Episode 15 The Box

Across the country, lots of us are working out what to cook tonight

from the ingredients in our cupboards.

To inspire you, we're throwing away the cookbooks

and going back to basics.

We're pitting three resourceful and creative home cooks

against one another to see what they can come up with.

Whoever does it best will be our cook of the day.

Ready to show they can think on their feet are today's three cooks.

IT manager Laura doesn't want to have another kitchen nightmare.

Last night, I had crazy dreams about cookery

and I can't remember them now, but they kept me awake a bit!

When it comes to cooking, Mary Bea likes to stick to her roots.

The only way I know how to cook

is Southern American cooking.

That's how I'm going to interpret whatever's in that box.

And arts graduate Alexander likes to cook with a gung ho attitude.

To be honest, I never really look at recipes.

I just do it off the top of my head.

Usually, it will be quite good.

Their first test will be to cook from a box of ingredients

put together by today's guest -

the spice man himself, top chef Tony Singh.

Tony, you're holding that like it's highly prized.

-James, of course it is, it's my special food.

-Good to see you.

Now, your family, they originally came to the UK just after the war?

Grandad came just after the war and great-grandad came after that as well.

-Settled in Scotland then?

-Settled in Scotland, God's country, in Edinburgh.

Scotland, great larder of ingredients to pick from as well.

I still think it's got the best of what the British Isle has to offer.

-Now, shall we have a look...

-Go on, then.

-..see what's inside?

-Wow.

-Different.

Wow, I mean, seriously different.

I mean, the first thing I looked to was the humble little langoustines.

Oh, lovely. Prawns, as we call them up the road.

There's a bit of influence from you here.

What are the spices in here?

-OK, we've got green cardamom and we've got black cardamom there...

-Right.

..which is smoky. It's very perfumey, but it adds a deep earthiness.

But there's a few dessert ones in there. What have we got? Some apples.

We've got apple, Braeburns and we've got Cox's there.

-Some puff pastries.

-Yeah.

-There could be a dessert there.

You've put two of your own home-made pickles and jams in here.

Yeah, so we've got the kimchi and I've got my chilli jam.

We've got three enthusiastic home cooks waiting in the wings.

I'm pretty sure they've never seen a few of these ingredients before.

-Shall we find out what they're going to cook?

-Yeah, definitely.

-I'll see you in a minute.

-All right, cheers.

Now, this is a real mixed box of ingredients.

These, to me, are the real prize ingredient, langoustines.

They've got to use these.

Welcome to The Box.

You are all smiling at this point,

because you're all enthusiastic home cooks.

You're all dressed for the part, anyway.

Now, you know the idea.

That boxful of ingredients has been picked by our special guest.

And they've not made it easy for you today.

THEY LAUGH

Seriously, you've got to think about this one.

Open your box, you've got 50 minutes to create one dish.

Best of luck.

Does anybody at this point, one minute in, want to go home?

Yep!

HE LAUGHS

I've got wonderful langoustines.

It's one of the iconic ingredients from Scotland.

Langoustines would have to be in there and it's one of my favourite things to cook with.

Savoy cabbage, some wild mushrooms, strozzapreti - I love it

because it was one of the first pastas I was shown to make.

You don't need a pasta machine.

Thyme, tarragon.

I have my home-made kimchi and chilli jam.

I love pickles. It's my passion.

Growing up in a Sikh household with Indian food,

there was always pickles and chutneys there,

but now I've been trying to perfect kimchi and I love it.

Chilli, puff pastry,

some apples, Cox's and Braeburn,

candied ginger,

Jura Superstition whisky.

Mmm, I love whisky, and obviously

if there's some left I'll be wanting a drink.

Our cooks don't have to use all of Tony's ingredients.

They also have a store cupboard filled with the basics.

The things that really scream out of this box, for me,

are those Dublin Bay prawns, or langoustines.

They'd go fantastically well with that little bit of pasta.

You've also got the mushrooms in there and the tarragon

and those are the four ingredients in this box that I would really concentrate on.

The look on your face

when you opened this box wasn't too impressed.

To be fair, it wasn't the ingredients

-I would've best hoped to have got!

-Right.

But I think I'm getting there.

Laura's going to have to get a shoogle on.

Kind of a mixture in there, you've got a little bit of Korea.

Do you know what that is?

No, I've not had kim-i-chi.

Kim-i-chi, ha! Kimichiwa!

-Kimchi?

-No, chim-chit-su... no...(!)

-Kimichi? Kimchi.

-You've decided to go with a pasta, have you?

-I have.

Using the langoustines, I'm going to do a pasta

with a kind of seafood sauce, like a seafood pasta.

