Episode 13 Spring Kitchen with Tom Kerridge

It's springtime, and we're celebrating with food

that makes the season so unique. Welcome to Spring Kitchen.

Hello, and welcome.

We've got the best of spring's bounty in store for you today.

We're heading to East London with Rachel Khoo for a spot of shopping,

before she makes some asparagus pastry twists, especially for us.

Plus, we take a peek into the BBC food archive

and join Nigel Slater for another of his simple suppers

as he makes some chocolate cookies with raspberries and cherries.

Now, with me in the studio is the Italian inspiration

to Jamie Oliver, it's his friend and ours, Gennaro Contaldo.

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

all about the wonderful produce available at this time of year.

It's our very own farmer, Dave Finkle.

Hello to the two of you.

-How are we?

-Hi!

-Happy?

-Very, very happy. Spring!

-Happy like springtime.

-Everything green, everything lovely.

-Everything fantastic and fresh.

-Fresh, lovely.

-And Dave, for you, springtime is great?

-Fantastic.

Plethora of produce coming out of the fields,

-my favourite time of year.

-A plethora! Brilliant. OK, then.

Our guest today is a champion of consumer rights

and often battling dodgy geezers.

So he should feel right at home today with Gennaro!

Look at us two, we look a couple of dodgy geezers!

It's like me and Mini-me! Right, OK.

So Dom, tell us what sort of food you like.

Without a doubt, it would be Asian food.

I travel a lot in Asia,

my sister's lived over there for 30-odd years,

and I've never ever eaten anything I didn't like with the exception,

I think, of chicken's feet in Hong Kong. And congealed pork fat.

Why someone would want to eat that, I don't know,

but other than that, Asian food, love it.

We might be in trouble today!

Gennaro, what are you cooking for us?

Oh, I'm going to make it for Dom, believe me.

I'm going to make fantastic fresh gnocchi.

With watercress, some watercress, wild rocket, chilli and garlic.

Bit of chilli and garlic! We love it!

Everything is all right if chilli and garlic is in it.

So later on, I'm going to be doing a recipe with guinea fowl.

I'll roast it with some lemon, garlic, thyme and rosemary

and serve it with a spring green salsa.

Now, for my first recipe, I'm going to be using strawberries.

Dave will tell us a little bit more about those in a minute.

Dominic, you come with me, we're going to do a bit of cooking.

Park yourself on there, young man.

Right. What you mean is you're cooking, I'm watching.

-Yeah!

-You're doing the hard work.

-From that opening start there,

the word on the street is

the fact that you don't cook very much so I'm going to cook.

You can have a look at what we're doing and maybe take it home.

I'd like to cook, just I've got no real reason to.

If I make a nice big dish, there's no point.

What am I going to do, freeze it and eat it every now and again? No.

But every now and then,

some of these dishes are quite easy to cook at home.

One of these is very simple, fresh strawberries, then I know

Gennaro's later on is very, very simple, beautiful one-bowl thing.

So maybe you'll come away a happy man, having learned something today.

We'll keep our fingers crossed. Now, strawberries.

The first thing is going to be with strawberries,

I'm going to make strawberry ice cream, very simple to do it.

-The ice cream is the easiest thing in the world.

-What, to make, or eat?

Both! Both, both! Easy to make, really easy to eat.

What are you going to tell us about strawberries, Dave?

They've been around for a very long time.

Throughout medieval England,

basically what they used to do at big banquets,

marriage ceremonies, they used to just devour loads of strawberries.

And they used to believe that they would bring good wealth

and it would help the relationship.

Later on, it was then followed with the Roman occupation.

The Romans used to actually eat strawberries because they thought

it would cleanse the spirit, it would help settle their stomachs.

That's why in England, if you're on the old-fashioned Roman roads,

in the hedgerows and ditches, you'll find wild strawberry plants.

And that's because they used to cultivate them to actually,

whilst they were on their journeys and pilgrimages,

they used to literally have a snack on the move. It was Roman fast food.

A bit like Greggs but in Roman times!

-Snack on the way!

-Perhaps maybe a little healthier.

But wild strawberries, they do have a different flavour

to the kind of cultivated ones here, don't they?

They're a little bit more, I suppose, floral as well.

They are, a very different flavour.

