Letter A The A to Z of TV Cooking

We've got some of the greatest dishes from your favourite TV chefs

and we're serving them up alphabetically here on The A-Z Of TV Cooking.

Today we're looking at things linked by the letter A.

So let's start where every good alphabet starts -

A is for apple.

And here's Nigel Slater with a savoury take

on a good old-fashioned apple crumble.

I'm not the sort of cook who travels the world

trying to find weird things to eat.

But I do like to ring the changes,

and much more fun, to my mind,

is to take something I know very well,

something familiar...

and give it a new lease of life.

Give it a surprise.

So I'm taking an unusual approach to one of my favourites -

apple crumble.

I want to play with the flavours

and make a savoury version.

Something to try with a Sunday roast,

or even alongside some sausages.

Half a dozen apples should be enough.

There's two ways to approach the filling for a crumble.

You either cook the fruit from raw

with the crumble topping on it

or you just give the fruit

a few minutes in a pan with a little bit of butter

to start with.

So often cooking is about

getting something on the table at the end of the day.

It's about feeding the hungry hordes.

But I think it can also be about

having a little bit of fun.

A rainy afternoon...

a few ingredients, and just...

just playing a bit.

These apples just need a few minutes to stew.

Plenty of time to make my crumble topping.

It starts in the usual way,

with butter and flour.

Rub the butter into the flour,

which you can do in a food processor and it takes seconds.

But I like the feel of food in my hands, particularly baking.

I just end up with a good, rich, basic crumble.

Check the apples, see how they're coming on.

Now, they're looking good. They're looking nice and soft.

I'm going to put in a little bit of Madeira.

You could use Marsala.

Just something to give it a grown-up flavour.

So far, so traditional.

But I want my crumble to be a bit different.

Time for the savoury twist.

Apples and cheese...

are one of life's perfect marriages.

So, I'm going to grate into that

a little bit of Parmesan cheese.

A good, strong Parmesan will add real flavour to this.

Probably need three or four tablespoons.

Breadcrumbs will add to the savoury edge

and crisp up beautifully.

I'm just thinking of something that will work with the apples.

Maybe a little bit of thyme. I've got some lemon thyme.

It just has that little extra bit of freshness.

Lemon thyme works well in stuffing

and will add a delicate freshness.

So, the apple's really quite soft.

And it's soaked up a little bit of that alcohol.

And then it gets its crumble topping.

A final shower of Parmesan

and into the oven it goes.

I'm grateful for the rain today.

It's a wonderful excuse to stay inside,

pour myself a drink

and just enjoy the scent of baking.

It's deeply savoury from the cheese and thyme,

but there's definitely the sweetness of apple in there too.

Looks like a crumble.

Something very familiar and friendly about that.

I'm expecting pudding,

but I'm actually getting something that reminds me

of an old-fashioned ploughman's lunch

with a big lump of cheese and an apple.

It would be a really nice thing

to have on the side with some cold roast meat.

Quite unusual, but it's a success.

The cheese has made a classic apple crumble

into something intriguing, for very little effort.

I'd happily eat this for supper any day of the week.

And especially with sausages.

Now, A is for avocado,

and here with a recipe, Jamie Oliver getting ready for a barbecue

that's going to feature a potato, avocado and cress salad.

Right, second salad, yes?

Check if these old boys are done...

Beauty.

I just chuffed up the potatoes

with a scrubber, sort of roughed it up a bit,

to clean it and to scrub it.

And cooked it in nice salty boiling water

and then you drain them.

And what I'm going to do

is put olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper on it now.

You could use vinegar if you liked.

And because it's all sort of chuffed up and really hot,

it'll suck up all the dressing and just make it really taste nice.

So, good pinch of salt...

..good pinch of pepper...

..olive oil - about sort of six tablespoons.

Enough to dress the salad.

And a lemon.

Any particular sort of potatoes?

Well, these are just new potatoes,

but basically, any small, waxy potato is really good.

Put the lid back on, just give it a...

So that's kind of nicely dressed. Let that cool down a bit.

And while that's cooling down,

it's kind of... I suppose it's a bit of a retro salad, yeah?

Cos it's kind of, er...

It's got avocado in it.

And, like, you know, avocado is massively '70s, isn't it?

And in my business, like, you know,

it's quite old-fashioned to have avocado on the menu.

Tell you what really winds me up,

it's like no-one seems to sell them ripe any more, or just ripe.

They're always hard.

You've got to buy them a week in advance.

I don't know. I just don't think

people's buying habits are like that any more.

-How do you ripen them?

-They ripen very quickly

if you put them in a dark cupboard.

I've got a mad friend who said you put them in a bag with a banana.

So are you doing all the cooking yourself this evening?

This evening? No, not really. I've done most of it already.

For the actual barbie,

Ben's going to come and help us very shortly.

But, um...

Then again, it's his party, so he should do!

Plus, if anyone can do a good barbie,

-it's an Aussie, do you know what I mean?

-Is Ben a good cook?

Yeah, Ben's a brilliant cook.

He's quite mad.

He cooks fine food, but he's got a secret soft spot for offal.

