A Cut Above 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, we're transforming everyday ingredients,

creating comforting dishes that are definitely a cut above.

It's about great ways to make cheap cuts of meat go further,

and taste lovely. Cos actually, interestingly,

cheaper cuts have a deeper taste.

The thing is, there are some recipes that are particularly suited to

-cheaper cuts of meat.

-Indeed.

Like, this is pork shoulder.

We're going to be doing a caramelised Vietnamese pork.

It's a wonderful dish.

And the pork shoulder, because of the fatty content, it's better than,

say, a really expensive loin.

It's, quite simply, a cut above.

Well, it is. A cut above in flavour, a cut above in price,

because it's cheap.

So, the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to add some oil

to the pan, coconut oil.

We're going to add that to the pan,

and I'm going to fry off, in batches, said pork.

And I've got four banana shallots, and I'm slicing them.

The Vietnamese food culture is very interesting.

About 1,000 years ago, the Chams invaded from India,

so there's that, kind of, Indian spices got mixed up with, kind of,

the Chinese influence.

Then, of course, the French were there for years.

And some of the best French bread we've had has been in Vietnam.

So you kind of combine the French with the Indian, with the Chinese,

and Vietnamese food is this light, delicate, kind of,

eclectic bouquet of flavour.

It is.

For recipes like this, with the caramelised pork,

we don't want to overpower the flavour,

which is why we're using a shallot.

The shallots tend to be slightly sweeter and less overpowering,

less oniony, you know.

You cry less with a shallot, as well.

And you want some nice colour on the pork.

Yeah, that's perfect, isn't it?

Right, mate, that's us.

I don't want the onions to caramelise,

I want them to be quite soft and just to sweat down a little bit.

While Dave's doing that, I'm just going to prep the lemon grass.

Lovely, lovely flavour.

As these shallots are cooking,

they're picking up all those lovely cooking juices

and bits from the pork.

I think they're just about spot-on, Si.

Yeah, perfect, man.

It's time, now, for the garlic and the lemon grass.

Lovely!

We have two stalks of lemon grass.

I've got three cloves of garlic.

So, take that off the heat.

The last thing we want to do is burn the garlic.

And just cook that for another minute or so.

-The smells are great.

-It's starting to build up, isn't it?

-Mmm.

-Now, we've got a teaspoon

of Chinese five-spice powder.

And three star anise.

I mean, funnily enough, star anise is one of the main ingredients

in five-spice powder.

-It is.

-Just pop those in.

-Yep.

-Two, three.

-And now, the caramel part, and that's palm sugar.

You can either get it in a block, which you have to grate...

But this is, like, it's kind of fresh, sticky palm sugar.

And this makes the caramel, the sweet nature of our pork dish.

And palm sugar in Asian cooking, it has a wonderful, it's sweet,

but it's not, kind of, sickly, is it?

No, it's not. I love it, I love it that in Asia they have palm sugar,

in India they have something called jaggery,

which is very, very similar, and it's just so, so lovely.

-Well, there you go, Kingy.

-Yeah.

I think Mr Caramel is in the house.

-It's happening, dude.

-Yeah.

But it wouldn't be Vietnamese at all without some fish sauce.

And, Vietnamese fish sauce is very different to the Thai fish sauce.

It's much, much stronger.

And this is your seasoning.

And, lastly, 200ml of water.

Now, this also helps deglaze the pan, and gets all of those lovely,

lovely flavours off the bottom of the pan.

All we do now is return the pork to the pan,

simmer away gently for about an hour and a half

until the pork is literally the softest, most unctuous,

sweetest pork you've ever tasted.

-Oh, look at that!

-Lovely.

-It's beautiful.

-I'm just going to push some of this cori through it.

It's hard to describe the smell of this.

It's, like, kind of, caramel mixed with five-spice, with lovely,

lovely hearty stew.

It's great.

-It's all right, isn't it?

-And we're just going to serve this with some

jasmine rice. Keep it nice and simple, because the sauce,

or the gravy, is pretty spectacular.