Obviously, they were much, much smaller

to our modern counterparts that we have now.

Now we get these big, fat, juicy strawberries, succulent,

you get the juice dribbling everywhere.

Children and adults alike adore them.

But with the modern techniques that are out there, the season is now,

strawberries are coming in, British are by far the best.

-And it's one of my favourite products.

-Hear that, Gennaro?

-Yes.

British strawberries are by far the best.

Well, I must say, yes, I lived for many years in England.

Yes, the strawberry in England are the best.

One thing I don't understand, why pick up strawberries

and put them inside a fridge to eat the day after?

They're growing in the sun, they grow in the hot.

Pick them up, eating!

And enjoying it.

They're perfect, nice and warm.

-Sun temperature, you want them.

-Yes, that's it!

So, I'm going to make a strawberry puree.

All I'm doing is just putting the strawberries into a pan

with a little splash of water.

Then we're going to put a little bit of sugar into that as well,

we're just going to slowly kind of stew them down.

And then we're going to slowly cook it.

Now, Dom.

-Beware! Cowboy Builders.

-Yes.

-A new series.

-Yes.

-Although, a new title, but same series?

-Do you know why they did it?

It's series ten, but what happens is, after a while,

a lot of programmes do this, they slightly change the name

so people realise it's a new series.

We ran for... Series one and two were called Cowboy Builders,

then we changed it to New Cowboy Builders.

The viewing figures literally doubled on that series

because people realised it's not a repeat, it's a new series.

And now we're up to series ten. As of series nine, we called it

Beware! Cowboy Builders.

It's on tonight, funnily enough, it's on every Thursday.

And it's quite good. We've had a lot of results from the programme,

there's been a lot of changes, a lot of prosecutions

and I think a lot of cowboy builders out there are starting to be

more cautious about what they're doing. Some of them are terrible.

It's not just bad building,

some of them are out to deliberately deceive and defraud people.

What's the worst things you've come across?

Well, there's a guy, which I only found out this morning,

where Dave's farm is, down in Essex, there was one guy

where we followed him all the way to that farm. He was from Milton Keynes.

And he was trying to tout his business in Essex,

because his reputation was spreading, up in Milton Keynes.

That guy, we exposed, and as a result of that,

the police contacted us and said, "We've been looking for him,

"he's on our wanted list," and he was arrested

once they'd found out where he was for an £800,000 fraud,

and he is now serving eight years in prison.

So we've had some pretty bad people on there.

Not just putting up wonky shelves.

Yeah, proper bad people taking a lot of money off people.

I first came across you on TV in the Channel 4 programme

Faking It, as...funnily enough, you were an Essex boy originally

and a used car salesman, is that right?

It used to be new and used, I worked for main agents for many years.

Then the industry became less fun.

Like most things now, it's all bureaucracy and paperwork

and I decided to go my own, I had my own garage for many years.

It was a fun industry then.

You could still have... You could duck and dive

and get away with all the things where you could cut out

some of the unnecessary paperwork and just deal with people.

And it was a great industry, but it's become very, very tough

and most people in it now are really struggling.

I was glad I had a break and I got out of it.

I was always a very honest, decent, nice guy,

which every car salesman will tell you!

They're always going to say, "Trust me! The mileage is true!

"One lady owner!"

LAUGHTER

And 14 blokes! Yeah! But the industry has cleaned up.

You know, nowadays, the people who have the bad reputation

are people like estate agents. It's flipped on its head.

Car dealers, they're well regulated

-and there's not that many rogues left in it any more.

-OK.

But you first came to prominence,

I saw you actually training a vicar in Faking It to be a salesman.

-Is that right?

-Yes.

-And he went all the way?

He went all the way, he won, he was very good at what he did.

He was lousy at choosing a car to buy at the auctions,

but that comes with experience.

We took him in, gave him £1,000,

I wasn't allowed to have any influence on what he chose

and he picked up a rotten old Mini Metro, in white, covered in rust.

It was worth about 40 quid a tonne in scrap.

He paid good money for it, and, you know, I was...I was ashamed.

And you're still a big petrolhead, aren't you?

You're still a big car fan.

Yeah, I ride motorcycles, I ride bikes,

but my passion is American cars.

Ever since I've been young, and I've owned quite a few,

I've imported new ones and second-hand ones from the States.

