DIY The Hairy Bikers' Comfort Food

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

to restaurants with Michelin stars.

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.

There's nothing like comfort food to put a smile on your face.

Today - dishes you may never have thought of making at home.

We're talking do it yourself.

DIY or do-it-yourself.

Some dishes that you see, you think,

"Oh, it's very expensive, but I'll treat myself.

"But I'd never do that myself. I couldn't do it myself."

-Well...

-You can.

-..you can.

Because we're going to show you how to make gravadlax.

The only thing with making gravadlax is that there's quite a bit of waste

cos you've got to trim it off.

So I'll start that.

I'm going to make the cure.

I start with dill.

I've got 40g of fresh dill,

and chop this till it's fine.

There are many processes that were originally started not for flavour,

not for taste, but to preserve food.

Salting, brining, smoking, pickling.

And Scandinavians, because of the short seasons,

are very, very good at it and this is a wonderful way

of making salmon keep for a long time.

But by crikey, it tastes lovely.

So, I've got some sea salt flakes, about 75g.

50g of soft brown sugar.

And I want about a tablespoon of freshly ground black pepper.

So I'll be here for a little while.

DIY, you see.

We don't buy our pepper ground, we do it ourselves.

We mix that together. Look at that. Looks nice, doesn't it?

It's amazing as well. It takes about three days to cure

and the salt draws out the water in the salmon and the liquid

and it kind of cooks itself.

But you know, it's amazing the amount of liquid

that it will draw out.

-Do you know, we could be somewhere like in Reykjavik, couldn't we?

-Yeah.

-IN SCANDINAVIAN ACCENT:

-We are getting ready for the winter,

-myself and Olaf.

-Yes.

-So we make the salmon.

Yes, we do, yah.

And then what we do...

..we do that, like a big sandwich.

-Big sandwich.

-And then...

Now this is the important bit

because this needs to be quite tight.

Now, when you're wrapping...

Do you want to wash your hands? I'll do that.

-Yeah, go on mate, yeah.

-Yeah.

When you wrap it, leave the ends open,

cos that liquid needs to go somewhere

and if you wrap it up like a plastic bag, it's just going to stay.

We need to wrap that quite tightly,

but the weight of the salmon itself on its own isn't enough.

Now we've got our trusty brick.

That's going to exert pressure on to the salmon.

We put that in the fridge now for three days.

That will be in the fridge for the passage of three moons.

At the end of every moon cycle,

that's like once a day, you take this off,

drain all the water out and turn the salmon over,

so each side gets its own share of the brine.

And also, what is nice is fresh clingfilm each day.

Look after your fish, it's precious.

Right, fridge.

-Three days later.

-Oh!

We've been up day and night, just waiting for that moment

to turn the gravadlax,

and then another 24 hours, turn again.

-If you believe that, you'll believe anything.

-Yeah.

But even the sauce, we are making it ourselves.

Three egg yolks.

Four teaspoons of Dijon mustard.

And two tablespoons of white wine vinegar.

And a spoon of caster sugar.

This is a proper Scandi sauce, this.

And pepper. I'm not finished yet.

Did you put salt in when I wasn't looking?

-I did.

-And salt.

I'll put a bit more in cos I didn't put hardly any in.

Now, we beat that till it's creamy

then we kind of dribble the oil in to make mayonnaise,

then we add dill.

-Right, mate.

-Lovely. It's a sweet and savoury mayonnaise, this.

Now, sunflower oil is always best for mayonnaise, as we know.

You keep this long, ceaseless, endless dribble.

It's starting to thicken up lovely now.

-Do you think we're there?

-I reckon.

Give it another whack.

Done.

Now, to this we add the dill cos without the dill it

wouldn't be dill sauce, would it?

In Scandinavia, they use a lot of dill.

That's it, that's what you want to see.

That is. And we've done that ourselves.

Now, what we've also done, just to serve it up with,

is some coriander seed and some beetroot, some chives,

a little bit of parsley as well. It's lovely.

So here we have the finished gravadlax.

Put it on the board, mate.

-And then we can...

-That's the liquid that's come out of the salmon.

That's the curing process.

Anticipation.

How much would this cost in a restaurant?

Oh, it'd be fortunes.

It does look nice.

Now, we need to scrape off.

You know gravadlax, it's one of those dishes,

you must try and do it yourself.

You can have loads, it's impressive and you can say,

-"I did this myself."

-Yeah!

-Lovely, isn't it?

-Mmm.

Every family has their favourite dishes,

the comfort foods that remind us of home.

These are our inheritance dishes,

handed down through generations of the same family.

My name is Lynda.

I'm an organic baker and I've been baking for 25 years now.

I've got four children and one grandchild.

I think the food that I would hand down as a memory for my children

would be the focaccia bread, especially the cheese and pesto.

