Episode 94 Saturday Kitchen Best Bites

It's time to get inspiration from some of the best chefs on the planet.

This is Saturday Kitchen Best Bites.

Welcome to the show. We've got some very eager chefs lining up to cook

for some very ravenous celebrity guests for you this morning.

Ashley Palmer-Watts grills cured mackerel and serves it with

pickle lemons, roasted cucumber, broad beans and peas.

Tana Ramsay creates a one-pot wonder for all the family to enjoy.

She makes a chicken and butter bean casserole with tomatoes,

peppers and mushrooms and serves it with basmati rice.

And Tom Kitchin creates an intriguing warm summer salad.

He makes it with summer veg, leek, sauce gribiche,

crispy lamb's tongue and sweetbread fritters.

And West End star Summer Strallen faced a Food Heaven or Food Hell.

Would she get a Food Heaven? Peaches with a delicious roasted peach

and raspberry pavlova with almonds and caramel sauce.

Or would she get a dreaded Food Hell?

Tinned tuna with a tuna and chicken tonnato with rocket salad.

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

But first, Stuart Gillies treats us to the

most decadent sarnie you're ever likely to see.

-Good to have you on the show.

-Good to see you.

-Good to have you on.

-Now, all this way...

-Yes.

-..and you're making a sandwich.

I am, but no ordinary sandwich, James.

-Lobster sandwich.

-Lobster.

-So this is a native lobster.

-Now this is still kicking.

-This is live, yeah.

-And bang in season at the moment these things.

Yeah, these are actually prolific now. It's the cheapest time in the

year to buy it. It's definitely the cheapest.

Now, this is a lobster that we cook in boiling salt water.

for seven minutes, then we cool it naturally, then we cut it open

-and break it.

-Now, do you measure them before you cook them or not?

I don't after 20 years of cooking, no.

There is a time, I think you know, yeah. Now that we've cooked,

-you don't cool it in water.

-OK, I'll cover him up

before he starts wandering around the studio, yeah.

So, you don't cool it in water, you just let it cool naturally.

So we're going to chop up and mix with a Thousand Island dressing

for the sandwich or the roll.

-It goes in a brioche roll there.

-Are we going to make our own mayonnaise?

And top it with mustard cress.

You're going to make the mayonnaise with me.

So we've got eggs, a bit of mustard, some vinegar,

but we're going to use this rapeseed oil as well, yeah?

Rapeseed oil because it's fantastic and massively underused.

-So, just start the mayonnaise by putting the yolks in there.

-OK.

A little bit of English mustard, vinegar,

I'm going to dice up the peppers.

It's one of the first things I learnt when I was training.

One of the chefs turned round and said,

"If you put the lobsters in the pan and they go red, you're sacked."

-Remember that?

-I had that with crayfish.

-For the first week you're in tears, aren't you?

-You panic, don't you?

-Yeah, you're in tears.

-Cos a lot of people think lobsters

are particularly red when they're raw and they're not, they're blue.

Of course, they're actually an amazing colour.

-There is a lobster we're using today called a Dorset Blue.

-Yeah.

And that's only really available during the summer cos

the water's slightly warmer and the shell is softer

and it takes on the pure flavour of the sea,

so when you eat it it's not just sweet lobster,

it's this amazing taste of the sea, so it's really quite stunning to eat.

But they are seasonal at the moment, there's lots of them around.

And, of course, the price drops as well.

The price drops. It's definitely the cheapest time of the year.

And I think, you know, the thing about, "Oh, you have to use herbs and

"spices and peppercorns to cook them in, and vinegar." I don't believe it.

Personally, I use boiling water with salt and you just cook it

and that's it. Don't wash it after.

And that way you preserve your pure flavour of the...yeah, the lobster.

Are you all right there, James?

-I'm fine, I...

-Should we all lean like that?

I'm trying to do this on a slant, I do apologise!

If you're currently waking up and your eyes have just opened,

it's not an optical illusion, I have to do this to pour the oil in

cos I can't get it first of all mixed up.

And to make your mayonnaise I've got in there egg yolks,

-a bit of mustard, a touch of vinegar...

-Yeah, exactly.

And then slowly, slowly, slowly add the oil.

-Yeah, and that will just thicken as you add the oil.

-Well, we hope.

You hope, yeah. Unless, of course, it turns to, like, scrambled egg

and that's, James, split in a moment, but it's such an easy thing to make.

Thanks, Stuart, yeah (!) You just keep chopping your...

-For professional chefs like you and I.

-Yeah, exactly.

So, right, that's the, uh, peppers done.

I'm just going to chop that into...

Now, before our guests ask,

this is really good for us this rapeseed oil?

-Yes.

-Very good.

-Rich in Omega-3, no?

The fact that he's going to cover it in butter in a minute is irrelevant!

No, no, no, no - no butter.

Just...no butter. Just pure, actually. It's very pure this dish.

It's incredibly light and clean for the summer.

You have chips with this, which, of course,

-are really healthy cooked in dripping!

-Yes!

You have chips with this and it's a great dinner for everyone,

-for the whole family.

-Lobster and chips, delicious.

Right, let me take that away. OK.

Now, when you're cooking lobster, we talked about that,

but you really do need to think about the weight.

Is it six minutes per pound, something like that?

But you actually cool them down, not in cold water, don't you?

You just leave them to one side.

I think it's a very bad thing to cool it in cold water,

because as it cools it naturally sucks in any water, so why do it?

Just leave it to cool

-and if you actually don't have to put it in the fridge, don't do it.

-Yeah.

Just cut it when it's cool and you just get pure flavour

and the meat doesn't tighten up so it's delicious.

It's always better, where possible, to get fresh ones, cos

the supermarket ones are overcooked.

Buy fresh - there's loads around and

it's the cheapest time of year to buy them,

so you should be using fresh.

-How are you getting on?

-I'm getting there slowly but surely.

I'll start to dice this lobster.

You'd use a bit of olive oil for this, Phil?

I would personally use olive oil, yeah.

But it's great stuff, this, I have to say.

It tastes fantastic, it smells delicious.

This one's being cut, James.

If you were doing the lobster roll,

you'd still cut it the same way, start with the head...

-But it has got a natural line.

-It has, yeah.

-A line down there.

We've got a natural line down there and the head divides there,

so you put the tip of the knife right into that point and you make

-sure the knife is pointing down and you just push through it.

-Yeah.

So don't muck around with the knife

and then you just again put the tip of the knife on the board

before you apply any pressure, that way you won't chop your fingers.

Through the tail...

I don't think I've made this since I was last at college!

-What? Mayonnaise?

-Yeah. I think we're there.

You always get somebody else to do it nowadays, don't you?

These claws, they've got bands on.

You know why they've got elastic bands on, don't you?

When they're still alive, they'll take your fingers off.

When they get them on the boats.

I went out lobster fishing recently. When they come out,

they're not happy about being dragged out the water.

So you get the bands on as fast as you can.

-Just crack that claw, just break that open.

-I'm going to leave you that.

Just have a smell of that and it's just unusual stuff

-that you want to taste.

-Is the flavour...?

Rapeseed oil, yeah, they press it like they do olive oil but

it's a fantastic, you know, really, really good thing to cook with.

-Right.

-OK, so we've got the lobster tail out

and sometimes you get a little piece of entrail there, James.