I love it because it's kind of quite thick, isn't it?

-Yeah, yeah.

-Beautiful, man.

This is more like a dish from Hanoi, isn't it, from the north?

It is, very much. Well, here's to our trips in Vietnam,

and a lovely dish with caramelised pork shoulder.

Yeah. Cheers.

Memories of Vietnam.

Mmm.

Mmm.

There's only food does that, isn't it?

-Takes you back.

-Mmm!

-So nice.

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.

We've been making cheddar here since about 1890.

Somerset is such an ideal place for making cheddar.

I mean, it's the home of cheddar.

So, the best thing about it is the climate.

The climate's perfect for producing the best quality grass

to produce the best quality milk to produce the best quality cheddar.

We're stood in an underground cheese cellar that we just built,

and we've got a cheese-turning robot.

So we've got this unbelievably traditional practice and recipe

that we're working to, but

we're dragging it through to the 21st century.

Cheesemaking's so exciting because every single day is different.

Especially with making the cheese that we're making.

It's raw milk, so every single day is different.

I've got to be reactive to the milk that's coming in.

Acidity might be slightly different, the fat, the protein,

and you're constantly working in that dairy, to try and guide it

and push it in the direction that you really want it to go into.

When you make cheese, you need ten litres of milk

to one kilo of cheese,

so the rest of that, you know, is all wastage.

This is whey. It'll be potentially going away for pig feed

or being spread back on the land,

but there's still some amazing nutritional value on that.

So I decided to actually do some experiments with making ricotta.

Lucky enough, I had a guy in doing work experience

who's an Italian mozzarella and ricotta maker

and he showed me a very basic recipe of ricotta making,

and so we developed it

and we've managed to make something totally unique to us.

To make ricotta, we use the whey from our cheddar-make

and we transfer that into vats,

which are really efficient at actually putting heat into the whey

as fast as possible.

We get to about 70 degrees Celsius and then we add some salt.

Then we add some starter culture and that shocks the whole vat.

And those smaller particles of ricotta suddenly kind of

get redistributed and then start to group together into larger,

almost snowflakes of ricotta

and then they just really gently rise to the surface.

Then we allow this crust to form on the surface of the ricotta

for about 15 minutes to half an hour,

and then we gently take a basket mould

and just gently scoop out some ricotta,

place that on a table and then ladle the rest on top.

All I'm trying to do, is I'm trying to be really,

really delicate while I'm scooping the ricottas out,

so you retain that beautiful texture.

The other bit that I really like is actually just tasting it.

You know, you've got to just nip in

and have a little bit of a taste of it.

It's got that kind of lemony, citrusy,

but also this base note of that creaminess, as well.

Ricotta's like a flavour carrier.

You can chuck anything into ricotta.

You can use it with savoury foods, you can put it in quiches,

you can just whack it on toast, bruschetta.

You can do it as really simply as to just put a bit of honey

over the top and then have that as a dessert or a morning pick-me-up.

You know, that is ace.

I'm going to make the tomato sauce to go with Dave's gnudi.

It's an arrabiata.

-It is an arrabiata.

-One of your faves, isn't it, mate?

It so is, yeah, because I've got a topknot and I'm hip and trendy

and I live in London.

Ya, do you wear corduroy trousers?

-Ya.

-Ya!

-Now, the ricotta's sometimes wet, so this...

-It's been, kind of,

over a sieve, so that we've got the solids.

To that, I need to add about 50g or so of Parmesan cheese.

It's where cheese meets cheese.

So, arrabiata, very, very simple.

What we do is, we start it off with some olive oil,

we're going to gently heat that in the pan

and we're going to grate some garlic

and we're going to cook the garlic down for about 2-3 minutes.

Now, we don't want any colour on it, we want it to infuse the oil.

To the ricotta and the Parmesan, some nutmeg.

It's great to be grating together, Si.

Oh, yeah, Dave, yeah. Cos we're just hip and hipsters.

Because together we're great.

And one egg yolk.

That goes in.

And I put in some flour.

