Old School Classics The Best Dishes Ever

Today, our chefs are dusting down recipes

that are the staples of the great British diet.

These are dishes that seemed to have always been around

and will always be around.

They're comforting, they're traditional

and they're old-school classics.

And we start with one of Lorraine Pascale's favourites.

It's chilli con carne.

Back in the '70s, it sat happily on most menus alongside prawn cocktail

and chicken chasseur, dishes that reflected our hunger for the exotic.

As our tastes became more sophisticated,

it meant goodbye, some might say good riddance, to old favourites.

And yet this dish has retained its popularity.

Which chillies do you use in your chilli con carne?

-Usually I go for this one, because I like it mild.

-Yeah?

-So you don't use scotch bonnet then?

-No, I go for the red chillies only.

-SHE LAUGHS

Chilli bubbles with our love of all things Americana

and we've even started to hold countrywide chilli cook-ups,

with rules specifying certain ingredients.

I say rip up the rule book!

-Thank you.

-Thank you very much.

Time to get cooking.

Start off with an onion.

Chop it up quite small.

Then I'll let those sweat down.

When the onions have sweated for a few minutes,

add one chopped clove of garlic...

..and a large bay leaf.

Some rosemary...

Such a great herb to grow, rosemary.

I'm not green-fingered at all.

But I can just about stretch to rosemary.

Now, chilli... This is where it could all go wrong.

So you get overzealous, put the whole chilli in

and then when you get to taste your dish, it's way too spicy.

So, the way around that is to taste the chilli before you put it in.

Not very hot. So I'll put the whole lot in.

Chillies are said to be an aphrodisiac.

So put in as much as you think you like.

I like my chilli spicy!

Depending on HOW hot you like it, top it up with some chilli powder

and then add about a teaspoon of ground cumin.

Layering up that flavour.

Mm, the cumin smells beautiful.

And of course, mince.

Put the whole lot in.

Browning the mince will give it a meatier flavour,

but be careful you don't overcook it.

Salt and pepper.

Chilli con carne is a great dish to make in a slow cooker, too.

You just pop it on before you go to work and come back,

and there's a lovely cooked chilli con carne, piping hot.

Now, I'm not going to add kidney beans,

as I prefer my chilli to be closer to the original Texan recipe.

However, I am putting in tomatoes,

which to some hard-core chilli-cooking kings is a no-no.

Now, I don't think tomatoes are as sweet as they could be.

I remember my dad growing them in the greenhouse and they used

to be so, so sweet.

So, if you fancy it, a little squidge of honey,

literally quarter of a teaspoon,

just to give the tomatoes a helping hand.

Finally, a good glug of red wine.

And then let that bubble away, to get nice and rich.

At its simplest, chilli con carne is an economic feast,

great for families and students

and indeed anyone watching their weekly food bill.

What I do to make this dish even more cost-effective is always

make more than I need.

It actually tastes better after a few days in the fridge.

The chilli is now ready

and I'm going to dish it up with some fluffy white rice.

Yummy.

Look at that.

Now, that's what you call a chilli.

I'm going to top it with coriander.

I know some people don't like coriander. I love it.

'And in fact, most of you do.

'It has recently overtaken parsley to become the nation's

'favourite herb, selling over 13 million bunches a year.'

And then I've got my salsa. I'll have a spoonful on the side, I think.

Time to eat.

I love the way we take a dish to our hearts,

customise it by adding or taking away ingredients

until we call the recipe our own.

This is a nice, smooth, gentle chilli taste on the tongue.

Memories are made by family members or friends

cooking dishes their own way.

It's how culinary traditions evolve.

Ah, thanks, Lorraine.

And now we have a great culinary tradition that is always evolving.

It's the Irish Stew.

And a classic dish deserves a classic clip,

so here's Keith Floyd getting to grips with one version

during a television tour of the West of Ireland.

I was relaxing with a glass of stout in the pub the other day

after a very hard day's filming.

