Episode 2 Spring Kitchen with Tom Kerridge

At last, spring has sprung, the weather is getting warmer

and we've got some great recipes for you,

for you to get excited about in this new season.

So, welcome to Spring Kitchen.

Hello and welcome.

We have a great line-up of food and chefs for you this afternoon.

The delightful Rachel Khoo takes us shopping before creating

a lovely, simple crab and kiwi tartare especially for us.

Plus, we take a look into the BBC food archive

and join the irrepressible Raymond Blanc for a masterclass

in making a glazed lemon tea cake.

Joining me in the studio is one of Jamie Oliver's old schoolmates

who is now his head chef at Jamie's Fifteen restaurant here in London.

It's Essex boy Jon Rotheram.

And because it's St George's Day, I'm making a dish using

St George's mushrooms.

So we got a Spring Kitchen guest to talk to us all about mushrooms.

It's Rupert Burdock.

-Hello to both of you. How are you?

-Great.

-Happy spring is here?

Absolutely.

I'm very happy spring is here. This is great for me, this time of year.

-It's excellent.

-And as a forager?

-Yeah, lots of green leafy things.

-Get 'em down, cleanse your liver.

-Cleanse your liver, perfect.

OK, well, here today to enjoy our spring fare is a script writer,

TV presenter, actor, columnist, producer and author,

or as his parents might say - in need of a real job.

It's Danny Wallace. Hello, Danny. How are you?

-I'm all right, how are you?

-Fantastic, thank you.

You have enough time to eat in that busy schedule?

Yeah. Interesting fact about me -

I've eaten every day of my life.

That is incredible!

Yeah, I'm an inspiration.

We're not going to break that rule here.

Jon, what have we got going on for Danny to eat?

Today we're going to help out.

We're going to do some shoulder of lamb with some monk's beard,

some yogurt, some garlic.

It's very this time of year, really spring.

-It's delicious, it's fresh, it's great.

-Sounds lovely.

Apart from what was in the middle... Monk's beard?

Never had a monk's beard before, Danny?

Let's see how long I last on this show.

It's a green forage vegetable. We'll talk about it later, OK?

So, later on, in keeping with our mushroom theme today,

I'm going to be making a roasted crown of wood pigeon with peas

and mousseron mushrooms.

Now, mousseron mushrooms taste a little bit like ceps,

but they've got a bit more of a hazelnutty flavour.

And Rupert, our mushroom man,

has brought in some mushrooms for us to see here.

-Spring mushrooms.

-I have indeed.

I've picked all of these recently, in the past few days.

I've got some morels here.

I've got some mousseron,

or as we know in England as fairy ring champignon.

-Fairy ring champignon, OK.

-And the St George's here.

So, St George's mushrooms are mushrooms that are around today.

Taste fantastic, which is great cos I'm going to cook them first

with you, Danny. So come with me.

I'm going to pinch these off of you. Thank you, Rupert,

Mr Mushroom Man.

And we're going to get cooking over here. All right.

-Danny, I need you.

-Yeah?

You can't just come here and expect to do nothing.

-Oh, man.

-I'm going to give you a bowl.

I feel like a toddler sitting at his mum's table,

just watching you cook. Are you getting me involved?

Yeah. All you got to do is scrape just a little bit

of dirt off of these mushrooms.

-Sounds delicious.

-We're not eating that, we're eating that.

There we go. Careful with the knife, toddler. You don't want to...

Don't cut yourself.

-OK.

-There we go.

So, we're cutting the dirt from these mushrooms, Rupert.

Are you a mushroom washer or just a brusher?

Never, Tom, never washing, always brushing.

Always brushing the mushroom. And why is that?

Well, if there is a bit of earth left on them, that will

take the tartare off your teeth and washing them can get them

a bit soggy, and you don't want that with mushrooms.

Cos they kind of act like a sponge.

Is it the same for your personal hygiene?

Never washing, always brushing.

You all right there, Chef?

No, you're doing well. That's fantastic.

OK, so this is a posh version of mushrooms on toast.

We're going to be doing mushrooms on toast with

kind of like a chicken liver parfait or pate to go on it.

It is kind of a cheeky, easy, quick one to do.

So these are chicken livers that I have just soaked in milk overnight.

And that soaking in milk,

what it does is actually draws any bitterness from the liver.

So where you have... Livers are quite iron-y.

That offal... They contain a lot of iron.

So soaking them in milk helps draw all of that, you know,

kind of those strong bitter flavours

that a lot of people don't like with offal.

Hopefully, this way gets rid of it.

You are a bit of a big food fan.

Do you know, you say all that,

-I've never had anything to do with livers.

-Really?

I've never had pate, can you believe that?

-I'm sorry, you've never had pate?

-No.

My wife loves it, I call it meat jam.

