Lincolnshire The Hairy Bikers' Food Tour of Britain

We're here to find regional recipes to rev up your appetite.

-We're riding county to county to discover, cook and enjoy the best of British.

-Come on!

We're here to define the true taste of Lincolnshire.

It's a bit flat, isn't it?

Flat? David, the great DH Lawrence once wrote of this magnificent land

his endless love of the horizontal,

where the great levels of sky and land in Lincolnshire

meant to him the eternity of the will.

But you can't eat levels of sky and land, can you?

You can if you grow stuff on them.

Lincolnshire produces one fifth of the fresh produce of Britain

and has the greatest proportion of Grade 1 double-cropping super land.

-You've been on the internet again, haven't you?

-There's a few bits going on up there, son.

There's got be more to it than the humble Lincolnshire sausage.

-It'll be good, this.

-It will. Let's go for a coast.

-Come on.

On our quest to define the true flavours of Lincolnshire,

we drive into the cathedral town of Lincoln to bake a traditional dish served the local way.

We visit a farm specialising in native rare breeds,

where Dave finds he really can talk to the animals.

HE GOBBLES LIKE TURKEY

And we're forced to put our backs into it and do some hard labour,

harvesting cauliflowers.

Representing Lincolnshire in the cook-off is Colin McGurran.

Will we be able to beat him using the county's finest ingredients?

We're off to Louth to bend the ears of the people of Lincolnshire

and find out what sums up their county on a plate.

-What a beautiful town!

-Isn't it?

Maybe it's a good place to look for a sausage or a poacher.

Rick Stein said it was one of the food capitals of Britain.

-Did he?

-Yeah.

Hello, ladies. How are you?

What are the iconic ingredients or dishes of Lincolnshire?

-I breed cattle so beef, mate!

-Ah, brilliant!

When you drive from Skegness down to Boston, you can smell cabbages.

We do like Lincolnshire sausages.

We are mainly down for the sausages. Lincolnshire sausages.

-What are Lincolnshire sausages like?

-Very nice.

-Beautiful.

They're just nice.

This shop, Lakings, it's an institution in Louth.

It's one of the great Lincolnshire pork butchers.

If we're going to get fine Lincolnshire products, this is the place to start.

The original Lincolnshire sausage made in this building for 100 years.

-In Lincolnshire, you put herbs into your sausage.

-It's English sage that makes the flavour.

This is one of the best sausages I've ever had.

At this point I could almost be converted from the Cumberland.

I've never had Lincolnshire sausage like this. This is the real thing.

What else do you have that is particular to Lincolnshire?

We have the Lincolnshire haslet, which takes the pork sausage a step further.

It's a roasted sausage meat,

but there's something else in there as well.

-Pig's liver.

-Yes, it's pigs liver.

-It's wonderful.

-It is.

-This is Lincolnshire stuffed chine.

-What's the chine?

The chine is a section cut out of the neck of a pig served on the bone.

In fact, a few years ago, when they wanted us to chop all the pork down to check the spinal cord,

we had to get parliamentary approval

to say that we could still serve our chine on the bone.

Look at that, man!

What else is in there? Parsley. Mint?

And a little bit of onion.

We're preparing some stuffed chine at the moment.

-Would you like to see how it's done?

-Ooh, yeah. Aye!

This is a pair of shoulders of pork, delivered this morning.

We saw down either side of the spine.

Is it only Lincolnshire that does a stuffed chine?

It's very unique to Lincolnshire.

This is the basic chine.

This is now cured, packed in salt, ready for preparation.

-The same as you would do if you were making bacon?

-Exactly.

We're cutting into this,

and you work all the way down the side here and prepare it like that.

-So there's little pockets where you can stuff the herbs.

-Exactly.

These are like pages in a book.

Every two years, we have a competition in Lincoln

and one category is stuffed chine.

In Louth, it's very hotly contested between the local butchers.

They will mark you on how evenly you slice it up.

Lincolnshire meat is clearly special but there's so much more on offer.

What to you is the taste of Lincolnshire?

