Letter R The A to Z of TV Cooking

Fantastic ingredients, delicious dishes

and some of the nation's favourite TV chefs.

Get ready for a gourmet's greatest hits

because this is The A-Z of TV Cooking.

Today, we're looking at things linked by the letter R

and here's just some of what's on the menu.

Nigel Slater's tips on spicing up a ribs recipe...

I much prefer the lightly-crushed, dried chillies,

and they're really quite spicy.

..a speedy razor clam dish with The Hairy Bikers...

Ooh, there's one. Oh, look them!

..and my mate, Gregg, with all you need to know and more about rhubarb.

It is a good laxative, as well. Nice(!) Nice, Janet(!)

All that to come, but we're starting with rice

and a dish made up of not one, not two

but three different varieties, all cooked up for us by Sophie Dahl.

For years, this was my dinner party staple. This is a wild rice risotto.

It is totally different from a traditional risotto

and shouldn't really be called a risotto, but it's made in the same

way as a risotto - it's stove-top, it's fed, it's a mixture of rices.

Got red rice, wild rice and brown basmati.

No arborio rice, so I think it would make an Italian turn in their grave.

In here, I have two leeks, a red onion and two cloves of garlic,

and to that mixture, I'm going to add one grated carrot,

one courgette, a good handful of wild mushrooms.

Roughly tear them.

I think the reason this recipe's

so good for a celebratory meal is it's beautiful to look at,

you've got lots of different things going on,

so three different kinds of rice, all these lovely vegetables.

Next, you're going to add brown basmati, 500 grammes.

Yes, it might be the brown rice that'll finish the Italians off,

but just like a traditional risotto,

now is the moment where you can add a good glug of wine.

Absolutely love that smell of the wine hitting the bottom of the pan.

So, once that wine has been guzzled up by the rice,

this is where the patient ladling bit begins.

So, really, the trick with risotto is to just keep feeding it.

The moment it looks thirsty, another spoonful of stock.

I used to love my mum's dinner parties, when I was little.

The feeling of total fascination from watching her, as she put on

her make-up and her earrings, and then, getting tricked into

laying the table and thinking it was a great treat!

Then, there's that very specific smell of a party, sort of, wafting...

..upstairs. Very politically incorrect now,

but the smell of cigarettes and perfume

and, sort of, whisky and just brilliant... Brilliant smells.

So, the rice has puffed up.

I'm going to add to it what I cooked earlier,

which was some wild rice and red rice.

This is both a flavour thing and a texture thing

because the rice that's been cooking in the pot with the stock is creamy.

The wild rice, you've got that slightly nutty, bitter taste.

Just works really well as a combination. Mm!

Feels really filling and moreish.

You could have that as a main course, if you're a vegetarian.

Also, really good cold for the next day for lunch. Some salt.

Some pepper. Grated Parmesan.

And then, lastly, decent-sized bunch of parsley and coriander.

Not remotely a strict combination.

You could use basil, you could use chives,

you could use a bit of tarragon.

The thing that's lovely about this is you've got that

sort of freshness of the coriander, the cleanness of the parsley,

and it just works well with that sort of nutty rice.

So what I'm going to do now, I've got this mould.

Please don't imagine that every night, I'm going to

the trouble of putting my food in moulds! I'm not.

I'm serving it in a cake mould because it's going to set in

the fridge, and then you turn it out and it's like a sort of risotto cake.

Beautiful, if you've got people coming over, and it's celebratory.

And that's what the whole spirit of tonight is.

All that needs to happen with this now is it cools,

then it goes into the fridge for a couple of hours to set. It's so easy.

The good news is you get to have a bath,

be relaxed and not answer your door a fraught, kind of, manic mess.

Next, a recipe that really does look finger-licking good!

We're moving on to R for ribs and this is Nigel Slater,

who likes his sticky and spicy.

I often think that the best fun a cook can have is seasoning.

And one of my favourite seasonings of all

is when I mix sweet things with something spicy.

It's getting the right amount of heat and the right amount of sweetness.

When I'm making ribs, pork ribs, I often start with some honey.

'Sticky ribs are a classic example of sugar

'and spice working brilliantly together.

'You might never have thought of making them at home,

'but it's much easier than you think.

'So I've got the sweet honey, and now I need the spice.

'I'm going to add crushed chillies.'

And you can use ground chilli, if you like,

but I much prefer the lightly-crushed, dried chillies.