I sort of... I get away from it.

I was once taken to an offal restaurant

and I didn't know what to order.

-An awful restaurant or an offal restaurant?

-An offal.

And only thing I could order on the menu was a duck's neck.

Because I thought it might look a bit like a Peperami.

So, where is this restaurant? It sounds incredible.

Well, if I tell you exactly where it is,

then I've just sort of slated it.

That's very true. OK.

And also...

It doesn't like you want to go back.

Yeah, so, that's fine, then. I won't say it.

I've got some red wine

and I'm just going to reduce that down in a pan with a shallot.

Shallots, this is a banana shallot.

It has got a lovely amount of sweetness to it.

So this is going to go through in the base of our pate.

-So, you have been a busy boy, Danny. Book writing?

-Yes.

Yeah, I've been writing a new book. That has kept me busy.

My little boy keeps me busy.

And when is the new book out?

Tomorrow, so this is book eve right now.

Book eve. Is this an exciting time?

It is. It is sort of slightly nerve-racking

because for such a long time a book just sits on your computer

and you are the only person who sees it and one day you press send

and you lose all control.

-So, it is. Tomorrow will be...

-What is the name of the book?

It is called Who Is Tom Ditto?

-OK, and what is it about?

-It is about a man named Tom Ditto.

-Yeah.

-And he...

So many books and films and things begin with someone being

left by their girlfriend or their wife, and in this one,

he gets home and there is a note from his girlfriend and it says,

"I have not left you, but I have gone."

So he has to work out what that means and where she has gone

and what he does from now on.

He meets a very strange group of people,

and that is when it becomes hopefully quite exciting.

-But I'll find out tomorrow.

-What sort of book is it, a comedy?

It's hopefully funny, you know.

Thank you very much. You can have a seat back down there, Chef.

-You have earned your keep, you can stay.

-That's good.

-Well done.

Yeah, it's funny, hopefully. It's a mystery. A little bit of romance.

-A bit like your life.

-Very similar to mine, yeah.

Mysterious and romantic, yeah. Very similar to mine.

-Nailed you. Absolutely.

-Yeah.

So, you have been a very busy man producing

television from an early age.

Yeah, I did a lot of producing back in the day, and radio producing.

Yeah, working with the likes of Ross Noble and The Mighty Boosh.

The Mighty Boosh, of course, yeah. I first saw them in a room

above a pub with, like, sort of 12 other people.

And, you know, they remain two of the funniest people out there.

And then I did... Yeah, so, radio presenting,

TV presenting, just different things.

But never cooking anything to do with liver,

-as I've said.

-This is kind of a cheap and easy...

What we're making here is liver butter almost.

What we are doing, we're going to fry these livers.

We're going to blend them in a mixer, mix them in with some melted

butter, some of this red wine and shallots that is reducing down.

We're going to blend them altogether and then we are going to sit

them in a pot, basically, and spread them on the toast when it is done.

-OK.

-So what I've got here as well... I've got the St George's mushrooms.

They have gone into a pan.

And we're just frying them off - a little bit of oil,

a little bit of butter. The butter gives a beautiful colour to them.

And then we are going to cook them

down with a little bit of chicken stock.

Now, I don't know what you make of using chicken stock, Dave,

in mushrooms. Are you...?

Sorry, Rupert.

Are you always...?

Yeah, absolutely, great combination.

You know, a lot of people say that mushrooms taste like meat,

but I like to think that meat tastes like mushrooms.

Mushrooms were there first and then meat came along.

-OK. We'll stick with that.

-OK, yeah.

I'll pop that on Wikipedia.

So, what we've got is the chicken.

As we fried them, we got a nice bit of colour on them.

They're still a little bit pink in the middle.

We're going to put them into the blender. Get rid of the pan.

Get these on here.

And with this pan, I'm going

to deglaze it with a little bit of this butter.

Now, this butter is the butter that actually will set the pate.

And then into that, I'm going to put in a bit of chopped garlic.

And then...

melt it down.

So, apparently, you are a bit of a big beer fan, is that right?

You've got a bear that's been launched to go with your book?

Yeah. I just thought it would be an interesting thing to do.

I like sort of ticking boxes and going, "Yes, I've done that."

So, yeah, we brewed a beer.

I tried to sort of sum up the book in a beer.

So, the book is set in London and New York,

so we used American hops and British hops and a new experimental hop.

And it's an IPA, and India Pale Ale,

because one of the characters in the book is called Pia,

and that's an anagram.

So I think it's the first time a beer has been based

-entirely on an anagram.

-I love that. So the idea...

Brewing beer, for any excuse for me... There's, you know...

There's no reason for an excuse for brewing beer.

-Yeah, I should have brought one.

-Yeah, you should have brought one.

-I can't believe you turned up without one.

-Slightly awkward.