It's probably the right thing to do, as well.

A bit of kick to it,

so a bit of garlic, a bit of chilli.

A BIT of kick?

I'm not going to necessarily use all of that!

I just chopped it up so I'm ready.

Laura's got ginger, garlic, chilli, the holy trinity, I'd look at it,

that brings great flavour to several dishes.

Are you a part of a band as well?

Well, I used to do music when I was younger. I used to rap.

-Used to rap?

-Yes.

And my boyfriend still does it, so we've got

a little studio at home and he produces some music

and I help him out a bit.

And do you know how to approach

these little fellas over here,

-these langoustines?

-Well, I was going to boil them.

The key to this, really,

is get a really hot, boiling, rolling boil on.

In you go.

And literally, they only want 30 seconds.

The problem is if you overcook these,

they go very powdery and you can never peel them.

Literally, in, 30 seconds, then out.

In. All right? Happy with that?

I'm great. Thank you.

Straight away, everybody's using the pasta,

and funnily enough, only one person so far

is using the langoustines, which is a shame.

I think I might have to change that.

So what's the idea of this dish then?

It's a veggie pasta dish.

What have we got in here, in terms of the sauce?

-Are you going to use a tomato-based sauce?

-I did.

I put some white wine in it.

She's added tinned tomatoes and white wine,

but at the wrong stage.

Now, we've got a singer over there,

but you're home of the singing capital of America, aren't you,

Memphis, aren't you, you must be?

-Yeah, blues.

-Blues, proper music!

Laura's a rapper and Mary Bea sounds like one. That's good.

So what brought you to the UK then, from Memphis?

-We pastor a church in Swansea.

-Really?

-Mm-hmm.

-So that's where you ended up then?

-Mm-hmm.

-So we've been in Swansea for seven and a half years.

-So there's 25 minutes gone.

-You're almost done, really.

-Mm-hmm.

You don't want to use these, not tempted by these?

If you show me how to do it, I'll put them in there.

Mary Bea, mmm! Didn't you see it over there?

HE LAUGHS

-Will they go with the red sauce?

-These will go with everything.

If you just put these on an apple tarte tatin,

I'm sure our guest would just love you all the same.

Tarte tatin, should've done that.

-All right, I'm going to try it.

-OK.

31 seconds.

Well, that's a bit more exact than I was hoping for. 30 seconds.

30 seconds

Cook, babies.

With a bit of help from me,

everybody is now using the langoustines.

Straight away, you're confident with the langoustine as well.

I wasn't actually going to do them

but considering you made everyone else in the room do it,

I thought I'd better do it as well!

Oh, he is using langoustines. Good lad.

What's in this sauce?

Garlic, onions, honey mustard, a bit of lemon, a bit of white wine.

He's making a pasta sauce as well, but he's got honey in there,

which I'm quite surprised by.

-Are you going to put anything in this, other than just this?

-Yes.

-Cream, or something like that?

-Yeah, cream, obviously the mushrooms.

So where does the love of food come from then, your family?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, my parents really loved food

and my aunt's a really good chef.

I cooked with her when I was really little.

You know, I don't know how good we are.

We like nice food, so...

-So you didn't want to pursue that as a career?

-Maybe, I might.

It's good to see what the pressure's like with the food,

-because I haven't actually done it under pressure before.

-OK.

Well, things are looking pretty good so far.

You could, if you wanted to, do the opposite to everybody else.

You see, rather than make a stock, munch these down...

..like that.

Put a little bit of this tarragon... If you can get me some garlic.

Grab some tomato puree as well.

The idea of this pasta dish, you see, I really like,

but I think by adding a little bit of the oil

that you get from the langoustines

will just take it to a different level.

It's very good that, but he really needs a long and slow...

like a stock, to get all the flavour leaching out of the shells.

A bit of the tomato puree,

and you're going to take all that ingredients

and just stick it in the oven

and that will be the most amazing oil

to drizzle over your pasta when it's done.

Great, OK, thank you.

Alexander's looking pretty confident.

We've got a nice little creamy sort of sauce,

using the mushrooms and onions,

a little bit of lemon in there and some of that fresh thyme,

and the langoustine meat, going in at the last minute.

I've got to be honest, you won't find

really fresh langoustines that available in supermarkets.

It's really a specialist produce, which is such a shame

when you think that 90% of the langoustines

get shipped abroad, but if you can get them,

and from a specialist supplier, buy them.

You won't be disappointed.

With cooking time running out,

Laura is at a critical stage.

Right.

See these lovely little langoustines -

the easiest way to get rid of these, you take them there, tails up.

-If you just...pinch either side.

-Yeah.