You want to get that out, really.

That's kind of its lunch that it caught before, you know.

Yeah, that's its digested lunch,

so you really want to take that out, yeah.

Trust me, it's better without, yeah.

-Eileen, you said you don't cool, is that right?

-I used to, um...

My husband got me into it a couple of years ago.

Cos you said Jessica's a better cook, but you need to be confident, Eileen.

-Yeah, yeah.

-Come on, Eileen!

-Aww!

-I was wondering when that was going to be put in!

-# Come on, Eileen! #

Gordon's other chefs weren't available, so Stuart came along.

We asked him to create food, and what do we get?

A sandwich. You know...!

-You do what you know, James.

-Aye, do what you know. A sandwich!

Right, so we've got some spoons over here. Now we're mixing this.

Did I see a little spatula here?

Uh, I used it there. There you go.

Right, so we're going to mix this up,

the base of this is mayonnaise we've made fresh

and it's basically a little bit like a cocktail sauce.

You know, the old prawn cocktail - another classic, James.

This is the sauce you make.

Now the French name is, of course, Marie Rose, it's a classic

and we call it cocktail sauce so we add ketchup to that.

A big pinch of, uh, cayenne.

Can I say, all we need now is a little bit of iceberg,

a few frozen prawns and we're happy for lunch?

Apart from the frozen prawns, I'm all for that, yeah.

-Right now, a key ingredient - brandy.

-Yeah.

You know, you put in as much as you like. I put quite a lot of brandy in.

It really lifts the dish. It's amazing the difference

when you don't make it with brandy. A little bit of Worcester sauce

-in there, James, for a kick.

-Yeah.

-A pinch of salt again.

Right, have we got everything there? Uh, yes, we're good. Everything in.

Now you put in these little Brioche rolls.

So we've got a Brioche roll there that's made. You could make your own

Brioche, but it's a bit intense for Saturday morning,

-so I would go and buy a quality Brioche roll to be honest.

-Yeah.

I'm going to taste this. Do you want to have a taste?

-Want to try? Make sure you're happy, boss, it's your show.

-No, it's good.

OK, now into that. Add a little bit to here.

We add the sauce to the peppers and the lobster,

not the other way round cos you only want enough to bind it.

See I like that and the one thing I cannot eat is bought-in mayonnaise,

I'm allergic to it. Which I think a lot of people are as well.

-Is that because of the product in there?

-I think so, yeah.

There's some preservative in there, anyway, so that gets spiced.

I'll just cut you some...

-Just a little bit of mustard cress for the top, please.

-Yeah.

We've got to make this dish really refined. We're going to put

mustard cress on top. It's not just for the egg sandwich, you know?

I've just looked and thought he was going to do

egg and cress sandwiches to go with it.

Bring your plate up over here.

Take your roll.

OK. Into there, like so.

You see it's quite dense in the filling, it's not mayonnaise

with fillings it's the lobster and peppers, a little bit of the gherkin

and that's all mixed with just the cocktail sauce that you've made.

Cos you've got red and yellow peppers in there and those gherkins,

so you've got a nice bit of saltiness as well, yeah.

-Exactly, it just cuts through the oil.

-OK.

-That's that one there.

-One would do.

-I'll pop that one there.

-But I know they'll want another one, James.

-So when would you serve that then?

-This?

This is definitely a high summer dish, you want to serve it.

For a luncheon it's beautiful.

You have that and, as I said, you can have it with chips

if you want to make it less healthy, but it's great as it is.

Stuart and his sandwich. Remind us what that is again?

So that's your Dorset Blue or native lobster roll with

-Thousand Island dressing and mustard cress.

-There you go.

It's better than Tuna mayo, isn't it?

Right then, let's have a taste of this. There we go.

-Tim, you get first bite.

-Oh, I'm salivating away here. This is good.

He's just downing that lovely mixture with a fork.

You've got half of it there, Tim. You've been watching this show,

because by the time it gets down there it doesn't come back.

-That great combination.

-Oh, gorgeous!

If there's any left there, girls!

That was a fantastic combination. You used lobster, but I suppose you could use crab?

You could use crab, prawns - to be honest,

the balance of the Thousand Island sauce that's not bought,

it's made fresh, and shellfish - it's just a match made in heaven.

You put those peppers and the gherkins there too. It's lovely.

-Not the usual taste.

-It's a nice use.

-That's really lovely.

Are you in love with that? We've got nodding heads all round then.

And, of course, all you need with that is a nice cold glass of fizz.

Coming up, I'll be making lamb tikka for Ricky Groves after

Rick Stein takes us on a trip to visit his food heroes.

I was sent a jar of lime pickle some time ago. I tasted it and I liked it.

So may I present another food hero from the Lake District -

Manel Trepte.

-Well, I've made chutney all my life.

-What, at home in Sri Lanka?

In Sri Lanka and then my husband retired

and we came to live here for good.

It was just something to do and, um, it just took off so well that,

you know, we're now up to our eyes in chutney!

We can't make enough!

Manel's helpers deseed these limes and carefully peel garlic

and ginger meticulously.

Well, I'm used to industrial estates, but, no,

they insist on doing everything by hand in Manel's kitchen.

The limes are imported from India already brined.

To make her famous lime pickle, her assistant Banda puts garlic,

ginger and cider vinegar into a blender.

Then into a warm pan goes sugar, some ground mustard

and chilli flakes - a LOT of chilli flakes.

Then in goes the ground ginger

and garlic whizzed up with the vinegar, then lots more vinegar.

And Banda slowly heats up the pan.

The pickles are brought up to the boil and then he lets it reduce

and thicken.

He takes it off the heat and in goes sultanas.

Then the whole mixture is left to cool and finally the deseeded

limes go in, which have been meticulously prepared.

Note that there's no onion in any of the chutney

because they say that masks the flavour of everything else.

We were doing a show and somebody approached us from Virgin, the

company, and they asked us whether we could do metric tonnes of it.

-A metric tonne?

-A metric tonne and I said, no, I'm sorry, we are

pushed to make 15 kilos!

Well, this is a salmon curry, a Sri Lankan salmon curry.

We had it for lunch after we'd been filming her making the chutney.

So I'm just frying onions and garlic together.

Quite hard to get a bit of colour there

and now I'm going to add what I think is a quite extraordinary ingredient.

It's called rampe and it's a sort of semi-dried leaf of a screwpine,

but the thing that's extraordinary about it is the smell.

It's a bit like those sort of dried shrimp in Malaysian cookery,

you just think, "How could anybody put that in food?" Well, this smells

like chalky smells when you've been out ratting under

the shed on a rainy day, like his coat, his fur smells.

It's, you know, anyway, in it goes and now some fresh curry leaves.

We'll stir that around.

Actually, it's smelling quite interesting, I have to say,

but now some Sri Lankan curry powder I'm just going to whizz

up in the mixer but first of all we've got some cardamom seeds

and then some black peppercorns and some fenugreek seeds,

a few cloves,

a small stick of cinnamon,

some fennel seeds,

quite a lot of them,

a great deal of coriander seeds and, finally,

quite a lot of cumin seeds too.

So just give those a quick whizz up for about half a minute.

So then you add the ground up spices to the pan

and next some turmeric, about a teaspoon or so.

Follow that with some chilli powder and then some fresh chopped tomatoes.