What I'm doing now is just adding a little bit of chicken stock

to these mushrooms. We're going to reduce them down in the stock.

What they'll do is they start to absorb,

like Rupert was saying earlier about the mushrooms not being

cooked in anything liquid because they absorb it.

In this case, I want them to absorb it

and take on all that kind of chicken stock-y flavour.

We've got the toast going.

In here, I have my chicken livers,

my red wine reduction,

my shallots and my butter.

And I'm just going to turn it on

and blend it.

-We are going to blend it.

-Yes, absolutely.

-We are going to blend it.

-Join us later, when we blend.

Join us later... We'll try again.

Do you want a hand? I'm good with buttons.

It's on. Sorted. Don't worry.

Me and technology, we're fine.

It would've been quicker to brew a beer.

I was going to make the noise for you.

OK, so we give that a good whizz.

Imagine that's been done a long time.

And then we have this puree that we put into a pot.

And then into that pot. We're just going to stick it into the fridge.

And we leave it to set overnight.

-Right.

-Eight hours preferably.

-So this takes planning.

Yeah, this bit is planned.

This isn't stumble home from the pub and knock up a quick...

No, but maybe... The mushrooms on toast you could probably

stumble home from the pub. And into it, we're going to wilt some garlic.

Now, this is wild garlic leaf. Seen this before?

-No.

-OK, Rupert, can you tell us all about the wild garlic leaf?

It's a fantastic plant. It grows all over the woodlands and elsewhere.

In our neck of the woods, Tom, around Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Stroud, Gloucestershire.

I'm not sure it grows in the city centre of Gloucester, does it?

-No, I haven't seen it there.

-I'm not sure you get a lot of foraging

done in the centre of Gloucester.

Well, I have picked blackberries there. They grow rather well there.

-Do they really?

-Well, they get pruned back, you see,

and there's a lot of tarmac

for them to, like, get the extra heat from the sunlight.

I always knew Gloucester was the centre of all foraging.

Do you need to borrow some money or something?

Are you all right? Picking blackberries in the town centre...

So all I've done is put some parsley, some garlic.

We've just wilted it down.

And the garlic, the leaf, cooks very quickly, a little bit like spinach.

We just stir it through the chicken stock.

So this is the poshest mushrooms on toast.

-Wow. It smells delicious.

-A little bit of seasoning

on both cakes. And then the toast.

I'm going to get a...I have a knife here.

This, you see, is almost like liver butter.

So we spread this, there we go, on the toast.

So, yeah, this is, for you, is going to be one of the first...

-It's the first time.

-The first time you've ever eaten pate.

What can I expect from the taste of pate?

You can expect a kind of beautiful, rich, meaty, irony flavour.

But I think what you'll predominantly get is this

beautiful flavour of garlic,

the St George mushrooms

that have been fried and poached in chicken stock.

Guys, come on over.

You can help Danny just in case he doesn't like his liver.

-I'm sure I will love it.

-And then on top of that,

we're going to grate a little bit of Parmesan cheese.

-Wow, it looks good.

-Garlic, cheese and mushrooms on toast.

And then a little bit of this garlic flower.

There you go, guys.

Get in there, guys. Get in there and eat it.

Let me know what you think.

Taste the mushrooms, taste the liver, don't be scared, Danny.

This is one of my favourite mushrooms, St George's.

-What are we thinking?

-It goes well with the chicken.

The chicken's the dragon, the mushroom's St George,

-it's all working out together.

-I love that, that's fantastic.

The chicken... That's beautiful. What a lovely link.

OK, now, in every show we get out

and about on special spring trips with some of our favourite chefs.

And today, the delightful Rachel Khoo takes us shopping

in East London and then makes a crab and kiwi tartare specially for us.

Springtime is all about fresh colours, vibrant flavours.

And I've got a couple of ingredients that I need for my spring recipe.

A couple of kiwis and a lime,

which are going to bring all those elements to my recipe.

-Here you go.

-Hey, thanks.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you, bye.

So, my Spring Kitchen recipe is a zingy, fresh crab and kiwi tartare,

which you can whip up in minutes - very quick to make.

Start off with some dressed crab - brown and white meat.

This is the easy option, the cheat's version.

Much better to do this than pick the crab yourself.

So I'll just pop the meat in the bowl.

It's good to use both white and brown meat because you'll get

lovely flavour as well of a nice texture to your tartare.

I'm going to add a little bit of lime zest.

Just add a bit of freshness, a bit of zing.

Maybe cut it in half.

So, squeeze in half the juice of a lime.

And then I'm going to add two kiwis.

You might not think about using kiwi with crab,

but actually it works very well.

I love the bit of acidity you get from the kiwi.

So, you want to cut your kiwi into small, little cubes.

So, I got the inspiration for this recipe when I was visiting Bordeaux.