And they're really quite spicy.

But then, because spicing isn't all about heat,

it's a very aromatic thing, too, I'm going to stick in...

..a warm, sort of earthy spice, too. A little bit of star anise.

'They'll give the ribs a lovely, mellow, aniseed flavour.

'I'm adding some oyster sauce, for richness.'

There are so many recipes for ribs.

Some of them have so many ingredients that they almost cancel

one another out.

I keep mine simple, with just a few ingredients that all add

their certain something.

'All it needs now is some salt and pepper. Don't grind the peppercorns.

'Just bash them a bit.

'Now for the ribs. You want something you can really get your teeth into.

'Coat them thoroughly in the marinade.'

Now, what I like to do is to leave the ribs in the sticky marinade

for a few hours.

Two's the minimum and overnight is probably the maximum.

It just gives a chance for the spices and the sugar to work with the meat.

'Finally, tuck some garlic cloves between the ribs.'

And they'll soften as these are roasting.

And you'll get a lovely mellowness.

You won't get that rasping, garlic flavour.

'Cover them and leave for as long as you can.

'Once the flavours have really got to know each other,

'then it's into a low oven, for 90 minutes.

'Turn them occasionally, to make sure each rib gets

'a good coating of the sweet and spicy marinade.'

So, these ribs have been cooking for a good hour and a half

and this is the moment when it actually gets slightly dangerous,

because I'm going to put them back in the oven,

but on a slightly higher heat.

I'm going to keep my eye on them, till they're almost starting to burn,

then I've got this incredible sweetness, the spiciness

and then just that edge of caramel burntness to them.

So this is how I like my ribs - very, very dark, very sticky...

..very sweet and very spicy.

'Choose plump, meaty ribs and cook them slowly.

'While they're in the oven, they'll fill the kitchen with warm,

'sweet and spicy smells and they'll be the best ribs you've ever eaten.'

We're tackling, next, one of the nation's most popular curries.

It's Rogan Josh, and here with how to cook it is Anjum Anand.

Rogan Josh.

Now, Rogan Josh is probably the most familiar Kashmiri dish

that we know of in this country.

If I could just ask you to slice that onion. OK.

In Kashmir, they would use just lots of spices and yoghurt.

So if you slice that,

and I'll get into these garlic cloves to make a puree.

Mm-hm. OK. Since you've done the onion, let's start cooking.

'First, I'm going to fry off all my spices in hot oil.

'I'm using black and green cardamom pods, peppercorn, cloves,

'cinnamon and mace, which is derived from the nutmeg tree.

'Next, I'm going to make a paste, using six cloves of garlic

'and one square-inch piece of ginger.'

So, in with that meat. All in. Right.

If I can have you, kind of, gently browning that off in the onions.

And the reason I haven't gone too dark with the onions

is cos they're going to cook now more with the meat. Even more.

Quite big pieces here. Would you actually leave them this size?

No, I would have cut them a bit smaller, really.

I mean, for the train, definitely. Well, that's what I was thinking.

Does it matter, having them small? No, it doesn't matter at all.

You know, in India, we eat with our hands, so we'll tear bits off and that's fine.

But for the train, you absolutely cut them to the right size for you. OK.

So how did you get involved in this train? How did that happen?

Cos your parents are involved, too, aren't they?

My parents have been involved, yes.

They are still, um, slightly less involved than they were.

My father used to be the chairman of the catering department. Ah!

Now the connection makes sense. He roped you in, didn't he?

Something like that, yes.

Did what an Indian father does - he goes, "This is what I do.

"Come and do it with me." OK. I'm just going to puree these tomatoes.

'Then I'm adding half a teaspoon of chilli powder

'and two teaspoons of cumin, coriander and garam masala.'

Now, fennel seeds are really typical of Kashmir.

And it's definitely something that should go into Rogan Josh,

and it just works.

Although it sounds unusual, it works really well with the lamb.

So I'm adding two teaspoons. OK. Stir, stir, stir.

And you can see the colour's already gotten darker.

It's looking more like what you'd expect a curry to look like. Mm-hm.

In go the tomatoes.

This is yoghurt, and I've stirred it, so that it's got no lumps.

So, three tablespoons, straight in.

OK. Stir. And that's really all that goes into it.

'Now I'm going to leave the lamb to stew for about 20 minutes.'

Sound of the water, some wine and sunshine. A bit like a holiday...