Stir that around a little and then add some liquid tamarind.

It's amazing that five years ago it was so hard to get tamarind.

Now every supermarket has it.

Finally, a can of coconut milk.

So that's just a teaspoon of salt.

One of the things that interests me, I've got quite a few chef friends

who do things on telly, and they always put the salt in like this.

With the result that most of it goes all over the cooker.

I asked them why they do it and they say, "I don't know." But I know!

I wouldn't make a curry like this with prime wild salmon -

the flavour's too delicate, but now in supermarkets there's really

good quality farm salmon around and it's perfect for that.

I think, actually, curries suit all oily fish,

but none more so than salmon.

The flavour is just right.

And all that's needed are some of Menel's

delicate pickles and chutneys.

Really the series is about British produce,

but also about all those really interesting and passionate

characters that produce the best things in a small and beautiful way.

As if to illustrate that thought, moussaka -

a dish that we've taken on as our own.

Just frying off some onions and garlic in olive oil.

When I was a university student in Oxford, I used to go to this

little cafe down Cowley Road - the New Excelsior Cafe it was called -

and have moussaka and big chips after a few pints in the pub on a Sunday.

Well, that onion and garlic is nicely caramelised now which will

accentuate the sweetness which is, I think,

important in a tomato-based sauce and now to add the lamb,

lovely minced lamb.

I was just thinking about that shepherd in the Cheviots.

This is Cheviot lamb mince, in fact.

He might not have thought that was the obvious dish,

that moussaka was the obvious dish to cook with this lamb,

but it's got really good flavour and I do think moussaka needs

a well-flavoured lamb to be at its best.

And it's helped by a little slug of white wine.

Now I'm just using chopped tinned tomatoes.

You don't need to go out and get the ripe fresh ones

because it doesn't make any difference -

such a strong sauce, so lamby, you'd never tell the difference.

Right, now the herbs and spice. There's a lot of odd things

go into a moussaka, as you can well imagine.

It develops and there's rubbish like green peppers,

I've seen chilli in them, I've seen currents in them,

but I'm just using, first of all, a cinnamon stick because that is the

traditional flavour and, of course, some Greek oregano and that's it.

Put the lid on there, pull it off the heat a little bit,

just so that it simmers

and that'll be ready in about 30 or 40 minutes.

Meanwhile, we will fry the aubergines.

There we go.

It's very easy to tell when your aubergines are ready

because as soon as you put them in the pan

they absorb all the hot olive oil and, as they cook, they start to give

it back again and when you've got about as much olive

oil in the pan as you started with, you know they're cooked.

And now to make the sauce.

Well, first of all we need some butter and flour to make a Roux.

So the butter goes in first.

Let that melt a little then stir in the flour,

equal quantities but I tend to add just a little less flour cos

it gives a more silky sauce.

Some boiling milk,

stir that in about three phases

so that you don't get your sauce all lumpy and, finally, add some

parmesan, plenty of it, cos you want lots of flavour in that bechamel.

So, having added the parmesan, I'm now going to add the beaten egg,

but not immediately, I've just got to let the sauce cool down a little

bit, otherwise I'll just scramble the eggs and I just find it quite...

sensible to put the pan on the window ledge,

making sure it doesn't fall down, of course.

Now the point of the eggs are...well, really,

when you put the final moussaka in a hot oven,

the eggs will make that top brown very attractively.

Also, the eggs, of course, will just richen the sauce a little bit.

So, let's make up the moussaka now.

So you layer the aubergines in the bottom of a dish

and sprinkle them well with salt

and plenty of freshly-ground black pepper,

and now for the tomato and lamb mince which we stewed out so successfully

and then lots of flavour in that bechamel filled with parmesan.

I can think of nothing better to go with a nice green salad than

moussaka so just bake it in a hot oven for about 30, 35 minutes.

And there - it's done.

You know, there are dishes like spaghetti bolognese,

lasagne and moussaka that are as popular now as roast beef

and Yorkshire pudding, but this is my favourite.

I can never understand the point of the chips, actually.

You don't need to add anything, it's all in the dish,

except some young lettuce leaves straight out of the garden,

dressed with olive oil and a glass or two of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Great stuff from Rick as always. Now there are quite a few foreign dishes

that we've adopted as our own in Britain.

Moussaka is one and another one is an Indian dish that

probably is considered totally British by now.

It's that tikka style curry, would you say that?

-Do you mean tikka masala?

-Yes.

-That's British curry, it's not Indian.

Exactly, there you do, I've been put in my place

and that's what we're going to do now, a lamb tikka.

So I'm going to get this lamb on first of all,

but, first off, I'm going to show you, in this selection of spices

that we've got here, we need a bit of oil in here,

you can barbecue this if you want,

if you're going to do a whole chicken,

you can do fish as well.

I've got a selection of spices, so I've got coriander in there, I've

got cinnamon, masala, I've got some mango powder, fenugreek seeds,

and a bit of saffron.

What I'm going to use is a lamb loin cos it's quite quick to cook.

So I'll fry these off and get these off first of all,

but, to actually marinate it,

it's pretty straightforward cos you use yoghurt as a base.

So I'll just drain that off and all we do, really, is grab our spices...

There we go and we've got some chilli in there

and a little bit of, uh...

some ginger, grated,

that all gets mixed together with some yoghurt,

which we've got in here, some natural yoghurt, full fat yoghurt.

Give that a quick mix.

And that's predominantly your little paste.

I've got some loin here, now loin is particularly good for a barbecue

if you're doing anything like that cos it requires quite quick cooking.

-You'll know this.

-Yeah.

-Shoulder and stuff like that requires longer.

-Yes.

-I'm going to chop this up into pieces, you can

put this on kebabs or anything like that.

We throw the whole lot in.

Marinate that for at least a good couple of hours.

That's got saffron in as well, by the way,

so you get that colour, that nice yellow colour

and then just fry it or you can actually put it on the griddle,

which is fine, but you'd know all this being a chef.

When was it you started cooking then? You got the bug from your mother?

Well, not necessarily my mother. It was her birthday yesterday, so happy birthday, Mum.

-I know she's watching.

-Happy birthday, Mother. What's her name?

-Irene.

-Irene. Happy birthday, Irene.

And, um, I sort of started in kitchens as a kitchen porter.

My mum was a sort of cleaner in the front of house

areas at a local hotel and I became a kitchen porter.

I was a kitchen porter as well when I first started.

It was a great way to start in any sort of career

is from the bottom, as you know, and work your way up.

They offered me an apprenticeship

and I went from three-star to four-star to five-star hotels

and then on to work for Raymond Blanc for a brief

period at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons.

So it was great, you know.

-I mean, but you got into acting quite late, really.

-Yeah.

Was that because you wanted it? What made you stop cooking then?

I think I'd fallen out of love with it.

It's the wrong thing to say on a programme like this, but now

I'm back in love with it, but I miss the people and the camaraderie.

I don't miss the hours and the intense heat shall we say.

-A lot of people say that.

-Yeah.

If you get a good bunch of guys in there and girls,

it's good fun, isn't it? It's hard work, but...

Indeed, it's very rewarding in that sense and, you know,

what better way to,

you know, live your life than eating good food and, you know,

having a good time on the time.

And to prove he was a keen cook and a serious cook,

we've got pictures of you as well that you brought in.

-I didn't...