It's very easy to make.

You just put some warm water, hand hot, into a bowl.

You add some flour, put fresh yeast in, give it a stir.

It's that simple.

And now we've mixed the flour and the yeast together,

we're going to wait for this to activate,

so we're going to leave this for about 15 to 20 minutes

and it'll start bubbling.

So, we just leave this where it is, in the bowl, in your kitchen,

it's ready to go.

When it starts looking creamy in colour and it starts to move up

in volume in the bowl, you know that that yeast has activated.

You get a little bit of sea salt, just enough,

in the palm of your hand, you put that in and then you, very generous,

you put in at least four to six glugs of olive oil.

Add your flour until it comes away from the sides of the bowl,

tip it out and just knead it for a while, about five minutes.

Let the dough work for you,

let it work for itself and then you put it on the side,

you can chop it and use it straightaway.

I think it's important to pass on the skills that I've taught myself

for the children, for the future and also for their children.

-Hi, Mum.

-Hi, Verity, are you all right?

-Yeah, good, thank you.

-Yeah, good.

Hi, Louis, give Nanny a kiss.

Oh, I've got flour on your cheeks now.

How did I do that?

'I think that food is love, so when you make something by hand,

'I think you have that intent.

'While I'm making it, I'm thinking,

"People are going to enjoy eating this."

Your turn. Watch your fingers.

Beautiful.

Now we're going to put the pesto on.

So we put about half of a tablespoon on.

I think what's really important about family cooking as well

is that we can now teach Louis all the stuff that we've learnt from Mum,

our mum, and he really enjoys it.

I just think it's, like, such a brilliant skill

to have when you're older.

'I think family gatherings are really important

'because everybody's having a go at cooking and sharing the food.'

'Everybody's relaxed and we can all sit in each other's company

'and enjoy what we're eating.

'I think that's very important and very important for my grandson

'because he's seeing the food being made

'and he has a go himself at chopping and helping

'to prepare the food and then we all sit down and eat it together.'

I think it looks like...

'I love comfort foods.

'When you eat something that tastes good,

'you feel good in yourself and it lifts your spirits.'

Righto, viewers, settle down

because this could be the longest recipe in TV history.

-Yes.

-We're going to show you how to make salt beef, or corned beef.

It's bit of a process, it's old-fashioned,

it's fabulous and you can do it yourself.

I'm going to start with the pickling spices or the preserving spices.

First thing that we do is we're going to toast these off.

So, we've got four bay leaves.

Now, just crush them up and then we've got some cinnamon bark,

some allspice, some mace, some cloves and some peppercorns

and two teaspoons...

..of mustard seed.

These pickling spices will go into the brine that I'm making

and this is what will cure the beef.

I put some salt in the water, hence you've got brine.

To that I've got some soft brown sugar.

That goes in.

This is the mystery ingredient, Prague Powder #1.

You won't find this in the supermarket but you can buy

it on the internet.

What it is, it's a mixture of salt and sodium nitrite.

And it's also known as saltpetre.

This is going to take ten days to cure.

You can be slapdash with your ingredients and your amounts,

not with this. For this amount of water, you need just 20g.

Do be careful with this.

Too much is not good for you.

We bring that to a boil until all these ingredients have dissolved.

While that's coming up to the boil,

I've lightly toasted all our spices off in a dry saucepan.

All this is doing, really,

is just releasing the oils and you'll start to get

-big wafts of...

-Yeah.

..pickle and spice and... DAVE SIGHS

-It's lovely, isn't it?

-Over the ten days, you know, again

it's home-made and all those spices go into the beef, it's fabulous.

Right mate, they're ready. I'll just put them in, eh?

And lastly, just to spice things up, one teaspoon of ground ginger.

Oh, man, it smells amazing.

Bring to the boil and stir until the salt and sugar have dissolved.

Allow to cool completely.

Let's get pickled.

This is a piece of rolled brisket.

Nothing fancy. It's nice, though.

Not too much fat but it's a good piece of meat.

-That goes in the bowl.

-And this goes in here over said brisket.

Nice one, Kingy.

Now, cover this

with clingfilm.

I'm going to put this in the fridge for ten days,

so when you get up or before you go to bed,

just remember, "I've got to turn me brisket."

Right, now look at this.

In those days, ten days, it's here,

it's turned a bit grey and miserable-looking.

But... That's what it's meant to do but it hasn't gone off.

Now, we have to wash this.

I'm going to do a court bouillon, which is fundamentally

onion, garlic, some thyme,

bay leaves and some celery.

Just chop them,

it doesn't need to be flash.

So it can be quite rustic.

Now, we put the brisket in here.

Bring it to a simmer.

And leave it for about three and a half hours.

THEY LAUGH

I told you it's worth it, I'm telling you, it's worth it.

Right, we'll lose this lid.