'Once the liquid has reduced, I brown the meat slowly in the masala.'

So what it's actually doing is just concentrating all those flavours?

Yup. So you just need enough liquid and in there to stop it catching.

Yeah. Exactly. So it shouldn't, like, be dry.

But there shouldn't be so much liquid that it's just kind of bubbling away.

Yeah. So I'm happy with that.

I can kind of smell the caramelisation of that masala.

We need to add some water.

It's not supposed to be a thin gravy, but it's also not thick,

cos we're going to have it with rice,

so we need enough to, kind of, moisten that. All right.

So that's boiling. So I'm putting the heat back on, turning it down a bit.

And then, just leaving it till the lamb's completely cooked.

Another ten minutes or so.

Un petit peu de garnish.

And that is actually more than garnish, cos once you

crunch into that with the lamb, it's really fragrant and fresh.

And I think it's time to try.

And we have lift-off!

That's fabulous. Is it? Yeah.

That's not converting you to eat lamb in Indian restaurants now, is it?

It might well do. You're kidding! Yeah. Success!

That's a good curry... if I do say so myself!

'This fabulous lamb curry would normally be served

'with Kashmiri pilaf rice.'

We've had a couple of meat dishes there,

so let's try something veggie.

Here's one of my favourite cooking Rs, Rick Stein,

with one of HIS favourite Rs, ravioli.

And it's an unusual variety, as you're about to find out.

Just thinking,

I wonder how many people in this country actually eat pumpkins?

They all seem to be turned into those little lanterns at Halloween.

American idea, I think. They're missing a great treat. I'd love

to see more pumpkins being eaten.

They go particularly well in this ravioli dish,

a classic Italian ravioli dish, where you mix Amaretti biscuits with them.

Now, you'd have thought it's a combination that wouldn't work,

but, in fact, it does.

'So, first, you bake the slices of pumpkin with olive oil, salt,

'fennel seeds and a scrunch of black pepper.'

So I'm just going to put these in a hot oven for half an hour at least

and then I'll scrape the flesh out, to make the ravioli filling.

But now, I'm going to make the ravioli dough.

'I use a food processor for this, to save time.

'225 grammes of flour, two whole eggs, four egg yolks,

'a little olive oil and some salt.'

So, that's just about ready.

It's a bit elastic now,

so I'm just going to have to leave that

to rest for about 20 minutes to sort of calm down a bit, by which time,

of course, the pumpkin will be ready to get out of the oven.

Pumpkin.

"A large vegetable fruit, typically orange in colour." Mm.

It's fairly obvious.

No, I'm just waiting for it to roast at the moment.

It takes... Well, I said 20 minutes. Actually, it's more like 40 minutes!

I suppose we'll have to change it. Yeah!

'And, indeed, it did take 40 minutes,

'but I needed all that time to really concentrate

'the flavour of the pumpkin and drive off a lot of the moisture.

'Scoop the pumpkin flesh out and mix it with Amaretti biscuits.

'I don't know why, but the flavours of the pumpkin

'and the Amaretti really work, with Parmesan, of course, and an egg yolk.

'Now I add some fresh white breadcrumbs,

'just to tighten the mixture up a little.

'And I season with salt and freshly-ground black pepper.

'This is a classic Northern Italian dish

'and needs just a rasp or two of nutmeg to finish off the filling.

'Now, I make a dough that's rich in eggs, so you really do need

'one of those Italian rolling machines, to do a proper job.

'And what you do is just keep rolling it through and reducing

'the roller gap all the time, so it's thinner and easier to work with.'

Now, these are really good.

I'm told every Italian housewife has one of them,

but I think in the average British household, it's probably

destined for the garage, shortly to be followed by the car-boot sale!

Normally, I wouldn't bother with one of these.

Actually, it's quite easy to make ravs,

but I'm a sucker for a gadget, and, yes, I DID buy this.

It also comes with a little rolling pin

and you mustn't forget that in a car-boot sale.

In theory, what you do is roll it along the top

and out comes all these pristine little raviolis.

Good Lord, I think it's working.

Look at that!

I suppose, in theory, what we do now is empty them onto a floured table.

Something like this.

Yeah, look at those.

Look at that, they're lovely little ravs.

You need to cook these in plenty of boiling salted water

for about four minutes.

And making the sage butter is simplicity itself.

Just melt butter over a high heat, add your sage leaves

and fry them for a little bit and then add lemon juice.