-So where's the first one from?

-We'll get the first one up here.

-That would be on my apprenticeship at the...

It was called the Woodford Moat House up the road from where I used to live.

You're at the back on the left, you look as if

you're not serving it, you look as if you're nicking it.

Yeah, I'm just on the left there. There I am.

That's me probably being about 16, I think,

but, you know, I think that was the Lord Mayor's thing.

Once a year, he used to have a do up there

and we just used to cook for him.

I think we were setting up a barbecue or something, I can't remember.

-And we've got a much more serious one coming up next.

-Have we?

-Where's that one? Ah.

-There you go. Which one are you out of...?

-Back row, second from the right.

-Yeah.

-That's me at the...

That fellow on the front,

-second from the right looks like Gino D'Acampo there.

-It does, yeah.

-So you're top second on the right.

-Top second on the right, there I am.

That's at the Mountbatten Hotel on Seven Dials.

I don't think it's called that anymore, but that was with

a hotel group called Edwardian Hotels who I did a lot of work with.

-Yeah.

-And, you know, they were happy days.

That was my first real sort of experience of working

in a London hotel.

Now in there, you've got the scars to prove it,

bags underneath your eyes, you must have battle scars to show here?

Yeah, I've got a few stitches.

I mean, one of my main ones, I don't know if you can see it, I'll point

it out on three, I think it is, that was a filleting knife that...

That looks like the palm of your hand, mate.

-Yeah, I know, it's just there.

-It's just...!

-I heal well, I heal well.

-What can I say?

-Nathan's got a better one.

-Have you?

-Where's yours then?

-It's on the end there.

I took the top of my finger off.

-It's a good job it wasn't the middle one.

-Look, it's massive.

It looks like you've just had a scab when you were 14!

I was five when I did that!

Atul, have you got any?

-No, I've always been a careful chef.

-Ah, yeah, yeah.

-I'll show you mine. I've got one there.

-Yeah.

-One's there.

-Well, what was that?

-That was a knife.

-Yeah.

-I've got one here.

-Oh, no, no, don't do that.

-That was the appendix. That was 64 stitches.

-I've got one there.

-64!

That was with my little BMX when my sister closed the gate.

LAUGHTER

And on my lip. And I've got one here.

-Oh, no, no! Leave it.

-OK!

LAUGHTER

-But anyway, we start it off, our little bit of lamb there.

-Yeah.

But going into acting, what got you into acting from cooking?

Well, I sort of came out of the unsociable hours of restaurants

and hotels and went into contract catering

and then I had more time on my hands, so I started

to do a bit of amateur dramatics, you know,

and you start off at the bottom painting a bit of scenery

and then the next thing you know they say would you like to be

an angry villager? You know, in one of the productions and then,

all of a sudden, you're an angry villager with a line to say and

the next thing you know, it's rungs on ladders like any career,

really, and then I think I was a member of about seven

different amateur dramatics companies and someone said,

"You want to take this a bit more seriously. Go to drama school."

So I auditioned for what I call the main five, which is

the Bristol Old Vic, LAMDA, RADA, Central and Guildhall

and I wasn't successful.

I nearly got a recall at RADA which was quite good, but at that time

it was very expensive to put yourself through drama school,

so I studied at a place called The Poor School

down in Kings Cross which works at evenings and weekends, so it was a

two-year fulltime course at evenings and weekends

and they have an agents' night,

they invite all the local agents from London to come along

and the next thing you know, you get picked up by an agency

and then again, you know,

first role a couple of little pilots for the BBC and then, you know,

I got the call from EastEnders and the rest as they say is history.

Well, it wasn't straight in though. Didn't you do that Burnside thing?

Yeah, I did about seven or eight TV little bit parts, you know.

I'm a very good support actor, I'm not a lead actor,

But going into something like, you know, EastEnders,

it must have been a massive jump.

Yeah, life-changing, completely and utterly

and it was nine years of my life,

850 episodes of EastEnders I done in the end.

And the ending! Cos a lot of it you're either buried, shot,

ran over or whatever, or you fall off a building.

It's a dangerous place to live, Walford.

Not for you, really, cos you...well, you didn't sail off,

you sort of floated off.

Yeah, I got the girl and we sort of sailed off into the sunset,

you know, so it was a happy ending all round, so...

On the East End on a barge.

On a barge, on the Lee Navigation, I think.

So is that because it's open for you to come back or...?

Well, you know, you never burn your bridges in life and I'd love to.

You know, I miss the people there,

I won't lie to you, I miss the camaraderie and, you know,

it's nice in life to try different things and to move on in your career.

You know, that's what it's about, after all.

It's very rare to get a job, like, in a soap because, obviously,

acting we're quite nomadic, you know.

We're one job to the next and so I'm learning to be, at the moment,

"Didn't you used to be that bloke on the TV?"

There's plenty of cooking shows out there. You could do one of them.

I'm running through the ingredients, I've made a little tzatziki.

Just a bit of yoghurt, some cucumber - there's no point telling you

- a bit of mint, salt, pepper, a touch of lemon juice, that's it.

The lamb, all I've done is fried that off.

It takes four or five minutes.

I've just done a little bit of salad leaf, a touch of lemon over the top.

-Lovely.

-And there you have your sort of tikka style lamb.

-Beautiful.

-Was that OK, chef?

-It looked very good.

-Was it?

-May I?

-Cooked by a Yorkshireman.

-Cooked by a Yorkshireman?

Whereabouts were you born in Yorkshire.

-A place called Morton that nobody's ever heard of.

-Morton?

-A great place.

-That's very nice, very fresh.

-Yeah.

-Very easy to do.

It's nice and simple and use that loin of lamb.

I'm sorry for making you put up with all those scars.

If you'd like to try your hand at making that tikka or if you'd

like a go at any of the recipes you've seen on today's show

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

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

at some of the fantastic cooking from the Saturday Kitchen cookbook.

Now it's time for lunch from the man behind Heston Blumenthal's

restaurant, Dinner - Ashley Palmer-Watts.

-What are you cooking for us?

-We're going to have some grilled, cured mackerel.

We're going to make some pickled lemons.

We're then going to use various parts of the cucumber in different

ways - grill the centre...

-Yeah.

-..use the flesh for the garnish with the peas and the beans

and then we're going to finish off with sort of grilling

the mackerel and then the pickled lemons.

-There's lots going on. You want me to do the lemons and the limes for this?

-Yes, please.

I know you've got to get on and do that.

So, for the cure, we've got salt and sugar going in,

zest of lemon and lime. I'm just going to lightly toast...

-the spices.

-Now, for anybody who doesn't know about Dinner,

it literally it's opened up and been a massive,

massive success from day one, really.

-Yeah, it's been very good, actually.

-Very, very good.

-We've been lucky, we've been very busy.

-Are you just being modest?

Because, literally, you went straight to the top ten best

-restaurants of the year. Were you number nine?

-Uh, number nine, yes.

This is in the World Awards as well.

Yeah, so we were very fortunate there.

And the way you looked at food was something slightly differently.

You went really back into old cookbooks.

I mean, not Delia, but before Delia.

A little bit before Delia, I mean going back 400 or 500 years

-and looking at old recipes and old flavour combinations.

-Yeah.

To then just inspire us for sort of modern interpretations,

really, on those.