I just think their styling, their characteristics,

they're so in your face, the American cars.

As far as build quality goes, lousy compared to European cars

and Japanese ones, but I think they're very stylish.

Yeah, yeah. And a big fan of them, and still have them.

So what we've got here, I'll tell you what we've done.

We've sweated these strawberries down,

we're just going to blend them now to make a puree.

And then in that bowl...

So just a very quick blitz, it blends very, very easily.

We're going to take the seeds out.

The seeds, strawberries are the only fruit to have seeds on the outside,

-is that right, Dave?

-Absolutely true, yeah. Correct.

On average your typical strawberry will have 200 seeds.

Have you counted them, Dave? How do you know that?

He's got a lot of spare time on his hands, haven't you, Dave?

-I wish I had, yeah!

-225, I believe.

-225!

-Oh, that's your British ones.

-Yeah!

That isn't the Italian ones!

So what I've done, I'm just putting a bit more sugar into the puree

and some single cream.

Now, this is that simple, this is... this ice cream is that simple.

I'm not a great fan of sugar, Tom.

I'm diabetic, since I was ten, I've been diabetic,

so been quite a few years now. I try and avoid sugar whenever possible.

I can eat it, just in moderation.

The good thing about strawberries, they contain so many natural sugars,

it's a beautiful thing so it's very sweet on its own.

So what would happen if you made that without adding any sugar?

To be honest, the sugar content is in there

just so it doesn't set up, the ice cream doesn't set up too hard.

Just pour it straight into here... So you could do without sugar.

But you just need to take it out the freezer

-just a bit earlier before you serve it.

-OK.

-Into the ice cream machine.

That will take about 25 minutes.

Now, in here, we have some more strawberries. Some brown sugar.

The brown sugar is like curing them, you know if you cover things

with salt and it draws the moisture from it, a bit of brown sugar,

we're drawing the moisture from the strawberries

to give it a lovely liquid.

Then we're going to add to it some balsamic vinegar.

Balsamic... Balsamic, strawberries and basil, very Italian.

A beautiful thing to do.

Let me tell you what is balsamic.

You're in love with this beautiful girls,

and you can't wait to kiss her.

And then everything goes, wow!

I don't know where this is going, so we'll stop just there!

He said girls! Not girl! It was plural!

THEY LAUGH

Girls, girls, well, I'm Italian!

So, we've got some cured strawberries.

You leave them to sit for about 25 minutes, and you get to this.

Strawberries, in the balsamic. Now, the balsamic,

you need a good balsamic vinegar, a sweet one,

not one of the cheap ones that are very acidic.

You want one that's been aged in barrels for, I would say

-minimum of eight, you say...?

-I say 12. Eight years is all right.

Actually, the very good balsamic vinegar,

they start to put them out when

they're five, then eight, and then 12.

Then 25 years, cost a fortune.

But my God. That is the girl!

Yeah! I've just broken up some amaretti biscuits,

that kind of lovely almond flavour, then pour the strawberries back in,

then a little bit more of this beautiful balsamic.

Balsamic comes from Modena,

beautiful things in Italy come from Modena.

-Ferrari cars and balsamic vinegar.

-Yeah, yeah.

Then we'll just get the ice cream. We've got some in the freezer.

So, this has been sat in here.

Once it's come out of the ice cream machine,

sits in the freezer till you need it.

Basil as well, basil goes so beautifully

with strawberry ice cream.

Just going to take a nice scoop of this.

Basil is such an easy thing to grow at home as well.

It's so simple, children can do it on the kitchen window ledge.

Come on over, guys, you can have a taste of this.

Just going to put the ice cream on the top.

And then, a little bit of this lovely basil cress around it.

So basil and strawberries, again, this is beautiful.

A little pinch of black pepper.

That seems so odd to me.

Not being a cook, putting vinegar, pepper and some herbs on ice cream.

-You taste it. You taste it!

-You taste it and you let me know.

Balsamic vinegar goes with it so, so nicely

and the ice cream is beautiful. The strawberries are lovely.

-Mm, yeah.

-Wow!

-Happy now?

-Happy with the taste?

-Ecstatic.

Delicious? Very nice indeed.

Now, in every show, we're getting out and about

and visiting some of our favourite chefs on their home turf.