I forget that this is actually a vegetarian dish

because I think the best vegetarian food doesn't try to be vegetarian,

it just doesn't happen to have meat or fish in it.

I saw this in a restaurant in Venice and thought, "I'll give that miss",

but everyone was ordering it.

I thought I'd give it a try and I'm so glad I did.

Do you know what?

This is not going to the cupboard under the stairs with the fondue set,

I'm going to keep it, it makes jolly good ravs.

Considering our next chefs are well-known for their beards,

you wouldn't have them down as fans of the razor,

but they are both united in celebrating the razor clam.

Our next star is courtesy of The Hairy Bikers.

We're going to make chilli and garlic razor clams

served with parsley crumbs and a harissa and saffron mayonnaise.

Ancient forage food meets the flavours of contemporary cooking.

First up, we cook the clams in boiling water,

and you don't need to do that for long.

Literally it is for seconds because they'll open pretty quickly.

Soon as they're open, they're cooked.

There's one. Look at them!

Say hello to Daddy.

Look at those.

They're cooked.

And if you like eating mussels, if you like cockles,

the sweeter shellfish, these are better.

But we can't tell you enough.

They key is, you saw, literally, it took seconds.

The key with razor clams is not to overcook them

because if you do, they'll go chewy and rubbery.

Squash balls. Yeah.

Drain them off and, while they're cooling,

we'll get on with the other components.

I'm going to chop one chilli and eight cloves of garlic

to make an infusion that we'll pour over the clams.

While Si's doing that, I'm going to fry up 50g of breadcrumbs,

which I'll mix with a handful of rough-chopped parsley.

They're just nice to sprinkle over the razor clams

when they've been dressed with the garlic and olive oil.

With the razor clams, they're wonderful.

This is British produce and it doesn't come much better.

For the oil, it's really important not to burn

the garlic when you cook it.

Do you know how we keep banging on and going,

"Oh, listen, start with something in your pan"?

Not this time. What we're going to do is put...

the chilli in and put the garlic in, again into a cold pan.

We're going to cover it...

..with olive oil - and quite a lot of olive oil.

Look at the heat here, it's really quite low,

so we're just going to very, very slowly bring that up, very slowly.

We're going to season it up with lots of black pepper...

..and salt

and then just stir it in.

We're going to leave the breadcrumbs to cool,

before we add in the parsley.

In the meantime, we can get on with the last bit of the recipe -

the harissa and saffron mayonnaise.

I love saffron.

The smell is lovely.

The spice that's more expensive than gold.

Just put a good handful in there.

Keith Floyd always use to say, he said, "When people say to me

"how much saffron do I use, I say, how much can you afford?"

Splash of boiling water on that.

Look at the colour that's come out that instantly.

It's going to make the most fantastic colourful-tasting mayo.

Leave that to cool.

Saffron's interesting. It's thought that the Phoenicians,

when trading for tin with the Cornish, swapped saffron for tin,

and this could explain that the Cornish love making saffron cakes.

But we do know that, in the 16th century,

saffron was grown in Britain, particularly in Essex.

Saffron Walden. Look at that - got a tan like an Essex girl.

Now for the other main ingredient.

This is harissa,

a chilli paste that goes really well with Middle Eastern food.

A lot of people think it's Moroccan, but originally it's Tunisian,

and it's fantastic.

Put a teaspoon of that in a bowl.

What's great about cooking in Britain

is that we get to spice up our lives

with fantastic international ingredients.

The one that we're using is rose harissa,

it's not as hot and fiery,

because you can get some harissas that blow your socks off.

There are all really robust flavours

and honestly, the razor clams can take it.

Add in a couple of large tablespoons of mayonnaise and mix it in.

That is gorgeous. Now mix the saffron in.

You don't waste any of this.

Look at that.

Somewhat tasty and somewhat psychedelic.

That's what you call a seafood sauce.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, it's earthy, as well. It's lovely.

By now my chilli and garlic infused oil should be ready.

This is when it's ready. Look.

Got little bubbles in the oil.

At that point, take it off the heat.

And leave it.

That's it. It's done.

Put the parsley in the crumbs and we're nearly there.

We've got the clams, we've got the dressing, accompaniments

and we've got its juice.

Lovely.

We can start building now, can't we? We can.

Let's show you how to dress a razor clam.

Really simple.

Save the shells.

They come out of the shells easy, don't they? Yeah.

