Episode 12 Spring Kitchen with Tom Kerridge

It's spring outside and we have a studio full of great guests

and food for you to make the most of this new season.

Welcome to Spring Kitchen.

Hello and welcome.

Now, we have a great line-up for you this afternoon.

We head into Padstow, in Cornwall, to join the great

Rick Stein for an Asian influenced crab salad with wasabi mayonnaise.

It's a dish that he's made just for us.

Plus, we take a peek into the BBC food archive

and join Raymond Blanc for a classic French dish, lamb Provencal.

Now, with me in the studio is one of the country's finest female chefs,

she trained under the great Gordon Ramsay

but now is very much her own boss - it's Angela Hartnett.

And also with us is a special Spring Kitchen guest to tell us

all things cheesy, cos there's a bit of a theme to my recipes today,

it's our very own cheese expert, Emma Dandy. Hello to the two of you.

-Hello.

-Hi.

Hello, hello, hello. Is spring time a happy time for you, Ange?

I love it! It's green suddenly, nothing's brown any more, is it,

after the winter, so it's fabulous!

Lovely, light and fresh...is spring a good time for cheeses?

Cheeses are very seasonal, aren't they?

Absolutely, the cheeses change throughout the seasons.

In wine, you have one vintage a year, in cheese,

the cheese-makers are making every day of the year,

so you get real variation through the seasons.

OK, we'll touch on that a little bit later,

and now, our guest is a journalist and presenter,

not to mention a very nifty dancer, it's Chris Hollins.

-Hello, Chris, how are you?

-APPLAUSE

Very, very well!

I got a round of applause, thank you very much for that.

-I think that's for the dancing.

-Really?

-And you're a big food fan?

-I...well, look at me!

Look at the chins, they're all there.

I live to eat, brought up in a family where you tried everything.

You couldn't say I don't like that, you had to try it.

We used to go on holiday and you had to try something, so I love food!

-Fantastic!

-Counting down the hours to the first tasting.

Ange, tell us what you're going to be cooking for us.

Well, minutes hopefully,

a lovely fresh farfalle pasta with some spinach, gorgonzola cheese,

sprouting broccoli and a touch of garlic and walnuts on top.

-And lovely it is, too.

-Thank you.

And later on, I'm going to be doing a recipe using Cheddar

and I'm going to be making a classic courgette and Cheddar tart

with a little Parmesan that goes through the pastry, too.

But, now, for my first recipe, I'm going to be

using my native cheese, which is actually double Gloucester.

Emma, you can tell us a little bit more about that in a second

and, Chris, you can come with me.

We're going to come over here

and we're going to do something with double Gloucester.

OK, Emma, tell us a little bit about double Gloucester cheese,

what milk it's made with, clearly it comes from Gloucester.

Absolutely, although not all double Gloucester does

come from Gloucester but the best stuff is made in that region,

erm, and they use milk from the Gloucester cow,

a special breed, quite a rare breed now.

But it produces perfect milk for cheese making.

Just the right protein content, really fantastic.

And the flavour of it is quite a mild flavour, isn't it?

Yeah, it's quite mild, slightly nutty, it's a really good cheese

for cooking because it works really well with lots of other ingredients.

So, it's very similar to a kind of a Cheddar-like cheese

but it's not too powerful, it's not too strong.

That's right. Much milder.

Can I ask you an obvious question? Why is it "double"?

"Double", it's to do with the milk that they use

when they're making the cheese.

So, they use morning milk from the cows milked in the morning,

then they use milk from the cows milked in the afternoon as well.

-That's where the double comes from.

-Love it.

And you get single Gloucester as well?

Single Gloucester, again, and that's from one single milking of the cows.

That's a protected cheese, that has the protected name.

Yes, single Gloucester has a protected food name.

Why doesn't double?

Erm, I think, probably because there are just

so many people around the world producing double Gloucester...

-What, out of Gloucester!?

-And so few people in Gloucester doing it.

I'm heartbroken, I've only learnt this today. I'm destroyed.

I think once there are enough people in Gloucester making

double Gloucester, then they will apply for a protected food name.

To be honest, my first experience of double Gloucester cheese,

or coming across Gloucester cheese,

coming from there myself is actually chasing it down a hill.

Which is something that happens at the end of May,

on the Mayday bank holiday.

There's a big hill in Gloucester called Cooper's Hill

and you have a couple of ciders just to get the confidence up...

LAUGHTER

..and you walk up to the top of the hill, which is

actually a very, very long way

and then once you get to the top of it,

some geezer throws a massive cheese of double Gloucester

down the hill and it goes racing down

and everyone chases it to the bottom of the

hill and the first one to the bottom of the hill gets to get the cheese.

The hill is so steep, actually, when I got there I actually bottled out.

LAUGHTER

Backed down the hill, a little bit

slowly and very carefully.

Just like a Ploughman's at speed.

Yeah, just a Ploughman's at speed.

