Episode 19 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.

Jordan, a brand manager from London,

writes a blog critiquing restaurants in his spare time.

I just hope that I'm not criticised today

but I'll take it constructively.

When I see the ingredients, it's either going to be

an absolute delight or I'm going to absolutely freak out.

Becky, a science teacher from Newton Abbot,

has always enjoyed getting creative in the kitchen.

I think I cooked my first full meal, a three-course meal,

when I was nine years old.

My children are always in the kitchen with us

trying to cook as well, so it's a lot of fun.

And Tony, an automotive assessor from Essex.

He loves creating new recipes

and dreams of writing his very own cookbook.

Oh, I love food, I love cooking food,

I love seeing the look on people's faces when I give them good food.

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

put together by today's guest...

..Great British Menu judge Matthew Fort.

-Matthew, welcome to The Box.

-Nice to be here.

Where does your passion for food come from, then?

Well, I suppose it comes back from my childhood.

Food was a central part of family life and, little-by-little,

by little I was able to turn a passion into a business.

-Shall we have a look, see what you've bought?

-Have a look.

That looks like whiting to me.

It is whiting. I've chosen whiting because, first of all,

-I think it's a greatly underappreciated fish.

-Yeah.

But it was a great favourite of my mother...

-Erm, broad beans.

-Yeah.

-I love a broad bean, James.

I like broad beans as well.

And, er, this is summer savoury, which I'm sure you recognise.

Well, I really like... I grow this at home in the garden.

But it goes very well,

traditional accompaniment herb to go with broad beans.

Well, fingers crossed. They've got just 50 minutes to impress you,

-so I'll see you in a bit.

-OK.

OK, well, welcome to The Box, guys.

Now, you're all here because apparently you can all whip up

amazing recipes just with a few ingredients, is that right?

-Apparently so.

-Well, sort of.

You've got 50 minutes. Off you go.

I've put this box together with two dishes in mind - a main course

and a pudding.

Well, I think whiting is one of those forgotten fish

and I love cockles cos they have that sort of sweetness

that goes extraordinarily well with other fishes.

Jersey Royals,

summer savoury

and cider.

Today's cooks may not be used to seeing really small broad beans.

What they must not do, in my view, is peel them.

And then rhubarb, vanilla pod and custard.

These are the classic ingredients for rhubarb fool,

but there's nothing there to terrify the capable home cook.

This box of ingredients that our guest has brought in

is right up my street, really.

Got that wonderful summer savoury. It's quite a light,

delicate sort of herb, which lends itself really well with

the broad beans and those fantastic Jersey Royal potatoes.

Use the liquid that you get from the clam juices together with

a touch of cream, maybe a little bit of white wine, and that cider,

you can make an amazing little sauce to go with that wonderful whiting.

It doesn't look as if anybody's making a pudding.

Tragedy.

-Right, Tony, how are you?

-I'm good, mate, thank you.

-Good.

-So what are we cooking?

-Right, OK.

I'm going to simply pan fry this, crushed new potatoes next to it...

-OK.

-I'm then going to actually put the...

-Little cockles?

..broad beans with the cockles,

actually put some of the actual sauce with it...

Sort of chilli sauce with a little bit of vinegar in it,

-white wine vinegar...

-Yeah.

-..little bit of olive oil.

Tony's dish does rely, to a large extent,

on quite pungent additions.

I'm afraid that the whiting looks as if

it's fighting a losing battle here.

-Have you ever cooked whiting before?

-Yeah, loads of times.

-That's good.

-I catch 'em as well.

-Oh, d'you catch 'em as well?

Cos you go foraging for food round in Essex, don't you?

We do go foraging for food.

We also go deep-sea fishing probably once a month as well.

Tony clearly knows his own mind and he didn't seem to be in the slightest

bit fazed by what he saw, er,

and it's nice to know that he catches his own whiting too.

-Right, Becky, how are you getting on?

-Yeah, all right.

-I'm going for sort of Asian flavours.

-Asian flavours?

-Yeah.

-OK.

-I've made, like, a sort of spicy, rhubarb-y compote thing.

-Yeah.

That's got star anise and chilli in there?