They grow kiwis in that region.

And I always thought kiwi, it's something exotic.

But actually, it's a local fruit in Bordeaux.

So that inspired me.

Plus, an hour away from Bordeaux, you hit the Atlantic.

And they have some amazing seafood as well.

When the seasons change,

when you come out of winter and all the heavy stews

and the heart-warming soups, you really want something which is

fresh and zingy, something which wakes up your taste buds.

I think this is the perfect recipe for it.

OK. Add a little shallot.

You want to finely chop it. It just gives the tartare a bit of a kick.

So when you make a tartare,

a lot of it is about how you chop up your ingredients.

You want to have an interesting texture.

And so with this tartare, you've got a lot of things going on.

You've got, you know, the kiwi which is quite tender

and soft, then the shallot, which adds a bit of crunch,

and then obviously the delicate crabmeat.

Have a little taste.

If you feel like it needs a little bit more lime juice or lime zest,

pop a bit more in.

I think I'll just add a pinch of salt.

Give it a little stir.

It's all coming together very nicely,

but there is one ingredient which is missing.

We need a crunch factor.

With some cucumber.

I've got my cucumber here.

And you want to take the seeds out just

because that tends to be the wetter, soggier part.

Chop this into chunks, same size as your kiwi.

And then just gently bring that altogether.

Just be a bit delicate, because if you mix too hard,

then you'll make the kiwi mushy.

OK, that is my tartare.

Have another...

Mm!

And slice up my amazing loaf.

So, I'm just going to toast my bread for a couple of minutes

until it is golden and then plate up, and we are all good to go.

I think the toast should be ready.

No burnt toast here.

So, I'm going to cut small rounds out of my toast,

but you could simply slice it into, you know, triangles if you wanted to.

Press quite hard.

The rest of the bread, then you can save for croutons.

Now, just a bit of soft butter.

So, I'm setting mine up as a starter,

but you could easily do it more as a snack, so you have

a bowl of the tartare with, you know, some triangles of toast on the side.

So, yeah. And then pop some...

..on your toast.

So you want to make a nice little mound of tartare.

Don't worry if it tumbles off,

just make sure you have got a generous topping of the tartare.

And that's it - my simple but very spring-like crab tartare.

A perfect way to kick off a spring menu.

Mm! Really fresh.

Thank you very much, Rachel, that looked beautiful, fresh,

very spring-like, really nice. Right.

OK, it's time for Jon to cook.

Jon, what you going to be doing for us today?

Yeah, we're going to do, like I said,

this lovely little shoulder of lamb.

I'm going to slow roast it.

It's one of those dishes that I love. You put in the oven,

you kind of semi-forget about it, leave it in

the oven for five hours, and then you come back and it is already to go.

-I love dishes like that. Stick it in, go to the pub.

-Exactly.

Watch the football. Let's get going, a shoulder of lamb.

OK, so first we'll have you prep the monk's beard for me.

-OK, so this is monk's beard.

-That monk's beard.

Like I said, not many people have seen this,

but it is just one of those things that is in season for four weeks.

It's the perfect time of year for this. This is the season for it.

-That is a monk's beard.

-How wonderful.

-That is a monk's beard.

-Exactly.

Is it what you were thinking it was going to be?

Yes, it's exactly what I thought it would be.

-It looks nice, doesn't it? It looks really good.

-OK.

And it is a little shoot as well.

It's very similar to samphire, I think is the best way to describe it.

It's got that sort of, like, saltiness

and iron-y flavour to it, don't you think?

-Anything you can add to that, Rupert?

-Yeah. I think

one of the really special things about it is the structure of it.

It's the way that it has these little sort of spaces,

these vacuoles inside the plant, so when you eat it,

it sort of bursts into your mouth. I think that's the magic about it.

-Can you eat it raw?

-I'll eat it raw now, we'll find out.

Eat it raw and find out, I love that. It's like a dare show.

-Exactly, called Eat It Raw.

-Have you eaten it raw, Danny?

Yeah, a little bit.

Are we insured for Danny to eat raw monk's beard, do we know?

-It's like grass.

-It's very much like grass.

So what we have done with this lamb, we have seasoned it up,

put a bit of salt and pepper on there.

Now, big joints like this,

I like to bring out about an hour beforehand, season them up.

You know, big roasting joints, they're amazing.

It helps with the caramelisation, when it comes up to temperature.

-At room temperature before you put it into the pan.

-Exactly.

We're trying to get a lovely

bit of colour on to the lamb, trying to season it up.

We don't have to worry too much cos we'll put it in the oven

and, like I said, halfway through, we are going to remove the lid

and then that will get a nice golden caramelisation still going on.

So just seal it off. And then in this, I'm going to add some onions.

Again, keep it simple, keep them whole.