So what surprised you, really,

when you were looking at all those old sort of style recipes?

-Was there anything that really stood out?

-I would say technique.

The techniques that we used to use in kitchens were actually far

more advanced than people give us credit for.

Um, so, you know, puddings and the old-fashioned pudding sausages

and things like that, with crayfish and eggs running through them.

-Yeah.

-So they're just slightly toasted.

They're going to go in there.

OK. Now you've just filleted that and taken the bone out of

that mackerel. You made it look easy...

It's just with the knife, don't go through the skin,

but right down to the skin and then you can pull them all out in one go.

-Yeah.

-So, when that's ready...

That's the lemons and limes done for you, anyway.

-That's there.

-Brilliant.

-And then...

-Presumably, I mean, you're going to cure it,

-but we used to cure quite a lot of foods back then.

-Yeah.

Pickling, curing, salting, smoking...preservation -

when food was there, you needed to preserve it.

So for the pickled lemons there's going to be some water.

Nice Chardonnay vinegar...

and a little bit of sugar

-and if I could get you to slice those up for me...

-I'll do that, yeah.

..on the mandarin. Ideally,

you want to want to do this about 48 hours before you're going to

use them, so you can make up a big batch and then

just keep them in the fridge.

Now when you think of preserved lemons, you think of

Moroccan things, but, did we used to do that back there, then?

Um, yeah, preserved lemons, lemon salad,

we use this now as an ingredient from the larder, you know

as a nice seasoning, a nice bit of acidity,

it usually gives you a nice little balance in each dish.

So just lightly crush that and then pop that...

Whoa, have you got it? Yeah?

..onto there.

We'll lay our mackerel on.

We're going to give that about 90 minutes in the fridge.

So that's just on one side, that?

Yeah, just on the flesh side, just gently press that in.

Now when you're researching stuff like this, was it easy?

Did you have to travel far?

I mean, how do you even start doing stuff like that?

Uh, the National Library,

the Food Historians...we've got quite a collection of books now as well.

-Right.

-So, it just takes a bit of time. That's all.

-So...

-I've got the lemons here, which...

I'll put in a bowl for you there.

So they're thinly sliced. Right, what's next?

I'm going to wash the mackerel off.

If you continue podding those beans, that'd be brilliant.

Peas and beans all right. And then you want to get the cucumber on.

-Cucumber on.

-Yeah.

-I'll just wash this off.

So just rinse this off, give it a little rub and just let it down.

Now one of the most famous dishes that you actually

thought of from all this sort of research

was the Mandarin pate.

It looks like a Mandarin, but...

Yeah, the Mandarin meat fruit, it seems to be quite popular.

-We're making about 1,100 a week at the moment, so...

-Really?

It's almost like a meat fruit factory sometimes.

-I don't do that many customers!

-You don't?

-There's a fair few every day, so with the cucumber...

-Yeah.

I'll just get a knife.

We're going to juice a small part.

-Right.

-And that's going to be used for our garnish.

So we'll get that ready.

MACHINE WHIRRS

-We don't need a lot, just a little bit.

-Right.

Let that drain away.

-The lemons are ready.

-You want to get that? I'm char-grilling so...

Yeah, I'll just get that on. So just peel this down...

Now, when I've been to your restaurant you had cucumber ketchup.

-Yes.

-Which was with scallops, weren't it, that one?

-Yes.

-Yeah.

So this is based on the same sort of flavour

-with the herbs and the acidity from the vinegar and stuff.

-Right.

So I'm just going to cut the flesh from the outside.

We're going to use that in a pan with the peas and beans.

Of course, as well as this on the menu, we've got some amazing

things, particularly your new ice cream trolley and that kind of stuff.

Yeah, we have a trolley for liquid nitrogen ice cream at the table,

-so the waiters put it around the restaurant...

-Yeah.

..making ice cream cones. All a nice bit of fun, really.

So I'm just going to put on a nice bit of oil.

Do you put a flake in it though?

We're trying to come up with a flake,

but there's no getting away from what a flake is, so...

-Yeah, it would be nice.

-It makes an ice cream though.

Right so, cooking with cucumber, which we've got in here,

-like you say, this is the traditional part of it.

-Yeah.

Maybe not on a chargrill, I suppose - pan frying it, maybe.

Yes, so what we're going to do is we're char-grilling some,

we're going to pan fry some as well.

-So...

-Right, so we've got that.

-I'll do the shallot for you as well.

-Excellent.

Right, so we've got a little bit of shallot in here as well.

So that goes in. Keep pressing that down.

The liquid is now ready for the lemons

and just simply pour it over,

give it 48 hours in the fridge - it's ideal.

Yeah, right, I'll bunch the peas. They go in there.

They just don't want too long. So the cucumber is just getting a bit of colour on that.

A little bit of colour and then we'll add the shallots and vinegar so our mackerel...

-You've got two minutes left, so...

-Excellent.

-If you could just chop me some Parsley...

-I'll do that.

..some mint and some dill, that'd be amazing.

I'll do that, no problem.

The peas are ready.

So just get a little bit of colour on this, as hot as you can, really.

So what about the use of herbs in cooking.

When did we start using that? Do you know?

Um, I guess it was more in the summer, of course, you know

-when things were growing...

-Yeah.

-..was when you had them.

During the winter, that was the time to preserve things for later use.

I'm going to start grilling the mackerel now.

How long ago would that have been?

Oh, you can go back as far as we've been eating food,

I mean it's...you know,

-a thousand years ago it was actually a lot more advanced...

-Than we think.

-Yeah, than we're led to believe.

-Was everybody pickling, Ash,

or was it just big, big country homes

or was it day-to-day households?

Well, I think what it was...when people were rich,

they had staff, so then recipes were written back then

so that they were a reminder as to how to make something rather

-than for commercial purposes like a cookbook.

-Right, OK.

So, generally there, the Royal households, the rich and,

obviously, the famous, I guess, at some point started to emerge.

-So, the shallot goes in.

-There we go.

-Lovely, thank you.

-How's your beans? All right?

-Brilliant.

I don't want to cook the shallots too much.

-OK, well, there's your plate.

-Chardonnay vinegar...

Vinegar, vinegar, vinegar...

There's a bottle somewhere.

-I'll get some.

-OK.

I'm just going to take this mackerel off now cos that's actually ready.

-I'm just going to grill one side because it's cured...

-Yeah.

..it doesn't take that long to cook at all.

I'm just going to stick that there.

So the idea of that is it's cured on one side

-so you don't need to cook it any more?

-Yes.

-Right, OK.

-So we've got our cucumber juice.

-Yeah. Vinegar.

It just suddenly appears from somewhere. Look at that!

-That's where it went.

-A bit in there?

-Just a good dash in there.

-Yeah, that's brilliant.

-Is that where you get the ketchuppy thing from?

-Right, you're getting the balance of the dish in there.

-Yep.

-Bring the cucumber over, cucumber juice in.

-Beans in?

-Beans in.

-Herbs in?

-Yeah.

That's it.

There you go.

A nice bit of salt.

-We're almost there.

-That's more or less it, isn't it, really?

Yeah. We'll just lift that...

-lift that off.

-I'll turn that off for you.

Just so you can cut this up roughly, just however you want it to be,

really.

It's quite rustic. A nice sharing dish in the middle.

That's it, simply. I'll just pour that into the middle.