-Listen, listen.

-CRACK

-Wow. You hear a crack.

-Yeah.

And then all you do is you just carefully,

carefully, carefully peel.

And just squeeze the tail, it should pop right out.

If you've not been shown, it's very difficult.

You can tell you've done this before.

Well, yeah, exactly, because these are quite expensive.

You've got to really treat them quite carefully,

but this is the problem, you see,

with us in this country.

We have wonderful ingredients like this

and we end up exporting them

-to places like France and Spain.

-Wow.

-And they taste so good.

-Taste so good.

I'm looking forward to getting in and trying a langoustine.

Nobody's butchered the langoustines, which is good.

It's going to be quite hard. They've all done similar kind of things.

It's going to come down to the chef

that's coaxed the most flavour out of everything.

That Korean kimchi and also those black cardamoms,

I think it's the fact that they haven't cooked with them before,

that's the reason why we are not seeing them actually used today.

Two minutes left!

And that's it, stop cooking!

Time is up.

Step away from the hobs.

Well, guys, I think you're relieved and intrigued

to know who put this box of wonderful,

but I actually think, quite difficult ingredients together,

for you to be able to cook with.

You'll probably want words with him afterwards.

THEY LAUGH

But I'm going to put you out of your misery,

because he...

..is a TV presenter,

a restaurateur,

and most importantly, a pretty good, top-class chef.

Uh-oh!

It's Tony Singh.

Hi.

-Welcome back.

-Hi.

-Hi.

Now, as a whole package,

what do you think of how everybody did?

Very well. You went down the safe route,

but the best thing is you never murdered the langoustines.

You've all treated them with a bit of respect, which is great.

First of all, our first dish. What have we got?

So, my dish is Italian-inspired

with a chilli garlic

and mushrooms and langoustine.

The true test is what it tastes like, so...

-Smells good.

-..over to you, chef.

-OK.

That's very nice. Because you've used the shell

you've got a lovely langoustine sweetness in there. Tastes fabulous.

Yeah, you've got a nice spice with a touch of chilli.

The right amount of garlic, which is what you want

if you want to go down the Italian route.

And I have to say, by using those langoustine,

-you've certainly pleased him, anyway.

-Yeah.

-That's good.

-And you've drawn the flavour out of the shells brilliantly.

-Wow!

-Well done.

-Fingers crossed. Well done.

-Thank you.

Now, you like cooking with a bit of a challenge.

You certainly got one today.

Absolutely, yeah, it was a challenge.

What have you done?

I've done a wild mushroom and langoustine pasta sauce.

-Shall we have a try of it, though?

-Have a try, right.

-Well, the langoustines look pretty well cooked.

-Spot on, yeah.

That is a great plate of food.

Really well seasoned.

The onions work really well. You caramelised those for a long time.

-You've got the sweetness out of them.

-I think the oil helps, over the top.

-Thank you.

One spoonful, I was watching you put another one in and I thought

it'd be too rich, but you've got enough lemon juice in there. Very nice!

-Thank you.

-Well done.

So what have we got here then, Mary Bea?

It's a pasta dish with just vegetables

and langoustine on the side.

-Well, Tony, have a taste.

-Have a taste.

Tell me what you think.

The pasta's cooked perfectly out of everybody's, so... Nice tomato sauce.

The mushrooms are lost in it because you put them in at the beginning.

Lovely delicate mushrooms, sauteed up with a bit of garlic on top,

would have been really nice if you were keeping it vegetarian.

Will you try a langoustine or are you still chicken?

If you're going to try one, try it here.

-I would like to try one.

-Yeah.

The pasta, I think, wanted finishing off in the sauce.

I think you made the sauce a little bit too early and because of that

it sat in there, and you're right,

you lost the flavour of the mushrooms as well.

-Do you like the langoustines, though?

-I do.

-There you go.

Thank you.

I think you've all impressed him,

but the decision is not mine to make. It's 100% your decision -

which dish you would like to eat more of?

-Laura's.

-Wow!

-Well done, Laura!

-Thank you!

Great dish.

The way you've worked with the langoustines,

using the shells to get that flavour out

in that small amount of time, you've really done well.

A wee bit of chilli and ginger in there, very, very nice.

I'm glad you liked it.

Well, well done, everybody. You certainly impressed Tony.

Now you've got to impress me, using the ingredients

that I've picked inside these three boxes.

So we've got a leftover box,

a pudding box

and we've got a bird box.

But what Tony's done

is given you, Laura,

the power to choose what you want to cook,

but also, what you want the other two contestants to cook as well.

Laura...

what would you like Alexander to cook first?

SHE LAUGHS

Oh...