-Lincolnshire plum bread. Delicious!

-Really?

Lincolnshire plum bread is a great favourite.

What do you have with a plum bread?

Lincolnshire poacher cheese.

Definitely Lincolnshire plum bread, but you have it with proper butter and cheese.

-Have you got any tips for plum bread?

-You've got to put the water and the fat in hot.

Everybody is going on about Lincolnshire plum bread.

A baker's. Got to find out what it is.

That's our plum bread. Would you like to try some?

-Not half!

-Look at that!

-It's packed with fruit.

-It's made with sultanas, raisins, currants.

It's spiced, like a really good teacake.

Traditional recipe?

It is traditional, yes. It's made with all local ingredients.

-The true taste of Lincolnshire.

-It is, yeah.

-We can have a go at that.

-D'you reckon?

-I reckon we can.

-I think we should.

-That's decided.

We'll cook plum bread, but we need some local cheese to go with it.

This cheese shop sells every local variety from Cote Hill Blue

to Yellow Belly, but it's the poacher we're interested in.

I'll let you taste this vintage poacher.

This would be made in August '07.

When you cut the truckle open and smell it, you can smell the summer.

Wow! Yes, you can!

-It's beautiful.

-Very nice, isn't it?

Could I take a nice big slice of Lincolnshire poacher, please? Cheers.

We've got all the poacher we need, so now it's time to get baking.

Lincoln is the county town of Lincolnshire,

famous for its stunning cathedral, a landmark that can be seen for miles.

Today it's home to our mobile kitchen, where we'll be cooking

Lincolnshire plum bread topped with local poacher cheese.

There's a lot of hungry mouths to feed!

Here we are, Lincoln Cathedral, amidst a posse of yellow bellies!

-Here we are!

-We're making your traditional plum bread.

Plumming means the drying of fruit.

It doesn't mean to say you have to have plums in it.

Before we get started, we're gonna make a nice cup of tea.

We're using Earl Gray because it's slightly scented.

What we're doing is infusing the fruit with the tea.

As Kingy's chopping his prunes, half a pack of butter goes into a pan for melting.

Hey. Prunes, quartered!

We'll put these in a glass bowl because it makes it easier to see the infusion.

-Got some raisins and sultanas as well.

-Fruit that has been plummed.

We've got a lovely pot of Earl Gray tea.

-CATHEDRAL BELL CHIMES

-Somebody's at the door.

Look at that!

Let those steep.

In a bowl, we're going to put good Lincolnshire knobbly eggs.

-That's what it says on the box.

-It does - knobbly eggs!

Knobbly eggs!

To that, we want...

..150 mls of full milk.

Full milk.

To that, we want six tablespoons of soft brown sugar.

-Five...

-Six!

Now into that we whisk the butter to form an emulsification of great joy.

Now we add the spicy stuff.

One and a half teaspoons of allspice

-and lovely cinnamon.

-We love cinnamon.

Give the dry goods a whisk in.

Vanilla extract. Never use vanilla essence.

Essence is chemicals - it's not good.

Vanilla paste is good as well.

Lastly, add the yeast.

Look at that. It's lovely, that.

Flour. What we'll do is mix this with that.

-Whack it in, dude, whack it in. That's it.

-Just work that through.

It's time to strain the fruit.

Be careful, because these might be a bit hot.

Can you see how they've all plumped up?

What you need to do is work the fruit into the dough.

It needs to be a soft, unctuous mixture and...

CROWD LAUGHS

What have you done to our set? Oh, Myers, man!

Wait a minute. Right.

That's it. You're a liability, you!

What we need to do is work the fruit all the way through

-that lovely, doughy, gorgeous mixture.

-You don't want clusters of fruit.

The dough needs to be kneaded. It's time to knead it.

I'll flour the board.

-What's your name?

-Jake.

-Great. Shorty, here, hold that.

Good lad.

Don't pinch it!

Right. Shorty, come here. Pull this up, would you?

-Me sleeve!

-I'll take that.

-No, the other way, you loony!

This is a soft dough.