Scatter the...roasted cucumber.

You can do this on the barbecue outside if you like,

-or just simply...

-I've never, never thought about cooking cucumber.

Particularly the middle bit, cos you throw that away, don't you, really?

-Yeah. That's there and then we've got our pickled lemons.

-Yeah.

If you could just put a little bit of that with some olive oil just

-to form a dressing.

-I can do that.

-A few pickled lemons.

Very rustic.

-Onto there. Some pea shoots.

-It does look fantastic.

So is this on the menu now then?

No, I mean this is derived for here, really, but it's

based on a dish at the restaurant with pickled lemons and cucumber.

And then just literally...

drizzle that over the top.

-It looks pretty good to me.

-And that's it.

So tell us what that is again?

It's a grilled, cured mackerel with roasted cucumber, beans, peas,

-mint and pickled lemons.

-And if you want to try it, it'll definitely

be on his restaurant menu, I promise you, but try it at the chef's table.

-It is amazing.

-Thank you.

-There we have it. This is your first dish.

-Marvellous.

-He's done enough for all of us, anyway.

-A small portion, that!

Tuck into that!

And I like the way that it's cured on one side

and then seared on the other. You don't turn it in the cure,

-you leave it like that?

-No, just cure that side.

-If you cure the skin it might go a little bit tough, so...

-Right.

-Oh, yeah.

-We put it on a chargrill but you've got one of those famous

grills, particularly a custom-made grill that you've got.

Yeah, we've got grills, we've got spit-roasts, we've got

everything, so...

-All the toys.

-Love it.

-Happy with that?

See mackerel is something you give to dolphins.

Guess what my brother does?

Is it? But it is delicious.

It's great to see something different to do with mackerel.

Now it's time for a trip to the south west of France with

the late, great Keith Floyd.

Today he's taking us to the fabulous region of Perigord.

When you arrive for the first time in a strange country like

de Perigord, and I've never been here before, the first thing you do is go

into a good bar, find somebody who's chatting well,

ask him to tell you who runs the best restaurant in the region.

Having found that out, you go to the best restaurant in the region

and make friends with the proprietor, which is

what I've done - a chap called Bernard. He's a super guy.

And then you get him to take you around the market where,

in France, all life is at.

This is the essence of the whole place and we'll

go wandering round when he's stopped chatting up

the women cos he's one of those sort of fellows,

we're going to do some shopping and explore this whole wonderful area.

KEITH SPEAKS FRENCH

You might think that once you've seen one French market,

you've seen them all, but you couldn't be more wrong.

It's by the marketplace, by the little old ladies

and the old men who come in to sell their produce from their small

farms, it's there where you find out the little regional specialities.

It's there where people haggle and talk,

worry about their change, smell the fruit,

meet each other, discuss what they're going to have for lunch.

It's also where you pick up little tips like what to do with

ducks' feet, I mean we'd throw them away, wouldn't we?

But not in de Perigord,

they save them to use them to enrich soups and, afterwards,

grill them with a little melted butter,

something the Chinese are very fond of, duck feet.

And for the most exquisitely prepared parking meter,

this gets the Floyd award.

THEY CONVERSE IN FRENCH

Now this is pure pig fat, OK?

Just pig fat.

THEY CONVERSE IN FRENCH

THEY CONVERSE IN FRENCH

Here's another remarkable thing, very peculiar to this region.

This is a chicken blood pancake.

When they kill the chickens, they let the blood run onto a plate

until it coagulates.

Once it's coagulated, they chop little bits of garlic into it,

put it into a frying pan and make an omelette out of it,

or make a pancake out of it, and it's now cooked and cold.

You might ask what do you do with it?

Well, to enrich an otherwise boring dish of perhaps just fried

potatoes, you chop this up into little pieces,

add some parsley - again this word comes into the cooking around here.

Toss little pieces of this with the bits of pork

fat into your potatoes and you have a fabulous meal which hasn't

really cost you very much money.

Again, a poor country that uses everything.

THEY SPEAK FRENCH

'But the marketplace isn't just for buying lunch.

'It's for a quick check on what's been happening last week.

'For checking out the little deals that can be done, for seeing

'and, of course, being seen.'

We have the chief of police with us.

He's in disguise, so I think we'll be quite safe.

He's the guy with the sunglasses on his head.

He's a kind of a godfather in this town,

he knows everybody and you couldn't have a better guide.

Where are they now?

People are always asking me how we choose our locations.

Well, usually it's because the director likes the architecture,

but in this case he chose Tremolat for these few shots of French

provincial life simply because his great hero, a real film director,

Claude Chabrol, shot his macabre little masterpiece, Le Boucher, here.

Also he liked this sign showing a man drinking wine from his soup bowl.

Kindred spirits, I can tell you.

Right, that sums up the area, so let's do a little cooking sketch now.

Of course, cooking sketches need kitchens, so after a few

agonising seconds in the tourist office, we came up with this one.

I thought it would be really good to show you a typical Perigordan

meal, the sort of meal that an ordinary family has on holidays,

feast days, birthdays and thing like that.

So we found, in our usual way, by tripping around the place,

we ran into somebody called Madame Moulin and

her husband Monsieur Moulin, who are farmers and they open up their

house from time to time for visitors to come

and sample the simple country food of the region.

Anyway, she's one of those ladies who's a bit of a tart,

a bit precise, doesn't like film crew interrupting her work,

which she takes very seriously.

So I'm letting them get on with it

while I'm just sitting here having a glass of wine and later,

when she's ready and if she's in a better, more...bit of a better

mood, we'll try and get in and see exactly what she's doing.

Husbands, please not the happy acquiescent attitude of Monsieur

Moulin sitting here pretending to be helping his wife making the soup.

One word from her and he was there, obedient as anything.

She made us this amazing soup, it's just sort of bacon, cabbage,

water and onions thickened with egg yolks.

Looks absolutely appalling, you pour it over stale bread.

Surprisingly enough, it tastes absolutely delicious.

FRENCH SONG PLAYS

In Perigord, they call this soup La Tourain.

Mrs Beeton calls it "soup for the poor and needy." However, it is very

good, but much less good was this dreadful dish of stewed

gizzards made from Mr Moulin's homemade red wine.

It was "fowl", if you'll pardon the pun.

What is particularly good, however, is the confit de canard.

Wonderful pieces of duck preserved in its own fat, reheated in the oven

till its golden, crispy and fatty and it's absolutely superb,

but it's best in the winter.

OK, now look, this is...what we're doing here is making what we

call a very simple Perigord omelette of ceps, you see, wild mushrooms.

Clive, come down and have a look at these ceps which have been

preserved over the winter in their own juices

and now they're being passed...

MADAME MOULIN INTERRUPTS IN FRENCH

Right, we'll start again, OK?

I've already had a row with the crew, the lighting man isn't feeling well,

I'm trying to speak in two languages for five different people who don't understand any damn thing

and the fat's getting too hot. Right.

Starting from the top, Clive... You like me, don't you?

Stay with me nicely. These are cepes - wild mushrooms which have been preserved

throughout the winter in their own juices, in an airtight container.

We've just put them into the oven with some goose fat

and warmed them through.

We've chopped into that some fresh garlic and some fresh parsley

and now, using the typical fat of the region,

with the old dragon peering over my shoulder - which is goose fat, by the way -

we put it onto the stove like that...

