melt the butter in a pan

and you add blade mace.

Quite a good pinch of it, actually.

Then a good sprinkling of cayenne pepper and some grated nutmeg.

This is what contributes the essential Britishness of this dish.

You just swirl that around in the butter.

Then add your shrimps.

Turn them all over in that wonderfully scented butter.

Then put them into four ramekins, little white ramekins.

Spread them out evenly. Gosh, this is good.

It's as good as foie gras to me - just as rich, you don't

put any butter on the toast.

Clarified butter next - on top, beautifully clear. Let it set.

Now you're going to enjoy it.

Just a little bit on some thin, brown toast. Eat that. Oh, heaven.

I felt a rather sad feeling being out there doing something that

I knew would soon fade, even from memory.

My journey home on this battered, old,

faded green shrimp boat filled me with a, well,

pleasant elegiac feeling for this very atmospheric end to

one of the greatest rivers in the world.

It reminded me of a few lines from one of my favourite books -

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness,

and the description of sunset at the mouth of the Thames

and some thoughts about the passing of time.

"The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance.

"And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall,

"the sun sank low,

"and from glowing white changed to a dull red

"without rays and without heat.

"The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled

"after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks.

"We looked at the venerable stream

"in the august light of abiding memories.

"Nothing is easier for a man than to evoke the great spirit of the past

"upon the lower reaches of the Thames.

"The tidal current runs to and from in its unceasing service...

"..crowded with memories of men and ships

"it has borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea."

That cod looked delicious.

Rick's right, they don't get much more British

than beer, bacon and cabbage.

Now, I love Great British food,

and we should celebrate dishes a lot more, particularly our own dishes.

There's nothing more British than a steamed pudding.

One of my favourite puddings has to be spotted dick and custard.

Not the stuff that I was brought up on at school. This is a proper...

It's my granny's recipe for spotted dick and custard.

You like sponge puddings? I love steamed puddings.

You know, the old day, Christmas pud used to take hours.

It used to be like, a fortnight steaming.

Do you remember?

This is fantastic. I'm going to get on the custard, first of all.

We take a mixture of milk and cream.

Now, equal quantities of each in there.

I'm going to infuse this with a vanilla pod.

My granny never had this,

so she used to whack a little bit of vanilla essence in there.

But just take a vanilla pod.

The best vanilla pods are little bourbon, Madagascan vanilla pods.

Much fatter than normal vanilla pods. They're the ones to look for.

They've got much more flavour, a lot more seeds in there.

Then we're going to pop those into the milk and the cream.

Just bring this to the boil just to infuse it. That's it.

Now, in here, we've got a mixture.

This is for our spotted dick mixture.

We've got some plain flour, suet, baking powder, sugar,

some currants and some milk.

The great thing about this... Some lemon just to give it flavour.

The great thing about this, we can just throw everything in together.

My gran's main topic of conversation every Christmas

was how suet was superior to margarine in these puddings.

Oh, it's just...

You've got to use suet in this. Why? You just have to.

I mean, sometimes I've heard that you can put a little

bit of melted butter in there if you want to.

It just helps keep it a little bit if you are going to reheat it,

but I find it's brilliant with suet. Absolutely delicious.

Take a little bit of lemon zest.

You can use a bit of orange zest if you want.

But dishes like this are so far remote from your favourite food -

Japanese food - where you lived, didn't you?

I lived in Japan for three years. It was really an education.

Didn't you miss food like this? No. Didn't you?

No, if I'm honest, I didn't at all,

because there was such a wide variety of foods that kept coming at you.

Go on, then, what's the most unusual thing?

We talked about the sea urchin and bits and pieces.

Live prawn, that was a bit of a shocker. What's that? A live prawn.

Not raw, live. Live. Still wiggling.

That was crazy. What do you do with it? What do you do with it?

You eat it very quickly

and have a shot of something straight afterwards.

The other one that was really horrible was sea cucumber.

Have you ever had one of those? It's like a slug.

No, I've never really eaten slugs. Never partial to eating slugs.

It's a slug that crawls along the bottom of the sea

until some Japanese chap finds it.

He picks it up, chops it into slices and serves it to you on the bar

while you're having a beer.

You have to, cos you're surrounded by Japanese guys

who are all watching you.

You're called gaijin in Japan, which means foreigner.

They'll all watch the gaijin to see if he's going to eat

the sea cucumber. Are they laughing?

Yeah, yeah, they will.

It's like what I imagine eating a condom full of safety pins is like.

It's the rankest thing I've ever had. You have to...

You chew it for about an hour an a half, and you eventually swallow.

In Japan, what you have to do is, you slap your thigh, like this.

Drink your beer and say...

HE SPEAKS JAPANESE

Which means, "that is fantastic".

Regardless of whatever you're eating.

In Japan, you've got all these sorts of foods -

fermented bean curd, natto.

Oh, yeah, I've had that. That's disgusting.

That is really, really horrible. You mix it up, you eat it.

HE SPEAKS JAPANESE

Wasn't there a story...? That pork thing. Oh, yeah.