OK, so listen, what I've got here, I've got some onions in a pan that's

just sweating down and into that I'm whisking up, these are duck eggs.

Now, I'm using duck eggs with a little bit of creme fraiche

and we're making kind of like a

Spanish tortilla...it's cheese and onion, basically, with a few

beautiful Jersey Royal potatoes that I'm going to add to the bowl.

Now, Chris, you started off as a football player, I understand.

Well, that is a very loose term.

LAUGHTER

My dad was a footballer, erm, and I think when I

-was growing up...

-He played for England.

He played for England, Arsenal, two Arsenal fans over there,

Chelsea and Queen's Park Rangers.

Erm, and I think he wanted his son to do everything that he didn't do.

So, for example, he wanted me to go and get a good education,

he left school at 15, 16, to go and play football.

So, he encouraged me to go and play different sports, so I, throughout

my junior years, until I was probably 16, 17, 18,

I didn't really play football at school.

I played rugby, I played cricket, I was quite a good cricketer,

played for Kent and you know juniors and all that sort of thing.

But it was only when I was at university when suddenly boys

turned into men and I realised I wasn't getting any bigger...

LAUGHTER

And I used to come home covered in blood, from being beaten up

by rugby players.

I started playing football again

and then ended up at university at Swindon Town,

then played a bit for Charlton Athletic

but I was 23 when I started doing that

and I was playing with the likes of Lee Bowyer, remember him?

Shaun Newton...and they were only 16, 17.

-So, I played but, unfortunately, not to my dad's standard.

-OK.

Otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here,

I'd be in my boat in the south of France.

LAUGHTER

But then, the interest from that sport led

you into the broadcasting world.

Yeah, if you can't play, you might as well talk about it

and so I wrote off to Sky Sports

and I ended up getting a job with them

as my introduction into television.

-Then went to Channel 5 telly and then ended up at GMTV.

-Now Watchdog.

Now Watchdog.

Now, consumer affairs, Food Inspectors.

And Food Inspectors, where there's a new series coming up, is that right?

Yeah, it's the third series, Matt Allwright,

a mate of mine from Watchdog, we presented it together

and, you know, everybody at home likes the nitty-gritty of following

the environmental health people,

the food inspectors going around dodgy restaurants finding rats,

cockroaches and that sort of thing.

It covers the fours Cs. What do you mean by the four Cs.

Well, the four Cs, cleanliness, obviously, you clean your food.

Chilling, make sure it's chilled properly.

Make sure it is cooked properly and, of course, the other big C,

cross-contamination.

-And we see that quite a lot at home.

-I think we have a little clip

coming up, we can have a look at that.

Cooking-wise, I'm going to stick this in the oven,

whilst we have a little look at the clip.

I've come into the kitchen, I feel like it's in two halves.

So, why the split?

We keep our raw meats separate from all the rest of our products there.

It just prevents any cross-contamination, it's a really

simple process, we have the space, why not do it.

C number three is cooking.

When do I know they're ready?

Well, a catering thermometer will be able to tell us

if these beauties have got up to the recommended minimum

temperature of 75 degrees.

And our final of the four Cs is an important one, chilling.

The staff here allow any hot food to cool down,

before it's placed in the fridge at a chilly five degrees.

That looks absolutely an incredibly interesting programme...

Well, that's really good.

He is the ultimate! Cos funnily enough, you know

how popular market gardens are now and you go in there

and everybody's preparing food

and they've all got hygiene ratings

and back in their restaurants they're fantastic.

Like, you guys, you know, they know exactly what they're doing

but suddenly they go on location

and they wear what we describe as magic gloves or they think

they are and they touch everything with their gloves, raw food,

lettuce, vegetables and stuff and it's cross-contamination.

We've done some secret filming of a market stall

and see the mistakes they make and it's quite extraordinary!

So, a lot of the things that we see there are very

important for the home cook to understand.

Yeah, cos we always talk about food poisoning, we think,

"Dodgy restaurants, bad takeaways..."

But the majority of cases where we get poisoned by bad cooking

is at home.

Our loved ones are killing us!

LAUGHTER

They don't cook chicken properly, they don't wash things properly

and so those are the sort of lessons we're making sure they take home.

-Let's hope this is cooked properly.

-Have you washed your hands?

-Of course, of course.

-The pressure's on now.

-Yeah.

-Trim your nails?

Hopefully we don't poison anybody.

We have the Jersey Royals, double Gloucester cheese, spring onions,

some chives, the duck eggs and then they've gone into the oven

and we've kind of baked it

and then here I just have some creme fraiche that I've just whisked up a

little bit with some chives through and a little bit of seasoning.

Guys, if you want to come on over, we can have a little taste of it.

And then on top of that, we're just going to put a few...these

are actually chive flowers but you can use garlic flowers.

It looks a little bit like thistles.

-Can I just try one on its own.

-Yeah.

There you go and they just add a little bit of that oniony flavour.