I think that's cool enough now.

We can just about get a sandwich out of it.

What's your favourite sandwich, Kingy?

Oh, man, a Reuben sandwich, dude, with that, fantastic.

Yeah, I mean, the Reuben sandwich is the colossus of sandwiches.

You start off with good sourdough bread, butter,

slices of just warm home-made salt beef.

You top that with a couple of spoonfuls of sauerkraut,

some cheese goes on the top, Emmental, nice one,

and then you make a Russian dressing to top your butty,

which is what we're doing now.

Right, it starts with teaspoonful of shallots.

Now, to his teaspoon of shallots, I put a teaspoon of horseradish sauce.

And then we have some gherkins that we're just going to dice.

Hot sauce, red-hot sauce, a splash, or two, or three, or four.

A tablespoon of mayonnaise.

Do you know what, I am so excited by this sandwich.

Oh, I know. Well, we've waited for ten days for this sandwich.

A tablespoon of ketchup.

And a splash of Worcestershire sauce.

And that is our Russian dressing.

And to finish it off, just a pinch

of paprika.

What do you think, Kingy?

-Oh man, that's it.

-Mr Beef.

Beautiful. Now, it does look a bit grey there but wait till we cut

inside. Go on, Kingy, you're on carving duties.

All right, mucker.

Now...

-There you are.

-There we are, that's what we're looking for.

-Look at that.

-And that's your home-made corned beef.

Oh, that smells so, so amazing.

It's just the tenderest, most wonderful, fragrant beef.

Oh, man!

Call it corned beef, call it salt beef,

that's some of the best beef I've ever tasted.

The flavour, it's fantastic.

Now, we're using a sourdough for this.

You could use whatever bread you fancy.

I think, I think the Reuben traditionally is on rye.

-Yes.

-But we're kind of sourdough fans, aren't we?

You do it yourself,

you can put as much love as you want, even into a sandwich.

Quite a generous sandwich.

-Oh, yes.

-You know, let's think deli style.

And cos you wash the brine and the pickling spices off it,

it's not overly salty or spicy.

Now, sauerkraut.

Now the cheese. Some Gruyere, I think that's my favourite for this.

The Russian dressing.

Take that piece of bread.

I think this is the ultimate sandwich.

Look at that.

Mmm!

-Oh, that is brilliant.

-That is brilliant.

I know you shouldn't talk with your mouth full

but, dear me, that's great.

You know, it's bonkers, isn't it, Kingy, when you get dishes like the

-Reuben sandwich, cos it's more than a sandwich...

-It is.

..you wonder who first thought of putting together salt beef,

sauerkraut, cheese and a spicy chilli dressing.

Einstein, dude, cos it's genius.

Britain has an army of creative chefs who day after day send out

sensational dishes to customers in their restaurants.

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

I'm Henry Eldon.

We're at The Cauldron Restaurant in St Werburghs, Bristol.

The name is exactly we what we do,

we've got a 60 litre cast-iron cauldron in the kitchen.

For us here we are unique to have a kitchen that's powered by charcoal,

beech logs. What you have is what you're cooking on

and it's open for customers to see and that's really nice

to be able to show those processes

and those flames and that smoke coming out.

So, all of our appliances in The Cauldron are solid-fuel powered.

This one here, this beautiful dome, it's a wood fired Pompeii oven,

Italian style. Been used for centuries to make bread and pizzas.

We use it for roasting haunches of meat, vegetables,

making Yorkshire puddings for our roast.

Down here we've got our Swedish style cast-iron stove called Vicky.

We use her for wok burning, for proving bread,

nice little bit of warmth in there to hold plates hot.

These, the masterpiece, centre of the kitchen,

South African potjie pots.

Big cast-iron stock pots.

We've got a stock in here at the moment, pig's trotters,

chicken carcasses, vegetables.

That'll be on for two or three days.

Powered by a fire directly below it.

Cooking in this way with solid fuel has lots of benefits.

You can get a nice char on fruit and vegetables,

you can get the immediate heat,

you get the smoke and the smell coming from that wood burning.

You get the sense that you're cooking with nature.

It's the way that families and cultures have cooked for centuries.

One of the dishes that were doing at the moment incorporates smoking

chicken in Woody the wood-fired oven.

It's a really nice way to get the flavour and colour onto the meat.

We've made a dressing with fat that comes out of the chorizo when you

roast that in the oven as well and that fat we then use to make a

mayonnaise. It's really bright in colour and a fantastic flavour.

My partner's from Texas.

We get huge influences from the barbecue scene out there.

As a result, we cook on the barbecue a lot at home.

Not just meat, vegetables and stews and casseroles and desserts.

So now we're going to cook

the smoked apple and spiced rum crumble.

Thick crumble topping, nuts, dried fruits, sugar,

spiced rum to flambe it all off in the barbecue.