Today, we join Rachel Khoo in East London

who is after some new season asparagus.

Spring brings a new lease of life to your recipes,

with fresh ingredients, and zingy flavours.

And I've got plenty of ideas but first,

I've got to buy some ingredients.

When spring arrives, there's some amazing produce back on the shelves.

One being asparagus. I absolutely love asparagus.

But I like doing something a little bit different with a twist

than just having sauce on top.

Great, thank you. Bye!

My Spring Kitchen recipe is asparagus and anchovy twists.

Perfect for a party snack, really easy to do as well.

So I start off by making my anchovy paste.

You need a big pestle and mortar.

If you don't have one, you could use a blender.

Some anchovy fillets.

Just six.

Now, if your anchovies are very salty,

just give them a little rinse.

And then about a tablespoon of the oil. Or you could use olive oil.

And then you just want to bash it until it's a very smooth paste.

A little bit of elbow grease.

I love having friends round for dinner,

but I also like to spend some time with my friends,

I don't spend the whole time in the kitchen.

So this is just a great way of using some delicious asparagus

to make a fun party snack.

It's pretty pasty. Just going to set that aside till I need it.

Make some room to roll out the puff pastry.

Now, there's nothing wrong with using ready-bought puff pastry.

Just make sure it's all-butter.

I'm going to use two sheets of baking paper

to roll out my puff pastry.

That way it won't make a mess on the work surface.

And also, if it's a very hot day

and you're finding your puff pastry starting to melt,

you can just simply slide it onto a tray

and into the fridge to firm up again.

OK. So that looks pretty good.

You want to leave your puff pastry fairly thick,

about four millimetres.

Don't worry if you end up with wonky edges, I'm going to trim that.

My baking tray...

So just trim off these wonky edges.

Now I'm going to spread on my anchovy paste.

If you don't like anchovies,

you could do a sun-dried tomato paste instead.

But I quite like that saltiness from the anchovies you get.

OK.

And then you simply want to cut it into 12 strips.

A couple of centimetres wide each.

And then I've got my asparagus tips,

and you're just going to wrap the puff pastry around the asparagus.

Asparagus in a blanket. On a wrap.

Easy party snacks that look fantastic.

Finishing touches, a little bit of egg wash.

So it gets a lovely golden colour.

Just going to add a splash of milk to my egg wash.

Makes it easier to brush on.

And some sesame seeds on top.

So they just need to go into the oven at 180 degrees for 20 minutes

or until golden and puffy.

It's been about 20 minutes, certainly smelling good.

Let's have a look.

Puffed up lovely, they've gone nice and golden.

Crispy on the top.

And that's it. My asparagus and anchovy twists.

Great for springtime entertaining.

Thank you very much, Rachel.

Asparagus, beautiful this time of year, absolutely love it.

OK, it's time for somebody else to cook and right now it's Gennaro,

hold on to your hats, guys. What are we going to be cooking?

We're going to make a fresh gnocchi,

with a fresh spring sauce of wild rocket, watercress,

beautiful onions, chilli...

-And a smack of garlic.

-And a smack of garlic!

-You will love it.

OK, OK, let's get going.

Right, what I want you to do, here you are, this is a bowl.

I boiled this potato, I need for you to rice the potato.

-Rice the potato.

-I never understood the word rice.

You don't understand the word rice?

You know, mash it was more appropriate. But I don't know.

I think it's because when it comes out of this contraption,

-it looks like rice.

-Yeah, it could be that.

-I think it is that!

LAUGHTER

-I don't know, I'm still searching!

-OK.

Meanwhile, so I put wild rocket and watercress...

Wild rocket and watercress.

Dave, what do we know about wild rocket and watercress?

Well, wild rocket, basically, it has a deeper, richer flavour to it.

It's slightly more woody in texture to the softer things

that we're all used to now.

But watercress, obviously it's in the title,

but it loves growing in water.

-Now, have you ever heard of aquaponics?

-No. What's aquaponics?

Aquaponics, imagine huge, giant, great big fish tanks,

with all the fish whirling and swirling around in there.

On top of these fish tanks, a new method.

Great big polystyrene rafts, that have small cells within them,

and those cells, you actually put the watercress

and wild rocket seeds, and...well, how do we put it?

The solids that are excreted by the fish actually provide the nutrition

in the water for the roots of these plants on the rafts to grow from.