-Ca va maintenant? Ca va comme ca?

-Ca va, ca va. Alors, il faut battre.

I now... If you didn't know how to make an omelette, you know now

because "il faut battre", c'est a dire - that's to say - "you must beat the eggs".

Well, we all know that. OK. Un peu comme ca.

Now, we've already put salt and pepper in.

-Ils sont deja sale et poivre?

-Oui, oui. Alors, vous versez un peu.

Un peu? Oui. OK. Clive, this is a very important that.

This is how to make an omelette.

Pas tout d'un seul coup. Voila! Comme ca.

-Voila.

-Allez-y par-la.

And here we go. We're making a fine, frothy omelette.

These are free-range eggs, by the way. Notice...

Pour the little bits of liquid over the edge.

-Get it like that. Ca va?

-Ca va, ca va.

-Bon.

Alors, il faudra peut-etre quelques cepes.

Mix up the "quelques cepes" into there. "Some cepes", that means.

-"Quelques cepes" is "some cepes".

-Pas tous cepes, parce que...

-No.

I'm not allowed to put them all in because this is for demonstration purposes only

and she wants to keep the ones for her own lunch! Right.

And it's like that. Un peu plus?

-Un peu plus et puis, une assiette pour la retourner.

-D'accord.

Mais il faut...

We must leave the omelette a tiny bit runny in the middle,

-otherwise it won't be good enough. And we then just fold it...

-Ooh, ooh!

Ah... Ca va, ca va, oui. C'est pas mal.

SHE CHUCKLES

I'd like her to come to England

and cook a roast beef and Yorkshire pudding

with my mother standing over her shoulder like that.

-Ca peut aller, ou pas?

-La presentation est bonne.

The presentation is good. Mais... Ca manque quoi, alors?

C'est a dire, moi j'aurais fait un peu differemment, mais...

Mais montrez-moi. Oui, oui.

-Allez-y, allez-y.

-Ooh, ooh!

If you're so good at it, lady, you cook it, OK? Bon.

Clive, can we just spare a second, please?

We are now going to see a real omelette aux cepes,

fait par la maitresse de cette superbe maison, Mme Moulin.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present omelette aux cepes,

cooked by Mme Moulin.

The essential difference there is that she cooked hers on both sides

but that is a sort of, actually, if I may say so,

a peasant way of cooking an omelette because that can be served cold.

It's tougher and stronger - could be carried into the fields.

The way I made mine is more in line with the way you'd like to have your dinner parties,

with a soft, fluffy interior. I won't dispute with her whose was the best -

they both had the same good ingredients, two different ways, OK?

BRASS BAND PLAYS

Ah, good. Here's another one of me and Bernard,

this time getting in with the in crowd.

These chaps in gold robes are celebrity the Bergerac Wine Festival.

It's a place for fun AND serious business but above all,

it's a place to appreciate wines.

It doesn't matter whether you drive a tractor or own a vineyard.

Here, your opinion is sought and respected.

Although wine's a very serious business,

happily it knows no social boundaries.

And much more important, as far as I'm concerned,

Bernard's been fixing again and I'm going to get one of those medals these guys from the Star Chamber,

or wherever they come from, are wearing.

Naturally, these great honours aren't bestowed on any old body.

You've really got to know what you're talking about.

So I, of course, went on a crash course of Bordeaux and Bergerac wines.

Now, are you sitting comfortably? Cos this is what you need to know.

First of all, turn a few pages in Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Guide.

"Baumes de Venise, Baumes... Ber... Bergerac." Here we are, Bergerac.

"Dordogne. R or W. SW or DR. Two stars.

"82, 83, 84W. 85.

"Lightweight, often tasty Bordeaux-style wine.

"Drink young, the white very young." Got all that?

THEY CONVERSE IN FRENCH

All this drinking, all this tasting, you don't get to get any.

It's a bit grim!

I was invited here to be enthroned by knights in robes in chapels

and things like that. I've got to pass an exam

before they'll let me down to the enthroning room.

It's absolutely terrifying. I'm going to have a quick snifter here.

It's a very, very good wine. But they asked me all these leading questions.

I don't really know the answers.

Excuse me, I'm going back to fill in part two in my own time,

one side of the paper at a time, in my own writing. Hee-hee!

-Rosette.

-ALL:

-Bergerac.

-Montravel.

-Saussignac.

-Pecharmant.

-Monbazillac.

These guys really know how to lay on a ceremony, don't they?

I'm quite trembling in honour here, almost in panic.

In fact, it's even more important than when I got commissioned

or even got selected for the second 15, or even getting my O levels.

This is amazing.

Look at that - the final result of hours of really intense study.

Consulat de wine de Bergerac.

That's me - there's my name, look, Keith Floyd.

All those very important signatures prove the fact that I slipped a couple down while I was over there.

I think more people ought to get medals.

It'd be a happier place. If you mend the gas meter, you get a medal.

Drive a bus well? You get a medal.

Oh. I'm not too sure about that bit.

Now, we've had a lot of fun. We've shown you the Perigord, we've shown you the simple peasant dishes.

It is a cookery programme after all,

so I thought we ought to have a really good sequence

where a splendid, exotic dish like chicken stewed with freshwater crayfish

is prepared for you by a master.

And I'm going to write a little commentary now but, David,

you're the blinking director. How do I deal with this bit?

-Say what he's actually cutting up at the moment.

-Right.

Well, you see, he's got to start by chopping the onions -

and by the way, this was a very, very difficult bit

because the atmosphere was so tense you could cut the whole thing with a blinking knife, actually.

The director didn't like the cook very much, the cook resented the film crew being there

interrupting the normal day at work.

First of all, he takes the shells off some pre-boiled freshwater crayfish.

-He was very miserable, wasn't he?

-He was very unhappy.

-VERY miserable.

-Crushing those up. He's saved the tails for later on.

-What do I do now?

-You talk about him moving the chicken breasts into that little bowl.

I would have thought the pictures were self-explanatory.

He just put something in it. We're not sure what.

Oh, right. He's put shallots into the pan -

the same pan in which he fried the butter. Fried the chicken, I'm sorry.

Now he's got to add - I know he's got to add -

some tomato, finely chopped up,

and the ecrevisse shells, which he's already crushed, right?

Absolutely. There's the tomato there. We see the tomato there.

-Bubbling up quite nicely, I think.

-Then the shells go in.

Then he's got to add a bit of saffron. Very expensive, saffron.

I think he'll probably do that in a minute and get round to that.

You can see he's quite miserable, can't you, in that shot there?

Yes. That's the saffron going in.

Chicken back in now, so the chicken get the flavour of the saffron

and the crayfish shells and the little bits of onion and tomato.

This is an important bit here. This is the fume de volaille.

It's a very, very reduced chicken stock

and you mustn't use gravy "ganules" to, er...

-Gravy ganules?

-Sorry - gravy granules.

THEY CHUCKLE

-It's bubbling up quite nicely.

-Yeah.

That now simmers away for about ten minutes or so.

Oh, look, another BBC lid - frying pan, actually.

Into the oven for about ten minutes,

for the chicken to absorb the flavours of the ecrevisse.

Oops, here's a witty bit.