Delicious.

To make the crumble, I smoke the apples over hawthorn.

It's very similar to apple and pear tree.

You smoke them on the barbecue with the lid on.

Get a load of the spiced rum in there, burn it off.

Red fruits, red berries, damsons.

Crumble topping on the top with some of the dried fruits, nuts, oats,

all in there. Get the lid back on and use the barbecue like an oven to

bake this all in a dish.

Having lived in London for 30 years and not having a garden,

any outside space,

it's really nice to come down here, have our barbecue,

get your friends out, be outside with the trees and cook,

all out here in the garden.

It's really nice to sit with your

friends and dig through it with big spoons, eating it from the pan.

The addition that my kitchen brings to the food,

it's the smoky, charcoaly, carbonised flavours.

Having that same smell and that same flame and spark that we do in the

garden that we have in the restaurant here, it's my dream.

DIY doughnuts.

Yes, jam doughnuts.

-DIY jam as well.

-Yeah.

I'm just hulling strawberries and I will be here for a while, so don't worry about me.

And my job is to put the dough in that nut.

So what I do is first off

I have half a teaspoon of salt and then to that I add -

stir the salt in cos I don't want to kill me yeast -

a sachet of dried yeast.

Some caster sugar.

Sugar.

And just mix your dries together with clean hands.

Doughnut dough is quite a rich dough,

so I melt the butter into the milk and then I'm going to beat an egg

into that, then make the dough.

How many are you eating and how many are you putting in the bowl?

It's like, "One for the pot, one for me."

Well, sorry...

Now, I don't want to heat this up too much because obviously if this

gets too hot it's going to kill the yeast,

so the butter has just melted,

take it off, I'm going to beat into this an egg.

While Dave's doing that, I'm going to start process of making our jam.

So there's 750g of strawberries...

..and 750g granulated sugar.

See, he's making this up as he goes along, he's jammin'!

THEY LAUGH

It's easy, though, isn't it, it's half and half.

It is exactly that, half and half.

Egg gets beaten into the milk and butter.

'Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the milk,

'butter and egg mixture.'

'Stir to combine with a spoon or your hands until it comes together

'in a fairly firm dough.'

'Knead until smooth.'

'Return the dough to the bowl and cover with clingfilm or a damp tea

'towel. Leave somewhere warm until the dough has doubled in size.'

For the home-made strawberry jam,

heat it up until the strawberries break down and the sugar dissolves.

When the temperature reaches 105 degrees,

you will start to make pectin,

which is the chemical which causes the jam to be jammy.

You can then turn the pan off and you'll have jam.

We've got the jam, we've got the dough.

That's it. We've got to wait for that to cool,

wait for your dough to rise.

Let's have a cup of tea.

Ah. There we go, Mr King.

-Right, that's cool.

-Oh, nice, dude.

Now, that dough should make eight healthy-sized doughnuts.

So we knock the dough back.

Oh, very nice. Oh, it smells lovely.

So...

that's the air knocked out.

Right, while you're doing that, mate,

I'm going to put the cool jam into this jug and then from the jug

into a squirty bottle and that's how we're going to get our jam

into our doughnuts.

And just because we can,

we made some custard.

-Custard and jam doughnuts!

-HE INHALES SHARPLY

Not yet, though.

No.

We have to put these aside for half an hour

until they've doubled in size again.

Right, let's make doughnuts.

I'm looking forward to this.

Take your dough. Don't crowd. I want to flatten it a bit.

Heat the vegetable oil in a fryer or deep,

wide saucepan to around 160 degrees C.

Fry the doughnuts for around three minutes on each side until they are

a deep, golden brown.

This will need to be done in at least two batches.

Do not overcrowd the pan or the temperature of the oil will drop.

They are supermodel doughnuts.

Ha!

You've got to get the sugar on when it's hot, though.

No pain, no gain.

-Mr King.

-Thank you, sir.

To the injection plant.

HE LAUGHS Right, so, it's very simple.

What you do

is you make a hole in your doughnut like that.

Squiggle it round a bit.

-Oh!

-Squirt the jam in.

I love the idea of the custard.

-It's great, innit.

-I don't mind a bit of ooze on the jam

cos it gives you indication of the treasure that lies within.

I know, well, that's what I was thinking, you see.

They're brilliant.

Aye.

-That's it, we're done.

-We're done.

-Shall we?

-Yeah, but here's a competition for you.

-Yes?

-Can you eat a doughnut without licking your lips?

Well, can we eat a doughnut and keep our moustaches intact?

I'm going in custard and jam side.

They're brilliant.

They're really, really, really naughty.

It's even got a smiley face, look.

-Excellent.

-Mmm.

DIY doughnuts - do them, they're lush.

Oh, aye. They're naughty, but they are very nice.