Winter Warmers The Best Dishes Ever

Today, our line-up of top chefs are looking at classic, comforting food

for those days when a salad just won't do.

You need something hot and nourishing.

We're talking about dishes that are real winter warmers,

but work equally well in spring, autumn or even in the summer.

So get ready for Keith Floyd's beautiful beef Provencal...

You'll probably need half a bottle to go into the dish itself

and you're going to need half a bottle to go into yourself.

..Rachel Khoo's chicken dumpling soup, and the Hairy Bikers

work their magic on a good old-fashioned apple pie.

A bit of care and a bit of love,

you've turned this into something really quite special.

-Yeah.

-Put that in the middle of the table after dinner

and people are going to go, "Wow!"

We're starting with something a bit surprising.

After all, do you really need a television chef to show you

how to make a jacket potato?

Well, watch this and enjoy.

Because James Martin is taking the students' favourite

and giving it his own special treatment.

'For me, there's nothing quite like cooking outdoors

'over an open flame in the winter months.

'It's one of the most rewarding ways to cook at home.

'And I've got just the recipe for a chilly day like this.'

You can't beat a jacket potato for a nice winter-warming dish.

I love to cook mine with bacon, Taleggio cheese and leeks.

But to make it really special, I'm going to tray-bake it

in my wood-fired oven.

For a cold winter's day, there's nothing better.

First thing we're going to do is get our potatoes on.

And to do that, you need some decent salt.

And I actually use sea salt for this, rather than table salt.

And just put little piles in there.

As you actually cook the potatoes, this dries out the skin,

so they become nice and crisp.

Put a bit of oil on the potatoes.

Like that. And then what you need to do is just prick them with a fork.

Just over the top.

In the oven, I've set the oven to about 200 degrees centigrade.

I've got some already in here.

And these want to cook for about an hour, really.

And then we turn our attention to the sauce.

'Dice one shallot and slice a clove of garlic,

'then sweat them down in a frying pan.'

Starting off with a little bit of butter, of course, as always.

'Next, chop up two leeks.

'I like to use all of them, including the green part.'

So we're going to throw our leeks in here.

'Pop them in the pan and pour over a generous amount of white wine.'

And of course, just like the legend, Mr Floyd,

you've got to have a glass while you're cooking, haven't you, really?

'At this point, the sauce gives me some great cooking options.

'I could blend it into a soup,

'serve it as a side dish with some brioche,

'or add sweetcorn and use it as a sauce with roast chicken.'

And then we need some liquid in here.

And that comes in the form of double cream.

Now, the key to this, I think, is not to overcook it.

I do find leeks, if they're overcooked,

they go horrible and grey.

And you lose the great flavour of leeks, I think.

So just be careful when you do it like this not to overcook it.

So a good amount of seasoning. Some salt.

And black pepper.

'Slice the spuds into quarters

'and lay them skin-side down in a baking tray.'

Just take the sauce

and just drizzle it over the top of the potatoes.

'Now I need to crisp up some bacon in the pan.

'It's the star of this dish, so I want quality stuff.'

And when you've got bacon this good - and this is dry-cured bacon -

you fry it in a dry pan

and the fat's going to come out of the bacon,

get it lovely and crisp.

For years, really, when I was training, when I had no money,

when my mother came to visit me, she would always bring down some

proper bread and some proper bacon

so I could at least have a proper breakfast.

This is Taleggio cheese. And it's got a lovely creamy flavour.

And it actually melts when it cooks.

It really is delicious and one that goes really well with bacon.

So what we're going to do with this is just chop it up.

And I kind of first came across this, really,

definitely not in a farmhouse in north Yorkshire -

I first came across this while working in London, this cheese.

And it was wrapped in a little bit of bacon and pan-fried

in a little brasserie that us chefs used to go to on our rare day off.

But it really was fantastic.

I kind of used it not just in the restaurants,

but at home, ever since, really.

And you just break it up...

and put it in there.

'When the bacon's ready, chop it up and add it to the tray.

'And don't waste the fat.'

If my granddad was alive, he'd take a piece of bread now

and just scrape this up.

And then what we do now is just pop it back in the oven.

But instead of using this, I'm going to use a proper oven.