Now, you can make the gnudi without flour, if you're making, like,

super-skinny gnudi.

But I like a little bit of weight in them,

but nowhere near the flour you'd have in gnocchi.

No.

A bit of a stir through.

And see how we get on with the flour. We can always add more but we can't take it out.

-You're not wrong.

-I mean, ricotta has a lovely character.

It's very often overlooked, but, like, with spinach in ravioli,

with cannelloni, it's soft, it's unctuous, it's slightly sweet,

which is great, cos the Parmesan is sharp and big.

And it's that textural difference, as well, isn't it?

It's so lovely, so lovely.

That's about 80-100 grams of flour, but I'm just doing it by eye,

cos what I want to do is I want to make it stiff enough to roll out.

Now, you can make gnudi,

which are basically just like spoonfuls of fluff,

but, being a Virgo, I like formed gnudi.

I like to roll it out, chill it and cut it into discs, so on the plate,

-it looks like...

-Neat?

Neat. I don't like untidy.

There we go.

A bit of flour on the table.

So, let's try and roll this out.

I want two, kind of, sausages, and it's not easy.

No, it's not easy, mate. You're doing a sterling job.

Pat it.

Chilli flakes, in with the garlic.

See, it is perfectly possible, just with a light touch, we have, like,

a gnudi sausage.

And so it doesn't stick we use a lot of semolina.

So, pop that on there, like so.

Nicely done, Mr Myers.

And repeat.

So, we've got our olive oil, we've got our garlic,

and now we're going to put the passata in.

And I've got my second gnudi sausage.

So we pop that in the semolina, like so.

And pop it in the fridge for a couple of hours to firm up.

So, the arrabiata sauce, what we're going to do,

it needs to be the right consistency for the gnudi.

You want it to cling a little bit, so,

we're not going to really thicken it up, we just want that halfway,

-kind of, mark.

-You've got a really nice texture on that sauce, Si.

Yeah, it's lush, isn't it?

I think we're there. Now, there's a mate of ours, she always said,

if you're making an arrabiata, or any tomato sauce,

what you do to finish it, always finish it, once the cooking's over,

with some olive oil.

And it just lifts all those flavours,

you get the beautiful flavour of the oil, it just looks great.

-Look at that, look at the difference, Dave.

-Oh, aye.

Now, I'm going to do these in, probably, two batches.

Take your gnudi, and with a sharp knife, just cut discs.

Don't worry about compressing too much.

Now, dust these in semolina, you can put them all in.

Like so.

And we pop them to poach for about four minutes.

When they float to the top, they're done.

-Fantastic.

-They're sinking well.

It's more a poaching process, it's not a mad boil.

I do the same thing when I'm doing ravioli, you know,

I want it to cook through, I don't want them to split.

Look, have a look!

That one's got his snorkel out.

-Yeah.

-"I'm coming up for air!"

Said the gnudi.

-Right, mate, I'm just going to put little bit of oil...

-Yeah.

..on this plate.

-Oh, wow, they're really light, Dave.

-Yeah, they are, aren't they?

They're so light and yet they look substantial.

-They do.

-The flavour is very, very subtle,

and very tasty with the Parmesan, though.

It kind of doesn't get much better.

Then we just pop the rest of your gnudi in.

They have this saying in Italy, "a watched gnudi never floats."

So, just look away.

You're staring.

-You can't help it, though, can you?

-They're lovely, aren't they?

Right, Mr Myers. A pool?

A pool.

That's it, lovely.

Some basil.

Lush, man.

More Parmesan!

You think about ricotta in the cheese industry,

it was going to be thrown away,

but the Italians have caught on that it's really rather lovely.

And I think the gnudi dish,

it's made that humble cheese be a cut above.

-Definitely that.

-Look at that!

-Lovely. Lovely plate of food.

-Yeah.

-And just to finish, mate...

Yeah.

Yes!

-Thank you, sir.

-Thank you.

You know, after watching this, it'd be very "rudi"

not to make our gnudi!

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?