You know yakitori? Yes.

If you go out for yakitori in Japan, it's not just tori, which is

chicken, it's everything. One of them is a pig's trachea.

Which is the throat. The windpipe, which is sliced.

You're selling it to me.

Yeah? What you have to do is you have to grill it very quickly

and then throw it away.

LAUGHTER

it's another one. I mean...

I imagine that what it is, in Japan, you know,

they had huge periods of poverty

during and after the war where they had to eat what there was.

It was real subsistence food. Well, they didn't eat this. Look at this.

that's magic. It's fantastic. That's how spotted dick should be.

What you need to do is just basically allow it to just

drop off the spoon. We call it dropping consistency,

that's what you're looking for,

which is, you've got your suet, your flour, your currants,

baking powder, milk to mix.

Just enough milk to mix, that's the secret of this.

My grandmother, who is no longer here, will go nuts at this point,

cos she always used to bake it and make it in an old pair of stockings.

Really? Yeah. Clean ones. She was just wearing...? Clean ones.

Old pair of stockings.

Old pair of stockings, and then wrapped....

LAUGHTER

She did take them off first, yeah.

Then wrapped in a tea towel, like that.

Then you've got these fancy things. She used to use a bit of string.

Then we use this fancy thing...

You get sent all these kinds of gadgets on this show. This is this.

Look at that. There you go.

What we need to do is steam this, but you could use it,

put it in a nice tube.

You get an old bit of cutlery, not your granny's best.

This is an old bit of cutlery hanging around.

Sit that on the bottom of your pan. In we go.

Use basically a tea towel because it expands a little bit better

and easier

than using just a little bit of greaseproof or tinfoil.

Steam this for at least an hour and a half. Fortnight.

Fortnight.

I'm going to take this out.

My custard doesn't take very long at all.

That's going to come off second.

It's got kind of a Middle Eastern look about it.

Lift that off. Wow.

Of course, we need some custard to go with this.

Then, all we do with this, is in here I've got six egg yolks.

We put half the sugar, which is about 4oz of sugar

in the egg yolks, half in the milk and the cream.

Bring this milk and the cream to the boil. This has got your vanilla in.

Then I'm going to whisk that onto my egg yolks and sugar.

Back into the pan, that'll instantly make custard.

So apart from Japanese foods and bits and pieces, you're currently...

You've just finished the new series of Rogue Traders, is that right?

No, we've got more coming. More coming.

There are so many secrets surrounding

the making of Rogue Traders, I couldn't possibly divulge

exactly when and where we'll be for that,

because, you know, we're very, very undercover.

I watch it. I do actually watch it all the time. Is that why...?

You should get out more. You confront these huge great builder guys.

Is that why you have your sidekick who is about 6'4" with you?

He's never there. Right. He's off somewhere. He's off somewhere else.

We do take people along, it's not just me there doing it,

cos we've got cameramen and sound men and people like that.

The whole crew behind us. Yeah, some of them do get a bit frisky.

In the last series, we had one roofer in particular who wasn't very

pleased with me, it's safe to say. But, you know, that's fair enough.

We're catching them out, bringing things to the public's attention.

Doing the right thing.

It's understandable that they should be a bit miffed about it.

So there's the custard.

Traditionally, you would use a wooden spoon. I use a whisk,

cos once the air bubbles start to disappear,

that's when the custard is nice and thick.

We turn all this lot off, pass it through a sieve,

keep that vanilla pod as well,

cos we can dry that out, blend it together with a bit of...

..a bit of sugar, and you end up...

Look at this. This... You don't know what you've been missing in Japan.

Look at this. See, it's something to come home for.

Then proper thick custard over the top. Look at that.

If you want a more yellow custard, you don't use food colouring -

use organic, pure organic eggs, and you end up with a rich yellow.

There you go. Dive into that.

Nice. Spotted dick with custard.

Nothing like a bit of spotted dick in the morning.

Tell us what you think of this.

That sounded filthier than I meant it.

Taste of British? That's amazing.

Forget the January diet,

there's always room for a good old-fashioned British pud.

If you want to try making that dessert,

or try your hand at cooking any of the food

you've seen on today's show,

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

We're not cooking live today, so instead we're looking back

at some of the delicious recipes

from the Saturday Kitchen back catalogue.

Now it's time for Lawrence Keogh to cook.

Judging by the scarf,

he obviously thinks it's a bit cold in the studio.

Good to have you on the show. Great stuff. Now, what are we cooking?

We've got ling today. Yep. Similar to the cod family.

What's the dish, then?

The dish is going to be ling cooked with clams. Yep. Perry. Yeah.

A bit of kale. A bit of curly kale and... Very, very British, this.

Very British, of course.

Tell us a little bit about ling, if you fold it over,

you mentioned the cod family, that's the reason why it looks...

The skin is much tougher than the cod. There's also big bones in ling.

Oh, yeah. They're so big. Look at the gap down the middle there.

What we'll do, we'll skin it today,

and I'm going to use the thicker side of the fillet...

..and then cut two long pieces. So that's how we skin fish.