Even at this cold time of year,

there's a chance to enjoy the outdoors.

This is the kind of dish you could cook in advance for

when your friends come over, and in a normal oven,

it takes ten minutes at 200 degrees centigrade to cook.

HE LAUGHS

It just...

It is a simple dish, but...

..it just tastes so good, with the baked potatoes especially

cos you get a mixture of, sort of, different textures.

You get the fluffiness of the inside,

and the crispness of the potato skins, as well.

That Taleggio cheese, if you can buy it...

try it.

Hey! Thank you, James. Next up, a classic dish from France.

Beef Provencal -

a deliciously rich stew with red wine and vegetable.

It was a favourite of one of the true greats of television cookery,

Keith Floyd, who would invade people's kitchens

when he was filming, but then always rewarded them

with a meal at the end of it, like only Keith could.

I'm bored to death with fish,

and I want to get back to a bit of simple peasant cooking,

and some red meat! And for those of you who are vegetarians,

switch off because this programme is really going to upset you.

Richard, who is our cameraman here, come down,

look at the ingredients, and I'm going to show you what it all is.

This is some lovely fatty and grisly shin of beef.

It's important that it's shin because the veins and the gristle

make it a very unctuous flavour when it's finally cooked.

I've picked in some little holes

and stuffed in some garlic into all of them.

That's an important thing to do. Over we go, Richard.

Little shallots, beautifully peeled.

Fresh garlic.

Orange peel.

An onion stuffed with cloves.

Can you see that all right?

Just three cloves in an onion like that.

Some very fresh herbs. Rosemary, a dried bay leaf -

that's not a fresh herb -

fresh thyme, and fresh parsley.

Some chopped-up tomato.

OK? Some fatty pork or bacon.

And some bacon without any fat on it.

And a bowl of mushrooms.

But because this is a Floyd programme,

and we always cook in lemonade, as you know, one of the most

essential things is going to be a bottle of good, strong red wine.

You'll probably need half a bottle to go into the dish itself,

and you'll need half a bottle to go into yourself to make things

really cheerful.

So, with a little olive oil, and our lean and our fat bacon,

we get the pan up to frying speed. Highly humorous, isn't it?

Frying speed.

And whack it, now that it's golden brown,

leaving the fat behind, into our "marmite", which is

this lovely earthenware pot, from which slow-cooking beef

really benefits from being popped into that kind of thing.

But if you have to use aluminium or tin, it doesn't really matter.

Then, into the fat, we put our pieces of beef,

which you'll remember I stuffed little cubes of garlic into.

This is the importance of frying speed, you see,

because it quickly browns the meat.

-LOUD SIZZLING

-And a little tip here.

We're going to put a little salt on, but you never put salt on...

Isn't this cracking noise loud? Funny, isn't it?

It's real cooking, you see.

You never put salt on meat until it has been sealed.

Otherwise it lets out all the good flavours.

Salt on like that.

Black pepper. Like that. Really hard grind.

That's obviously got to cook for a moment or two.

I'll have a quick slurp.

And then...

Come back, Richard, you're too far away, please.

Come back. We've got that nicely sealed and browned.

And it goes straight in. This is quite difficult.

Can you get into this pot?

We lift it into the bacon, which is already there.

One...

There's a piece per person here, by the way.

One piece per person.

"Give them plenty," my old sergeant major used to say.

One per man per day. There we are.

There's the first part of our daube.

Now we add the rest of the ingredients.

Richard, you'll have to follow me back

because all these other things now have to go in.

And the first thing is a trig's potter, OK?

Pig's potter.

A little land mine. No, a sea mine. An onion with its cloves.

The four or five pieces of orange peel.

A plate full of little shallots.

Or small pickling onions if you haven't shallots.

Some of these mushrooms.

Like that. OK.

Then one sprig of rosemary will go in.

This is looking rather pretty, actually. A bay leaf has gone in.

A spriglet of thyme. Don't overdo the herbs.

And a little packet, as we say in French, of parsley.

Cover the lot with the tomatoes like that. I'll just lift that to you.

Looks rather attractive, looks like the front

of an Elizabeth David book. Actually, I shouldn't insult her

like that. She's one of the finest cooks there ever was.

And, then...

in with our...

lovely bottle...