Cos when we used to cook together

and we used to get a whole pig come into the kitchen

that we had to break down,

the head would always go missing,

and I'd be doing a fridge list two days later

and you go into this big bucket which said "Ben's bucket"

and you'd open it up

and there'd be this big pig's head going like this...

And you'd be like, "Oh, my God, what's he doing?"

And he'd be, like, soaking it in spices and stuff like that.

Then he'll take it home

and he'll be kind of,

dismembering it and making some fantastic concoction out of it.

Listen, this has cooled down a touch.

And I think...

nice thing about this salad is

it should be pretty last-minute, really.

And I think the best potato salad in the world

is just put in some fennel tops or dill from the window box, yeah?

Beautiful.

But I think to have it, not necessarily hot, but warm-ish.

I think that makes all the difference.

I need a big plate.

Right, so what you have to do

is now these potatoes have cooled down a bit,

and all the dressing's been warmed slightly...

Get some of these big ones

and just slice them up a bit, cos you don't want them all to be huge,

and, um...

So they're nice, mouth-sized pieces.

Pick up the avocados and just put them on top.

And we'll mix it up in a sec.

The avocados don't discolour?

No. The thing is, I'm going to dress them in a sec

and the oil and lemon will protect them.

Right, so here's for the last part, yeah?

You're going to laugh.

Cress!

And, like...

I know cress is the most hated thing in the restaurant world,

-but I love it.

-Why's that?

-I don't know... What, in the restaurant?

-Mm.

It's just tacky, isn't it?

It was always like 1970s cookbooks

with kind of a garnish of cress.

A bit kind of poached salmon with aspic jelly.

It's just like, "Oh, my God"

But we used to grow them on cotton wool.

We used to scatter the seeds in special shapes and stuff

to get, like, shapes and rude words and stuff.

I mean, the taste is...

It's well up there with rocket, I think.

Nice and peppery and mustardy. Interesting.

But all we do now

is kind of dress it. Let's move it up here.

Just kind of toss it over

and dress it.

The idea is that it's like a really relaxed sort of salad, really.

Just sort of...

You know, it's three ingredients. Not much to it.

It's not exactly classy,

but it tastes damn good.

So...

I think it's good for barbies.

Good summertime thing.

And then all you do is kind of

put it out on the plate.

Beautiful salad.

So we're done, mate!

Get ready for barbecue fever.

And now, our final dish of the day.

We started today with a savoury apple crumble.

So let's end with a sweet apple crumble,

courtesy of Sophie Dahl.

I think the ultimate in...

pudding nostalgia, British pudding nostalgia,

the award would have to go to

the crumble.

It's one of those things that everyone has a memory of.

Walking into a grandparent's house with their mum and dad

on a Sunday, with the smell of a roast in the oven...

..and a crumble on the next shelf down.

So in order to recreate and bring that feeling back,

apple and pear crumble.

But it's a toffee apple and pear crumble.

Four apples, four pears.

They're in there.

Next, 125g of butter

with an equal amount of sugar.

This is soft dark brown sugar.

You want the zest of one orange.

And along with the zest of the orange,

you want the juice.

I was thinking about Bonfire Night.

All the things that you associate with Bonfire Night.

And that sugary, dense, caramelly bite of a toffee apple.

And wondering if that could translate into a crumble,

and the answer is it can.

Basically, what's going to happen to this is it's going to turn into

a thick, syrupy toffee sauce.

To add to this, to make it that bit stickier...

here I've got some dried dates...

..and a few dried figs.

Obviously, dates are in sticky toffee pudding,

so we've got dates, apples, pears, figs,

toffee.

We're going to just soften it in this toffee sauce.

That's going to take about five to ten minutes.

And while that's cooking, I'm going to make the crumble mix.

Spelt flour...

100g.

It has a very nutty, sweet taste

and it works particularly well in puddings.

100g of oats.

The brilliant thing about oats in a crumble is

it gets really brown and caramelised,

more so than just the plain flour crumble.

And to add to that 100g demerara sugar.

Into there,

and it's good for your butter to be cold,

so 100g of butter.

I think the whole point of nostalgia is

it's almost quite ironic,

because...

we tend to rose-tint everything.

I seem to find myself a lot these days

sort of tutting and talking about when I was a child.

Might be a bit pre-emptive.

In my day, the summers were hot.

Didn't have rainy summers in my day.

It snowed at Christmas, always, in my day.

In my day, we didn't have crime.

So the fruit is...

soft, but it's still firm.

Got all of this amazing

syrupy...

juice.

All of that is going to bubble up

through the top.

This is going to go into the oven at 180 for about 25 minutes.

And it's a pretty good 25 minutes,

because your house will be filled with this incredible...

fragrance of...

the crumble

merrily blistering away in the oven.

MUSIC: "Sunday Girl" by Blondie

# Hurry up

# Hurry up Hurry up and wait

# Hurry up... #

The moment of truth.

And the smell is really like

condensed everything that's good in the world.

That's my childhood on a plate.

That's the last of today's dishes.

Now it's your turn to get cooking.

Thanks to all our chefs

and do join me for more remarkable recipes next time.

See you soon.