I'm going to give him the leftovers box.

Thank you.

-You might not be saying...

-You won't be thanking her.

No, I'm sure I won't be.

That leaves two boxes left.

A pudding and a bird box.

Which box would you like Mary Bea to cook with?

I'm going to give Mary Bea the pudding box.

-OK.

-The pudding box.

-You seem happy with that.

-I'm very happy with that!

That was a big thank-you!

THEY LAUGH

That leaves you, Laura, with the bird box.

Hopefully that's a good decision.

Only time will tell

because you've got 50 minutes to impress me

with one dish from each of you.

Collect your boxes and good luck.

That is definitely the easiest box to cook with,

I think, out of the three.

You think so? I don't know.

In my bird box, I've put in duck breast,

plums, turnips,

carrots, cavolo nero,

black olives, cherry tomatoes

and Sichuan pepper.

-You made the right move there, didn't you?

-Yes, I think so!

So what are you going to do? You've got the bird box.

You've got the duck. What are you going to do?

I'm just making a little kind of marinade

to rub to put on the top of the duck

so I've put some pepper,

garlic and ginger and a little bit of soy sauce

-and I'm just going to rub it into the top of the duck.

-OK.

-I wouldn't put the marinade on the skin.

-No, on the other side.

-Yeah.

Because otherwise it'll ruin the crispiness of the skin.

But don't turn it over, cook it all the way through.

-More or less on the skin side, OK?

-OK.

-So you're feeling pretty confident, looking around at everybody else's...

-I'm not sure.

I know that, you know, my contestants are all really good,

and this is a new thing to me, cooking duck,

so I think it could be anyone's right now.

Well, Laura's doing the right thing by marinating that duck, first of all,

pan-frying it on the skin side to get that skin

nice and crisp and then it'll get roasted in the oven.

And I like the idea that she's using the plums

to create this wonderful little plum sauce.

In essence, it's actually quite a simple dish.

Laura gave Alexander the leftovers box.

Inside, there's a cold roast chicken,

roast potatoes,

peas, carrots and green beans,

along with some leftover shortcrust pastry,

some bread and half an iceberg lettuce.

Well, I know if I was doing this against you,

I would definitely give you the leftover box.

Well, this is a great challenge.

There's leftovers and everybody's looking at food waste and everything like that

-and on Monday, you've normally got a roast something left over.

-Yeah.

It's always good as a salad, or a curry, if you wanted to make it.

I don't know why, or a soup, or something like that.

It'll be interesting to see what Alexander does with it.

Alexander, I've just seen Laura over there,

just quietly and sneakily look up and snigger!

-I don't blame her on that one.

-Yeah. This is a real tough one.

-It is.

So what are you going to do with the leftover box?

-I'm going to make it into a pasty.

-OK.

-A pasty?

-Yeah.

You've got time, 50 minutes,

-because I've given you some pastry, as well.

-Yeah.

What did you initially think when you lifted the lid?

I thought this could be a shocker!

Exactly. I bet you thought other things as well, but...

I absolutely thought other things as well.

The thing is, this shows what a good chef is.

Using something that's not top end,

or not bought specifically for it,

but you're going to make something really nice.

Alexander, a nice bit of cumin in the pasty would be lovely.

-Yeah, I was thinking that, actually.

-Cool.

-Were you thinking that or are you just...

-No, no, I was actually thinking that.

-We had this whole thing going on, it's going to be cumin.

-Oh, really?

Finally, it's Mary Bea's pudding box.

I've put in some rhubarb,

ready-made puff pastry,

rolled oats, sponge fingers,

custard powder and some brandy.

I love rhubarb, but it's got to be cooked right.

I was brought up on it as a kid, either in savoury dishes or desserts

and nothing really beats a rhubarb crumble and custard.

-What are we looking at?

-Did you ever have a Dutch apple pie?

-Yeah.

Well, this is going to be a Dutch rhubarb pie.

What a great accent! "Did you ever have a Dutch apple pah?"

-"A rhubarb apple pah!"

-"Pah?"

-"Pah? Home-made pah!"

-Now, when you first got the pudding box, you were very happy.

-Yes.

-What happens when you lift off the lid?

-Well...

-It's the rhubarb, yeah.

-Really? What's wrong with rhubarb?

-Not a rhubarb person?

-No.

-No?

It's a love or hate kind of thing.

I like to eat it. I just have never cooked with it, so...

The key to rhubarb is getting the right amount of sugar,

-so you want a little bit of sharpness...

-OK, yes...

..and you compensate that with the sugar,

so you don't want to put too much sugar in, but you need enough.

-Do you put lemon juice in it?

-No.