..of wine.

All you now have to do is put the lid of that onto that,

and into the oven.

So, while my vegetarian cameraman takes a big, deep breath,

turn to page six of the Radio Times,

and scratch and sniff the sachet, OK, for the Floyd daube.

Doesn't that look wonderful? Wonderful.

Anyway, you've seen that, haven't you?

I want to introduce you to our hostess today, who's Trish.

She made the fatal mistake - and she'll never do it again,

I'm sure you won't - of saying, "You can use my kitchen any time,

"do you know what I mean?" And we did. And we've wrecked the day.

But thanks a million for that, Trish. Here's to you.

Thank you very much.

Now, what I'd like you to do,

and I'm not going to pinch you or anything like that, is to... Ow!

That's hot.

Is to taste this and tell me honestly...

We always say this, then edit it out afterwards if you don't agree.

Have a go at this very simple, humble Provencal beef daube.

There's a little bit for you.

Have a tuck into that, see what you think.

And I'm going to help myself.

By the way, Richard, come back to my plate so we don't embarrass Trish.

She's not used to eating in front of a load of people like that.

And this isn't a thickened sauce.

You can see it's deliberately thin.

But it has all the flavours of wine and beef.

And the pig's trotter and all those excellent

-things. How's it tasting?

-Good.

It's all right, is it? Let me have a go.

Oh, it is good, isn't it? Anyway, we've got to go now

because the producer's getting into a bit of a flap.

There you are. Cheerio, see you next time.

Oh, wonderful stuff. Wonderful.

Now, our next recipe ticks every box

as far as warming comfort food is concerned.

I love chicken, but I'm also very fond of dumplings.

Put them together in a soup like Rachel Khoo does here

and you've won me over. Completely.

This city is overflowing with food.

But it's also crammed with people.

Four times as many per square kilometre than in London.

No wonder so many of us live in tiny flats.

So I've had to change the way I cook because of my petite kitchen.

No space. I just go "Whaaaaaa!"

My tiny oven...

tries to limit my ambitions.

It's not very big, but I can fit a mini chicken in here.

I've learnt to simplify the cooking process without skimping on taste.

But even in this tiny kitchen,

I can still make a dish that has very special memories for me.

When I first moved to Paris, I didn't know anybody.

And sometimes I felt a bit lonely, and I'd want something comforting,

and I would make this chicken dumpling soup,

like my grandma in Austria used to make for me when I was little.

I'm going to start off with my chicken stock.

I'm using home-made,

but you can always use a good-quality stock cube.

Just don't tell the Parisians.

That goes on there.

And I'm going to peel two carrots.

While my carrots flavour the stock,

it's on to the dumplings.

I'm using a traditional French shape for dumplings,

which they call "quenelle."

You need five slices of white bread.

Cut the crust off cos they don't taste nice in your dumplings.

If you really wanted to, you could use...

wholewheat bread.

But I wouldn't, actually,

because what's nice about this recipe, by using white bread,

is your dumplings are really light.

Add your bread to a blender, along with 200g of chicken breast...

..one whole egg and one egg yolk.

100ml of single cream.

Nutmeg for seasoning.

This is real home cooking.

I mean, you're very unlikely to see quenelle in a restaurant.

And if they do quenelle, they tend to be baked

and quite heavy with a rich kind of white sauce.

Whereas this is actually quite light

cos you're having it in a soup.

It feels really nourishing.

It's kind of one of these dishes,

if you're feeling poorly, you'd have this.

Add some salt.

Good two pinches.

Black pepper.

And then I'm going to plug this in.

If I can find my plug.

I've, like, only got one socket in this apartment. He-hey!

Right.

You want to blend it until it's a paste.

Perfect!

While that's coming to the boil, I'm going to chop up my mushrooms.

All right, that has come to a boil. I'm going to turn it down.

To make a quenelle, you have a spoon and then you just rock it back

and forth. Like that.

Just get a nice shape.

You don't have to make perfect dumplings.

This is just a good way of portioning it cos you want them

roughly the same size, so they cook evenly.

Drop your dumplings into the soup.

They should be ready in less than five minutes.

A minute before they're finished, you can throw in the mushrooms.

I like my mushrooms when they still have a bit of a bite to them.