One of the rules about bread-making, be it plum bread or bread bread,

-the softer the dough, the better the loaf.

-Now...

There is no right or wrong way to knead dough.

What you're doing is releasing the proteins

and encouraging the elasticity...

You're encouraging the elasticity all right!

I think a tad more flour might be in order, dude.

Lovely.

Put that in a bowl.

Cover that with cling film or a damp tea towel

and leave to prove for a couple of hours.

That's another bread myth,

you have to put it in the airing cupboard. You don't.

It just takes longer to rise.

The slower the proving, the wetter the dough, the better the loaf.

However, we do have a proving oven.

Pop this to rise for a couple of hours.

Here's one we did earlier!

-CROWD CHEERS

-As you can see, it's full of life.

-BEEPING

-That came out the oven, but that was a proving oven.

-Hello!

-I thought it was a Tesco's truck.

You know - beep, beep, beep...

I thought it was the timer on the oven!

So, we need to knock the air out of this

before we put it into the oven.

At this point you can start to smell the yeast activating in the loaf.

-It's lovely.

-Oh, yes!

Take a loaf tin, non-stick or otherwise...

And put it there! Like that!

It's a good idea to plop it in, it gets the air out.

Just put it down like that, then leave that again

with a tea-towel over it to double in size for about an hour.

We'll just pretend this has been left for an hour, left to rise.

We'll put this in the oven to bake.

It'll take about an hour in a medium-high oven.

So, here we go.

About an hour later, we'll pop out your Lincolnshire plum bread.

This is what it should look like.

Look! See? What a set of loaves, missus!

It's plump, it's juicy, it's spicy.

Aah! Look at that - it's still steaming.

-Nice, that. Nice texture.

-Lovely.

We've got butter, and add to that a sliver of poacher,

one of the finest cheeses ever.

There we have it, a taste of paradise.

Lincolnshire plum bread, poacher cheese and good company.

What more could you want?

I hope we've done Lincolnshire proud.

There's only one way to find out.

-Help yourselves.

-Just dive in, gang.

-Make sure you get a bit of cheese.

Mmm, fantastic!

Just like my nan used to make. It is spot on.

That looks gorgeous.

-There you are.

-It looks really nice.

-Thanks, darling.

-It's too delicious to describe.

Too delicious to describe! You can't get better than that, can you?

That seemed to do the trick!

A fruit loaf with cheese is a great tasty mix.

But our next challenge is just around the corner.

We're taking on one of the county's top chefs in their restaurant,

using local ingredients to see who can best define the taste of the region.

It'll be up to local diners to decide

whose dish best represents the true flavours of Lincolnshire.

Our opponent today is Colin McGurran,

head chef and owner of Winteringham Fields.

Colin bought the restaurant aged 28, and since he's been in charge

it's been recognised by the Good Food Guide as the 4th best restaurant in the UK.

I started off in France at Domaines Hauts de Loire,

which is two-Michelin-starred.

Very similar to this. It was in the country, a hunting lodge.

The style of what I'm doing now is what I remember from all those years ago.

Lincolnshire is very, very good for produce.

It's very flat, easy farming land.

We're lucky with vegetables and the things we get.

Lincoln red beef, salt marsh lamb.

Out of all the counties, Lincolnshire is one that's very much focused on rural market produce.

We try and grow what we can.

We have a herb garden.

We have our own lamb, poultry, eggs.

The eggs are fantastic, great for souffles, creme brulees.

When you look after your own produce, you have a greater respect for it.

There's no wastage.

You don't burn it as often. You take good care of it.

But ultimately the flavour is a lot better.

A lot of chefs get it wrong, they think about presentation first.

If you get a really pretty plate in front of you,

by the time you've had two mouthfuls, it's ruined.

The most important thing is flavour, without a doubt.

To take on the bikers, my taste of Lincolnshire will be

Lincolnshire haslet beignet,

pigs' trotter sauce, sage foam and rhubarb puree.

Bring it on!

-Wa-hey!

-How are you doing? Welcome.

Pleased to meet you. How's things?