Now, the ling itself can grow up to about five foot in length.

Some of them I've seen are huge.

This side of it, we can use them for fish goujons or your fish pie

and cut them up.

So I'm going to cut two nice long pieces for us to cook today.

I'll season them up and put them in the pan.

Bit of rapeseed oil.

Now would ling be a similar sort of thing to pollock?

People don't really use pollock as well, which is great.

Pollock's in at the moment.

It's going up in price now, pollock and hake, things like that.

I'll put them in the pan. There's a sink to wash your hands up.

Thank you, Chef.

Wash my hands. If you, em... I've got the kale. If you put the kale on.

You've got the kale on. Needs a bit of salt in that water.

I'll get a chopped shallot going for the sauce.

Do you use that dish in your restaurant?

This one? The ling? Yeah.

I've just put it on yesterday, funnily enough.

The same with the...with the shellfish as well, yeah? The clams?

The clams, yeah. Yeah.

There was a clam caught last year in October near Iceland,

and it was reputed to be over 400 years old. No. Really? Really?

Yeah, it was registered at Bangor University, I heard about it.

One of the oldest sort of... My God, I felt bad about using it.

So, finely chop shallots. How do you know how old it is, then?

They just did some tests on it

and they found it to be the oldest thing they found.

I'm doing these finely chopped. I've got the perry.

Perry, my mum used to like her Babycham.

That's where it came from.

That's where it came from.

Perry is like cider, but they make it like cider, but they use pears.

It's actually, the pear they use is the perry pear.

That's the pear on the front that they use.

Famous Gloucester area, that kind of area. Yeah.

You put a handful of shallots in there.

I'm just going to let them, the clams, just pop open.

The ling's cooking nicely there.

Tell us a bit about kale, cos kale...

Well, it's in season now. I love it, I think it's fantastic.

Oh, it's wonderful. Look at that crisping up.

It's packed with vitamins, it's got more calcium,

six times more calcium, than broccoli.

So eat your greens, kids.

It is great stuff, isn't it?

You blanch it first and then have just got some butter in here.

Butter, and you've put some lemon in there? Yeah, lemon zest in there.

I can do that, you're all right.

Now the clams, cook them quite quickly.

Yeah, just let them pop open.

If you can see them now, they're just starting to open up.

They're cooking that quick.

You see them there? Yeah.

That's going to pop open, fish is cooking gently there.

Recommendations with clams? People buy them from supermarkets?

Yeah, a good fishmongers.

You can do it with mussels, mussels and perry's nice -

like mussels and cider and bacon, things like that.

The same thing really applies, if they're not open, once they're cooked...

Don't go near it - the golden rule, don't go near it if it's open.

There could be all manner of problems, you could be very ill.

What I do with these now, once they start popping open,

I don't want them to overcook, so I just drain them in the sieve here.

Can use cockles as well? Huh? Can use cockles?

Yeah, and with the juice put a bit of the juice back in there.

Now, the reason why you pass it through there...

Just to hold back some of that sand, just hold back some of that sand.

A touch more cider there. Reduce that down.

And then we're going to put some butter in it,

or the French would say "monter au beurre".

But you know you said it's a very British dish,

because of the perry, but in France we do...

The French will have invented it somewhere or another - bound to!

We use a lot of shellfish with fish like this.

They will have claimed it somewhere! Exactly! They normally do.

I didn't say that, no.

Just remember, we've got beef Wellington, yeah? Of course.

You can see it is a member of the cod family,

it's beautiful white flesh.

It's not too expensive, James, that's what I like!

It's a good quality fish. Just put these back in.

Put another knob of butter in there. That's nearly cooked there.

You've seasoned the kale for me.

There's a sink there, give your hands a quick wipe.

So you just put some butter in there,

a little bit of that perry's gone in there.

Just let that all melt down.

Once that fish is cooked... Get a spoon there.

And where do you want your chives? The chives can go in that sauce now.

Turn that gas right up.

It looks fantastic, that's just on its own.

The secret of getting this sauce right is when it's nearly ready,

we're going to put a bit more perry in, just to let it foam up and get the champagne effect going.

You mentioned your restaurant's famous for seasonal produce.

It's quite difficult in the UK, because the seasons change so much with food.

I know. It changes every month now.

So we've got game coming out of season, what's coming into season?

Next week we've got the rainbow carrots coming in, the heritage carrots,

all different colours - purple and orange.

Jerusalem artichoke is good. Cauliflower is good.

Rhubarb of course.

Famous in my neck of the woods. Not in France!

Yorkshire rhubarb. The Yorkshire triangle.

I'm going to put this in a length, because we've got length of fish.

There we go, the fish is absolutely magical.

It's a wonderful bit of fish, yes.

The colours of it, just... I mean, look at it.

The secret with this sauce is get the perry in last minute,

watch the foam going through it.

Like a sauce champagne.

But you need to use perry, not cider? Yeah.

You see the foam coming in there.

A touch of seasoning.

Just change my spoons there, James.

And then we pour that over.

So what I like about the sea kale, it looks like a seashore this dish, you know like a coral, isn't it?