We got to chatting and as usual, we started talking about food.

Not food in general, but Irish Stew in particular.

Do you know, in Ireland, it's difficult to find?

Sometimes in pubs at midday, you can get it in England.

It's often a disastrous mishmash of potatoes,

lamb and onions, boiled to death, tastes absolutely awful,

so I wanted to find out the secret of what I think to be

one of the finest dishes on earth.

So I came to my friend Myrtle Allen, who is indisputably

the Queen of Irish cooking, famous here at Ballymaloe,

famous in Beverly Hills, in Paris and throughout the land.

It's true isn't it, Myrtle? She's absolutely brilliant.

And she knows all about it.

But before we go into all of that, Richard, the usual business.

A spin around the ingredients.

The most important thing is a splendid shoulder of lamb,

traditionally butchered. More of that later.

Spring onions, new potatoes, not the flowers, OK?

Young baby carrots, a bit of fresh thyme, a bit of fresh, erm...

-I've forgotten the name of that, Myrtle. What's that?

-Marjoram.

Marjoram, a bit of fresh marjoram.

Then, I've butchered the chops over this way a bit, to take off all

the fat, because we need those to cook the chops in later

and that's where I cut my finger, ho, ho, ho!

So we've got nice... Down here again, Richard, thank you. Don't smirk.

We've got these nice cutlets to saute off later on,

bit of parsley to garnish it off with.

Over here, we're going to need some stock.

We use this piece of bone... Stay there, Richard...

..from the end of the lamb there... Pop that in.

The tops of the spring onions, a bit of thyme, parsley stalks,

economical use of parsley stalks, a few chopped carrots,

cover it with water...like that, and that put on to simmer to make our stock.

That's fine, there's another chop in the bottom.

Chops in the bottom is the first thing, isn't it?

As you can see, I've been frying them

in the sweated-down lamb dripping, and I'd like to eat a little piece of that.

-Myrtle, do you want a little bit?

-Yes.

-It's fabulous.

-Thank you.

-This will have the doctors up in arms, won't it?

-Mmm.

-Never mind about them.

Right, now, next thing's what? The onions and the carrots in there.

That's right.

Just give them a quick turn.

If it's a bit too slow, you may have to heat that fat again.

-And then our thyme...

-A little bit of thyme, that's enough.

-And let's put in that marjoram.

-Marjoram in there.

-That's enough.

My viewers have seen an Irish Stew made with whole potatoes.

They would tend to think of it as being sliced in there.

There are different ways of doing it.

Some people slice them, they say the potato thickens the gravy.

But I love them whole on top, they can brown, you know, in the oven.

Now you want to get this...

Have you got the lid, or something?

You need to strain it.

No, I'll do it... The trouble is, under pressure like this,

I sometimes I have to improvise, because once this goes in, I've had it.

So I'll strain it through like that.

-Now, it doesn't have to cover the potatoes, does it?

-No, no, it'll be fine.

Because with the lid on, they're going to sort of steam and glaze as they cook.

And by the way, you don't need to throw that away.

You could wait for that to be cold, chop it up into little bits, you could toss it with

-a bit of vinegar, or something, couldn't you?

-Well, you could...

-Or something.

-You wouldn't necessarily throw that away. What would you do with that?

-I'd give it to the dog, actually.

SHE LAUGHS

These people who live in castles!

THEY LAUGH

Anyway, that goes in the oven for, what? For how long now?

That goes in the oven...

At this time of the year when the lamb is young, I would say three-quarters to one hour.

And we'll go and do something really amusing until that's ready to eat.

-Fine.

-So let's wander off...

-Right.

..and he'll think of something to make us look really interesting while we're gone...

The Irish Stew - "in the name of the law". The producer made me say that -

turned out to be superb. But after simmering for an hour or so,

it's worth skimming the fat before serving.