This bit here, you don't want.

And you want to make a cut across there, like that.

Look at that. Beautiful piece of meat.

Now the foot. We want all that.

So we just nip that off like that.

So we have two lovely pieces of meat. And this bit, you chuck.

Take the shells and snap the hinge, so they lie flat on a baking tray.

Then replace the prepared clams.

There we are. Lovely.

Dress them with the infused garlic and chilli oil.

Coastal foraging's interesting

because it's far from being, kind of, like survivalist food,

it's quite haute cuisine,

I mean, you could eat this in a very fancy restaurant and be happy.

Last of all, the clams need to go under a blistering hot grill

for two to three minutes.

Move the shelf up as close as you can get it to the grill,

under a preheated grill, which is key, stick your razor clams in.

They're starting to go.

I think they're perfect.

Sizzling away.

Just dress that with the crumbs and parsley.

And on the side...

..a nice big dipping dollop of the saffron and harissa mayo.

That looks fantastic.

I think that's what I would call a Michelin-star forage.

I'd be with you. That's a top scrams, that one.

Should we? I think we should.

Forks or foraged?

Foraged.

Mayo. Garlic. Crumbs.

The chilli and the razor clam, it's so sweet,

and then you have that lovely savoury hit with the garlic and the oil.

Fabulous.

Then you dip it in the mayo, you get that earthy thing with the saffron.

It's amazing.

If you like squid, you'd like these.

If you like mussels, you'd like these.

If you like scallops, you'd go bonkers for these.

And if you like food for nothing,

give this one a go.

That, here on our beaches and on our shorelines and they're fantastic.

All you need, a bit of courage, a good sense of the tides

and a bag of salt.

Cooking foraged food and eating the oldest grub around,

it's a great way to connect with our very earliest foodie ancestors.

But it's great to combine those primal flavours

with the best tastes modern cooking has to offer.

Fusing the really old and the new.

Our next star is for rhubarb. But before we look at the recipe,

let's join my great mate Gregg Wallace, finding out

about one particular type and how it got it's special status.

My dream is to reinstate British rhubarb as national treasure.

I'm off to Rothwell, to meet a grower

who's as passionate about rhubarb as I am

and has been instrumental in putting Yorkshire forced rhubarb

back on the map.

I love forced rhubarb.

Tender, soft, sweet, bright pink

and the chefs I work with

simply cannot get enough of it.

But in recent years,

there's been a rival on the shelf.

Those naughty, crafty Dutch are trying to pass theirs off

as the hallowed forced Yorkshire.

Not right.

And the Yorkshire growers weren't prepared to take that lying down.

They knew they had a unique product

and they were prepared to fight for it.

And the good news is,

after six long years battling with bureaucrats in Brussels,

Yorkshire forced rhubarb has been awarded

a protected designation of origin status - a PDO.

It's an exceptionally rare accolade, which puts it right up there with

the likes of Champagne and Parma ham.

And Janet is the woman who made it all happen.

There it is. The beauty.

Your forced rhubarb has been a huge success in the last ten years.

And I've got to congratulate you on your hard work

on getting European PDO status.

Yes, thank you.

It was hard work.

It took six years in total.

But now, no-one can call it Yorkshire rhubarb.

Exactly. Unless it comes from Yorkshire.

Yorkshire forced rhubarb is available for just a few months a year,

from January to March.

It's first established outdoors.

Is this where the life of forced rhubarb starts?

It is.

This is a two-year-old root.

When do you decide to take it in?

It's got to have two to three years of living out here,

getting stronger and stronger. The root are massing an energy supply.

So you have to leave it completely dormant for over two years?

You don't get a single penny out of it? No.

It's not dormant, it's growing and working for the plants.

Yeah, but it's not making you any money. It's not. Exactly.

When they're ready, the roots are moved indoors

to pitch black forcing sheds -

a controlled environment that produces sweeter, tender stems.

In a forcing shed there is no light.

What makes it grow at all?

In the forcing sheds? Cos it's looking for light.

And that is when, the scientists have found out,

it puts out this substance, polyphenols,

that we need in our bodies, because polyphenols basically clear out

your body of pollutants that could cause cancer in your body.

This scientist who found the cancer cure in the rhubarb,

could you ask him to look in the beer at rugby matches?

Cos I'm sure it's got the same preventative medicine in there.

It is a good laxative as well. Nice. Nice, Janet.