-Nice to see you.

-How you doing?

-Yeah, good.

Well, come in, guys.

Colin, what are you going to do for us today?

Today, guys, I'm going to do a local beignet of haslet.

And we're going to sit that on some pigs' trotters.

-A sage foam and some rhubarb puree with that as well.

-Sounds beautiful.

-I'm going to start off with the beignet mix.

-What's a beignet?

Beignet's like a doughnut mix.

Melt some butter into the water.

Let that boil away. When that boils, I add my flour.

Beat the flour in. Then we add the egg yolks and the eggs.

-Just like a choux pastry?

-Exactly like a choux pastry.

This dish here is very old-fashioned.

The rhubarb now and the haslet go very well.

The tartness of the rhubarb works really well

with the richness of the haslet and the pork. They work well together.

Salt marsh pork? I always associate salt marsh with lamb.

Yeah. You can do the same with pork, and you get a lot more flavour to your pork.

This next stage is very important.

What we're doing now, we're going to mix in the flour.

We make choux pastry. You've done this before, haven't you?

This is the part they all turn wrong and I ended up with a pot of putty.

-I don't know what happened.

-Temperature's important.

If you throw it all in together, it's better than adding it bit by bit.

It's important to keep beating. If you don't, it will soften.

You want to get that gluten out and get it quite gooey and stretchy.

-So while that's cooling, we'll get on with the haslet.

-What's in it?

This one is pork mince.

It's sage, onion, a lot of different seasonings as well.

So when you use that into another mixture,

you get the roasted flavour without roasting it.

OK, so next we're going to add my eggs, one at a time.

If it's too hot, you'll cook the eggs.

You see a bit of steam coming off, which is OK,

-but you don't want to start curdling it.

-You don't want scrambled eggs.

So, while that's mixing now, the rhubarb should be just stewing.

Add a bit of sugar to that, rhubarb does get a bit of tartness.

We don't want to cook rhubarb too much so it stews,

because when you try and blend it, all the fibres will get tangled.

So now I'm just going to quickly chop some shallots and add that to the mix.

So that's all ready.

-Great.

-Just let that rest now.

The next thing, the trotter sauce.

-You like trotters?

-Yeah, love them.

Pigs' trotters, soak overnight.

Then next morning, put them into a selection of vegetables,

carrots, leeks, things like that.

We won't infuse too much flavour. We just want the skin.

We're just going to work away the meat from the bone.

Even the flesh here is fabulous.

You can pull it apart, there's no weight with that. Then you're off.

Is that OK to stand? I won't drop...

The final thing I'm going to add to that is some pork trim,

some belly as well.

-You can see how white that is.

-That's fabulous.

A nice layering of fat there.

If you do me the honours of just folding that pork into that mix

then I can get on with these trotters.

There's the trotters. Take quite a bit of the fat off

because the fat on the trotter is gelatinous, quite unpleasant.

Basically, I've made some stock...

-Would that be a demi-glace, chef?

-Ooh!

So all we're going to do now, I'll add the trotters and let that stew.

and it'll just dissolve some of the trotters into there as well.

OK, voila.

OK, so that's just going to sit there and rest.

Now we're going to make the rhubarb.

I've got a bit too much liquid, so I'm going to strain some of it away.

We're just going to blend it. Got a nice bit of kit here.

It blitzes pretty much everything you can think of.

Horsepower in a blender. They are, aren't they?

-I think it's about five horsepower.

-Yeah!

Just to break it up.

-Voila.

-Wow.

-There's no messing about, just rhubarb, sugar, water.

-That's it.

-That's it.

-Yeah.

And now I'm just going to let that rest there as well.

Next thing we're going to do is make a quite exciting thing.

We're going to make a sage foam.

Chef? Any chance of a suck at the bone of the trotter?

-Suck on the bone! Yeah!

-You know, I like them.

-I'm going to boil some milk.

-Ohhh...

-You really... I thought you were joking!

-No, I like it!

I can't believe he's done that!

My dog does that.

Your dog's probably got more table manners!