So how long has that been going on?

How long have people been growing things like that?

Well, it's fairly new as a system.

It's been around for two to three years now.

But it's technology that's becoming affordable.

-Can I do this with my goldfish bowl at home?

-You could try!

-You'll go hungry!

-Is there anything you don't know, Dave?

-I'm sure there is.

-What's the capital of Mongolia?

-He's a wealth of knowledge.

-Isn't he?!

-Brilliant, fantastic.

Gennaro, tell me what's happening.

What happening inside here, it's about 700g of potato,

I put two yolk of eggs, a little bit of salt,

a little bit of Parmesan.

About 150g of flour. And I mix it.

You see, the secret is not to overdo it.

Because when you actually make gnocchi,

and you overwork it, you get all the starch, all the water is coming out.

The one thing I have noticed with Italian chefs, you actually

cook a lot with touch and feel, rather than it being about recipe.

-It is about experience, I suppose.

-Of course.

When I make short pastry for any kind of cake, I never weigh anything. Off I go.

How much chilli? Is that too much?

Go on, you like chilli.

Put them all in.

With this one, you chop them very finely.

You taught Jamie Oliver all he knows about Italian cooking, is that right?

Do you want me to say yes?

He already knew something, I just had to give him a lift.

You have been working together very closely.

We are still working closely together. It is incredible.

One way or the other, we are working together with all of our restaurants.

-Jamie's Italian restaurants that are opening all over the world.

-Yes.

-So you're travelling the world.

-Yes.

-You have opened one in Singapore?

-Yes, in Singapore, in Russia.

Yes, Sydney.

And the last one we opened was in Piccadilly. Jamie is always there.

-Jamie does work in the kitchen.

-Yeah?

-We work him very hard.

Also, you are working with Jamie,

doing something on May 16th, what is that?

Food Revolution Day. Everybody around the world has to cook.

You don't have to, but make sure your family and everyone

is cooking - for better food,

better life, healthy food, and for better of everything.

Food Revolution Day. We will all be cooking.

You sound like a crazy Italian politician.

-Are you thinking of going into politics?

-Why not?

Italian politics, I am fairly certain you would do very well.

-You are also doing the Big Feastival.

-Yes, it is indeed.

Oh, I can't wait. That will be in August, the end of August.

-This into here?

-Yes, put them inside there.

And we will enjoy.

That is in the Cotswolds. Alex James's farm.

Alex James, what a lovely man.

You ought to see the way he's playing and the way he sings.

There will be lots of stalls of food.

You are not going to sing, are you?

Of course. Do you want me to give you a song now? I don't mind.

Does anyone want a song now?

Does anybody want a song now?

-You had better not.

-We'd better not.

-Do you know how to pray in Chinese?

No. Why do I need to know how to pray in Chinese?

Because the secret is we have to put them inside boiling water.

-OK.

-We put them inside here.

And we wait for those to come up. If they don't come up...

We need them to float.

Yeah, so what's happened, we done rubbish gnocchi.

If they don't float, we have made rubbish gnocchi.

The one that I made, I am sure will float.

I will put them in a big one, it is much better.

That takes less than 20 minutes to do it. Why not?

-I can see one of them coming up.

-There he goes! That baby's coming up.

Look at that, beautiful, all of our babies coming up. Come on! Come on!

Is that his Chinese praying?

"Come on, baby, come on, baby!"

I have a horrible feeling he cooks like this at home all on his own!

Yeah. I know it's nice,

because when I started cooking...

I have been in the kitchen since the age of ten.

Your neighbours must be worried

when they hear noises like that from next door.

"Come on, baby, come on!"

Into the pan. A little bit of the cooking water.

Because I wanted a little bit of that cooking water.

-Italian food, are you not really into it?

-Love it.

There is no food that I don't like.

I am just not great at cooking it because I don't have the motivation.

But you saw how easy that is.

Gennaro says it's 20 minutes.

I would spend three hours reading the instructions

and downloading it on the internet, four hours going to the shops

and trying to find the fresh food.

Its all fresh, it's all good, simple ingredients.

-It is all good ingredients.

-Watercress, rocket sauce, olive oil.

Come on over, guys. A little bit of grated Parmesan over the top.

Get that over a little bit.