Would you let me look in one of these sheds?

Yeah. Let's go have a look.

Take my arm. Nothing's growing, but it will give you an idea.

Janet has ten forcing sheds of varying sizes

producing around 200 tons of proper Yorkshire forced rhubarb a year.

This is one of the famous forcing sheds?

This is the largest one in the country.

It's one of the last ones ever to be built

because they do say today,

to build a forcing shed you'll never get your money back

because they're only used for six weeks' harvest, that's all.

When do the rhubarb roots come in here?

Late November, early December.

Ready to be in production straight after the New Year.

How many plants will we get in here?

You'll get between 20 to 30,000.

And they need to be kept damp and warm with mist irrigation

and propane heaters.

Looks like an aircraft engine. And you've got...? Two of them.

Do you think I may have learned enough

to now grow my own on a very small scale?

I won't bet on it.

You're not going to be in competition, I don't think.

I've been truly blown away by the hard work

and dedication that goes into producing our forced rhubarb

and can't believe it's taken this long to give it

the recognition it deserves.

It's a piece of our culinary heritage and it's delicious.

For a start it's just amazingly tender.

The force of my tongue on it against the roof of my mouth

is enough to make the whole thing dissolve.

That is just stunning.

That's nectar.

I'm having that.

You don't have to taste it, do you? No.

Close your eyes. I'll only be a minute.

I'm really impressed.

I really had no idea how difficult it was to force rhubarb.

It's not a scientific process at all, it's completely artisan.

Everything depends on the skill and the knowledge of the grower,

but I'm really pleased that they've managed to get PDO status.

For an industry once in decline has now recognised for its uniqueness.

It's a beautiful product and now luckily it's protected for ever.

What we need now is a rhubarb recipe.

So here are Tony and Giorgio with a rhubarb bread and butter pudding.

Shall we sling one together? Yeah.

Or let's put one together delicately.

Let's put one together.

We're going to go for a layer of bread.

Bread first.

All this way round.

I think it's better you do it left to right

because it's very unlucky to do it like that.

Like this?

Yeah, do it like that.

Why? You superstitious?

Everything has got to be why, why, why?

Why? Because it's like that. That's it.

If my mum asked you why, what would you say to her?

Politely, I'll tell her.

Come on. Why, why, why.

That's what the chef says.

You don't whistle in the kitchen.

You don't put things left to right.

You always put it right to left.

It is very unlucky.

I'm going this way for this one. Really?

Tonight I'm going to have an accident on my way back from

the restaurant, then I'll blame you, yeah? OK.

Nice.

Then we're going to put a bit of rhubarb.

Just in the gaps, yeah?

The colour is beautiful.

It's lovely.

Lovely shocking pink.

Very Versace, this is.

Ladle the custard gently over.

You always go from underneath,

you better keep some to put round the top.

Put the bread on.

Rhubarb, baby.

Yeah, we got enough?

You say it wasn't possible, but it's pretty easy, this dish.

It's a lovely dish. So much stuff to throw away.

Hang on. You made me do too much bread.

Didn't do too much bread.

Just a million pounds... Millionaire.

Nice big chunky bits on it.

Down the sides.

Oh, look at that.

Come on, we're suppose to be a marriage,

partners like egg and bacon.

You slag me off all the time,

then when it's your turn I have to be nice to you.

I have enough of this.

Oven?

I open the oven. Do the honours.

You don't cook it in...?

No, that's a bit restauranty. This is straight into the oven.

Just give it roughly an hour.

But we can keep checking it.

Wait now? Yeah.

You're on the spoon, I'll be on the tea towel.

I'll do this for you.

Give me the spoon.

Look. Whoa!

Robbie Williams does it with the microphone.

I got, "Eh, I can cook something for you."

Have you seen that?

Robin Williams.

Robbie.

Look.

See, I get too excited and...

Yeah.

Do you like it? Yeah.

That looks good. It would look better if you kept the crust on.

No, listen, I did what you told me.

And now because you don't like it, you're telling me...

I love it, it's beautiful. But it could have been better.

The colour is very, very beautiful.

You want to try it? Hang on.

Remember when I said we save a little bit of the custard?

I saved it for you.

Got big lumps in it.

Don't be so stupid, there's no lumps in that.

What's that, then?

The scrambled egg?

That's what we call a scrambled anglaise.

It's not scrambled.

I'm just joking.

I've got to have a good sense of humour, I work with you.