There's no hard and fast recipe for this classic dish,

and Myrtle Allen sets greater store on the quality of ingredients,

rather than the variety of them.

If I had seen you a week ago, my butcher had brought me

in a sward of grass from the pasture that he likes to fatten his beef on.

And it contained so many little flowers, the clovers,

the red and white.

Many, many grasses and plants.

He won't give his cattle, for instance, silage.

He looks for a sweet hay with plenty of meadow grass in it,

which of course, is very uneconomical for farmers to grow.

So we still have these people in the country.

And they need to be encouraged.

Is there any other place in the world

and you'd rather be than here in Ballymaloe?

Well, I haven't had a chance to try. You see, I've been here a long time,

since I was 19! And, um...

Maybe there would be... You know, I wouldn't mind the Pacific,

but I've a feeling it's not what it used to be.

THEY LAUGH

Next, we've got a recipe for meatloaf.

It's called haslet in some parts of the country.

It originated in Europe centuries ago and is very popular in America,

which is why this version comes from Nancy, an American lady

who moved here years ago and ended up cooking for the Hairy Bikers.

-Nice to meet you. Welcome to the cottage.

-Hello, love, how are you?

-Nice to see you.

-I'm fine, thank you.

Nancy moved over from the US 16 years ago, after meeting husband Nick,

who was there in the Navy.

They now live just outside Hove, with their daughter Toni.

Today, cousin Megan is also over for some good ole home cookin'.

In America, like here, there is a deep root in homespun cooking

-and home values, isn't there?

-There very definitely is.

I think it's like here, everybody got away from it

and they went to junk food and they went to fast food,

because we have more so we can drive through for dry cleaning, banking and food.

Yeah.

And it's very hard to tell people

you can take that five minutes and make something really nice.

-That homespun cooking, is that where your influence came from, or not?

-Oh, definitely.

Unfortunately for my mum, she, bless her heart,

wasn't the world's best cook.

-Wasn't she?

-No, no. Bless her! Yeah.

If it cooked, it bounced.

THEY LAUGH

So... Which is why the recipe for meatloaf is called

-Mum's Hockey Puck.

-Ah!

-Just like a hockey puck?

-Yeah.

This is my mum's potato salad, which is what I'll do today, too,

but there's a little bit of a twist on that one.

-Oh, brilliant!

-Well, I'm looking forward very much to this.

-Yeah, so am I. Shall we...? Should we...?

-Yes, we should. Of course we should.

Here goes then! Nancy's Mum's Hockey Puck Meatloaf!

We start with mince.

And then to that, we're going to add one egg.

And we add some Worcester sauce to it.

Worcester sauce works great with mince, doesn't it?

If you're making a cottage pie, a chilli or a meatloaf.

-Yeah, it gives it that bit of zing to it.

-Yes.

And then what we're going to do is add some brown sauce.

-Whoa, my girl! Brown sauce!

-Yes.

-I love brown sauce.

And then we add some ketchup.

-Good wodge of ketchup.

-Yum.

-Ohhh!

-OK.

And then we've got... Well, I've got fresh parsley and oregano.

So it's just...

Probably about a tablespoon of each.

-Now, you say or-AY-ganno, we say orri-GAH-no...

-I know.

BOTH: Let's call the whole thing off!

OK, now all we need to do is add some onion and breadcrumbs.

So one of you's doing onion and one of you's doing breadcrumb.

-Right, I'll do the onion.

-And I'll do the breadcrumbs.

-There you go.

Like many American recipes, this dish combines the convenience

of ready-made condiments with fresh meat and herbs.

So it's quick and easy, yet still satisfying.

-Then what we'll do is add some Parmesan cheese.

-Ahhh!

-I know, it's a chocolate grater.

-SHE LAUGHS

-Aw!

-But it gives... It's the little bits I want.

-That dinky thing.

That is the poorest excuse I have ever seen for a grater!

NANCY LAUGHS

-You can't do that!