OK, come on, guys. Come on, Gennaro.

Grab some knives and forks.

-A little bit more.

-Look at that.

Parmesan, the greatest Italian invention.

One for you, one for you.

They're very healthy, but this is all right.

We can get stuck in, can we?

The flavours of that chilli, are you happy with that?

Do you think you could make that?

-Perfect.

-Absolutely beautiful.

Perfect and absolutely beautiful, that is what we like.

Whilst we eat this, we will take a trip to the BBC food back catalogue

as we join Nigel Slater, who starts by making chocolate cookies

with raspberries and cherries.

If I am going to eat a cake or biscuit,

it is going to be a fabulous one.

If it is a biscuit, I will call it a cookie

because it sounds much more delicious.

So I'm going to start the week with a real treat.

Some divine chocolate cookies with crunchy hazelnuts.

These are the perfect way to beat those Monday blues.

I would much rather have one delicious, crumbly,

chocolatey cookie, made with butter, made with chocolate,

than I would have three supposedly better for me

because they're low-fat.

My cookies start off by gently melting 200 grams of chocolate

over a pan of simmering water.

75 grams of butter will add to its silkiness.

If we are talking about treats, we're talking about pleasure, and if

it is going to bring real pleasure, it has to hit those buttons.

225 grams of sumptuous muscovado sugar adds a wonderful

deep butterscotch flavour.

That only looks like a little butter and a lot of sugar but it will work.

A couple of eggs will bring my butter and sugar together and

a few drops of vanilla extract will complement the chocolate perfectly.

Finally, two tablespoons of self-raising flour.

Don't even think about the calories!

If this is a treat with chocolate,

then there is a huge temptation for me to involve nuts.

Hazelnuts and chocolate, for me, is just, just the best of the lot.

I skin my hazelnut, you can buy them already done

but I think I think they keep better with the skins on.

It is easy. Just toast and flake off the skins by rolling in a tea towel.

So about three-quarters of these nuts I am going to grind to a powder.

The last quarter I just roughly chop, to add a bit of crunch.

Then the whole lot goes in with the flour and creamed butter and sugar.

Then it is time to add the melted chocolate.

As soon as it is all liquid, I turn off the heat.

If it gets too hot, then we will be in trouble.

There is nothing worse than grainy, burnt chocolate.

I want my cookies to be moist and gooey in the centre

so they will get around ten minutes in a warm oven.

There is something that sends tingles down my spine when I put

a plate of warm biscuits...cookies,

call them what you will, on the table,

and everybody tucks in. There is just something.

Perhaps it is the reason I cook, I don't know.

About sharing something that you have made with other people,

while it is still warm from the oven.

You wouldn't think those biscuits were cooked when you take them

out of the oven but they are as cooked as I want them to be.

There is no packet of biscuits in the world

that would have the same effect on me as these are right now.

To go with the warm chocolate, some ripe cherries,

a few very ripe berries.

So they're lightly crisp on the outside

and then inside, they are moist and gooey.

You could keep these in a tin for a couple of days.

But I am not going to.

The trick is to go for the best chocolate you can with this recipe.

It is a treat, after all!

If I do overindulge, I often then crave something healthy.

It is like my body telling me off.

But a few aromatic herbs in a cup of hot water soon redresses the balance.

That feeling when I have had a little bit too much cake,

a little bit too many good things, there is something

very purifying about a glass of warm water, and some green aromatic herbs.

The garden sometimes has a healthy answer,

I reckon that is why I love growing my own so much.

Anywhere you look in the garden you will find something to inspire

a saintly supper.

Now, throughout this series, we are showcasing

some real key seasonal spring ingredients

that are at their absolute best this time of year.

Today, I am going to be doing a recipe with guinea fowl

and a spring green salsa.

Gennaro is going to give me a hand.

Going to keep our fingers crossed for this one, Chef.

-It will be fantastic.

-It will be fantastic.

Using spring greens as a salsa to make a salsa verde.

Dave, what can you tell us about spring greens?

It originates from throughout the Second World War.

Because everyone was trying to grow as much food as possible, which was

grown by the Women's Land Army,

they were leaving the roots and stalks of cabbage plants

and Brussels sprout plants in the ground, so in the spring,

suddenly, new little leaves would start to spring from

the side of these stems,

so that is where spring greens originally came from.