We've got some forks, there we go, guys.

I'll bring you some knives, as well.

Start tasting, guys, get in there and eat.

You mean, I'm the guinea pig in case of food poisoning.

LAUGHTER

It's not fair, is it?

Let the chef with the cast-iron stomach go first, that's the way.

I bet we never get anything like that!

You two, you obviously do courses in your own kitchens

and you're very aware of cleanliness and discipline.

I mean, if any of your sous chefs came in with dirty hands

and started chopping away, you'd give them a right rollicking.

Absolutely, it's all about staff training.

-Let me know what you think about that.

-It's delicious.

Staff training means you just blame on the staff, right?

-Very true.

-Yeah.

-Happy guys?

-Very happy!

Now, in every show we're getting out

and about and visiting some of our favourite chefs on their home turf,

for their take on spring ingredients.

Today, we join Rick Stein at his cookery school in Padstow,

for an Asian-influenced crab salad with wasabi mayonnaise.

Spring is my favourite time to be in Cornwall.

We've had the long, dark rainy winter and suddenly blue skies,

the fields become green, the days are longer, the fishermen are out

and I've got a really special recipe to celebrate spring in Padstow.

So, my Spring Kitchen recipe has to be, for me,

with brown crab, our local crabs.

They're becoming quite plentiful now the storms of the winter have gone.

The fishermen are out and lots of lovely, heavy crabs coming in.

And I'm going to do it in a Japanese way.

I'm going to use a seaweed called wakame

and I'm going to make a little

mayonnaise with local rapeseed oil and wasabi, which is

that green horseradish that you get in sushi and sashimi.

So, first of all, I need to get the meat out of the crab.

Take the tail off like that and then break off the claws

in two.

Then break off the legs.

Just like insects, eight-legged creatures.

And now to break the body away from the back shell,

I just hit it with the palm of my hand,

like that and just pull them apart.

So, the next thing I do is just pull off the dead men's fingers or

dead man's fingers, which are actually the gills of the crab.

Get rid of those. Now, I start cracking the crab up.

I start with the easy bits first

and the bits I enjoy most are the claws.

They're the best, cos you get lots of lovely, chunky meat out of those.

Now, I'm not going to use these parts of the legs,

they're going to go into my soup because they're just too fiddly.

I'm just going to put my wakame "tea leaves", as I call them,

into some boiling water and just let them soak.

As you can see, that's really just expanded and it now looks like

what you might see when you're snorkelling out at low tide.

So, now, I'm just going to take the meat out of the claws, first of all.

This is the best bit, I think.

This is the chunkiest bit but you do have to take that, sort of,

central bit of cartilage out of there.

There it is and now here's how to do a leg.

What I do is just chop the end off like that

and then you do need one of these, they're very important,

if you're going to do any serious extraction of meat

from shellfish you do need a lobster or crab pick.

So, put that end of it in there and just pull the meat out. Here we go,

do the next.

I'll tell you what I really like, too, is cutting the shell up.

I just like going like that.

Maybe, people think I'm about to cut my fingers off,

which I'm quite capable of doing, I hasten to add.

So, that will be enough. So, I'm just going to make a salad with

this cucumber and with my wasabi.

There we go.

And then I'm going to cut it in half length ways

and then scoop out the seeds.

If I have all these rather wet seeds, it will just dilute the dressing

and you won't get that sort of subtle but very evident flavour.

Now slicing my cucumber into thin, little slices.

The dressing, I've got here some soy sauce, of course.

That is rice wine vinegar.

The Japanese favour that for sushi and sashimi, which is

the sliced raw fish.

Now, I've got these...dashi granules.

Dashi is actually made with bonito flakes, which is dried bonito

and a type of seaweed called kombu.

So, I've got some sugar, and that's all the dressing is -

very, very simple.

And that's all I do.

Just add a bit of cucumber, I'm only going to make one salad.

I'll put it all in there.

And then a nice lot of seaweed.

You know, don't be put off by dried seaweed

and these funny flavours.

It is a really, really interesting salad.

When people eat it, they say, "Oh, like that." And of course

the thing with crab is it is quite a delicate, but full flavour.

You don't want to sort of completely smother it.

So, that's where I came up with this idea of using Japanese flavours.

Just mix it up and taste it.

It's got a very lovely, smoky flavour. So, that's done.

There's my crab meat.

Now I'm going to make a wasabi mayonnaise.

Wasabi. Of course, Japanese horseradish,

we're just using wasabi powder.

But what I am using is

cold-pressed rapeseed oil.

And this is something made in Cornwall, actually.

It just has a wonderful flavour,

It just tastes slightly of mustard,

slightly of horseradish,

cos, of course, rapeseed

is a member of the cabbage family,

and indeed mustard.

So, I'm just going to use one egg yolk,

and I've got some more rice wine vinegar.

Just a little bit.