-no. Definitely not.

-It's quite sharp, anyway.

-It's got its own tang.

-So you're feeling confident?

-I feel much better now,

after talking to you.

Mary Bea's doing a kind of Dutch pie,

which is kind of like a mixture.

You've got puff pastry as a base,

then that stewed rhubarb on the top

and then the crumble topping

and the whole lot gets baked in the oven.

My only concern is she's never cooked rhubarb before

and never made custard.

How's the duck?

-What do we think?

-I think it looks good!

-How long has it been in there for?

-About 15.

-Take it out.

-Pasty.

-Yeah.

-Are you a pasty man?

-I could eat a pasty.

It shows.

As Mary Bea's never made custard before,

I want to make sure she's on the right track.

-There is quite a lot of lumps in there, isn't there?

-I'm sorry.

I'm sure I did something terribly wrong.

If in doubt, get some more cream.

-Look, this goes in there.

-OK.

A little bit of that.

-All right.

-Then we'll pour this through.

It's not even going through the sieve!

Mary Bea, look at that, it's going through.

I like it thick.

See, that's all right, no lumps now.

Three minutes left.

I've just had a message.

The office said you just ordered a taxi, half an hour ago.

-Yeah, that'll be for me.

-All right.

That's it, stop cooking!

Step away from the food.

That includes you, Laura.

Phew!

We're starting with Alexander's creation

from the leftover box.

What do we have?

We've got a roast chicken and roasted vegetable leftover pasty.

-It looks spot on.

-It looks pretty good to me.

I know you like your pasties. Go on, then, dive in.

Do you know what, this goes to prove

that you can create stuff out of leftovers.

-It can taste fantastic...

-Yeah.

-..but above all else, you can cook.

-Because the seasoning on that is...

-Spot on.

-..spot on.

-Brilliant job, I would have said.

-It's very good.

The way he's got the pastry just right. Nailed it, very, very good.

-That's a fantastic dish. Well done.

-It is.

-Thank you very much.

Mary Bea had to come up with a dessert

from my pudding box.

-So what have you done?

-I made a Dutch rhubarb pie.

So what's in the pie then? What makes this different?

I used the puff pastry underneath, then the topping,

instead of a regular pie crust, is the crumble kind of topping.

Dive in. Tell us what you think.

You've got the sweetness just right

and the cinnamon and everything. It's fantastic.

The pastry's just a bit under,

but for somebody that's not worked with rhubarb,

you've got a tartness there that's really nice.

-It's working well with the creamy custard.

-OK.

Do you know what? It's so difficult to get rhubarb right.

You've actually nailed it with that topping.

On the whole, when it's in the mouth,

it actually tastes really nice.

-It tastes really good and the custard works really well with it.

-Good.

-So well done.

-Thank you.

Finally, Laura chose to cook from the bird box.

What did you make?

I did a pan-fried duck breast

on stir-fried vegetables and a plum sauce.

The duck still is pink, which is good and the skin looks crispy.

And you've put the little turnips in.

I'm going to start off.

The plum sauce, it's nice, it's sweet, it's jammy,

lovely on the palate.

The duck is perfectly cooked, nicely seasoned.

The skin's lovely.

I think you've got this one right. You've never done it before,

-but it's a great effort.

-Great!

You wouldn't know that was your first try.

-It's fantastic.

-Well done.

Thank you.

-Brilliant dishes in the end of it, don't you think?

-Fantastic.

All really went out of their way to make something really nice.

But it's up to me to choose the overall cook of the day,

based on what I've tasted just now.

Now, it's quite tricky because, Laura, you held the power

to decide what everybody else was cooking,

so it could go against you. It could work with you.

Unfortunately, this time it went against you

because the overall cook of the day...

..is you, Alexander.

Great job.

I never thought I was going to get a pasty

out of those ingredients.

But what a pasty.

I never thought I'd say that with a bit of leftover chicken.

It was a really, really good dish that. Well done!

Thank you. Thank you.

There is your trophy. Treasure it. Look after it.

-Thank you.

-Excellent.

So how does it feel?

When I opened that lid,

I thought, "I'm definitely not going to win this."

-I'm really, really happy about this. Thank you.

-Brilliant job.

Well, come on over, guys.

Well done, Mary Bea.

I love the apron, by the way. You've got to make me one of those.

-Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

-Thank you.

-Cracking, cracking job.

-Well done.

-YOU, well done!

-Congratulations.

-And thank you for joining us, Tony.

-Thank you for having me on.

And join us for more great cooking from three enthusiastic home cooks,

some great celebrity guests

and some more wonderful and unusual boxes of ingredients.

I'll see you soon. Bye for now.