So this is a mistake, it is a hybrid of something

-they didn't expect to happen?

-Absolutely. What you see here

is a consequence of what they were doing in the Second World War.

Which is why it tastes very similar

to a sprout top or outer cabbage leaf.

It is very strong, very iron-y, very powerful.

OK, right. Take the leaves off.

We will kind of cut the stalk out of the middle.

Tear it apart, we are going to blanch it

and serve it with guinea fowl.

It is fantastic, it is similar to a chicken but perhaps has more of

a gamey flavour, a bit more,

a little bit more taste going through it.

Guinea fowl, size-wise, you probably get two portions per bird.

-Two hungry people. Hungry, Dom?

-Starving.

-He's just had the gnocchi and he is still starving.

-I love it. Starving!

So we are going to stuff it with some thyme and rosemary.

And some garlic.

All of these are flavours that will come from the guinea fowl.

They will mix as we roast it.

We will add the juices to the salsa. It's salsa verde.

A salsa verde is Italian.

It is a green sauce, you can make it with many other different

herbs as well, as long as you give them that acidity,

like vinegar or lemon, capers,

a little anchovies.

In some parts of Italy they do salsa verde with bread

to bulk it up as well.

It is nice, the bread is soaked inside the vinegar

so when you mash it up it gets a lovely lift.

It goes ever so well with guinea fowl. I love guinea fowl.

So salsa verde - any sauce that is green? Green sauce.

Yes, but you can do it with one single ingredient.

As long as it is green?

As long as it is green.

You can't do it with tomatoes unless they are green tomatoes.

Then you do salsa rosa.

OK, salsa rosa.

I am tying the guinea fowl together,

just so that it helps steam it.

It keeps the legs tight.

Those lemons break down

and the herbs will kind of steam as we cook it.

Snip that there. The guinea fowl goes onto the tray.

Going to put a bit of butter on the top.

What happens is this butter melts

and all the fats from the guinea fowl come out,

and the juices, and they all mix together,

and make a very nice dressing that we will put through the salsa verde.

With the salsa verde, you have dropped spring greens, some parsley,

and some mint into boiling salted water.

That boiling salted water,

what that does is it helps to keep the greenness but softens it up

so when you chop it

it gives it a cooked flavour rather than a raw one.

Season the guinea fowl up. Plenty of rock salt. Some pepper.

We are going to stick it into a medium-hot oven.

About 180, 190 degrees Centigrade.

We will roast it for 35-40 minutes, until it is just cooked.

The important part is resting.

Resting the meat which is the most important bit,

so all those juices get back into the flavour.

We will chop green chillies to go through this for a bit of spice.

Dom, you have been on television quite a lot.

You have done a number of things, one of which is for a geezer,

for a geezer-geezer, who likes motors,

muscle cars from America... Strictly Come Dancing?

-Yup. 2007.

-How was that?

Tell you a funny thing, with Strictly they follow you

while you are training, one point when I was in the gym

one of the girls who had the camera

said, "You need to check your sugar levels."

I said, "I am diabetic but I know my body better than you do, nothing wrong with it."

She said, "No, check your sugar levels." Eventually, she talked me into it.

When I checked them, they were 1.2 which is on the verge of having a hypoglycaemic, very serious attack.

They quickly shoved me full of all sorts of Lucozade and sugary sweets.

Half an hour later I came round and I said to her, "How did you know

"I was getting that low,

"my sugar levels were at that low level and I didn't?"

She said, "It is the first time you ever looked like you could dance,"

and what happened is my muscles had loosened up

and I was dancing really good but she realised there's something wrong!

So the end result of Strictly Come Dancing wasn't such a strong one,

you didn't go on to win it?

I didn't have a chance in a million years of winning that.

You have done Ready Steady Cook a number of times.

Twice. Let's be honest, you don't really cook.

It's like now, I can't take credit

for what you guys are making, I'm just enjoying the results.

So, although you win, you go in, you give a few results,

you had Ainsley or whoever at the time, they would do your cooking

and produce a wonderful dish and got a plate saying I'm the winner.

Not really!

Gennaro has drained off the blanched herbs and the cabbage.

We're going to squeeze it out.

I am putting a little lemon juice into this salsa.