And some of my wasabi,

I'm going to make it quite strong,

so I'll put a couple of good teaspoons in there.

Like that.

Don't want to be sort of knocking your socks off with it,

but it doesn't want to be too delicate, either.

Just a little bit of salt, as well,

just whizz that up..

Comme ca.

I might just put a little bit of the white in there.

You can get away with using the white, as well,

but I want it sort of quite rich.

I just noticed

it could do with a bit more volume

in there before I start.

So, there we go, just make sure when you're making mayonnaise,

everything is at room temperature, don't get stuff out of the fridge.

It is bound to split.

And I still split mayonnaise,

and, when I do it, I just think, "How long have I been doing this for?"

And I can still make a mayonnaise separate.

It might happen, you never know.

But you start just adding a small amount of the oil.

And then you can gradually add more as the emulsion builds up.

Now, just have a little look at that.

Make sure it's thick enough,

I do want it sort of holding its shape.

Yes, that's perfect.

See? And lovely colour,

that's the great thing about rapeseed oil,

it's got that lovely, deep yellow.

Right, it's time to bring this all together then.

I just like to add a few dashi granules on the top of my salad,

just for that little burst of flavour.

So, that is a crab salad, with wakame and cucumber

and a wasabi mayonnaise.

Spring on a plate, to me, I would say.

I'm just going to eat some.

There's nothing better than fresh crab meat.

To me, it's all about the crab.

Thank you very much, Rick, that looked absolutely amazing,

-didn't it?

-Stunning.

-Beautiful, simple, wonderful flavours.

Just a quick note, Rick has got mad knife skills,

so, if you're going to start hitting crabs with a knife,

make sure you use the back of it and crack 'em properly.

Mind your fingers.

It's time for somebody else to cook - it's Angela Hartnett.

-What are you going to be doing for us, girl?

-So, we're going to make

some fresh pasta with flour,

00 pasta flour, whole eggs, then we're going to do a

beautiful Gorgonzola, spinach, broccoli and walnut sauce.

Finish with a bit of mint, flat leaf parsley and a touch of garlic.

-Very simple...

-Very simple.

-..but it's going to be beautiful.

So, I'm going to start making the pasta.

You're going to start making the pasta. So, in that is 00 flour?

00 pasta flour which means it's sort of being sieved twice.

So, you get it... You feel it, it's quite fine.

Add a little bit of salt and then two whole eggs.

So, you're not actually weighing this out? You're doing this

because you've got mad pasta skills and know exactly...

The expression in Italy is al occhio, you do it by the eye,

but when I used to make it with my grandmother, she would

literally do it, just tip it all onto a board and I go,

"Hold on," and then I'd put it off the board,

weigh it all, write it all down.

Other chefs could just use yolks?

Some people use yolks, some people even use a bit of saffron water,

just to get it quite yellow. And you can also add a little bit...

In fact, I'm going to add just a little bit of that water there.

Sometimes you need a little bit, rather than another whole egg.

I think the secret is to make sure

you've got some brilliant, free-range eggs.

You know, the Burford Browns, stuff like that.

-It gives it that colour and a bit of richness.

-Lovely sort of yellow.

The ones we use in Lime Wood, Luke has this guy who literally

feeds all the chickens on marigolds, so it has the...

Not the gloves, the actual flowers.

-That is Luke's joke, I'll have to give him credit for that one.

-OK, OK.

-So, Luke is actually the head chef down at the Lime Wood Hotel?

-Yeah.

-Oh, tipping it everywhere...

-I'll bring it together, girl.

You want me to knead this together?

Knead that all together into a lovely ball.

And then what we do is we let it rest for about 20 minutes,

-half an hour in a fridge.

-Yeah.

-Once it's rested, we roll it out into long strips.

-OK.

So, you were saying, Luke Holder,

who is the head chef down at the Lime Wood Hotel.

He's the head chef down at the Lime Wood Hotel.

Yeah, he's brilliant. He's a great guy. He's good fun.

And he does this brilliant... I think we've done a VT there,

where he does all his own home-made charcuterie.

We came and visited him and we saw Luke in his charcuterie shed.

-Shed, yes.

-Shed full of salami.

-And it's fantastic.

I've learnt loads of stuff,

cos that's the great thing about our job, isn't it?

You go and eat in each other's restaurants, and, you know,

you figure out how they do it.

And I've spent a day down with him butchering the whole pig down,

then he's seasoning all the little charcuterie up

and creating different flavours.

-Brilliant.

-How's that?

-OK, so that comes together.

I'm going to clingfilm it and put it in the fridge

-and rest it for how long?

-Easily half an hour.

What you want to do is get the gluten resting,

and then it's much easier when you come to roll it out.

Then what we do is cut our little strips into rectangles.

So, that's been put through a pasta machine

you've rolled that through one of the pasta machines.

Yeah, pasta machine, probably on about the second to, sort of,

thinnest setting,

so it's got a bit of structure to it, you don't want it too thin.