All you need now is some chopped parsley.

The dumplings have risen to the top, so you know they're cooked.

They're kind of trying to come out.

Crazy.

And that is ready to eat.

You could serve these quenelles on their own with a bechamel

sauce or, like the French, with a tomato sauce.

Mm! I love the smell of this.

Reminds me of my early days in Paris.

When I was all on my own!

And had no friends!

Apart from French guys who were trying to chat me up.

Garnish with a bit of parsley on top.

Steaming bowl of chicken dumpling soup.

Homage to my grandma.

This is my light take on the classic quenelle of the Lyon-Alpes region

and I love it.

OK. Now, we've had three delicious main courses.

Now, it's dessert time.

And what could be more traditional than a piping hot,

bursting-with-fruity-flavours, good old-fashioned apple pie?

The Hairy Bikers think they've got the perfect pie recipe here

and they're getting pretty patriotic about it.

Some people - not all,

but some people - mistakenly think that the apple pie is American.

Well, it's not!

They even say, "Oh, it's as American as apple pie!"

Well, we were making apple pies in this

-country before Christopher Columbus even learned to paddle.

-Exactly!

So, we're here to claim it back from the Americans

because they don't own it! We do!

And this is our homage to the Great British apple pie.

-Now, as two cooks, we've been making apple pies for many years now.

-Many.

-We've cooked apple pie on telly before.

-Yes.

But we've refined the recipe.

There's a few little tricks and cheats in this.

And we call this the perfect apple pie.

We've got lemon zest in the pastry. It just gives it that edge.

And we put corn flour in the apple mix, so it doesn't go soggy.

We've balanced the cinnamon and sugar perfectly,

so that apple pie will appeal to every single person on the planet.

We know because we've worked at it.

This still is a homage to the Bramley and Bramley is British!

Bur-ruh-i-tuh-i-huh-suh. Suh-huh!

All good pies start with a brilliant crust.

Now, look, I'm going to get on with these apples, right?

I'll not be a minute. Give us another one, mate.

The Bramley apple, it's British,

and it was thought to have been first started by a lady

called Mary Anne Brailsford, who planted an obscure pip in her

garden in around 1810 in Nottinghamshire.

And from that tree, which still exists today, the Bramley was born.

To start our pie, put 400 grams of plain flour in a bowl,

together with the finely grated zest of one lemon.

Meanwhile, mix two tablespoons of corn flour with one teaspoon

of ground cinnamon and 150 grams of caster sugar in another bowl.

And now, I'm going to peel my apples.

Over to Mr Myers at the bakery section.

So in my bowl now, I've got the finely grated zest of one lemon

and the plain flour.

To this, add two tablespoons of caster sugar and a whole -

and I mean a whole - pack of cold butter,

which will need to be cut into cubes.

It's lovely, it's a very short pastry, this. Short means crumbly.

Crumbly means buttery.

Buttery means - Mm! This is a good apple pie!

And do you know?

The Bramley apple is thought to be

the best culinary apple in the world.

-It's cheap and it's massive, isn't it?

-It is. It's brilliant.

The only thing to watch out for with Bramleys is that they hold

quite a lot of moisture, which is

why, you see, we've done the corn flour,

so if it does leak a lot of juice, you've got it

and it just becomes this lovely appley sweet gravy.

Ooh!

Moving on with the pastry, gently rub your butter into the sugar,

flour and zest mix until it resembles breadcrumbs.

The lemon zest is just hitting my nose nicely.

Ah! Now, what I'm going to do is quarter the Bramleys.

Core them.

Slice them thin. Simple.

Now, in here, I've got two tablespoons of water and one

egg and we use this as a liquid, so I'm just going to put this in.

And be careful, cos I don't want to overdo it. Can always add more.

It's not going to take much liquid to form this in to pastry.

Right, so there's your pastry.

Now, I want to take two-thirds for the base and a third for the top.

There you go. Make a ball. Don't handle it too much.

She's there, but she's very, very delicate.

Wrap this in clingfilm.

And pop this in the fridge.

It really would be a bit of a devil to roll out now.

Now, there's a couple of top tips for handling apples.

To stop them going brown, put them in some water with some lemon

juice, and that will stop the discolouration of the apples. So...