-It's got a big brother! It's in the cupboard.

OK, so, usually, it's probably about a tablespoon to two tablespoons.

And then what we'll do is mix it a little bit

and then add the breadcrumb as we need it, because eventually,

what it's got to do is just pull away from the bowl, so it's like one big meatball.

Meatloaf isn't what he used to be, is he?

Oh, he's never been the same since he's been on the diet!

You look at him now, he's like a deflated balloon.

He used to be a man with presence.

-I suppose you've got to be careful with salt on this...

-Yeah.

..because you've got ketchup and Parmesan. You've got to be careful. If you salt it now...

-That's it. And you've got the Worcester sauce, so there's a lot of salt in there.

-Yes.

So I usually don't add any more to it.

-Do you want the breadcrumbs in there now?

-I want some breadcrumbs in.

-Tell us when.

-Yep, just pour a little bit in the centre.

-Do you just do this by eye, Nancy?

-Yeah. That's fine, honey.

Yeah, it's been... Well, I've been making it 30-some years, so after

a while, I stopped with the measurements.

And once it's away from the bowl,

it goes in the pot and then in the oven, about 180, for about an hour.

Right. Just punch it down.

And that's us done.

But it would be positively un-American to have meatloaf

without potato salad.

So, like a bat out of hell, I get on with the potatoes.

Nancy prefers waxy red ones, as they hold their shape better.

-He used to be a chiropodist, you know.

-Ah! That's why.

-Fabulous with corns.

-Yeah...

-And better with potatoes there.

-Mm-hm.

Excellent.

Once the potatoes have boiled, they need to cool down a bit.

That gives us time to get on with the dressing.

So what we're going to do in here is put a teaspoon of sugar

and then we put a little bit of vinegar...

That's not fancy vinegar, just plain malt.

Yep, it's just plain malt vinegar.

And then, American mustard.

Big squeeze of that...

-Not as good as English mustard.

-No, it is!

It's my mustard.

Then what we're going to do is take a little bit, oops, of milk

and add that to it because what the milk will do is,

it acts as a coating with it.

-Is that all the milk you put in?

-Just a little bit.

-Oh, wow.

It will loosen the mayonnaise, won't it?

You can open the pickles for me, please.

Come on, Muscles Malone!

-There you go.

-I need a lie down now.

-OK.

The what we're going to do is just a tiny little bit into here.

So then you're going to mix this up

and then you just pour it over the potatoes to coat them.

-Oh, OK.

-Then, if you want, you can coat the potatoes in it.

-Yes.

All you're going to do is just add mayonnaise

and it's just basically how much you like mayonnaise.

If you like a lot, do a lot. If you don't, don't.

So, start out with about three big spoonfuls, then just stir it.

-It's good recipe, this. Nice.

-Then that should do it.

It just goes in the fridge to set up and it's all done.

The meatloaf's ready.

Hopefully Nancy's won't bounce like her mum's.

And served up with a potato salad and some dill pickles,

we've got an all-American tea.

Teatime, American-style.

-It's a nice consistency, isn't it?

-Yes.

-It's lovely.

-It hasn't bounced!

It tastes nice and moist as well.

-It's not all dry and doesn't clog your mouth up.

-Oh, lovely.

There's green salad if anybody wants any.

No. That would be wrong!

That's fab!

I'm liking it!

Megan, would you ever cook this, or would you learn to cook it?

I would, yeah.

It's really tasty, yummy. It's easy to cook for us lot as well.

See, that's the nice thing.

Recipes like this, they're going to carry on,

they're going to go on down through the family.

Thanks to Nancy for that.

Now, how about this for getting back to basics? This is a bacon butty.

Yes, I know, it's just a sandwich

and even though you might think you don't need showing

how to make this,

let James Martin's enthusiasm persuade you otherwise.

I can't wait to show you

a bacon butty made exactly the same way my granny used to do them.

Bread, bacon and tomatoes in perfect harmony.