Try and get little onions like this, this is beautiful.

They go in.

You keep them whole like that and you'll roast those for five hours.

Can you imagine, the lamb... It's going to become nice and tender

and soft at the same time as the meat.

In goes the garlic as well.

Quite a lot of garlic in this one.

Again, this garlic is going to become nice and sweet.

Pop some thyme in there.

And then what we're going to do is add a bit of chicken stock.

That goes in.

Pop a lid on it.

-Simple as that.

-And that is going to go into the oven for five hours.

-There we go, in the oven for five hours.

-I love that.

-So, Jon, you are Jamie's head chef at Fifteen restaurant.

-I am.

How long have you been there?

-I've been there for over a year now.

-OK.

-It's been great.

I came on board last year.

Did a little bit of a revamp of the restaurant -

we looked at the menu, how we could change it a little bit.

Cos it did start off, Fifteen, as more of an Italian-style kind of...

Exactly, yeah. Which is great. You know, I love Italian food.

I still look to Italy for lots of references.

-Monk's beard.

-Hence, monk's beard, which is great.

But we just thought it would be great for the apprentices to see

a little bit more of what we are cooking in the British Isles.

I think that is really important to see.

-So you were working for the great Fergus Henderson before, right?

-Yes.

I was a bit worried when you started mentioning about offal that he

was going to mention my restaurant before.

-This could be a little bit awkward.

-It was you!

I went to this restaurant where it was all offal.

You're thinking, "Oh, my God, it was me."

Yeah. Danny recognised me. "Oh, I recognise you from somewhere."

If you have noticed, Danny has gone very quiet.

-There we go.

-I'm still trying to process all this monk's beard.

-So, Jon, you started there.

-Yeah, exactly.

And Jamie saw you there, you kind of hooked up again.

We're old school friends, we hooked up again.

We lost contact for a while, but he came in for a bite to eat

and we... We have the same love of food.

It's very easy talking to him about food

because he is passionate like I am.

We like the same sort of ingredients and we get excited

about the same sort of projects as well.

And the apprenticeship scheme is still going strong?

Oh, it's amazing.

It's incredible. I'm really proud of them. I think...

We've got a really good year. They're really into their food.

Once you are into your food, you are kind of halfway there for me.

You know, the teaching is the second easiest bit.

The passion has got to be there.

And I think I have got a good group of apprentices this year.

Yeah, well, I have to say, I actually spent the day with you,

well, with your team at Fifteen. And it was an eye-opener for me.

The guys were fantastic, I thought.

And you know, the biggest thing that I was impressed by was

actually the standard of the food.

-I just thought it was phenomenal.

-Thank you.

-Dishes that were just all about flavour and taste.

-Exactly.

Once you do that, you're there.

So what we are going to do with this, a bit interesting.

People may use this at home. Yogurt and lamb together is classic.

You see it a lot in Turkish food.

We are going to do it with this dish as well.

What I'm going to do is just put a little bit of yogurt

-on the bottom of the plate.

-That kind of dairy acidity

-in yogurt helps it cut through the richness of the lamb.

-Exactly.

And like we're saying, we know lamb is quite fatty,

but what we have added balsamic vinegar to the lamb as well,

it's just kind of the sharpness and sweetness from the balsamic vinegar

-cuts through it as well.

-So what type of yogurt is it?

It is just a normal, natural yogurt. That's all we're using today.

So then, this monk's beard...

Basically, I just blanched it for about 30 seconds.

And then I have mixed it with some torn up mint leaves,

seasoned it up and I'm just going to stick it on the side.

You can see the look and the colour of the lamb,

-it looks absolutely fantastic.

-It smells delicious.

When you're carving through something and you're starting to...

Yeah, it's amazing. It's nice and sticky.

-And a lot of the colour has come from the balsamic glaze.

-Exactly.

And that's what I was saying. Three quarters of the way through, we

add the balsamic vinegar and we just keep topping it up.

So the thing with balsamic vinegar, you imagine it is going to

be highly acidic, but because it's balsamic,

-it has got that sweetness, as it reduces down...

-Exactly.

I love using balsamic vinegar in a lot of pastries as well.

-In pastry work?

-Yeah.

-It goes well with strawberries, doesn't it?

It goes so well with strawberries.

It's just that acidity sometimes with something sweet,

it really lifts it up.

So, like you say, just added some mint to monk's beard,

lemon oil. Very simple. Lemon juice, olive oil, that's it.

Looks fantastic.

And what we want to do again is just add some of these onions as well.

Whole roast onion. Come on, guys, come on over. Are we lamb fans?

-Yeah, yeah.

-And a little bit of cooked monk's beard.

You haven't got to have it raw again, it's OK.

There we go. And like you say, it's just nice and sweet. It's delicious.

-It looks absolutely incredible, doesn't it?