It's not like a little ravioli. And then we basically take them

and, if you like, concertina them together.

And your love of Italian food, I mean, it's very well known,

but it comes from your grandma.

Yeah, I know, they were the sort of Italians,

come from this little village in Emilia-Romagna

and they emigrated to Wales.

And it was all after the First World War, post-Second,

some went to Scotland, some went to London,

and then you add our sort of set of family that all went to Wales

and it's that total immigration community where a sister goes,

brings her brother, he brings his wife, who brings her brother,

and then you have whole families out there.

-There's a big Italian community in Wales, isn't there?

-Huge.

When we go home to sort of Italy in the summer, it's, you know,

very bonkers, cos you sort of hear all these beautiful Italian voices

and then you hear, "All right, Angela, how's your mother?"

You're like, "Oh! That's slightly spooky, that you're here with all these Welsh people!"

-So, these are called farfalle?

-Farfalle, little bows.

-Little bows.

-I think, in Italian, that translates as "butterflies".

-It does indeed.

Oh, Tom, have you been going on Google again?

We've told you about that! Stop it! Come on, Tom.

It's been an incredible day so far,

learning Italian words and the meanings of it.

And the cheese that you're going to use for it is Gorgonzola.

Beautiful Gorgonzola which is...

Well, we have our cheese expert, why am I going to bleat on about it?

Tell us more.

Gorgonzola, it's a fantastic, creamy blue cheese

from the north-west of Italy,

so Piedmont and Lombardy regions. Wonderful for cooking,

because it's got that lovely, soft, melting texture

and then you get the lovely, spicy, salty tang

from the blue mould that runs through the cheese.

It's beautiful.

-So, the blue in blue cheese is essentially mould.

-It's mould.

It's a bacterium. Cheese-making is controlled... You control bacteria.

-So, from a health point of view...

-Absolutely.

-That was for me, wasn't it?

-That was for you!

-You have to have...

-Before you start worrying about...

You have to think of your good bacteria.

You can't make cheese without bacteria -

it's bacteria that separates the curds and whey and the milk.

So, it's absolutely essential as part of the process,

but, yes, you want the good bacteria in there,

not something that's going to make people ill.

So, that's very carefully controlled by the cheese-makers.

And how do you actually get the blue veins that go into the cheese?

So, to get the blue, the cheese-maker adds the mould spores

into the curds, while they are separating the curds and the whey,

but the blue doesn't start to grow

until it's exposed to air. So, what the cheese-maker will do

with Gorgonzola is mature that cheese for about three or four weeks

as a white cheese and it gets lovely and creamy.

And then they get steel rods

and they pierce the cheese all the way round with the steel rods,

that lets the air in, and, once you've got the air in,

the air reacts with the mould spores and the mould starts to grow.

So, up until that point, there's no blue inside the cheese,

and then the air goes in and the blue starts to grow.

So, similar in this country when you get a white stilton,

-it's just not been pierced.

-Exactly.

-OK.

And then the difference between Gorgonzola

and the other very famous Italian cheese, dolcelatte,

-what's the difference between the two?

-The difference is...

-Actually, dolcelatte - that means "sweet milk" in Italian.

-Oh, please!

Very good.

Shall we call you Gennaro or something?!

I love the Italian with a big Gloucester accent, "Dolcelatte".

THEY LAUGH

Sorry, sorry. What's the difference between the two?

I think we should do the rest of the show in Italian!

So, the Gorgonzola is a very artisan product.

It's made specifically in the region,

and it's a protected food name,

so it has to be made to very strict rules.

Every Gorgonzola is stamped with a number of the producer

who's made it, and it has a special letter on it, as well -

the G to show it as official Gorgonzola.

Whereas dolcelatte is more of a mass-produced product.

OK. So, then, Ange, talk us through what you've got going.

So, I've just added the sprouting broccoli that you cooked for us.

Broken down a bit of the Gorgonzola,

finish it with a touch of spinach and then we will add a bit of mint,

which I think is fantastic in dishes like this.

-Little bit of parsley.

-Mint is so underused.

It is quite often associated just with lamb or sweet dishes.

Yeah. I think with pasta, and certainly in salad,

I think it's great.

If you feel, a little trick, if you feel it looks a little dry,

just always use a little bit of your cooking liquid.

-It has some of the starches from the pasta still in it.

-Yeah, exactly.

And then give it a really good toss together, like so,

and then finally we're going to add our little, toasted nuts.

-OK, I'll get some knives and forks ready.

-You can smell the cheese now.

Maybe spoons and forks.

Look at that, beautiful.

The Gorgonzola has actually melted down...

-Exactly, yeah.

-..wilted into the pan.

Come on over, guys, come have a little taste of that.

I think cos it's quite strong, Gorgonzola,

you don't need to add Parmesan.

-If you really wanted to, you could.

-Give it an extra cheesy kick.

Come on then, guys, get in there. Mint, parsley...