There is capers and some nice salted anchovies, some raw garlic,

you are going to chop that up and add it to it.

Bring the guinea fowl over. Gennaro.

Two Greedy Italians, an incredibly successful TV series...

-It is indeed.

-..that did very, very well.

Will you do more of that?

Let's keep quiet for the moment, but there is a very big potential.

-You and Antonio.

-Bless him!

I have to be honest, it's like two boys having a laugh,

going round Italy, eating what they want,

doing what they want with a camera crew there.

We were lucky, because we were going to take that trip anyway!

THEY LAUGH

-So someone paid you to do it.

-I said, "Ooh, let's do it!"

At the end, they couldn't keep up with the camera and everything else,

so the director said, "Oh, I am fed up, you two,

"get the camera behind them and let them do

"whatever they want to do," and we did whatever we wanted to do.

-And two series later...

-Yes!

-And very successful.

You have chopped up the herbs.

This is all the cooking juices that have come from the guinea fowl.

We have a bit of the butter, there is a squeeze of lemon juice

and all the juices from inside, the lemon, and the herbs,

and unfortunately it is not Amalfi lemon.

You are from the Amalfi coast.

-It's a lemon.

-It'll do.

Fantastic.

-It adds acidity. It has acidity.

-We will put a bit of olive oil in.

I would have used rape seed oil but that is because I am English

-and not Italian.

-To make you happy, you know.

Thank you very much...

THEY LAUGH

Just a little splash of rapeseed oil.

All I am going to do, when this has rested for 25 minutes,

I am going to take the meat from the carcass,

you can see it is lovely dark leg meat.

-Loads of flavour.

-It is indeed.

This is roasted properly. Because it is guinea fowl,

it has quite a dark meat on it.

It is a cross between a pheasant and a chicken.

You were telling me earlier, it is one of your favourite things.

Always. I usually have it once a month,

I have a guinea fowl for a change

and cook them in many different ways.

Love it. Just love it.

They are being commercially farmed now

and that is where there is large wooded areas,

because not many people realise

but they naturally roost in the tops of the trees overnight.

-Do they fly?

-Oh, yeah, they're terrific flyers

and they make a huge amount of noise.

-They are fantastic for guard dogs.

-They are!

If you have guinea fowls outside your house,

anybody goes in... "Wooh-wooh-wooh-wooh-wooh!"

I don't know how they do it.

Guinea fowl make a fantastic guard dog, I love that.

We will put the legs on a flat.

Come on over, guys, if you're still hungry, come and head this way.

Going to put the breast onto the plate.

Gennaro, you can dress the guinea fowl

with that beautiful salsa verde.

-Taste nice, you happy?

-Mm!

Just drizzled all over. We've got some knives and forks down there,

Dom, if you want to grab them,

-just underneath.

-Thank you, Tom.

Dom, you are about to do a 100-mile bike ride?

Yeah, it's Prudential Ride London.

It only started last year. They do this great event to promote cycling

and help some charities, and they have asked me if I would do it.

It is 100 miles, it is covering the Olympic route that Bradley Wiggins did.

I don't cycle much, I have a bike but I don't go more than two miles, but they said, "Will you do it?"

I have three months to prepare for it. I said, "Yeah!"

-It wasn't until a day later I thought, "100 miles..."

-That is a long way.

I am having second thoughts now, I'm thinking, "You've said yes,"

so I'm going to go for it.

You might need a bit of padding.

If you eat that it might give you padding.

Have a taste and let me know what you think.

I had a bike, I believe I did about

-100 metres in six years!

-100 metres!

We get them but we don't use them, do we?

Come on, guys, have a taste and let me know what you think.

-Happy?

-It's divine.

That spring green works so well as a salsa

and that lovely, iron-y flavour, it's delicious.

It's gorgeous!

-Very tasty.

-Happy?

-Very healthy.

-Yeah, lovely.

Very healthy, very tasty.

The acidity of the lemon and the lovely bits of capers.

-That is very acidic. I can taste that.

-Works with the richness.

It is all very delicious.

That is all from us on today's Spring Kitchen.

A big thank you to Gennaro Contaldo,

Dave Finkle,

Dominic Littlewood, and, of course,

Rachel Khoo.

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

bbc.co.uk/springkitchen

and a big thank you all very much for watching,

we will see you next time.