But because we're doing it pretty quick and we're going to coat

them in that lovely sugary cinnamon coating, we should be all right.

But don't leave them for half an hour and expect them

to be the same colour.

Cos they won't.

We're slicing these apples and they're raw

and they're going to go straight in to the pie.

Don't be tempted to stew your fruit first.

Get it in to the pie and get it in raw,

so all of those lovely flavours

are concealed in the beautiful

blanket of pastry that Mr Myers

is doing so well.

I'm greasing up my dish.

Next, flour and roll out the chilled pastry on to a floured surface,

until it is about the thickness of a £1 coin,

and 5-7cm larger than the pie dish.

The world of the pie is fantastic.

And nobody makes a pie like the British.

In fact, our pies are perfect.

Well, I think it's a deep ingrained tradition of making them

over centuries. We're good at it.

What started out as like a coffer in which to carry the meat -

it was just used flour and water as a case,

it was like a ready made pressure cooker...

-For me, the pastry is as important as the pie.

-Absolutely.

And you'll see when we cut into this,

it's just so wonderfully crumbly and gorgeous.

Now, to get this on to there, just dust this with flour,

so it doesn't stick to your pin, put it like that, roll it up,

put on there like so.

And line your tin.

If it's an all-butter pastry like this, a sweet pastry,

do chill it because it makes handling it so much easier.

Mr King, over to thee. I'll roll out the lid.

Lovely. We're going to look like it's slightly overfilled,

but it's not because, as those apples cook,

they're going to fall away and fall down and lose some of their volume.

So we need to make sure that it's

as good and as packed as it can be.

Place the 600 grams of beautifully coated sliced

apples into the pie casing.

Brush the rim of the pastry with beaten egg before putting the neatly

rolled pie lid on top and pressing the edges firmly together to seal.

Look at that, eh?

I remember my mother used to do this, yeah?

-She'd take the pie and there was this action, weren't there?

-Yes.

-Eh?

-I love this.

Now, I'm going to make leaves out of these off-cuts,

whilst Kingy shows you how to do a crimp.

-Over to you, maestro.

-Right. What we do... Like that, OK?

And you go... Push, push, push, push...

While Si is crimping, I'm rolling out the rest of the pastry

and cutting out individual leaves.

Stick these on to the pie lid with a beaten egg.

# Pie in the sky, I wonder, wonder why... #

-Egg wash it.

-That's beautiful.

Nice and gently.

I think this is a prime example of...

It's a simple dish, it's cheap, this is going to give us

-ten good portions.

-Yeah.

-But a bit of care and a bit of love,

you've actually turned this into something really quite special.

-Yeah.

-You put that in the middle of the table after dinner

-and people are going to go, "Wow!"

-That's the thing, isn't it?

You know, because, it's like - oh, it's an apple pie,

so don't make the effort. Well, do!

Because if you do, it becomes something else then.

Pierce the top to let out the steam and sprinkle with caster sugar.

Right, that needs to go into a preheated oven, 180 degrees Celsius

for a fan oven, for 40-45 minutes, until baked to apple pie perfection.

Our pie's ready and it's looking outrageous!

-What do you reckon?

-Look at that.

-Should I?

-Yep!

You don't need a sharp knife with that pastry, do you?

-Straight through, mate. Beautiful.

-Straight through.

Now, remember, that's the crust that has the hint of lemon zest.

Oh!

-Cream, Kingy?

-Oh, please!

Thank you.

A marriage made in heaven.

Right.

-The texture of the pastry is gorgeous.

-Mm.

And pastry is about texture. But that little hint of lemon zest...

-Beautiful.

-It just gives it, like, a fragrant top note.

I think the balance of acidity and sweetness, as well, which is

what we spent a lot of time working on, is just superb.

Yes.

And this, in our opinion, is the perfect apple pie.

# Dream about a slice of apple pie... #

Served hot or cold, with cream or ice cream,

this pud truly is the apple of our eye.

A British favourite that hasn't changed over the years

and is still as popular today as it ever was.

# Apple pie in the sky. #

Thanks to the boys and to all our top chefs for their fantastic

additions to the Best Dishes Ever.

There's plenty more where they came from, so do join me again.

Until next time, take care, bye-bye.