-It does look brilliant.

Go on in, guys, get on in there.

This is what I love about the foraging guys.

He looked at the lamb and went, "Yeah, nice."

I'm going straight for the free stuff.

I'm going for the stuff that I can find outside.

Anyone of us chefs would go straight for the meat.

"Oh, the monk's beard is nice."

The forager goes straight for the garden stuff.

-These are my friends, yeah.

-These are your friends.

Yeah, my only friends.

Like I say, it's springtime. It's really colourful there as well.

-Are we all happy? We like it?

-It's brilliant.

-Superb.

Whilst we eat this, we are

going to take a dip into the BBC food archive and join Raymond Blanc

for a masterclass in how to make the perfect glazed lemon tea cake.

But first he is off enjoying the patisseries of Paris.

Raymond has come to Paris,

home of pastry and fine food.

It's incredible to see all these shops, all about food.

Every one of them is about food, about wine, about pastry,

vegetables...

They celebrate food. They love food.

And it's all over the place, in every single shop. It's incredible.

I feel famished already.

I am so famous that my name is even here - boudin blanc.

The patisseries of Paris date back to the early 19th century,

when bakers began to emulate the pastries that

until then only the aristocracy could afford.

Many patisseries in Paris have closed in recent years,

but those that survive are amongst the most innovative

and celebrated in the world.

-Laurent, bon jour.

-Ah! Bon jour!

Raymond has come to visit Laurent Duchene.

Once Raymond's pastry chef,

he is now one of France's most renowned patissiers.

-That's really good.

-Good to see you.

-Same, same.

I'm very proud that you're here.

I'm even more proud to see what you've achieved.

-The raspberry, you have some...

-Look at that!

-Glorious, absolutely glorious.

-You like this one?

OK. You want this one.

Panna cotta.

-Fondant de chocolate.

-Fondant de chocolate.

THEY SPEAK IN FRENCH

I don't have a big family, but I'm a gourmand. What can I do?

Raymond's recipe is a lemon tea cake -

thick slices of sponge

laced with lemon juice, coated in a sweet and zesty glaze.

I think today was heart-warming,

cos I hear many parents with kids -

the kids still love to partake in the baking process,

so I wish I had a little chap here to help me and I could show you.

Actually, I'm going to find one.

First, Raymond needs 240g of plain flour.

Adam!

There's only 239g of flour. Can you please give me 1g.

Yeah, OK.

It's all over my apron, that's where it is.

The difference between baking and cooking -

a few grams could make a great deal of difference.

-Next, he adds 300g of caster sugar to five whole eggs.

-Zest of lemon.

Then the juice and zest of three lemons.

And have all the beautiful flavour.

Voila!

Next, 140g of double cream and 80g of melted butter.

Just warm, just warm, not boiling.

A little bit of airiness is good. That's what I'm doing -

I'm just beating air into it.

Voila.

So now a little bit of rum into my butter.

You don't want too much,

just a little bit of flavouring to support the lemon juice, OK?

The liquid is added to the flour

with half a teaspoon of baking powder.

You need to mix it really well.

When it's heating,

the lemon's going to give all of its flavour to the biscuit, OK?

The batter goes into a lined loaf tin

to bake for 50 minutes at 180 degrees.

Oh, lovely, fluffy.

What I'm going to do here is to give it our festive look

so it looks really beautiful.

Voila.

The cooled loaf is generously brushed with melted apricot jam.

This is the professional touches which makes a great deal...

Not all the difference, but a great deal of difference.

All we need to do now is to glaze it with the lemon icing.

Make sure there is no pips.

To finish, a layer of soft icing made by combining lemon juice,

zest and icing sugar

and warming gently.

Voila.

Glace it.

Layering icing over jam creates a sweet and soft glaze.

Hello, my darling. Could I have two teas, please?

It's...

The smell is really absolutely delicious.

Merci, bravo. Merci.

Thank you, Chef.

Looks nice. Nice, lemony colour and gold on the outside.

The zest on the glaze is nice.

You don't have, as well, to put all the icing on the top.

Just on its own, it's perfect.

It's lovely, cheers.

Adam, Adam, like that.

Look even worse.

Thank you very much, Raymond.

There's nothing better than a Frenchman

doing some classic French food.

It's absolutely stunning and Raymond's just a legend,

so, OK, we're going to finish today with doing a pigeon dish.

It's a wood pigeon dish.

We're going to be doing some mousseron mushrooms,

or what else were they called?

Fairy ring champignon.

Which is the English version,

although the champignon bit at the end

doesn't sound very English to me, but we'll go with it.

So, mousseron mushrooms, a little bit of bacon, some lettuce,

some peas. Peas just coming into season. What do we know about peas?

You've got to eat them soon as you pick them.

Eat them soon as you pick them.

Let's get them podded, we're going to get them cooking.

I'm going to get the pigeon. This is wood pigeon.

For me, if you can get good wood pigeon,

they're one of the best things we can have.

They're plentiful and they're available all year round.

They're not seasonal and they taste fantastic.

They one thing you've got to make sure you do with them, though,

is not overcook them.

If you overcook them, they get a bit liver-y, don't they, Chef?

I prefer to cook them under more than over, cos as you say,

there's no way back there.

No, that's it. It's way better to have it under than over.

You can always keep it cooking.

Wood pigeon like this, one per person is enough.

You ever had wood pigeon before, Danny?

I don't think so, no. Not even at that offal restaurant I went to.

By the way, you know we're all joking - we're all going,

"Ah, wouldn't it be funny if it was your restaurant

"that you worked at?" and I asked you off-camera

what the name of that restaurant was.

I can reveal, it was that restaurant.

THEY LAUGH

And you were cooking.

You may have cooked my duck's neck.

-Moving swiftly on...

-Move on, Tom, please.

We are going to cook this wood pigeon

by putting a little bit of butter on the top

and then seasoning it with a bit of salt and a bit of pepper.

A lot of chefs would actually go through the rigmarole

of searing this up in a pan

and all that sort of thing beforehand.

From our point of view, we're just going to stick it

straight in the oven for eight minutes.

Nice and hot, very hot oven.

And then after eight minutes, we're going to take it out

and we're going to leave it to rest.

That's very important. That resting process is very important.

OK, we need to dice some bacon for lardons.

Now, petit pois a la Francaise is a classic French kind of dish.

It's something that works very, very well with peas.

It's one of those things that sums up summer for me.

Summer and spring.

I think so, exactly that.

And the mint, we're going to be using the mint...

to go for it, because, again, it has one of those...

Mint starting to come through now.

One of those fresh flavours. Fantastic, isn't it?

There's a lot of members of the mint family coming out right now.

It's a wonderful family.

No poisonous members of that family.

There's no poisonous members of mint.

You can always recognise it by the square stem.

-OK.

-And the orchid-shaped flower.

-What else is in the mint family, then?

-Nettles.

-Really?

-Dead nettles, yeah. Basil.

-And you can nettles, can't you?

-Absolutely.

-Yeah, I love nettles.

-Yeah, they make a great soup.

-Yeah.

They make a great soup.

So I'm going to put a little bit of butter in this pan.

We're going to add the bacon to it.

We're going to sweat it down and begin to break down

all the bacon fats.

They're slowly going to come out and that kind of flavour from the bacon

is what we're looking for to go into all of the...

Into the pan.

That salt and that...

..savoury flavour that comes through the mushrooms is fantastic.

-You can smell that bacon straightaway.

-Yeah.

OK. And then into there.

We're going to add the mousseron mushrooms.

These are really nutty, really woody,

and where do we normally find these, chief?

You find those in fields

in spring and in autumn.

Quite clearly, you see rings in the fields.

-Sporting grounds, football pitches.

-Football pitches?

-Yeah.

-Nice.

I didn't see them when I was on a football pitch.

Loving the idea of walking around a football pitch and finding them.

-Yeah!

-Yeah, OK.

So they're going to sweat down a little bit,

then we're going to add the peas to that.

You can see that bacon fat is beginning to mix through it.

OK, peas go in.

So, Danny, your new book -

are you hoping it's going to hit Hollywood like Yes Man?

Yes Man, yeah, that was made into a film. Who knows? Who knows?

Jim Carrey was a big star in that movie.

He was. He was great in that. I couldn't believe when that happened.

Who knows? Yeah, it would be a wonderful thing,

but it's not even out yet, so give me a chance.

Sorry, I didn't mean to put the extra pressure on already.

But you are a big movie fan, I understand.

Yeah, I enjoy films. What are you getting at there?

Well, I'm leaning to your Mastermind appearance.

Ghostbusters is what you're going for? Yeah.

Well, I was asked on Celebrity Mastermind

and everyone else was doing things

like Russian Bolshevik dances of the 1890s

and they asked me what I would do

and I just said, "I will do Ghostbusters."

-And how well did you do?

-I don't want to boast,

but I'm going to boast.

I got them all right with no passes.

Ask me anything.

Is that down to research or did you just watch the movie again

and again and again and again?

Depressingly, I did do quite a lot of research for it.

-Really?

-And they didn't ask me any of the things...

I got very obsessive about it.

I was finding out box office takings for that film in the Netherlands.

All this kind of stuff, and nothing like that came up.

There was one hard question.

Uh, yeah.

Jim Carrey, you mentioned earlier, did see the clip of me

doing Ghostbusters on Mastermind and the one thing he took from it

was he was just going, "What on Earth is this show?"