Nothing cheers me up quite like it.

I can't quite believe this is the first time I've made it on telly.

It's one of my favourite things to eat and it's so simple.

Now, anybody that knows me knows that I like my butter.

This is where it all began with a proper bacon sandwich.

This was something that I used to have honestly

when I used to go round to my Gran's and you used to have to order it

because it used to take about 10 minutes to make

and then halfway through making, you'd order another one

because you'd eat that one straightaway.

It used to taste amazing because she used to use proper bacon.

What I mean by proper bacon is this stuff. It's dry cured back bacon.

I pretty much dry fry the bacon for this

so it gets all crispy with only a smear of butter.

Not only was my grandma a brilliant cook,

she used most of the stuff from my grandad's allotment.

He always used to have brilliant tomatoes.

And proper tomatoes like this before they were fancy.

None of that grow on the vine sort of stuff.

That's the reason why I actually built a greenhouse

at the bottom of the garden

because I want to replicate the smell of what it was like

as a kid walking into the greenhouse with it literally full of tomatoes.

Fry the tomatoes in the same pan so the flavours of the bacon

and tomato mix in together.

Even when I was a young kid, I used to stand on the stool

and watch my grandma put in the tomatoes.

This is also the health kick part of this.

Because the real hard-core stuff is in here.

You take the softened butter like this and you butter the bread

so much that it almost comes through to the other side.

There are few things more enjoyable than a bacon sandwich.

Too many chefs ponce around doing ciabattas and pugliese

and all these different sorts of stuff. White sliced bread.

When you eat this, you should feel as if you're about to go to heaven.

A real good bacon sandwich should fill you up for the entire day

and then this is what all bacon sandwiches need.

It's the press.

Mmm. Wait for it...

That's what were talking about.

You should actually feel as if you're getting better

and more ill at the same time.

It's a unique combination.

No matter how many times I do this, I swear,

I cannot get it as good as my granny used to do. I'll keep trying.

Keep getting bigger as I'm trying but I'll keep trying.

This bacon butty is like a time warp back to the '70s.

I reckon you just can't beat a meal with a past.

We end on a dessert and this is definitely

one of the best dishes ever and totally British to boot.

So, let's head to the Bake Off tent for Mary Berry's

masterclass in how to make treacle tart.

Oh, I can't wait!

I chose treacle tart because it's pretty tricky to make

but it's an absolute British classic.

First off, put a heavy baking sheet in a preheated oven at 200 degrees.

180 fan.

When you come to bake the tart,

this will bake the pastry base perfectly.

With cake tins at home, you forget the exact size so I always,

with a waterproof pen, write "seven inches, 18 centimetres"

-and you know exactly where you are.

-Is that seriously what you do?

-You go around your whole kitchen?

-All my cake tins.

Next time I'm round at yours, I'm going to check all your tins

to make sure you've got the numbers at the bottom.

But it does help. So, there it is, ready for action.

-We've got to make the pastry first. So, 250 grams of plain flour.

-250.

130 grams of butter.

Then just process that until it becomes like breadcrumbs.

Then I'm going to add just over three tablespoonfuls of water.

That, I find, is just about right. And off we go.

That's it. I'm going to gather those bits up by hand.

I like doing it by hand, the whole thing,

because I feel more in control.

I feel very in control of this

and I can nip and do other things at the same time.

I know by the sound when it's done.

You're a professional baker

and I'm a home cook so I'm just going to knead that first of all.

Can I feel that? It's still quite short, isn't it?

That's what I want.

I want it short but I don't want it to all break apart

when I roll it out.

So that has come together very nicely

and I'm just going to chill that. It'll be easier to handle.

Chill in the fridge for 20 minutes to relax the pastry.

Now I'm going to take off 150g of that for the lattice.

Put that to one side. Flour the board and then roll it out.

And I want it to be nice and thin. We do not want a soggy bottom.