Don't look like my sea shore at all.

It's all bits of plastic bags and bottle tops.

There we have pan-roast ling,

with clams cooked in perry and curly kale.

It's as simple as that, brilliant.

I tell you, this smells brilliant. I don't know about you guys.

There you go. You've had your steak, next course is ling.

You've never had ling.

This is the biggest breakfast I've ever had!

Exactly. I've never had - I've never even heard of ling.

It's not the same as that... There's a long deep sea

one in Portugal, isn't there, a Madeiran fish?

What's that one called - the very, very long fish?

I don't know where that one comes from. I'll find that one out.

Tell us what you think of this. I've never even heard of ling.

But you must have tried perry before.

You're not thinking of dogfish, are you, not thinking of huss?

What do you reckon? That is fantastic.

Curly kale, my favourite.

Very good for you, vegetables, yes, please.

And together with the clams...

It's a good dish for January as well, after Christmas.

It's a good, light dish. Not too heavy.

And using the clams,

if people wanted mix and match, you could use cockles.

And mussels, wonderful.

It is sweet, isn't it? Because of the perry.

The perry flavour's quite important, you don't have the alcohol content.

The girls are diving in there! They're happy.

This is absolutely delicious.

Have you ever tried ling before? No, I haven't. Never.

Again we talked of alternatives to cod, but that really is a good one, isn't it?

Needs to be absolutely fresh as a daisy though, that is the secret.

You could use hake or pollock. It's great - all the flavour together. It's gorgeous.

And it's British! Yeah, well!

That is a great dish and ling is a great alternative to cod.

Now, it's time for a trip north of the border

as the legendary Keith Floyd cooks his way around Scotland.

Every time I have a new passion in my life,

I make a quick call to the BBC and my dreams are realised.

In this instance, here is one of me going through the basic training in the gentle art of salmon fishing.

Notice the concentration on the boat race.

The salmon however - like so many objects of my desire -

is playing hard to get.

But I have no doubt that under the eagle or expert eye of Peter,

the ghillie, who is clearly impressed by my progress, we will succeed.

Indeed, just look at his face - glowing with pride at my efforts.

Or is it the mask of a man who's seen it all before?

So will I catch a fish supper, or will the cameraman run out of f...

This then is Loch Fyne, home of the noted kipper, superb oysters and plump prawns.

A loch of stunning views, of moody skies

and the birthplace of our dubbing mixer, Stuart Greg,

who wrote this piece of the commentary. OK, Stu...

Cue cooking, please.

On with cooking sketch number one.

The trouble with half an hour programmes is you haven't got the time to do everything.

Take my mate here, Jimmy McNab, brilliant fellow,

could tell you stories all night over a dram and fill up the whole programme.

One thing he can do really well is marinade and roast a haunch of venison.

Jimmy, tell us all about the venison.

Well, first of all, we get the venison from the estate, Keith.

We bring it down to the Creggans, we hang it for ten days in the cold room.

Then we butcher it and then it depends on the cut we want. Today it's the haunch.

We put the haunch into the tin, as you see.

And then we add apple, parsnip, carrot, onion, a mixture of dried herbs, fresh herbs.

We cover the whole haunch with brown sugar and a few cloves of garlic.

We rub it in and a few cloves of - what do you call these things? These are cloves.

Cloves. And we rub it well in and then we add a bottle and a half of good red wine, which is essential.

And cover it with tinfoil and that's you ready for putting it in the oven.

Right, which is going to take about three and a half hours.

Now, Jimmy, I don't wish to be rude, but if you could get on with that,

we'll be coming back to you and see your herrings later because I've got a dinner party dish to cook.

Richard, come down this way. Jimmy's got the heavy, slow-cooking haunch.

I've got the delicate and expensive fillet steak from the venison,

the loin of venison, and I cook it in creme de cassis.

This is what it looks like when it comes out of the beast, OK?

Like a big pork fillet, or a fillet steak. You cut pieces off it.

Like that - nice round little collops, we call those.

Then you beat them out. I've already done that.

And then they're lovely, thin little collops of venison like that.

And we also need some water, which I'll explain later.

These go into the hot pan for a couple of seconds on each side.

Just to brown very nicely like that.

A little bit of salt and a little bit of pepper.

OK. Then straightaway...

..we pour in some blackcurrant liqueur like that and flame it.

They must come out straight away now. On to the thing.

In we put some of Jimmy McNab's wonderful venison stock.

And we have got to reduce that. Come back, Richard, please.

We've got to reduce that for three or four minutes, which you won't really want to see,

so I'm going to have a quick word with Jimmy, while somebody carries on with that

and look at his wonderful herrings, OK?

Right, Jimmy, while my sauce bubbles, you've got about two minutes to explain your fabulous herrings.

Richard, get really close on Jimmy. He hasn't done it before -

help him out. Right, OK, Jimmy.

OK, Keith, first of all, that's your original Loch Fyne herring.

This here is a salt herring which we purchased there.

What I do is I run that 36 hours under running cold water.