I'm Freddy Bird, I'm the head chef here at the Lido in Bristol.

Check on, one tortilla, one courgette salad, please.

Two checks are sitting there.

Everything we prepare is cooked either over

charcoal or in the wood oven.

Fire, you get the smell, you get the sounds,

you get the heat, you get the feel.

I can't think I'd cook any other way.

One ajoblanco, one baked crab,

follow one salmon, one mezze, please.

Food, for me, is bringing people together and making people happy.

It's that thing, you sit down at home,

the rare occasions you get to sit down as a family,

everything happens around food.

After a long day, I like to keep it pretty simple.

One-pot wonder, if you like,

that I can chuck in the middle of the table,

tear up some bread and dip in and share it out amongst

Ness and the kids.

So, this is my kitchen.

A far cry from the Lido.

No wood oven, sadly.

But all the usual bits and bobs, gadgets and gizmos,

gas stove and a nice, big, open space

where the kids can see us cook and where we can all hang out

together as a family.

Today, I'm going to cook ourselves a nice,

sort of, fish stew.

I've got some mussels, got a bit of hake in there, got some tomatoes,

bit of leftover aioli.

Chuck it all together, bit of wild oregano.

Big thing in the middle of the table, everyone can tuck in,

maybe get my boy to eat a little bit.

I'm not sure, let's see what happens.

Food-wise, you know, I'm still keen to cook.

I have my days where I'm also very happy to put my feet up

and order a pizza.

Yeah, a little less fussy when I get home, but still great ingredients.

When it comes to home cooking, I suppose I like to keep it

pretty simple.

Always got lots of garlic in the house and in the evenings

when I come home, it'll be a simple little stew or a nice salad.

In the winter, lots of slow-cooky stuff that maybe I can then reheat

another day of the week.

It's not, you know, it's not complicated stuff,

it's just simple, easy, nice ingredients.

So, yeah, pretty varied.

So just wild oregano, slightly dry, but it's just got a lovely...

Just such a perfumed and peppery...

smell and flavour.

Lovely, really lovely.

And the sauce is just from the tomatoes.

That's a beautiful moment, I love that.

And it's the smell as well,

you just get hit with the oregano and the garlic.

I'm going to put just a little splash of white wine as well.

That'll boil off all the booze in that, just a little splash,

just to make it a bit saucier and then I'll chuck the mussels

into there. But the smell from that is...

That's what it's all about.

There we go.

That'll do, that's probably enough.

So, we're going to chuck a few of those chickpeas in as well.

A couple of nice prawns in there, just to make it a bit more exciting.

But you've also got delicious, cheap mussels, chickpeas to bulk it up,

hake, you could use cod, you can use coley,

you can use any cheap white fish.

The sauce is going to give all the flavour,

the fish is going to suck it all up. That's, you know, that's...

This is how you make nice, cheap ingredients taste great.

It's bags of flavour in your sauce, pack that, you know...

It really packs a punch.

That looks banging, really lovely, definitely.

I think they're going to enjoy that.

And you can serve it.

This looks delicious.

What do you think?

It looks delicious.

-Yeah?

-Delicious.

I like the look of the tomatoes and the prawns.

Mmm!

-Good boy.

-Good boy! Is it nice?

Family cooking, especially for me, you know, I think, you know,

want to feed them cheaply, want to get them filled up,

this is a good way of doing it.

It's a very, very simple process, caramel,

but people lose patience with it, and I can understand why because I

have, on several occasions.

And puff pastry, it's a very, very simple process.

I've bought a block and got it out of the fridge.

-It's good, though...

-It is.

-To be fair.

-Frozen puff's all right.

So, a little bit of heat in your pan, initially.

Little bit of flour on your table, initially.

And then what you do,

-you put the sugar in, and the key is patience.

-Mm.

And you let it go. You can swirl it,

a little bit, but you never stir it.

First, roll out your puff pastry, and with a tarte tatin,

we need to make the pastry a circle, just a little bit smaller than this,

and there's a tucking-in process, which we'll explain as we go.