No, absolutely not.

So, the aim is to keep it fairly round and keep freeing it.

Still, I want that thinner.

There, so, I've got my tin here.

Take that base and slip that underneath there

to the middle and then fold the sides in, so all the way around

and it's very easy to transport it into the middle here.

Then just flick the sides over.

I'm just going to push that in all the way around.

First of all with my finger like that, pressing it in.

Then take a little lump of pastry and you press that in.

Keep flouring it like that all the way around

so you get the indentations of the tin.

That's it. I'm ready to roll out the lattice.

Roll out the set-aside pastry for the lattice

so that it is very thin and big enough to fit over the tart.

Place on clingfilm and leave in the fridge to chill,

which will make it easier to cut into strips later.

Then we'll get on to the filling.

It's about six slices here of white bread. It's a day old.

You can always use the crusts to make breadcrumbs of them

and use them perhaps for cauliflower cheese or something of that.

-That's perfect.

-Lovely and fine.

If you use one or two-day old bread, you'll be able to get it fine.

If you use really fresh bread, you can't really get it fine.

For the filling, measure out 400g of golden syrup

into a pan and put on a gentle heat.

Add the zest and juice of two lemons and fully mix in your breadcrumbs.

Prick the thin pastry base with a fork

so that it doesn't rise during breaking

and pour the smooth treacle filling into the lined pastry case.

If the mixture looks runny, add a few more breadcrumbs

until you have a thick, smooth mixture.

To make the perfect lattice,

remove the chilled rolled-out pastry from the fridge and egg wash.

I'm going to glaze this now,

rather than try to do it on the actual tart.

That's a nice tip because it just stops it going

-straight into the treacle, doesn't it?

-It does.

Then wet all the way round the edge there.

That's really for the lattice to stick.

I'm not letting it drip down the sides because I know

there's a bit of pastry left that some little person

will be making jam tarts.

So, I'm going to cut those strips and you can make them

as thin or as wide as you like, but I like them fairly thin.

You need ten. Five across one way and five across the other way.

Carefully line the vertical strips across the tart

and weave the horizontal strips through them.

I'm quite nervous with having you looking over the side of me.

Make sure the strips are longer than the tart tin so that they hang

over the edge, preventing any shrinkage during baking.

We want these strips to stick to the pastry and I'm just going to

press down gently and let the actual tart tin do the cutting.

Just go round, pushing it down and I know that all those

pieces of lattice are sticking to the actual pastry underneath,

so you can gather all those together into a ball

and use them later. There we are.

Bake in the preheated oven on the hot baking tray for about 10 minutes

until the pastry has started to colour.

Then reduce the oven temperature to 180, 160 fan,

until the pastry is golden and the filling is set.

I think your lattice work was probably the neatest one I've seen,

certainly out of all the bakers that did it.

Do you think I might have won?

Maybe through to the next round.

-Number one?

-Maybe.

Your treacle tart is perfectly baked when it is a rich golden colour

and the filling is set, not wobbling inside.

Allow to cool a little so that the pastry edges shrink

away from the sides so you can lift it out of its case cleanly.

Slide the tart off the base of the tin on to your plate

and serve warm with a little cream or custard.

Let's have a look at the bottom. How's that?

No soggy bottom there, Mary.

That's because we put it on a very, very hot baking sheet

and we haven't baked it blind and it's got wafer-thin pastry.

That's it.

Now that, as you can see, looks lovely and soft in the middle.

It looks so good. That pastry is wafer-thin.

That's lovely. It's light. Beautiful lemons coming through.

And the good thing about this treacle tart

is that you can make it ahead.

Just serve it warm and it will keep too,

so you don't have to eat it all on one day.

-Though, perhaps we might.

-A true classic.

Thanks to Mary, Paul and all our chefs

because we've reached the end of today's show,

but there's plenty more where they came from,

so do join me again on the Best Dishes Ever.

Bye-bye for now.