That mint smells amazing.

..purple sprouting broccoli and some beautiful Gorgonzola cheese.

Look at that, it looks delicious.

-And a few toasted walnuts on the top.

-Little toasted walnuts.

Yeah, we all do pine nuts,

but I think it's nice to have a little change -

-little bit of walnuts, hazelnuts occasionally.

-That's delicious.

Delicious. OK, whilst we eat this,

let's take a trip into the BBC Food back catalogue,

as we join the brilliant Raymond Blanc

for a classic lamb Provencal.

'For Raymond, good quality lamb bursting with flavour begins

'with good-quality farming.

'He's come to Hampshire to visit one of the country's

'only organic and biodynamic farms.

'It's run by Raymond's friend,

'ex-Formula One champion, Jody Scheckter.'

Thank you for the drive. But never again.

-Next time, I drive you.

-You cook, I'll do the driving.

'Jody rears a flock of around 800 sheep,

'made up of three different breeds.

'They are looked after by shepherd Nigel,

'who knows just how to select the perfect animal.'

Feel them on the back, on the loin.

And then over the ribs. And then feel around the docks.

So, you check up here, on that side.

There's the top of the tail.

She likes it very much, she likes Frenchmen. You are ready, girl.

It's quite incredible, the vitality and the health of the animals.

Always about quality, right from the setting down on the grass,

selecting a breed, right up to the slaughter, right up to the plate.

Me, as a chef, believe me, I appreciate that -

when I have a piece of meat which is beautifully reared, and you know it.

It goes back to my little bistro, when I started in Oxford.

Red and white tablecloth and cheap prints of pies on the wall.

Oh, lovely. Thank you. Nice, sharp knife. My God, lovely.

'Most of this dish can be prepared in advance,

'making it perfect for entertaining.

'To begin, Raymond is French trimming the lamb by removing all the meat

'and fat from the ribs.'

So, we've got completely clean bones.

A bit of work, but quite fun, if you have nothing else to do.

'He then scores the meat, so the Provencal crust will stick to it,

'and ties up any loose ends.'

That's called a French trim.

It is really for a very special occasion.

And that's how your butcher should prepare it for you.

'For the first stage of cooking,

'Raymond brown's the seasoned meat in rapeseed oil.'

On the flesh side first.

'This caramelises the outside, creating a succulent, sweet flavour.'

I'm sure you remember

those meats which are overcooked, all grey and dry outside.

And the middle is red. We don't want that.

We want just pink right the way through.

That's why I'm applying gentle heat.

Voila. We are ready.

Got a beautiful colour here, so now, on the top...

'During second stage, the lamb is roasted at 190 degrees for 15 minutes

'to cook it perfectly before the Provencal crust is added.

'Raymond prepares this next.'

Tres bien. Now we've got our crumbs.

'To the breadcrumbs, he adds a selection of herbs,

'which must be completely dry before processing,

'so the mixture will stay loose and crumbly.'

-Ca va?

-Ca va.

-OK.

HE SPEAKS FRENCH

I've got two sisters.

Francoise is probably the worst cook at home.

C'est vrai!

She's a very bad cook, seriously bad cook, OK?

Just maybe, you can join me...

No probleme.

'Raymond adds garlic, seasoning,

'and just a dash of olive oil to keep the mixture's sandy texture.'

Tres bien.

You just want to make it moist, voila. Moist, like that.

That smell.

HE SPEAKS FRENCH

Oui.

But the smell, the smell is really amazing.

'Raymond generously coats the lamb in Dijon mustard.'

That will act as a glue.

And you press it.

And that will provide a beautiful crust. Voila.

The lamb is done in three steps -

searing, the first cooking, 15 minutes,

you brush your breadcrumbs,

then, when your guests arrive, just need 10 minutes' cooking.

And that can be prepared maybe half a day in advance.

'This last 10 minutes' cooking warms the meat through

'whilst keeping the herb crust's vibrant colour.'

To go with this dish, I'm going to do a very quick ratatouille.

Not just any ratatouille, a quick one.

That will take you exactly...

Well, it depends if you have an Adam in your kitchen

to do all the courgettes and everything.

'Raymond is cooking a quick French classic using a colourful range

'of garden vegetables with garlic, a pinch of herbs and a glug of oil.'

I'm going to do it quite fast, actually,

so I can keep the colours and textures.

'The simple, fresh flavours will perfectly complement

'this special lamb dish.

'After 20 minutes, the ratatouille is almost ready.'

Good?

Excellent.

'And the herb-coated lamb can come out of the oven.'

Very tender.

-She gives me eight!

-Huit!

-Thank you very much.

-Merci.

Thank you very much, Raymond.

I have to be honest, that looked like a 10-out-of-10 dish to me.

-I think only a French sibling could give you eight!

-Indeed.

Throughout the series, we're showcasing some real, key seasonal

spring ingredients that are at their best at this time of year.