So, caster sugar.

And just leave it.

Just use this for a template.

And I don't quite want it as big as that, so I'll just go in about less

than a centimetre, and use that as a guide.

Look at that. Beautiful.

Now, one of the ingredients we're using to elevate the humble banana,

you know, up the food chain, is some cardamom.

So, I just need the black seeds out the middle of these green husks.

So, I'm going to give it a whack and pick the seeds out.

You know when I was talking before about swirling the caramel?

Just keep doing it like that.

Don't do it too often.

-You know, Kingy, If I was a fruit...

-Yeah?

..I'd want to be a banana.

If you were a fruit, what would you be?

-Mango.

-Mango?

Yeah. I like them.

-What, a big stone in the middle?

-Yeah!

-How's your caramel?

-It's getting there.

Give me the countdown for when I'll cook the 'nanas.

Right, you count down now, man.

All right. That's me cardamoms.

I'm just going to give those seeds a bash.

-Oh, look at that. That's nice caramel.

-Oh, aye.

Oh, yeah.

-That's what we're after.

-It's even the definition of caramel coloured,

isn't it? Right, take...

..a bunch of bananas.

Now, what I'm going to do is, I've taken the caramel off the heat.

It's now completely melted at the colour that we want.

And I'm going to drop in 75g of butter.

Now, it'll start to bubble.

Let it melt, and then whisk it into the caramel.

-It's kind of butterscotch, isn't it?

-Yeah, lovely.

Right, about two centimetre lengths.

Just start to whisk the butter in.

Now, this has no heat here now,

other than what's left in the sugar and the pan.

And then you pour this lovely butter caramel

into our tarte tatin dish.

-Good job, Kingy.

-Lovely.

-Right, so we just start out.

Oh, we're going from the outside in, right? OK.

-Yes.

-No probs.

Be careful with the caramel, it is seriously hot.

-Yes.

-But you want your bananas to be upright, loud and proud.

-This just looks great, doesn't it?

-Yeah!

-Yeah.

-It's a cut above, Kingy.

-It is, dude, it is.

And there's two bits left over.

Well, you know what we're going to do?

Split it! Ha-ha!

Now, the good stuff.

Cardamom seeds, just sprinkle...

..a little loveliness

over your 'nanas.

Now some orange zest.

Take the pastry,

pop the disc on your 'nana,

and just kind of tuck it under.

Prick it lightly all over with a fork.

And that goes into a preheated oven

at 180 Celsius for about 40 to 45 minutes,

which gives us time to make a big pan of fresh chocolate custard.

Oh!

Bananas, chocolate, custard, oh!

I should coco!

There you are, David.

Let's clear down and get all the bits out that we need.

When the big hand is on the four, it's done.

Excellent.

Well, bananas and custard go together like Si and Dave.

-They do.

-But this is chocolate custard.

Very easy, very simple,

and the perfect accompaniment to our pimped-up 'nana.

Milk, cream.

I need four egg yolks.

And all I'm doing is going to heat this

milk and cream to just below

boiling point.

Caster sugar goes in with the egg yolks.

Cocoa powder.

So it thickens up nicely and doesn't split, a teaspoon of cornflour.

Beautiful.

And we whisk this together.

-I'll dribble.

-Right.

-Watch your hands, mate, this is hot.

-Sorry.

Lovely. And we turn it to the pan.

There we go.

Now, at this point, you've got to stir it continuously.

It's a little bit of effort but it's worth it.

Oh, look at that, it's thickening up lovely.

-Oh, aye.

-A lovely gloss and sheen on it.

Fab.

Just in time for our tarte nanan.

Oh, I say, matron, that's grown!

I love this bit, you see.

You are going to come out of this pot!

You are a banana tarte tatin!

What are you? Ha!

Banana tarte tatin.

-Is it out?

-Yes!

-Yes!

Look at that! It's so lustrous and tasty.

And look, chocolate custard!

The banana tarte tatin, Dave.

With chocolate custard.

I mean, this is a cut above your average banana dessert.