# May we sit for a bit?

# Magnifique C'est si bon

# Hey, how long

# Is this song?

# Well, they reckon 60 seconds

# Killing time with this rhyme

# Now it's back where we belong. #

Right, the chicken is out now.

It's been stewed in the stock and the shellfish.

And all he's got to do is reduce that sauce a little bit further

and strain it. Get rid of the crayfish shells.

Thicken with butter. I wish he'd hurry up a bit.

I'm sure he was deliberately going slow that day.

-The lighting man nearly bopped him, you know.

-I know!

-Kept tripping over the lamps!

-You've got to keep up.

-Oh, sorry.

So now he's strained the sauce.

He's now got to thicken that and enrich it with a knob of butter,

which you should whisk in but this guy's so laid back he just sort of shakes it on the stove.

But first he's going to decorate the dish with the boiled crayfish.

Notice the shells have been taken off the tail,

so you can eat the meat very easily.

-And a bit of butter going in there.

-Yep.

-A bit of sweat going in there.

-A bit of sweat.

He looks so unhappy.

Oh, dear. It's funny.

But he's a brilliant cook - that's the whole point.

I'm glad this sequence is coming to an end, actually.

-I think it does go on a bit, don't you?

-It's a bit too long.

-It's very difficult to write a commentary for such a thing.

-Yes.

-Well, you haven't, have you?

-I haven't written it, no.

Anyway, I think it's the next bit of the hotel owner coming up

and he's quite philosophical about Perigord.

Le Perigord, c'est le berceau de l'humanite. C'est incroyable, ca.

Il y a ici le premier...

C'est la ou tout les societes, tout les civilisations demarrent dans notre pays.

Alors, moi, quelquefois je peux aller voir un peu ailleurs ce qui s'est passer

mais je suis condamne a revenir en Perigord,

parce que j'ai tout en Perigord.

J'ai la douceur de vivre, j'ai le climat,

j'ai la qualite des produits. Je suis heuruex.

He's a very happy man. He said, "Why do I love Perigord?"

# Why do I love Perigord? #

He said, "It's the birthplace of humility,

"it's the birthplace of Western art.

"I go to other places just for curiosity

"but I am condemned to stay in this wonderful place," he says, "the birthplace of humanity."

Great stuff. We're not cooking live in the studio today.

Instead, we're looking back at some of the tasty titbits from the Saturday Kitchen archives.

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

Gennaro Contaldo takes on Adam Byatt in the Saturday Kitchen omelette challenge.

Both men had respectable times but would they be able to do any better?

Find out a little later on.

Tom Kitchin cooks an original warm summer salad

of lamb's tongue and sweetbreads.

He makes it with summer veg, a confited leek, sauce gribiche,

crispy lamb's tongue and sweetbread fritters.

And West End star Summer Strallen faced her Food Heaven or Food Hell.

Would she get her Food Heaven -

peaches with a delicious roasted peach and raspberry pavlova

with almond and caramel sauce -

or her dreaded Food Hell,

tinned tuna with a tuna and chicken tonnato and rocket salad?

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

Now, if you're in the mood for a one-pot wonder and you've got some leftovers to use up,

Tana Ramsay has the perfect recipe.

Tell us what you're doing.

I'm doing a really nice, comforting,

simple chicken and butter bean casserole.

Right, great for the kids, I suppose.

But it's like an adult dish, as well. Everybody can dive in.

-Family food, isn't it?

-I think so, but nursery food is the best.

-None of this fancy stuff.

-None of this fancy stuff. All right.

So, really simple ingredients - red onion, red pepper, baby leeks,

carrot, nice big field mushrooms, butter beans,

bit of soy sauce, tomatoes, stock.

So all handy stuff you've got in your cupboards, especially the beans and tomatoes.

-Can I get you chopping?

-I knew I'd have to do something.

Chop something. Now...

OK. Really nicely finely chopped.

-Sorry, I'm telling you what to do now, aren't I?

-Go on.

And I'm just going to sweat that off in the pan.

-A little bit of olive oil and butter.

-Lovely. Where does this idea...

Look how professional this is! See, I'm a domestic cook.

-It takes me ages to do that.

-Does it? Well, there you go.

-So, chop this nice and fine, yeah?

-Absolutely.

-There we go.

So tell us a little bit about you. I'm fascinated.

I mean, was it Kent you were brought up?

-I was brought up in Kent, yep.

-Farming background - is that right?

Farming background. At one stage,

everything on the table came from our farm. My mum was amazing like that.

She puts me to absolute shame

and I think the least I can do is give the kids good home cooking.

So how did you feel when Gordon decided to put

a load of turkeys in your back garden, and then pigs?

-It was an interesting experiment.

-Was it?

-One that's going to be repeated or not?

-Er, I don't know.

-He's negotiating at the moment.

-He's negotiating, is he?

-So this is...

The great thing about this recipe, I think, is you can just...

You know, end of the week when you've got all those bits and pieces,

you don't have to use exactly these ingredients - you can use up whatever your leftovers are.

-Which I think is what home cooking is really all about.

-It certainly is.

You don't have to be precise.

Most of the recipes in the book, you can substitute different things.

You don't have to get halfway through and think, "I can't do the rest - I haven't got that ingredient."

I mentioned the book - you've got a new book out. Is that what the book's about?

It's about real home cooking.

Yeah, absolutely. So they can go... Oh.

You've done all that beautiful chopping

and I'm already halfway there. I just wanted to test your chopping skills.

-Oh, thanks very much, yeah.

-You could do the leeks for me.

-What do I do with these? Throw them away?

-Probably.

-Put them to the side.

-You got me to chop stuff, you don't need it!

-There we go. Now, a little birdie tells me...

-But I do need my leeks.

Actually, Stuart, who was on last week,

-tells me that Gordon and yourself...

-Yeah?

One o'clock this morning, you were practising making omelettes.

-Well, I don't think you can ever do too much practice.

-50 eggs!

-You've practised making omelettes!

-I'm up against chefs.

I think it's quite brave of me to be cooking on here when I'm a domestic cook.

-So I think, you know, bravery award.

-Don't worry, I'll turn his gas off.

-For all you know, my omelette will probably be on the floor!

-Exactly!

The thing that worries me is I haven't seen anybody else that's in the five-minute region.

Really? Five minutes? So, tell me what's going on there.

-You've got onions, you sweated them off...

-Onions, garlic, little bit of olive oil.

I'm just adding my veg here. I'm just sweating them off here.

But this is one of the dishes...

I mean, stews, casseroles, that sort of thing,

that you could easily put on in the morning,

leave it ticking away, even reheat it in the evenings, really.

Well, I think, truth be known,

this is one of those dishes that just gets better.

The more it's reheated, the better it gets.

I'm not going to wash the mushrooms because they're like a sponge - they just absorb all the water.

So I'm just peeling them.

You know, and if they're really dirty, just give them a quick wipe.

A lot of people really don't understand that you don't wash mushrooms at all, do you?

Particularly these and wild mushrooms.

Particularly these ones - they really do act like a sponge.

You know, you literally just chuck everything in and it slow cooks.

You've got stock there. The chicken goes in raw and slow cooks.

It means it's so tender. It really is.

It's one of my favourites, cos I can just chuck it in,

get on with homework or whatever the kids need doing.

Tea-time is the most demanding time of the day

and the key really is to make my life easier on the cooking front,

yet still have the nice feeling that it is home-cooked food.