Today, we're going to do a recipe with courgettes

and Cheddar cheese and, Angela, she's going to give me a hand.

-Oui, Chef.

-All right, first thing you've got to do,

we're going to make it a kind of courgette and Cheddar cheese quiche

or tart. So, I want you to make me the pastry.

The pastry is very simple -

flour, Parmesan cheese, some egg yolks, some butter

-and a bit of water. You get going with that.

-I'll do that.

I'll get going with the filling, so it's kind of like a quiche.

-Just all in together, yeah, Tom?

-All in together,

-into a food processor and off we go.

-Easiest pastry ever.

Parmesan going in.

Now, Parmesan, we're putting that through the pastry,

so it gives the pastry an extra cheesy kick to it.

Parmesan's quite a dry cheese, cos it's aged, I suppose, is it?

That's right. Typically, you will be looking for Parmesan

that's two to three years old,

so it just gets that lovely dry, almost crystalline texture to it.

-And it comes from sheep's milk?

-Cow's milk.

-Cow's milk.

-Yes.

-Parmesan is a cow's milk. OK. And then seasonality with cheeses?

That's something we touched on earlier.

Now, that changes, a lot of people don't realise,

because I suppose the grasses change throughout the year,

-that the milk changes, and then that changes the cheese.

-Absolutely.

So, you've got, in the winter, a lot of the animals,

the cows will be in the barns, so they'll be on their winter feed

and in the summer they're out in the pasture.

Spring, they're out eating all the beautiful spring flowers

in the pasture, as well as the grass,

which just gives an extra dimension,

more complexity to the cheeses.

And, at this time of year, the goat's and the sheep's milk cheeses

are coming back into season

and there's some fabulous products there.

So, when we buy it, can we see it on the wax

to say this is a summer cheese or this is a winter cheese?

Yeah, if you go to a good cheesemonger,

they should be able to tell you absolutely when the cheese was made.

I did hear a story. Now, I'm not sure if it's true,

Ange might be able to tell me a little bit more,

because it's Italian-based, but you used to be able to secure mortgages

on if you had a large amount of Parmesan cheese, is that right?

-Totally true.

-The value of it.

-I mean, that makes absolute sense.

Because the Parmesan cheeses are absolutely huge,

they are 50 kilo cheeses,

and they take several years to mature to perfection,

so if you are a Parmesan producer, you've got a warehouse or a cave

full of cheeses maturing, and that's going to be worth a lot of money,

so, yeah, I guess you'd be able to get a mortgage on that.

-And it doesn't devalue, does it?

-No.

I suppose then you could just... If you had that much cheese,

-you'd probably...

-It's the only way I bought Murano.

Everyone else has a wine cellar, I've just got a cheese cellar.

In the fridge, Chef?

In the fridge with that.

OK, so that pastry goes in the fridge

-and it rests for about an hour.

-Yeah.

And then we roll it and then we blind bake it

and then we egg wash it, so it's got a bit of a glaze on it.

That's going to be our base, like our tart base.

To go into it, we are just going to chop up these courgettes.

Fairly large chunks, but we're not actually going to cook them,

-they will cook in the filling.

-Just lightly sort of sauteing them.

Actually, what I'm going to do is I'm going to salt them.

So, I will leave them for about 20 minutes

with a little bit of flaky sea salt on them.

What that does is it kind of draws the moisture from them

-and softens them.

-Yeah.

Which allows you to then cook them

and you end up with something like that.

If you can see underneath there,

the amount of water that comes from the courgettes

where they've broken down.

And we're just going to add them to the sauteed onions

that we have going on here.

Just a light, not too strong, just a nice, soft kind of onion

-and in this... You're grating some Cheddar cheese.

-Yeah, fantastic.

Cheddar cheese comes from... Is it protected?

The name Cheddar itself isn't protected,

so Cheddar can refer to any cheese producer anywhere in the world.

So, the traditional producers in the West Country

have got round that by...

They've got protection for the name West Country Farmhouse Cheddar.

So, if you see that, you know it's a traditional Cheddar,

made in the old-fashioned way in the south-west of England.

When you say the old-fashioned way, what do you mean by that?

Just the way they would have made it years ago?

Yeah, so they have to use unpasteurised cow's milk,

and, rather than making the cheese in a block,

as you would find from a factory cheese,

they are made in the cylindrical cheese moulds,

and then they wrap the cheeses with cheesecloth

and butter them for maturing.

And then they are matured in the cellars

for specific amounts of time.

So, Chris, you're a big fan of cooking and a big fan of food,

so Celebrity MasterChef,

that was something we were going to touch on, I think.

I did that, very briefly, one round.

I prepared a couple of very good dishes, I thought.

THEY LAUGH

You were wrong, Chris.

Obviously, some people don't have similar tastes to me.

And what were the dishes?