Then you nick the backbone off. The fin off. You take your scissors.

I nearly cut my hand off!

And then you chop into pieces.

OK, we've got that. Press on, because film's very expensive.

Then you cut the onion up and chop it up there.

Then we have got pimento, rosemary, mixed herbs.

A wee shake of crushed chillies.

Chop up your onion and your dill.

And this is all fresh herbs which you add as well.

Richard, pay attention properly here - mint, chives tarragon, fresh dill.

OK, on you go, Jimmy.

Then you mix all these ingredients up together and you leave them lying for two hours.

Then you boil one cup of brown sugar to one cup of good malt vinegar.

You bring that to the boil until your sugar dissolves.

Then you mix the whole lot together and there's your end product.

And the longer it lies, the better it matures.

It's absolutely brilliant.

Oh, boy! Should we have a little drink with that or not?

Well, I'll tell you a story about that.

It's a great combination -

a dram of whisky and a plate of pickled herring,

because you've your dram

and that gives you something, you're hungry.

So then you have a plate of pickled herrings,

the salt herring gives you the thirst,

so you go back to the dram, go back to the herring

and it works vice versa, until you end up you're as pickled as what the herring is!

Absolutely brilliant - slainte! I must go back to the sauce, excuse me.

Mmm. That was very delicious. Anyway I must just finish this sauce.

All I'm going to do now is beat in a little bit of butter

to the creme de cassis and into the venison stock.

Take about 30 seconds just to make it really smooth

and creamy and wonderful.

Which is now ready.

OK, strain it over the little venison collops.

Look at that lovely rich sauce.

Down close on that Richard, so everybody can see.

It's a dish you can make at home. Absolutely brilliant.

In case you weren't paying attention earlier, I did say

you needed some water for this dish.

Of course you do - it goes into the dram!

Jimmy! It's finished, can you come and have a taste, please?

If he doesn't like it, we'll cut him out of the film -

it's very, very simple!

There you are, there's my venison and blackcurrant liqueur sauce,

see what you think of it.

Now that's a really streamlined venison.

It cuts lovely.

Hmm! OK? Really first class.

It will be a favourite with the berry pickers in Dundee now!

Let's have a look at yours then, that's been roasting away in the oven there, let's see how that's going.

There we are. Can you pass me up the cloth? There you go. Lovely.

Now, we just have to hope and pray this turns out like yours.

I'm sure it will be very much better.

Now this is truly a Scottish version, mine is a Sassenach version.

Oh, I say, that looks brilliant.

Get in there, Richard, come on.

Right, in there with the fork and see what happens.

Oh, that is beautiful. Have a little slice of that.

Look at that, as tender as a baby's bottom!

That is beautiful.

Oh! That is incredible.

You ought to have a dram, Jimmy. It's over there.

Oh, that's good!

Thank you very much. Here's all the very best.

Absolutely brilliant, brilliant. Do you want a little bit yourself?

No, no. I'm on a diet!

You're on a diet! Look at that man - on a diet!

On a diet? Or is that a diet?

Meanwhile, back on the river bank...

That was a bit better. Much better. That is a bit more encouraging.

You see, I've only got a couple of hours to catch a really superb salmon for Lady McLean's lunch.

Peter's going to help me, I'm dressed in the right stuff, shouldn't be any problem, it's just that...

That was quite a good one again. Very good. Yes.

I'm actually getting a bit better at this.

We'll get the lunch, don't worry. And if not, well - we'll just...

There you are now. The fish is after your fly! I've got him!

I've got him! It's on. Now, keep the rod up, now. That's lovely.

I'll just... Now wind this in if you can, hold that.

Wind it in.

Once you get it on the reel. Right.

Now, you've got it on the reel, that's lovely. Don't rush it.

That's it. That's it. Let him go quiet, but keep your rod up.

It's only, all you've got to do is keep the rod up. Lovely.

Let him go if he wants to go.

Then wind in now. Very good.

I actually cast that one too, didn't I?

That's the extraordinary thing about it!

Ooh, he's gone! He's off again! He's off!

Ha! Ha! Ha! Well, that's just my luck, isn't it?

But never mind. Once encouraged like that, you just keep on doing it, it's not a problem.

That was a great shame. Very good. What did I do wrong?

No, nothing, you just didn't take it very well.

If you take it a wee bit better there. Do you want to try again?

Pretty impressive, though. More or less first cast.

Now we have to start all over again.

Yes, or Lady McLean will go hungry!

Failure is a solitary thing and I was sad to lose the fish

and injured that when I took my next one, the crew

had lost interest and were busy filming rare flowers.

Get the blinking camera on - I've got one!

I didn't even know the name of the plant!

I've got one!

Now, we did something that we shouldn't do,

but Lady McLean's far more important

than actually scruples at the end of the day.

And I'm afraid what we did was

we put a little spinner on

and in fact we've got one.

So honour, in fact...

is salvaged, I think.

If I can hold it just for the last...

Thank you very much, Peter. There you are.

There, you see, there's lunch for Lady McLean.

She will be very, very pleased with us, I think.