Star anise, chilli and ginger in it.

Is that going to work with the rhubarb, you think, or...?

Yeah, I think rhubarb takes spices quite well.

Rhubarb does go very well with fish,

but I think it probably needs a stronger fish like mackerel.

However, it's nice to see the ingredients put to uses that

you never thought of.

And then I've blanched those already,

so they're going to go in there as well.

I'm pretending they're edamame beans.

So much better than edamame beans!

Give me a broad bean every time!

Because whiting's part of the cod family,

you have to treat it delicately.

Becky's inspired by Asia for the flavours in her dish.

Whether it'll work with the whiting or not, I'm not quite sure.

With Tony's sauce and with Becky's Asian-effect salsa, erm,

I wonder whether I'm going to be able to taste anything else on the plate.

-Right, Jordan.

-Right.

-Looking quietly confident over here.

-Erm...

Yeah, well, you know, I'm trying to keep it simple.

The lovely Jersey Royal potatoes, you're keeping the skin on those.

Yeah, I'm going to crush those.

OK, and then the whiting, what are you going to do with that?

I'm just going to pan fry that.

Basically, with the cockles, I've tried to do a moules marinieres

but with a bit of, erm, a bit of cider.

He's cooked them with quite a long time to go and the trouble

with overcooked cockles is they tend to go a bit rubbery.

You're quite inventive when it comes to cooking?

-I do feel I've got a good... I've got a good palate.

-OK. Oh, right?

So I know, you know, I know what tastes good,

-and, you know, I know if it's not on the road to success, so...

-OK.

What I find interesting is that they're all making quite

elaborate dishes from something that was actually designed to be

terribly simple!

All three of them are going to pan fry their fish.

The key to this is make sure the pan is nice and hot,

a combination of oil and butter, and put the fish in

skin side down, and almost cook it all the way through on the skin.

The skin protects that delicate flesh underneath.

With 20 minutes to go, Tony has already cooked his fish,

but I'm worried about what else he's using from Matthew's box.

Custard?

Crikey. That's going to be interesting.

OK, five minutes left.

Skin side down, that's it.

That's it, if you keep your hand on it, it stops it from curling up.

Now you just keep your finger pressed on it until it...

-you stop the resistance.

-OK.

-Probably about there, innit?

-That one is, yeah.

-There you go.

-Now, we're not going to use the broad beans?

-No, I'm not, no.

-No?

-No.

-OK.

Therefore there's going to be no green element on, erm,

Jordan's plate.

With the time I've had to spare,

I could have done something with the broad beans.

However, you know, I'm not disappointed about my lack of usage.

Mm, that's rather a pity.

-You're all sorted?

-Yeah.

-What's the sauce?

That was the, er, lemon mayonnaise that was in the...

MATTHEW LAUGHS

Tasted it?

-Ooh, no.

-It's custard.

-Yeah, I've got to take that off.

Oh, dear, Tony.

OK, that's it. Step away from the hobs.

Stop cooking.

Leave it!

OK, then, guys, well, well done. 50 minutes, three plates of food.

We just got there...

without the custard.

But you're probably wondering

who went shopping to get those ingredients.

Well, I can now tell you that he has been involved in food all of

his life as a food journalist, a food critic, a food writer...

..or more recently...

..as a judge on the Great British Menu.

It's Matthew Fort.

Matthew, welcome back.

Now, I thought at one point you'd do a runner

when you saw what was happening.

Well, it was, er, it was absolutely fascinating, really.

You know, completely different approaches to the dish which

I had originally conceived.

Well, Jordan, tell us what you've done first of all.

So, erm, I did sort of a twist on a moules marinieres with

the cockles and with cider,

and some crushed Jersey Royals and the pan-fried whiting.

Right, erm, does anything strike you as being missing from that plate?

-Erm, the broad beans?

-Mm, bit of colour.

That's a wonderful symphony in beige, isn't it?

OK, silence.

Mm.

Well, I think it tastes a great deal better than it looks,

to be perfectly honest.

Erm, I think there's some very nice flavours in there.

I think that the fish is actually really well-seasoned

and really well-cooked, and you've respected the...

that very particular flakiness of the whiting.

Potato...

Why crush them?

You're losing one of the great pleasures of the Jersey Royal,

which is the texture of them, the texture and the flavour.

-There is a distinct lack of colour...

-Mm-hm.

..and I think part of that is because,

almost, these cockles were cooked...

-Too soon.

-..too soon. But I think, on the whole,

the flavours are there.

Erm, yeah, just wants a little bit more colour.

Becky, what did you do?

I've done spicy Asian rhubarb with broad beans and cockles

and then pan fried the whiting on the top.

Hmm...

Mm!

MATTHEW COUGHS

-Bit of a chilli kick in there.

-Yeah, there is a bit of chilli in there.

Nothing wrong with that.

The thing I was really frightened of was that the sauce was going to be

so strong it was going to kill all flavour of the fish

and it has almost, but not quite.

It's just, it's just stepped back at the last moment.

I think these are, the little cockles... Ooh!

-Don't you just love cockles?

-Hmm.

-They're so good.

Erm, and those have really held their texture really well.

For me, the fish is absolutely perfectly cooked.

I'm not too sure whether rhubarb still works in this,

-really, to be fair.

-OK.

-That's very Yorkshire of you, James!

Well, you know, rhubarb's from my county, you know.

We don't normally put it with whiting and chilli and all that!

You've got to think outside Yorkshire! As far as Lancashire!

Tony, we nearly had sweet and savoury at one point on this one.

-I know.

-THEY LAUGH

So what did we end up with?

Pan-fried whiting on a bed of crushed potatoes,

topped with a summer salad of cockles and beans.

Well, one of the things, I must say, I'm really interested in,

looking at the plate, is that you've left the beans with the jackets on

and I really like that.

You know what I'm going to say about the crushed potatoes.

You finished very early

and probably the whiting started off as being beautifully cooked,

and sort of lost some of that, you know,

that sort of bloom that really beautifully cooked fish has.

I think that the problem with the sauce is that

the vinegar is very strong.

-It's a good effort.

-Thank you.

Certainly you've cooked the cockles really nicely.

They've held and they keep their meatiness as well,

so you got the timing right of that.

-It's just the vinegar, for me, is really quite overpowering.

-OK.

But, d'you know? If I had been standing there

and discovered that the lemon mayonnaise was...

30 seconds before I was due to present my dish,

I don't know what I would have done!

You took it like a man and I absolutely take my hat off to you.

Well, what each of them had

was a really strong sense of a cooking personality, and that's

what you want, so thank you very much indeed for those pleasures.

But the pleasure is yours to decide which dish is your favourite.

I'm going to choose Becky.

First of all, I think your presentation was a bit more polished,

shall I say, than the other two

and I also liked the balance of flavours.

And, Becky, I must confess that your treatment of it has made me

think about rhubarb in an entirely new way.

OK, guys, Round Two.

In front of me there are three boxes of ingredients,

all hand-picked by me.

We've got nuts...

..leftovers...

..global.

Matthew, you've decided what your favourite dish was in Round One,

which has given Becky the power to decide

not only what she'll be cooking

but what everybody else is cooking as well.

What would you like Jordan to cook with?

Can Jordan cook leftovers, please?

We'll see what's in the box.

That leaves...

just Tony and two boxes to go.

I'm going to give Tony the nuts box.

So that leaves you, Becky, with the global box. Is it the right one?

You've got 50 minutes to create one dish

using the ingredients in these boxes.

Off you go, collect your boxes.

As these are my boxes, it will be up to me

to decide who will be our cook of the day.

Becky gave Jordan the leftover box, which contains cooked salmon,

cooked new potatoes, cooked pasta, red pepper, a broccoli stalk,

some ends of asparagus and half a mango.

I think the leftover box is a serious challenge to the serious cook.

It reminds you of that moment when you...

Open my fridge, and that's what you find.

I'm going to do a sort of tomato, chilli, red pepper, red wine

sort of, erm, sauce, er,

which I'll then throw the potatoes in as sort of a base.

Erm, I will steam the, erm, salmon,

just to bring the temperature up, with some lemon juice.

What about the broccoli stem, because, you know...?

I was just going to throw it at Becky for giving me the, er,

giving me the box.

-You know, this can be quite nice, actually.

-OK.

If you take this off and peel it...

-Yeah.

-..you've got this white...

-Flesh.

-..flesh in the centre and you basically just finely,

finely slice it like that.

I should delegate the rest to him if I was you.

Lemon juice...

..bit of oil...

touch of salt...

Well, go on, then, Jordan.

OK, let's get in there. Let's taste this.

-That's the inside stalk.

-Mm.

Lemon juice, olive oil, salt.

Lovely. Little bit of mango as well, that'd be nice.

THEY LAUGH

Becky chose the global box, which has a Thai theme

and contains tiger prawns, coconut milk, limes, chillies,

lemon grass, Thai basil, peanuts, rice noodles and bean sprouts.

Quite an unusual selection to go with, the global one.

It could have come from anywhere in the world.

Well, she's certainly chosen the easiest of the ingredient packages.

On the other hand, you raise your expectations,

so she's got to make something really tremendous out of those ingredients.

Becky, what are we doing here?

I'm going to make, erm, sort of steamed buns with prawns

and some...a bit of chilli,

and some of the Thai basil and lime in there.

Now, how have you made the pastry?

Erm, I've just kept it really simple.

I've used the coconut milk and some self-raising flour.

Are we going to use the noodles at all or not?

Yeah, I'm going to use the noodles perhaps with the bean sprouts,

but I'm um-ing and ah-ing about that at the moment

cos it might be a bit too much.

I've got a feeling this is a dish which is still evolving in your head.

-Yes, it is, yeah.

-Cos you can still get lots of flavour, you know,

-with these shells...

-Mm-hm.

-..and particularly the prawn heads.

They've got all, yeah, all that juice...

Prawn heads and shells make the most amazing sauces,

so try not to waste those.

Are you very happy with Asian cooking, Asian food?

Yeah, we cook it a lot at home.

Erm, it's something that we just enjoy,

and I think it's quite communal food,

and I think that's why we like it.

Well, Becky's using almost every ingredient in the box, really,

and that's the right thing to do

cos you've got so many flavours in there that go really well together.

Becky says she's quite confident, but the thing is,

by doing those dumplings, it's a big risk cos you've got to make sure

that pastry is just bang on.

Now, using coconut milk can make it quite heavy, so you've got to

make sure they're very, very thin when you put the filling in.

Tony got the nut box, which includes Brazil nuts,

walnuts and pecan nuts,

broccoli, pineapple,

sultanas and Stilton.

Matthew, which one would you pick?

I think I would take Tony's, actually, the nuts one.

I think it's a serious challenge, but there's some really interesting

ingredients to stimulate both the imagination and the taste buds.

-Didn't like that box.

-You didn't like it?!

What would you have liked to have seen if you'd lifted off that lid?

I would have liked to have seen...

a piece of meat.

JAMES LAUGHS

But what I'm going to do is, using the broccoli, the pineapple,

almost like a stir-fry with cream, tomato, chilli...

-Stir-fry with cream?

-Well, it's not a stir-fry, it's like,

it's going to end up like a curry.

-Now, I went shopping for nuts.

-Yeah.

-Are we going to see them in a dish?

Yeah, yeah, I'm going to make those in a second,

turn that into a paste, that'll then be added.

In there you've got what?

Some of the Brazil nuts and some of the walnuts,

-just to give it a little bit of body.

-OK.

I really wanted a dessert.

What I'm getting is not that.

This is almost like a stew, you've got tomatoes in there as well,

and whether that combines with the nuts and everything else,

I'm not too certain.

With ten minutes to go,

Jordan's dish finally seems to be taking shape.

Yeah, I'm bringing my salmon back up to...

-Temperature.

-..temperature.

Erm, this is just like a patatas bravas kind of style,

so it's that sort of Mediterranean sort of style with the potatoes.

Yeah. So you're feeling more confident than you did

when you first opened the box?

I'm feeling more confident than I did

when I first opened the box, yeah.

Tony's happily adding cream, pineapples

and crushed nuts to his dish, but I still think Becky's missing

a trick by not using the prawn heads and shells

to add flavour to hers.

-Can I just give you an idea?

-Yeah.

If we do this with a little bit of the stock,

-and then we take some soy sauce...

-Mm-hm.

..and we throw that in,

and then we take some fish sauce, we put a little bit of ginger in...

-Yeah.

-..bit of garlic...

-Yeah.

-..like that, and then, we take...

..all the heads from the prawns, nothing else,

some of your stalks,

chuck that in.

We've poured that in and then we throw that in...

-That's the lemon grass.

-Uh-huh.

-Now, you can taste that once it's come up to the boil.

-Yeah.

And then you can drain that off and use that to flavour the noodles,

if you want to.

OK, you've got one minute left. One minute.

OK, that's it, stop cooking.

Jordan!

Get your hands off.

Well done.

Jordan had to create a dish from my leftover box.

It's steamed salmon on a bed of patatas bravas, essentially,

-er, with some sauteed asparagus beside.

-OK.

-And what's this on top?

So, that is the broccoli stalks, just as the garnish.

So this is actually broccoli stalks a la James Martin?

-No, the mango fell into it.

-Well...

And the white wine vinegar fell into it!

Well...

I think you've achieved almost a miracle here.

Taken a very, very rum collection of ingredients and turned them

-into a really tasty dish.

-Thank you.

The salmon re-heats really nicely.

It almost tastes cooked from fresh rather than just...

It's very skilfully steamed, you see.

Don't overplay your cards, mate!

The asparagus I quite like, cooked in butter, that's quite...

With the garlic, I like that.

-But a great effort and a tasty plate of food.

-Mm.

-That's right, it is a tasty plate of food.

-Well done.

-A technical phrase.

-Thank you.

Becky chose my global box.

I've made steamed prawn buns with stir-fried noodles

in an Asian broth.

I really like the look of this dish.

Thing is, does it taste as good as it looks?

What's the dipping sauce, what's that?

That's, erm, fish sauce and lime and a little bit of brown sugar,

-and a little bit of soy with some chilli in it.

-OK.

Well...

-The bun is chewy...

-Mm.

On the other hand, I think the filling is really good,

and I think, you know, the sweetness of the prawns comes out.

I'll tell you what I really, really like, and that's the nuts on top.

I love that little bit of crunch in there.

I think it's an amazing effort doing the dumplings.

The taste inside is fantastic.

You almost want to serve the dumplings

just with the dipping sauce,

and then have the noodles and the prawns as a broth,

but it's a great effort, though.

Finally, it's Tony, who was given my nut box.

He prepared a broccoli and pineapple stir-fry with a nut paste

in a tomato, cream and chilli sauce.

There's a lot of different flavours knocking around there.

I'm not quite sure that they're sort of unified

in a single happy experience, if you know what I mean.

-What you really need there is a piece of meat, actually.

-Please.

That's the truth of the matter and that would help pull it together

in a way that I'm afraid it's not pulling together at the moment.

I realise what you were trying to do,

to create a paste and maybe thicken it a little bit.

What you have done by doing that is you lose the flavour of the nuts.

Having said that, if there was a pork chop on there, grilled,

that would be a lot better.

Anybody got a pork chop? Anyone?

I think, on the whole, great effort, don't you?

I think we've seen some remarkably accomplished cooking.

Now, this decision is based on the three dishes that I've just tasted.

And the cook of the day for today, and well deserved...

..goes to Becky.

-Well done, Becky.

-Thank you.

APPLAUSE

That's really exciting. Thank you very much.

Well, Becky, those dumplings were inspired, so well done.

-There's your little trophy.

-Congratulations.

-Thank you very much.

-Well done.

-Jordan, Tony, come on over.

-Congratulations.

-Thank you.

-Well done, well done.

-Congratulations.

Well done to Becky and thank you very much for joining us, Matthew.

It's been a huge pleasure.

Join us again next time, where we meet three more great home cooks

all gunning for this amazing trophy,

with boxes full of ingredients, and also some more great guests.

We'll see you again very soon. Bye for now.