The mystery dish, a bit like... You know when you revise for exams,

you think, "I just hope that essay on the Russian Revolution comes up,"

and I thought, "If only there's a white piece of fish,

"and I can have some fresh herbs,

"I'll make a piece of fish with herbs," and it came up!

And then I made prawn, pea and mint risotto,

and I made lamb cutlets with an anchovy, white wine sauce

as my main dishes...

-They all sound amazing.

-But I really lost it.

Well, I thought so, too!

The only reason I lost out was, in the professional restaurant,

we were cooking duck

and I did a prepared duck, you know,

the chef shows you, with wild mushrooms and a red wine "jus"

-and I did all of that...

-They sound like they were showing off.

I know, exactly!

I did it and it was all good and then when it came to, "Four ducks!"

"Yes, Chef!" and I produced them and they were all raw.

-Oh!

-And I thought, "Well, I put it in the same oven," I don't know...

-And another contestant, who will remain nameless...

-Yeah.

..he kept opening the oven to check his fish dish.

In the programme, it made me look an idiot.

Not difficult!

But you reckon with a bit more time, you'd have got through.

No, I was terrible. I was terrible.

You moved on to Strictly Come Dancing, as well. And a winner.

Yes, it was a very poor year.

TOM LAUGHS

I did Strictly Come Dancing, four and a half years ago.

Four chins ago, as well!

-So, you're not still dancing?

-Not still dancing.

It's very difficult, I disappoint many grannies at weddings

and birthday parties. No, it was a great experience. Really enjoyed it.

I mean, dancing with beautiful women,

dancing in front of 12 million people, learning a new experience,

-what's there not to enjoy, really?

-Yeah, really good fun.

And you went on tour with that, as well, didn't you?

Yeah! Yes, that was probably a bit of a mistake.

When I originally agreed to do it,

it was about four weeks into the actual show.

And I said to my girlfriend, now wife,

"Don't worry, I'll do the tour,

"cos I'm going out any minute now."

Of course, three and a half months later,

I was still in the competition and then we went straight on to the tour

and I couldn't get time off Breakfast.

So, I was, at some stage,

doing Breakfast in the morning, driving up to Nottingham,

doing the show, driving back overnight,

doing Breakfast, going back up. It was a nightmare.

-Sounds exhausting.

-I say nightmare, you know, dancing in the evenings!

I couldn't give it everything I wanted!

OK, so the tart, we've got the courgettes, they've been salted,

sweated down, we've added a little bit of chilli to it, a little bit

of red chilli, just for a hint of spice to cut through the richness.

Some sweated-down onions, with grated Cheddar on top of it

and a custard mix made the double cream, egg yolks and a whole egg,

little bit of nutmeg and then some grated Parmesan on the top.

It's going to go into an oven, cook nice and slowly,

on a low, low temperature, until it just sets. About 20-25 minutes.

And then it comes back...

..after that, it looks like this - beautiful, golden, very tasty.

Oh, fantastic.

And then, Ange, if you could grate some of that on top.

I'm going to get some courgette flowers.

These have just been steamed.

A little dress with salt

and a little drizzle of English rapeseed oil,

beautiful flavour goes on the top of that.

Then Ange's going to blowtorch the Parmesan.

And what we're doing with the blowtorch...

The reason why we do this is everybody loves that cheese on toast

flavour, you know, when it's been under the grill just that

-little bit too long, and it gets...

-Could you put it under the grill?

No... Well, you could put it under the grill,

but the problem you get is that you will burn the tops of the pastry.

You want a little bit of a blowtorch on the top

and you get this lovely, lovely flavour coming from the cheese.

You can smell that, that lovely, toasted flavour. We gently...

..take this off without dropping it.

If you guys want to come on over,

we shall have a little taste of this.

On top of that,

put a couple of these courgette flowers. I'll get a knife.

-Come on round.

-Beauty.

And if I cut some of these, we'll do some portions

of a very posh cheese tart.

-There we go.

-Do you like these courgette flowers?

-I've seen you use these before.

-Absolutely love courgette flowers.

Brilliant this time of year, taste great, you can stuff them,

you could probably stuff them with that mix.

-The cheese is starting to melt.

-Stunning.

Have a little taste of the tart, let me know what you think.

You looked suspicious there.

You can't just chomp the top of it, can you?

-Yeah.

-Yeah, you can. Go for it.

-Very nice.

-Very nice.

Very nice, and that's just the courgette flower,

-how about the tart?

-Exactly.

Absolutely delicious. Really good.

-The pastry is lovely. It's got that cheesy...

-Bit of Parmesan.

Is that because you made it?

THEY LAUGH

Yeah, it's lovely, because Ange made the pastry(!)

OK, that's all from all of us on Spring Kitchen.

A big thank you to Angela Hartnett, Emma Dandy

and Chris Hollins and of course the amazing Rick Stein.

All of today's recipes are available on the website,

please go to bbc.co.uk/springkitchen.

A big thank you for watching and we will see you next time.

Take care, bye-bye.