I'm certainly very pleased with me, because we never cheat on this programme,

that's the one really good thing about it.

How heavy is that? Three or four pounds? That's lovely - about three pound.

Yeah, that's absolutely fine. OK. Absolutely fine.

Ideal for your cooking.

Following the knocker routine to the letter, we arrive at the home of Sir Fitzroy and Lady McLean.

This man causes a great conflict of interest.

We nearly ditched the cookery programme

to make a documentary about Fitz,

who some say was Ian Fleming's inspiration for Bond.

CREW SING BOND THEME

AS SEAN CONNERY: The name is Bond, James Bond. 007.

British Intelligence.

He was good mates with Churchill,

and was parachuted into Yugoslavia to find Tito, which he did.

Nowadays he writes wonderful tales

and probably still has the odd word in the corridors of power.

This is absolutely brilliant, isn't it?

Do you like the little house I've borrowed for today?

Actually, it belongs to a friend of mine, who has a hotel.

We didn't like her hotel,

because it was a bit smaller than the house she lives in, you see?

You know, we always like to beg, borrow and steal

these humble little abodes.

But nothing humble about my efforts today, nothing humble at all.

This is the king of fish, must make me the king of anglers,

because up here, in May - which is now in May, you see,

you'll be watching this in the winter, probably,

but this is May - the rains haven't rained,

the rivers haven't spated, the salmon aren't running, but I got one.

I did promise about a five-pound one, and I'm sorry,

this is only about three and a half pounds, Veronica.

I hope it'll be all right. It's marvellous!

I didn't believe you were going to get one!

I was absolutely certain you'd come and I'd have to take one

out of the fridge, a farm salmon. This is a wild - is it freshly run?

Has it got lice on it?

It has... Well... Well, it's been up for three days.

You know about that, if a fish comes up the very day -

people are put off by that -

it has a louse with a streamer on it,

which you just wash off, from the sea.

And if it comes up two days it has a louse without a streamer.

And this has been up three days. Three days, you see?

It's really beautiful, fresh, wild salmon.

I should say that Veronica...

Not very big, but all the better for that.

I actually like a small salmon better than a...than a big one.

It's very good.

I ought to interrupt her there, before she takes complete charge.

Lady Veronica Maclean

is one of the country's leading cookery book writers.

She's travelled extensively,

she's the wife of that amazing adventurer Sir Fitzroy Maclean,

and what she doesn't know about cooking,

and, as you've heard, about salmon, isn't worth printing.

I mean, she knows the lot. Anyway, so how shall we cook it?

How is the proper way to cook this salmon?

Well, I've cooked it, always,

like it was always cooked in my home as a child,

on a very great river, much better than the West coast rivers,

the River Beaulieu.

And we cooked it in fish kettle, covered -

whatever the size of the fish, this is what's mysterious -

just covered by about a finger of water.

Right, so, Richard... So, we put it in the fish kettle, cold water.

Cold water. That's the first thing.

Now, Richard, I want you to be particularly good today.

We all know you've won the Glenfiddich award

for being quite a good cameraman, but I don't want any mucking about,

I want this all covered very carefully, OK?

There - into the salmon. There it is, about a finger of water.

Now, honestly, the business of putting a couple of peppercorns,

a bay leaf and a tiny bit of white wine is all nonsense,

but it looks good. HE CHUCKLES

It simply doesn't... That's enough.

It simply doesn't matter.

Some people say,

if the salmon came out of the sea, then it's best to cook in sea water,

but I quite often just cook it in plain, cold water -

one bay leaf - and that's it.

No salt? No, no salt. No, fish don't need salt.

Good. Richard, the lady's speaking -

I did ask you to start this thing properly.

Lady Maclean is talking to you and the customers at home,

would you look at her, please? Thank you.

Now, what were you saying?

Do you always wear your hat on when you're cooking?

Sorry...! It is rather a magnificent hat, has it got a Hardy fly in it?

No, it hasn't... It ought to, now that you've caught that.

It's my fishing hat. Yes, I'm sorry about that. Lovely!

Take that, could you?

Right, so, we want to put that... Now, ready. Hatless, but ready.

OK. And we've got the lid, yes.

Well, this is what I love and live by, which is

my glorious 30-year-old cooker. There we go.

And we put the lid on, and then the next...

It ought to fit tightly, and it does.

Now, the next thing is that that is in cold water,

and we don't forget it, but the moment it comes to the boil,

a nice sort of rolling boil... How long will that be? 20 minutes? Yes.

Cos there isn't... Not a lot of... About half an hour. Yeah.

I never can tell, it depends on your heat,

but you don't want to put it on the hottest,

you want to have it on hot heat, but not the very hottest.

Right. And then, when it comes to the boil,

you literally stand with your watch on your hand and cook it

for anything between one and a half and three minutes, let it boil.

OK. And that's all. Right. And then you let it cool in its steam.

Well, shall we go and have a wee dram to celebrate our success? I think so!

And also to welcome us here, because it's rather good, isn't it?

Very nice idea. Why not?

Oh, you haven't got one, excuse me.

It's over there.

And this is a very curious thing about this Scottish lady,

this grand, grand...

You can follow the microphone around, as well, if you can.

You know, you don't have to be difficult.

..Is she doesn't drink that much scotch whisky, she drinks...

I do outside. Outside. On the hill, I...

I'm sorry to say, I like bourbon.

Well, cheers to us. Thanks for having me here, anyway,

and we'll get on with the cooking. It's lovely having you.

Here beginneth the first Maclesson.

This is Lady Maclean's beurre blanc sauce, which goes over her salmon.

You have one cup of dry white wine, half a cup of water,

half a cup of finely-chopped shallots,

a tablespoon of good wine vinegar, bit of salt, bit of pepper,

couple of tablespoonfuls of double cream -

paying attention, all of you, I hope? And 8oz of butter.

You reduce all of the liquids except the butter and the cream

until there's almost nothing left, you cut the butter into little bits

and whisk it with the cream, by hand, like her ladyship is doing.

Richard, back on the pot so we can all see what's going on.

It's looking splendid, isn't it? Is that all right?

I think it's absolutely lovely, Keith. It's beautifully dressed.

Couldn't have done it better myself. And it couldn't be fresher.

That little salmon was swimming up the loch, up the river,

only at half past eight this morning,

it's now quarter to one, and I caught it - very chuffed about that, really.

Very chuffed you may be, but don't let viewers think

that it was because it was hungry the fish took your fly,

it's simply because they get irritated.

They don't feed at all in a river,

but when they see a fly hovering over them, they go, "Well!"

I... And just, really, to get rid of it.

I've got a little confession to make.

I did catch it, but I'm afraid I caught it on a spinner,

because my first fish I got on a fly I lost,

the second fish I lost on a fly...

Oh, well, that's very honest.

But I couldn't come here empty-handed.

I'm sorry to say that I've got two sons,

and one of them is a very good spinner.

Or rather, he wheels a very good spinner.

And he always comes back with results,

whereas the other one often doesn't.

That's absolutely brilliant, isn't it?

Should we consider going for a walk in the garden,

or having a little slurp somewhere quietly? I think we might do that!

And letting them get on. Carry on.

Cos we've had a nice time, haven't we? I'm very pleased.

A classic serving of the great man Mr Floyd, there.

Now, we're not cooking live in the studio today,

so instead we're looking back at some of the great recipes

from the Saturday Kitchen larder.

Still to come on today's bites,

Daniel Galmiche and Vivek Singh already had respectable

times in the omelette challenge.

Find out if they managed to get higher up the leaderboard

a little later on.

The shy and retiring Silvena Rowe shows us

just what to do with king prawns this New Year.

She wraps the prawns in basil and a type of finely-shredded pastry,

and serves them with a Middle Eastern inspired tartare sauce.

And actress Claudie Blakley faced her Food Heaven or Food Hell.

Would she get her Food Heaven, chicken,

which she could serve with a lemon tagine with herby tabbouleh,

or would she get her dreaded Food Hell, duck, with braised legs

and roasted breast, that would be served with red cabbage slaw?

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

Now, if you're looking for something to warm up those cold January days,

then look no further,

because Atul Kochhar has some inspiration from sunny Malaysia.

Take a look at this.

Now, this recipe - explain to us what it is.

It's Malay Indian lamb korma. Korma. Yes.

Now, we said at the top of the show korma doesn't have to have

coconut milk in. It doesn't have to have.

It can have, or it does have, but that's a different version of it,

from North India to South India it differs.

So, what's in your one, then?

This one has got - obviously lamb, I'm using lamb leg,

and for thickening, I'm using cashew nut instead of almonds or coconut.

Right, I'm going to get on and do the onions. Thank you.

You've got a load of spices that we're going to toast off first.

I've got some spices here, here.

When I say "some", I know you're going to laugh.

No, I love all this - but I think this is the common mistake,

we don't get the spices right.

We kind of just throw it in and mix and match.

It's actually a great combination of hot and cold spices, James. OK.

So, coriander, cumin, fennel, black pepper, cloves, star anise

and cinnamon. OK. All goes in together.

Ideally it should be toasted separately,

and to heat it up a bit more, you can add a red chilli.

Now, no oil in there, just a dry pan for this one. Dry pan, yes.

So, really high heat.

Lightly toast it.

And then bring it back on a plate.

Because you need to cool it slightly.

So, a beautiful fragrant smell comes out. Yeah.

OK.

And as we are going to do korma, we have to serve it with rice. OK.

So, absorption method, one is to one -

basmati rice, washed and soaked. Yep.

As the water comes to boil, just add the rice.

So, the rice is just washed through. Yeah, that's it.

And just put a lid on that. When it comes to boil, reduce the heat.

Now, you want to be browning off the meat for this. Absolutely. OK.

So, I want to use a little bit of ghee.

I don't often use ghee, but for this recipe I have to,

because it's such a traditional flavour.

Ghee is clarified butter. It is clarified butter.

Little bit of oil. Yeah. Otherwise ghee burns very fast.

Right. And I'll add all the lamb in the fat straight away.

Now, this area where this comes from, whereabouts is it in India?

This is actually inspired by South Indian cooking,

but it's actually Malaysia that has made this. OK.

So, it's Indians living in Malaysia.

Malaysia used to trade with India quite a lot. Yeah.

Pinch of salt will go in.

And I will also throw in this cinnamon stick now.

So, you're travelling all over the world, researching different curries

and following, almost, the spice trail, aren't you?

I am, actually, James.

I'm looking at Malaysia very interestingly,

because it has got such a beautiful blend

of different cultures and cuisines.

It has got Portuguese food,

it has got Eurasian food, it has got its own Malay food, Chinese food.

Yeah. I think, heritage-wise, it's a really rich country.

Right, these are all the toasted spices gone in here.

All the toasted spices gone in there. Right.

And we also have to make a ginger-garlic paste. OK.

And I will also need the cashew nut paste in. I'll do that.

I've chopped the onions, so we'll get that in a second.

Once this is done, I'll pass it through a fine sieve,

and I'll give you turmeric also, to go through that.

OK.

So, turmeric, the whole lot just goes - now,

you could actually make a batch of this, couldn't you?

You could easily make a batch of it, and keep it in an airtight container.

Yeah. Or, in a professional kitchen,

you could actually vacuum pack it and keep it. Right.

And it'll last you a good four months, if it's vacuum-packed.

So, we've got our spices through.

Now, the reason why you do this

is just to get rid of the husks out of here.

Yeah, because there's husks, there's bits which will come to your mouth...

Actually, I can use the same plate for keeping the lamb,

the toasted lamb back.

Bit of the old ginger.

So, tell us about your restaurant, then, Benares.

Because...it closed. And it's reopened.

It closed and it has reopened, yes. It has come back after refurbishment.

Yep. It's looking great,

I'm looking forward to have many long years to come!

And you're opening another one, is that right?

I'm opening another one, Colony.

Which was always opening,

but it just so happened that Benares got burnt in between. Yeah.

The Colony is in Marylebone High Street, and that has purely been

inspired, or I've got inspired,

to change the British bar food,

I'm sick of eating chicken nuggets and peanuts and crisps,

so I want to just improve it... All right, OK.

And make it the way I like it, so it's Indian-inspired...

Don't change the beer. ..bar and grill.

Chicken korma in a basket, then, is that right? You can say that.

That's a new idea. Sounds good to me! There you go.

Pinch of salt, always, so the onions will caramelise faster. Yeah.

Really helps.

And we can, actually, in the same one, we can just dust it lightly. OK.

Just dust it. Can I use your...? Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

So, in we go with the garlic and the ginger. Garlic and ginger.

So, this is a paste. Yes. Just a dash of water. Touch of water.

And give this a quick blitz.

For making of curries, cooking of onions is really important.

So, we have to come up with right colour of onion

to get the right consistency and the colour of the curry. Right.

So, for korma, it has to be translucent, golden-brown in colour.

Yeah. And for deep korma, which are called taar kormas,

the onions have to be brown, so rogan josh comes from that. Right.

So, the darker the onions, the darker the korma is.

Darker the onion, the darker the korma, yes.

OK. Right, there's your... Perfect. I'll add lamb back. Yeah.

And the ginger-garlic can go in there too.

Get rid of that. Thank you, Chef.

And then you want me to basically just blend these cashew nuts.

If you could, Chef. Now, these two have just been soaked?

It's been soaked in lukewarm water, so they become slightly softened.

And you can use the same water when you mince them.

OK, and these just get blended up - give it a quick blend.

And that just goes into a nice little paste. Absolutely.

The finer the better.

Once the onions and ginger-garlic has been sauteed well,

we can add the korma powder.

Yeah. And the saffron water.

Mix it all together. And that's saffron that's been soaked as well.

Saffron has been soaked in lukewarm water as well.

You could soak it in a tablespoon of warm milk, as well.

Now, we've got some chilli here. Some mild chilli powder.

Does that go in anywhere? That'll go in there.

OK. So, chilli powder as well.

And chilli is always like pepper, it's to taste.

It depends how much you want. Right.

And if the spice powder actually does it for you,

then there's no need to add any chilli powder.

But I guess, looking at James and the crowd here, I think they can take it.

No? Yeah. Yeah. Love chilli.

There we go. All right. Good. So, little bit of water in there.

Yeah.

So, that's the cashew nuts. That's the cashew nut.

Just mix it all together.

Now, you were saying, you can use peanuts, pistachio nuts...

Peanuts, generally not, but good idea.

If you want to make a cheap korma, you can.

It's my version of your recipe, Atul.

That's all right, it's all right.

I'm going to add the cashew nut paste now.

So, this thickens it up. It thickens it up really well.

And I've just got some diced tomatoes here.

I'll leave this cooking for a while, James,

and the one which we have been cooking for some time, now,

where the lamb is cooked, because the lamb takes about 45 minutes to cook.

Yeah.

Now, you've - we've got - this is leg of lamb, this is?