He found it the most terrifying idea,

the most un-American programme in the world,

just a man sitting on a chair

as a camera gets closer and closer to him,

answering obscure questions that only he cares about.

Yeah, but I think it's an incredible show.

It's been running for such a long time as well. I absolutely love it.

Did you know that Tom Hanks once tried to buy the rights

to Mastermind and told an American network

that he wanted to do Mastermind, call it American Mastermind

and he would host it and they said, "Nah, you're all right."

-No, really?

-True story.

That is incredible.

So you are a big Dan Aykroyd fan, a big Bill Murray fan?

-All those guys, yeah.

-I have to be honest with you -

when people come and eat in my restaurant,

I've been very fortunate, we've had a few stars

eat in our restaurant and I never, ever ask for autographs.

I get really embarrassed.

I worry that they'll never come back if somebody bothers them...

But?

-But Bill Murray did come and eat in the restaurant.

-He is a legend.

He is an absolute legend, so I had to get him to sign a menu

and in my house now,

there is a massive Ghostbusters poster signed by Bill Murray.

Which you're going to give to me. How wonderful(!)

Do you know a great story about Bill Murray? Apparently he does this.

No-one knows whether it's true or not,

but apparently, every now and again, he'll just walk up behind someone

who's just standing on their own in the street,

put his hands over their eyes and as they turn round, he just goes,

"No-one will ever believe you."

-LAUGHTER

-I love that!

And walks off.

I don't think I'm going to try that one.

I love it,

but it is a little bit spooky.

Yeah.

I think it'd be fine if you're Bill Murray. I'm not sure any of you...

Could you imagine doing that in Stroud, Rupert?

-I've done that in Stroud.

-LAUGHTER

And you're not allowed back?

You're not allowed out after dark?

Being here is actually conditions of his bail.

LAUGHTER

OK, so the pigeon is being roasted and rested

and I'm just resting it for about eight minutes.

I've taken it off the bone. You can still see it's nice and pink

and I'm just warming it through in a little bit of butter.

Then I'm going to put a few thyme leaves

into here.

Thyme and pigeon go really, really well

and just be very careful not to overcook it.

Very gentle heat.

Pull it to one side.

Just let it sit in that butter.

Now, the peas, chicken stock, mousseron mushrooms,

all beautiful together.

Into that we're going to put mint, and a lot of mint.

-A pinch of salt.

-Mmm, I can smell that straightaway.

A pinch of cracked black pepper.

Into this, some of the lettuce

and then we've got a little bit of raw, grated garlic.

I like using raw, grated garlic going in right at the end.

What that does, it's got a huge amount of kick

and if you grate garlic,

rather than chop it with a knife or hit it,

what it does, it releases oils slightly differently in the garlic.

I kind of give it an even more potent flavour,

which means you haven't got to use as much.

Take the pigeon breasts out.

Then just give them a little glaze

with the thyme-y butter on the top.

Going to put the petit pois a la Francaise,

or English peas with French mousserons...

English peas with French mousserons.

Bit of mint gone through it.

For me, that is a bit of a bowl of spring, that.

Lovely, beautiful, light, fragrant, fresh flavours.

Going to put the pigeon breasts on the top.

Again, very careful not to overcook them.

If you overcook them, they do go very liver-y,

and then on top, we've got some cucumber flowers.

Cucumber flowers, obviously from the tops of little baby cucumbers,

but they give a really nice, fragrant, fresh feel to it.

Guys, come and have a little taste. Come and have a little look.

Let me know what you think, get in there.

-Danny, have a bit of pigeon.

-Great, I will.

Do you know, when you said cucumber flowers,

you made an involuntary noise next to me.

-LAUGHTER

-I just heard...

It was quite disconcerting. I just heard, "Ahh..."

"Cucumber flowers!"

Very unusual.

I think we've firmly established that Rupert is a big fan

of everything green and outdoors.

Everything wild.

Everything wild. That live on the wild side.

The pigeon is beautiful. Really lovely.

Beautiful. OK, and the peas.

Here's the thing about peas -

they've stayed nice and fresh, nice and green.

They take on a kind of chicken liver, chicken stock flavour.

Loads of bacon going through it. It's absolutely beautiful.

And can you get the garlic at the end?

-What's not to love about this?

-He's just making noises again!

LAUGHTER

Fantastic, I'm glad you like it.

Danny, I've got to say thank you very much for coming

and talking about Ghostbusters. It's amazing.

OK, that's all we've got time for on today's Spring Kitchen.

A big thanks to Jon Rotheram, Rupert Burdock and, of course,

Danny Wallace. And the beautiful Rachel Khoo, thank you very much.

All our recipes are on the website.

Please go to bbc.co.uk/springkitchen.

Thank you all very much for watching and we will see you next time.

Bye-bye, take care.