I come to this country because they say,

"Go to England because they got very good humour."

Very good humour. Then you get touchy about

little bit of scrambled egg. Just eat it, will you?

Crust or no crust, it's delicious.

Is it...? NO!

Thanks, fellas.

Next up, Valentine Warner is using raspberries in a double R delight -

raspberry ripple ice cream.

Finally, the ultimate supper sweet to keep you cool

is my raspberry ripple ice cream.

Heat cream, milk and fresh vanilla in a pan.

As soon as it starts to boil, remove from the heat.

Whisk together egg yolks and caster sugar.

Add your cream and milk mixture

and then return to a low heat.

Stir the mixture constantly for around 20 minutes until thickened.

Leave to cool.

Now for the raspberry ripple.

Add raspberries, sugar and water and simmer vigorously until

the fruit has totally collapsed.

Then sieve into a pan and return the juice to the heat and reduce.

Pour your cooled creamy mixture into an ice cream machine

and churn until very thick and smooth.

If you don't have a machine, put the mixture in the freezer

and thoroughly mash with a fork every couple of hours until almost solid.

Scoop out the ice cream, add the raspberry sauce

and swirl to get the ripple effect, then freeze until solid.

Ice cream is summer.

Yum.

Now, we began the show with R for rice

and we're ending it with R for rice.

And here is one of my favourite Rs - Raymond Blanc,

with an amazing-looking take on a good old rice pudding.

In Raymond's Oxfordshire kitchen,

he's preparing the ingredients for his first recipe.

A French classic and childhood favourite -

riz au lait.

This creamy vanilla rice pudding is hidden under a crunchy topping

complemented by a tangy sweet berry compote.

Rice pudding.

It encourages all sorts of wonderful children memories.

I love this dish because it's homely.

It's yummy, it's delicious.

It's a relatively simple dish as well.

But Raymond's not the only chef taken back to his childhood

by this classic dessert.

M. Benoit is the one of the great patissiers in this country.

15 years we've battled.

He claims that his mother makes the best riz au lait.

I claim that Mama Blanc does the best riz au lait.

Since there is a battle of the riz au lait,

it must be once and for all concluded. Shall we?

I know the winner already.

See you later. See you later.

With the gauntlet thrown down,

the first thing Raymond needs to do is cook the rice.

First thing I'm going to do is to add sugar.

Everything together.

The rice.

The milk.

There's 1.7 litre of milk.

Whole milk. Of course you can do it with thin milk or whatever.

You can also do it with water.

But it's not quite the same, so I use whole milk.

It will absorb ten times its own weight.

Gorging itself with that milk.

Fantastic.

To create that fluffy, delicious experience.

Raymond's method is simple.

He just stirs the rice occasionally during cooking.

But there is a more time-consuming method going on

in the other kitchen.

He stirs his completely.

All the time he has to stand by the stove for hours.

Mine is more simpler.

For his low-maintenance method,

Raymond adds a tablespoon of vanilla puree to the milk

and leaves it to simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Just don't have to...

Thank you very much.

We're going to warm it up.

A little bit of butter.

He dusts the butter dish with sugar

which will caramelise around the rice during cooking.

Should be not starchy but creamy.

We'll see how it comes out.

After half an hour

the fluffy milky rice is ready to go into the oven at 150 degrees.

I'll just hope for the best.

Another 30 minutes and Raymond's riz au lait is ready.

Rice pudding - Mama Blanc.

What you're going to do is to...

brulee. A bit of sugar, so to use a lovely caramel

because that's what I love the most.

Or you could do what my mum would do, use an iron. So appetising.

You can see all these wonderful bubbles here.

A champion - Mama Blanc.

A childhood favourite.

Comforting creamy rice topped with a sweet caramel crust

served with a tangy berry compote.

There we go. That looks lovely.

But does it taste lovely? We'll see.

If it's not as good as I like it to be,

it's because my mother didn't cook it, I did.

There we go.

Shall we try it?

The proof is in the pudding.

The rice pudding today.

You go ahead.

Wow.

You are my guest.

Lovely.

Take a little bit of a...

I think it's lovely as well. How much?

I'm going to give you 9.

I'll give you 9 too.

It's done.

But you have to come to my house one day and my mum will cook it for you.

And this one will be ten out of ten.

I hope you've enjoyed all of today's recipes.

A big thank you to all our chefs today,

and do make sure you join us for more next time.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd