Posh-ish Nosh The Hairy Bikers' Comfort Food

We've travelled the world and eaten everywhere from roadside bars

to restaurants with Michelin stars.

DOG BARKS

But there really is nothing like a bit of home cooking.

Coming into a warm kitchen

filled with the aroma of a tasty meal, bubbling away...

..it's one of life's great pleasures.

Lovingly prepared dishes with flavours that pack a punch.

It's the perfect way to put smiles on the faces

of your nearest and dearest.

We also discover the secrets to producing quality ingredients.

The smell is absolutely fantastic.

Drop in on some of the UK's homeliest tearooms and cafes, and...

Service!

..find out what chefs like to cook on their days off.

Oh, look at that!

It's much easier and much quicker.

There's nothing quite as comforting as simple home cooking.

Today, we're pushing the boat out.

Special recipes and top-notch ingredients

make for show-stopping dishes.

We're talking posh-ish nosh.

For posh nosh, you canna get much posher than a pork tenderloin.

Yeah, but the thing is -

pork tenderloin is the nicest choice bit,

but if you just kind of cook it or do medallions in a pan,

it's either boring or it's dry!

-Dry!

-Dry!

It's drier than a frog that's been sitting on a rock

in the Gobi Desert for a fortnight. It's that dry.

So first off, you take two loins,

and we're going to wrap it and stuff it.

Now, I'm going to do the stuffing,

which consists of lots of ingredients

which I'll tell you as we go along.

This silvery sinew here needs to be removed.

Because it will destroy the carving,

-the effect and general bonhomie of the dish.

-Indeed.

So just cut down there, just slither off your sinew, like so.

So we're going to start,

as every stuffing should start, with a shallot finely chopped,

and we going to put that in the butter that's in the pan there.

Now, a top tip about cooking with butter -

don't put anything in the butter until it starts to foam like that.

Now just keep going at this until you've got all the hacky bits off

because it really is quite a fine dish.

Two cloves of garlic.

Nicely grated.

Now, the trick to this is when we say it's a stuffed pork tenderloin

you're thinking, "How is he going to stuff that?"

We take one loin,

put it between clingfilm and flatten it so it's a bit like...

an escalope.

It also has the benefit of tenderising it.

I can see why you do this.

It relieves the frustration.

-It is, yeah.

-Tension.

And just keep hammering away

until your best chum is happy with what you have in fact done.

About a centimetre.

Perfect.

And now repeat with your other loin.

Great. We're just going to chop an apple.

You don't want it finely chopped.

But you want some texture.

So that size, cos don't forget it's going to cook down.

-Incoming.

-There is a rhythm when you...

BANGING CONTINUES

We're going to make a blanket of bacon.

What I've done is I've got this chopping board

and I've covered it with clingfilm,

then I'm going to lay out my bacon,

so I'll get another chopping board for the stretching of the bacon.

-Dave.

-Yes mate?

In here, sultanas.

-Beautiful.

-Now we're going to chop apricots.

Now, they're dried apricots.

You know you can get hard dried apricots and soft dried apricots,

these are of the soft variety.

Zest of a lemon.

And the juice of.

It's a proper restaurant style-dish, this one.

And we've got the simplest of ginger sauces to put on this.

Ginger. Teaspoon.

Perfect.

And some herbs. Thyme.

Don't put the sprigs in, this time,

it's just the leaves that we're interested in.

So we're going to take three pieces of stem ginger.

-Oh.

-And chop them.

Pork is brilliant at taking sweet and savoury flavours.

-It is.

-Sweet and sour pork, for a starter, it's a bit of a given.

There we go.

So, we're going to add...

..two teaspoons of ginger syrup.

Now, finely chop this parsley.

That's a blanket.

Take your first pork loin and hope you've got enough spread

on your blanket to cover the loin, which of course, being me, I have.

Of course you do.

And then breadcrumbs.

And then the juice of a lemon.

And that should bring this beautiful stuffing together.

-Lemon.

-You're very slow.

Shut your face, you.

Right. If it isn't moist enough, add a little bit of water.

That's it, mate, lovely.

Nice, loose...

-Have you seasoned it?

-I have.

Comes together perfectly.

Chuck, then.

-Thank you.

-I'll go and wash my hands.

I would.

Take your stuffing and just pile it beautifully

onto your first pork loin, like so.

So this is how you stuff pork loin.

I'm just looking, cos it looks attractive.

Now, put the other fillet on the top.

It's the biggest pork sandwich you've ever seen.

Bring the bacon rashers over the pork to enclose it completely.

You pull the bacon quite tight, Dave, don't you?

Tight, yes.

Carry on covering up, like that.

Now, you see, this seam side is going to go at the bottom,

so don't worry if there's a wee gap there.

What we do is we roll it like this.

Form it as you go.

This is basically called barrelling, and we put this in, chilled.

So we get a second layer,

and sometimes even a third layer and roll it really quite tight.

-See? Look at that.

-Beautiful.

Put you in the fridge and start dreaming about our supper.

Here we are, all chilled out.

Now we need to get you onto a roasting tin.

Preheat the oven to 200 Celsius.

Carefully remove the clingfilm from the pork,

and place it on a lightly-greased baking tray

with the ends of the bacon tucked underneath.

Roast for about 50 minutes,

or until the bacon is crisp and the pork is piping hot throughout.

KETTLE WHISTLES

Now that is a handsome, handsome thing.

-Oh, that's gorgeous.

-Get this out here to rest.

Take some stock, pour that in.

Look at that, Dave, beautiful.

-That's kitchen gold, isn't it?

-Absolutely, Dave, absolutely.

And pour that straight into there.

We won't lose any flavours at all.

I want all that off there.

We'll start to heat this through.

Equal quantities of ginger wine.

Perfect.

And now some cream.

We want this to be quite thick, so I've got some cornflour,

we just want to mix that with some water.

And we'll add this to our sauce.

And that will thicken up to become a beautiful sauce.

-Let's have a taste of seasoning.

-Yes.

Take care with the salt,

because the residue from the pork, really, is quite salty.

Oof, that's lovely.

I think we're ready to serve up, aren't we?

-Yeah, why not?

-Some mashed potatoes and a few greens?

-I think so.

-But first, chef's perks.

-I'm excited about this.

-Oh, aye.

Mm!

Look at that. It's beautiful, isn't it?

Just cut through.

And for the full sauce impact...

Oh!

I'd come round to dinner at our house!

Mm. And that loin...

-..is really moist.

-That is a bit of posh nosh.

-It certainly is.

-Mm.

Britain has an army of creative chefs who, day after day,

send out sensational dishes to customers in their restaurants.

They work long hours, toiling over their stoves.

But back at home, what's their idea of comfort food?

Michelin-starred chef James Sommerin from Penarth

tells us about his home-cooked favourite.

So, being a chef means everything to me.

It's everything that I think about.

It's everything that I've wanted to do from a young age.

I made that decision probably when I was ten, that I wanted to cook.

Cooking, for me, was really installed by my grandmother.

I used to cook with her every Friday, on a weekly basis,

in the kitchen, learning to cook basic things.

Simple food, cooked from scratch.

Very much a family business here.

So, there's my wife.

She works front of house, my daughter, my eldest,

she is training to be a chef in the kitchen.

The only downside to it is, actually,

when you end up going out and you're away from the restaurant,

you end up talking about work all the time.

My philosophy for food is, it's just about honest food.

I don't like cooking that is hugely complicated.

I just like, you know, solid cooking with fantastic ingredients,

and cooked beautifully.

But I want to be able to give something

that's different to the customer.

I don't want them to be able to create something

that they can do at home, really,

so it's about being special.

The creative process starts from a sketch, usually.

It's an idea in my head, and then I draw.

I literally have a book of doodles.

I then look at the plating, what plate we're going to go onto,

how it tastes, whether it works.

There's a lot of process.

Sometimes, dishes come absolutely out of nowhere

and they're on the plate within an hour.

Other times, it might take two or three weeks to get it right.

The creative process for each dish is very, very different.

Our signature dish that's come towards me is a ravioli

that's filled with liquid pea soup, in effect.

And it's finished with crispy sage, Serrano ham and Parmesan emulsion.

It tastes amazing because it's got that element of luxury,

but it's all about the flavour, so it's making the peas taste the best.

You get that fantastic saltiness from the Serrano ham,

which works really with the Parmesan,

then the sage in itself is just great texture and great depth,

which works perfectly with the peas.

I work by the seaside but I also live by the seaside as well.

It's a real jewel for South Wales, this area here,

because when you look out on a day like today,

it is absolutely stunning.

So this is my humble kitchen.

Completely different to the restaurant.

It's just like every other kitchen, really.

Lots of junk lying around.

Simple stuff, because we only cook simple food here.

The dish I'm going to cook is kind of like

a bit of a cult family classic.

It's Grandma Somm's chicken dish.

Very simple, very easy, quick to put together,

and my kids love it.

I grew up absolutely adoring this dish.

And it was kind of something a little bit special.

The main body of it is soup-based.

Because it's a condensed soup, it's thick, it's creamy already.

My grandma had quite a tight budget to work to.

I suppose, having lived through the war,

she was very careful on how she spent her money.

You would always have quite a lot of chicken

or really...fairly cheap cuts of beef.

But then the most important thing was,

she used to buy tinned asparagus and use that.

But, before, I could never get it to taste exactly the same

as how she used to do it.

I was always chopping up and putting fresh asparagus into it,

and that's where the difference lies.

A massive flavour comes out of the tinned asparagus.

Well, it's just different.

I certainly think people would be not expecting this,

literally using tinned soup,

tinned asparagus and a bit of chicken just chucked together.

But, at the end of the day, we're human like everybody else,

and I like comfort food.

-Will we see if dinner's ready?

-Yeah.

Dinner ready.

It is nostalgia. Every time we eat this,

there isn't one of us around the table

that can't pass a comment about Gran.

-What do you think? Lovely, isn't it?

-Tastes nice.

Food is fun and food is memories,

and that's what I really love about this.

-So, Simon.

-Yes, Dave?

What can we do?

Take two humble ingredients and make them as posh as possible.

We're cooking fish and chips.

Yeah, but... It's different.

Few humble ingredients - salmon from the supermarket, potatoes.

OK, we've got a few extra tricks up our sleeve.

We're going to do a confit salmon with pomme noisettes,

samphire and sea purslane.

But first we're going to cure the salmon.

Which is like a rub, a marinade,

and it's going to be in there for half an hour

before we start to confit the fish.

And I'm going to do pomme noisettes.

Now, they're a favourite thing.

Basically, you take a melon baller

and you try and get a perfect ball out of said potato.

First off - goes great with salmon - a splash of gin.

About a tablespoon, ish.

The zest of a lemon.

The other thing that goes with gin is juniper,

so I've got some juniper berries.

How are you getting on there?

Yeah...

Just take a few juniper berries and crack them.

Scatter those over your salmon.

A teaspoon of salt.

This will draw moisture out of the salmon.

And lastly, a tablespoon of olive oil.

I think the moment has come to get your hands in here

and just work it into both sides of the fish.

This is preparing that said salmon for its oily bath.

I love posh food.

Now, I need a litre of oil.

Basically, I need enough oil in this pan

for those salmon to be able to bathe, just to be covered.

Now this has to be 55 Celsius.

The thing about doing a confit, it has to be 55 when it goes in,

and keep it between 45 and 55 for about 20 minutes.

It's that precise.

Not on the bottom of the pan,

because it'll give you a false reading.

-It's actually quite critical, this.

-It is, very critical.

44. 55!

Now turn the gas off!

Right? And just float the salmon in.

-Float.

-In the hot oil.

I've gone a bit hot. I'll just cool it down with a bit more oil.

Because these salmon pieces must be covered.

Now, you can use this oil again,

but bear in mind everything will taste fishy.

That's nicely cooling down.

Slowly down. 55.

HE BLOWS ON OIL

53, 54, perfect. Beautiful.

Dave, how would you describe confit? What would you say?

Confit, well, it's a French technique

normally used for cooking duck thighs and legs.

Cos, basically, duck thigh and legs can be a tough old beast,

but when it's confit, you put it in hot duck fat

for about five or six hours

and, really, the meat gets so soft and tender, confit duck's great.

As it's confiting, it's changing colour little bit.

This is the action of hot oil on fish.

I'm just going to just blanch my lovely pomme noisettes off

and literally just pop them in for a minute.

Strain them, and then, the good bit.

You know, sometimes, I feel like I'm in a lab.

I am Professor Fish!

OK, so, they've been blanched for a minute.

Literally, they only take a minute.

Holding at 45. I'll just give them a quick burst of heat,

and that will see us for the next five minutes.

Well, look, if that's the case, and you're going to do that,

-should I get on with my noisettes?

-Yes.

-Right, OK.

Literally, I just want to take it another two degrees.

So with the noisettes,

what we're going to use is some clarified butter,

because it's the real traditional way to cook noisettes,

because they go a beautiful golden colour.

And it doesn't burn, does it?

It doesn't burn, no.

Drop one of these in.

Perfect.

It's like a pan full of musket balls, isn't it?

-Superb, isn't it?

-Yeah.

That's us, I think, Dave.

Confit's nearly there.

And more or less a blood heat, this.

It's one of those dishes that's best served tepid.

And the fish is wonderful and firm.

You know, it's confit.

Just blot the oil off the top a little.

Oh!

It's just got such a nice bounce to it.

They're going lovely, mate. I've put the samphire on.

Yes, some butter in there, this just needs warming through, just so,

with some lemon.

I've got 30 seconds left on these.

They're lovely and beautifully golden, aren't they?

Shall I start to plate up?

Yeah, why not, why not?

I think I'll start off with a little bed

of the samphire and sea purslane,

and I'll take the confit salmon,

so delicate now in the middle.

Just as they come out, cos they're warm,

just very finely, chopped parsley,

sea salt flakes and then I'm just going to shimmy them.

-Brings out the gentleman in us, David, this sort of...

-It does.

I think the thing is cos you focus so much on getting it perfect,

I don't know, the anticipation to eat it's really quite exciting.

-It is.

-The noisettes on there. Tumbling.

-Simon?

-Yes, David.

Confit salmon, noisette potatoes, sea purslane and samphire.

Posh fish, chips and mushy peas.

Aye.

-Boom.

-Boom.

The secret to creating good grub is using the right ingredients.

The real work is done by the producers

who put all their passion and expertise

into getting their ingredients just right.

I've been a butcher for 50 years.

Farming as well.

I took on the business in Launceston that was started in 1880.

Still running with the same guidelines -

to use local livestock.

And while the world has changed, we haven't very much at all.

We're one of the few butchers left...

we actually still kill and we butcher.

We are not meat traders.

So the chefs that come to us want to know

that it's come from our local area,

what the breed is, what it's been fed on.

We are that the link between all my local friends and farmers

and all my chefs and customers.

Bodmin Moor covers approximately 47,000 acres

and it is predominantly granite.

But between the granite we have these lovely peaty parts of soil

that grow wonderful fauna.

Because of where Bodmin Moor is situated,

basically all the rain that comes off the sea on the South West

hits Bodmin Moor, so we get very, very, very wet summers

and we get very harsh winters.

And to survive up here you need a very special sort of fella.

There's a multitude of breeds, actually, on the moor.

The breeds that thrive best are the ones that like it wet underfoot.

We have Welsh Blacks, we have Galloways, we have Blue Greys,

the belted Galloways, and also we have Red Devons.

What you're actually seeing here on Carbilly Tor,

is a Red Devon in its most natural habitat.

Not only is got the grass it likes, he's actually doing the fauna good.

It grazes to the right height.

The Red Devon can mother well.

She's got good milk.

You can see how she's giving her all to her calf,

but the real beauty of the Red Devon is the way it can adapt on anything.

You can put it on the harshest conditions on Bodmin Moor

and it will survive.

Their hides are twice as thick as a normal bullock.

It produces a finer grain of meat

from very, very poor pasture.

When I say poor pasture, it's only poor compared to the valleys.

This has got wonderful faunas, different flavours,

and it's all these different faunas and graze and lichens that they eat

that actually gives to the meat that we sell,

and if you look around you, you can see, they're thriving.

MOOING

What we have here are different samples of Red Devon.

This is from a Red Devon heifer.

This is considered to be the best eating,

not only by us but by the chefs.

This is the female before it has a calf -

lovely, soft, very smooth textured.

So what we're doing is, we are ageing it

in a dry age smoke chamber for 28-45 days, depending on which...

Once it's aged, the marbling,

which are these flecks within the meat,

stand out and become pronounced.

The dry ageing intensifies the beef flavour.

The people, the chefs especially, are looking for this sort of meat,

looking for that fine texture and fine flavour.

Grass-fed beef gives you that fine flavour

and it is totally sustainable.

This is the fifth and sixth rib.

The first cut of the chuck, and this would be the eye of the chuck.

If you can see by my finger, how soft and succulent that is.

This will give it its flavour.

It is so tender.

It makes wonderful pasties, pies, casseroles.

Really soft. You have the succulence of the chuck,

but the sweetness of the ribeye.

And for us, as butchers, this is the ultimate.

-That's posh... Ruby...

-Devon.

-Yes, Ruby Red Devon.

Fantastic grass-fed meat.

We need to treat this with the respect that it deserves.

It's a beautiful, beautiful piece of meat.

It's chuck steak, so it's great for a stew,

but we've kind of thought about, what's a posh stew?

Something different that's? And we've come to the Greek stifado.

It's lovely, it's indulgent, it's spiced, it's nice,

it takes a long time and it makes an event out of this.

Now, I'm just going to take some, not all, but some of the fat off,

so I'm just trimming it off.

And you'll see little pieces of sinew

that I'm just going to take off as well.

The bedrock of the marinade, four cloves of garlic,

sliced this time, not crushed.

It is a fairly rustic, robust dish.

-Happy?

-I'm over the moon.

So, to the garlic, I put in a piece of cinnamon bark.

Three bay leaves.

Four cloves.

I want a teaspoon of allspice berries,

half a teaspoon of whole coriander.

I want a big piece of orange zest.

Now I've got a Malbec.

Malbec and beef, it's a marriage made in heaven.

Add in about half a bottle.

And, to help the marinade do its work with the beef,

two spoons of red wine vinegar.

Now that's the marinade done.

And just, you see what I'm doing? Just turn them over.

One side, then the other.

All those flavours are just starting to work through.

Lovely stuff, King-y.

The magic and the alchemy with this dish

isn't going to happen in an hour.

It needs to be marinating at least overnight, preferably for 24 hours.

So we'll see you later, in 24 hours.

Look at that. That's what you want.

Mr King, here's your meat.

Thank you very, very much.

Right, I'm going to brown some of these...

whole pickling onions off.

While the onions are browning,

I'm just going to pat this beautiful, beautiful meat.

Look how it's changed colour - absolutely gorgeous,

I'm going to pat that dry.

I want about 400g of peeled cold tomatoes.

Cross the bottom,

put them in boiling water to loosen the skin,

plunge them into ice cold water,

peel off the skin and then I'm going to core them.

You can do this with canned tomatoes, but this is a posh one,

so we're trying to make it as nice as possible.

And we need the marinating liquor,

and we're just going to strain that off.

Shall we keep the bay leaves in and fish those out later on?

-Yeah.

-Go on.

-Right, mate, I think we're there.

-They are perfect, man.

Beautiful. Nice colour on them.

Now what we do is start to... sear our beef.

And just do it in batches, because you want to get some colour on it.

-Man, this smells really, really good.

-Yeah.

-So that's the sort of colour that you need...

-Oh, yeah.

-..on the beef.

Now we start to build our stifado.

All these tomatoes can go straight into that pan.

And by the very nature of the liquid that comes out of those tomatoes,

what's happening is, quite naturally,

it's just deglazing the pan of all those beautiful beef

and marinade flavours and onion.

Oh, so good.

Now we've got the reserved marinade with the bay leaves.

We'll pop that in there too.

I've got two tablespoons of tomato puree in this

just to enrich my tomatoes.

And then, just to balance off the tomatoes, some sweetness -

about a teaspoon of honey.

-Some salt, King-y?

-Yeah, mate, yeah.

The one thing I can be sure of, beef, lots of black pepper.

Hear hear.

Right.

Let's bring that up to temperature a little bit,

just so it just hits the boil,

then we'll turn it down and add our onions and beef.

Roasting juices.

Those onions look perfect.

All in.

Just give it a stir.

We put the lid on, reduce it to a simmer,

and we cook it for about an hour to an hour and a half.

You could do this in the oven if you wanted,

but traditionally it's a stove topper.

It is. I'm just going to turn it right down.

Slow and long.

We'll come back about ten minutes before it's due

and put our buttery noodles on.

Oh! Oh, yeah.

Look at the sheen on that beef, it's dropping apart.

Oh, wow. Right, I've got some macaroni in here, small macaroni.

Stifado, I think, is one of those dishes, I believe,

that is served traditionally with macaroni, so we are not too far...

Oh, look at that.

Oh, dear me.

But it's wonderfully thick and rich, full of savoury goodness.

Oh, good grief.

I know, it's got that wow factor, but remember it's economical

and, really, it's what my mother would call just a nice of chuck.

And not forgetting our Greek origins,

let's put some oregano on the top.

A brindling of herbs.

Smashing. Thank you.

-Oh, yes.

-It's just falling apart.

Oh, it's so worth the effort. Oh, man.

That is a Parthenon of a dish.

Nothing beats home-made comfort food,

but every now and then it's nice to have someone else cook for you.

Thankfully all over the country there are tasty places

that make us feel right at home.

I'm Claire Woodier, this is Claire's of Smithfield.

This is my cafe on New Smithfield Market.

Before I had the cafe I was in telecoms, I was in sales,

getting very frustrated.

My husband bought the cafe off his mother.

His mother retired, and basically said,

"Would you like to spend some time managing it

"and you can do that novel you always wanted to write?"

I'm, like, "OK, fine". Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Essentially, the cafe was purely bacon sandwiches,

all those kind of traditional breakfasts things,

'greasy spoon fodder.'

Thank you very much.

'But it just seemed completely perverse.'

We've got all of the restaurants and grocers

and catering people coming here for their produce,

so rather than just cooking all this bacon and sausage

that people are getting bored with,

let's branch out, let's spread our wings a little bit

and go and support the traders,

support the market people that are here.

It's inspiring. We're in the middle of this great resource

that the whole of the North West is using.

So, we started looking around, saying,

"OK, let's do fresh soups everyday,

"let's make pasta dishes, risotto."

'A typical day for us, we open at 2am.'

What sort of coffee?

'First thing we do is have an influx of guys

'that are ready to come in for their coffee.'

They like their nuclear hot instant coffee,

and it stays hot till Leeds, apparently.

Being a trader here for over 30 years,

it's great to see the improvement in the quality of food.

When I first started,

you were lucky to get a cold ham sandwich, or a bacon butty.

She puts on a full spread,

which you don't really expect from a market caff.

A little bistro somewhere, you know, somewhere in France,

or something, rather than Manchester city centre,

wholesale market.

It's proper...proper food.

Pork stroganoff is one of our favourites at the minute.

Everyone loves it. We make everything fresh to order.

We flash fry the pork,

but we slow cook the onions and mushrooms

so that they're lovely and buttery and oozy,

and they make a lovely, rich sauce,

which the guys love because it's filling, it's tasty, it's fresh,

but it's not too green, because they get very suspicious of green stuff.

I found this one because we got a really great deal

on some pork loin and I thought, "What can we do with it?"

So, I did a bit of midnight reading next to my husband,

who was thrilled about that,

because I got one of the cookbooks out

and found this one and it just seems to have hit the mark.

The guys love spice here.

You can't possibly get away with anything mild at all.

In fact, they put chilli sauce on my risotto, which...

..makes me die inside a little bit.

However...

Turns out I'm doing 2am shifts, doing all the cleaning,

doing all the cooking,

doing all the shopping after the shift has finished.

I've never worked as hard in my life as I've done here.

However, it doesn't feel like work.

I come here quite regularly. I work on the sites.

It's pretty much the obvious place to come, really.

The food's fresh, you can see it being made, it's good quality.

I try to pick something different every time,

see what's on the specials menu, see what different things I can try.

And it's just great value and great quality food.

Lovely. Right.

One of my favourites is in the winter.

The soups are just out of this world.

And she has a different one on every day.

And she even does croutons, can you believe it?

Croutons, Smithfield Market. What a luxury!

Thank you.

'My husband absolutely regrets it.'

I'm pretty sure of it.

There have been times when we're like ships in the night,

we don't see each other at all.

And he has said on many occasions that the cafe gets the best of me.

Because when we're here, we're on a ten.

This is where the peak of our energy is.

And then I go home and I just go...

Out, done.

However, he can see that I'm absolutely loving it.

We laugh all night. It's great fun.

What's the first posh dessert you remember having?

Rum babas. Me mam used to make them.

But, King-y, how can we make the rum baba even more posh,

even more en vogue?

Well done. I have an idea.

-Yeah.

-Limoncello.

-The limoncello baba?

-Yeah.

-Could be fusion confusion.

It could.

Basically, we start with a very enriched dough.

Some yeast goes in.

Just give that a good stir.

A big pinch of salt.

About half a teaspoon.

The wonder that is limoncello.

From Italy, just the most great, great, great flavour of lemons

in a liqueur form.

So, I'm going to kick off with putting some of these

beautiful sultanas, we're going to soak them in a little bit of water

and a little bit of lemon.

We're going to bring this just to the boil.

I take four eggs, this is my liquids.

In true biblical style,

the land of milk, and honey, about a tablespoon.

And just whisk this up.

While Dave is whisking,

all I'm doing is putting some butter in these moulds.

Now, they need to be buttered quite well,

because you want the batter that goes in them,

once it's cooked, to come out perfectly.

Eggs, milk and honey go into the flour.

Look at that, that's creaming nicely.

Now, we beat the butter in.

We've brought our sultanas to temperature.

Now we have to cool them.

We need to reserve the liquor.

And just keep beating the butter in until it's creamy.

It's already starting to get elastic as the yeast starts to work,

it's feeding off the honey.

Have we got some mixed peel?

We have, mate, there it is.

Oh, thank you. It gives it a nice citrus feel to it.

A nice bit of chew.

-I think we might be there.

-Aye, we're all right, man, yeah.

So, this wouldn't be traditional in your rum baba.

I'm going to save the rest, mate, for our little...

Oh, yes. For the little filler.

Remember, these are going to virtually double in size.

It's an enriched dough, it's a yeasty bake,

so don't fill them too full.

Beautiful.

Set those aside for about half an hour

until the yeast has started to work.

Shall we crack on with the syrup?

Why not? Yeah, might as well.

Yes.

We start with 400g of caster sugar and we have 400ml of water.

And also the zest and juice of one lemon.

And when we've got the syrup, we add six tablespoons of limoncello...

..and the honey.

Have a taste, mate, have a taste. What do you think?

Syrup's done. That needs to go cold.

-Look at that.

-Oh!

They've levelled out and they've risen to just below the rim.

Now, we pop these into a preheated oven, 170 Celsius,

for about 12 to 15 minutes until brown and golden.

Excellent.

Now our syrup has gone cool,

can you remember the soaking liquor that we made for our raisins?

Pour that into there.

Traditionally, babas...

Well, a low class rum baba,

it would have its hole filled with squirty cream.

-Wrong, Dave.

-Wrong. These are posh babas.

Oh, yes.

So, we're going to fill our holes

-with a very special mascarpone cream.

-Oh!

A couple of tablespoons... of icing sugar.

A bit of vanilla extract.

This is going to be gorgeous.

It's such a luxury.

I'm not going to waste these little beauties.

And to loosen that mixture up a little bit...

..limoncello.

Back in the fridge.

Another ten minutes.

-Oh, yes.

-Oh, yes.

It's fairly safe to say that baba is in the house.

Right, now we have to wait for five minutes for those to cool

before we turn them out and start to feed them.

These are just cool enough to handle.

There we go.

Should I soak while we go?

-Oh, yes.

-Yes.

So, what we're going to do is soak these

and then wait for five minutes, then we're going to turn them over...

and soak them again.

-Do the other side.

-Oh, yes.

They're starting to get heavy now.

We'll continue to feed these over a 24-hour period.

Turn and dribble, turn and dribble.

We'll be seeing you in an hour or two for another good soaking.

Dowsing.

Oh, look at this. Now here's our mascarpone cream.

I'm just giving it its last snack.

Oh, yeah.

And...

..because it's posh,

a glacier cherry.

-Shall we?

-I think.

It seems such a shame.

-Oh, look at that.

-Oh, yeah.

-What's it like?

-It's glorious.

That is so worth the effort.