OK, so now we've got the sage.

-That's a lot of sage!

-When you boil anything with greens, herbs,

if you boil it in milk and it gets too hot,

it'll turn like hay, you know, you get that kind of wet grass taste.

So what we're going to do

is just blanche that in there and then blitz it.

That's a traditional flavour of Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire sausage.

Most Lincolnshire sausages have sage and onion and all sorts.

That's cos you add herbs, isn't it? In Cumbria, we add pepper.

Cumberland sausages, very spicy.

-I don't know if you can smell that...

-Oh, yes.

Once you've got to that stage, we're going to blitz it.

That's pretty much it. Now we're just going to strain it.

Cor! The smell!

Stick your beak in there. Fabulous.

This part about the foam,

you could hand-blend it and it would foam up.

But as soon as you put it on the plate, it would collapse again.

So we're going to add some lecithin, which is a chemical.

You put it in, you foam it and it kind of keeps its structure,

so you can spoon it on the plate and it will last while you're eating.

OK, so now we're going to hand-blend it.

These are great for foaming and things.

Good for emulsifying stocks, just before they go on the pass.

OK, we'll leave that for the time being on the side again.

Pretty much ready for getting the haslet on.

-Pork doughnuts!

-Yes!

Basically, the choux pastry was just like a binder. OK?

Do you want me to throw one of them pork trotters in?

No, no, there's no need to be rude!

-Perfect colour, isn't it?

-It is. He's good, isn't he?

-Yeah.

I'm just going to put these in the oven, just to keep them warm, really.

So plating up, trotter sauce.

Because they've been in the sauce,

all the fat has melted away so it's very, very delicate and soft.

The rhubarb is the opposite contrast.

So you just want a bit there.

-That's the haslet.

-I want to eat that.

And then, I love belly pork, sliced.

That's beautiful.

-Voila.

-Absolutely fabulous.

Chef, c'est magnifique! C'est bof!

C'est bof?! Pau-pau-pau!

It's lovely, innit?

Look at this.

-Have some of this rhubarb. I like the sound of that.

-So do I.

Look at that.

Oh, Mother Riley!

-Oh, that works.

-There's a lot of taste in that.

Get out of it!

Interesting, the bits of trotter...

Taste those on their own. They just melt.

-That was mine.

-I've left you the big bit.

All those flavours together, superb.

Big savoury hits.

What I do like about it is underneath it all,

there's that element of rhubarb, and it's just clean and cuts through.

Lovely.

Well, I think we've got our work cut out to say the least.

Right away. Let's crack on.

But it's the locals who will decide whose dish is best in a blind tasting coming up.

Colin's haslet beignet was a true taste of the county

and we want to make sure our dish is as local as possible.

Lincolnshire is one of only two counties

to have its own native breeds of pig, sheep and cattle.

On Woodlands Farm,

they're doing their bit to make sure these breeds continue to thrive.

It's a rare place for rare breeds, so I gather. Ah!

'Andrew Dennis is making the introductions

'and our first meeting is with a Lincolnshire curly coat pig.'

DAVE LAUGHS

-It's an afro pig!

-It's a pig in an Aran jumper!

-Look at that!

-I'm sorry, mate, but you look cracking!

-This is Gavin.

-Hello, Gavin.

It's just his hairdo! He's like you when you get out of a sauna.

-This is Stacey.

-Hello, Stacey!

And her six piglets. They're about two weeks old.

-Cor...

-These local breeds, which are traditional,

tend to be low input, so they're ideally suited for organic farming, which in itself is low input.

Have some more nuts.

I mean, why this breed? Why are you doing what you're doing?

I feel as a Lincolnshire farmer, born and bred,

that we've got a responsibility to try and preserve our local heritage.

And as luck would have it, there seems in recent years

to have been a renaissance of interest, as I'm sure you find,

in local breeds, which have far more flavour.

We'll look at the world's largest flock of Lincolnshire Buff chickens,

-which runs to about 30 birds.

-Lincolnshire...

-Lincolnshire Buff.

-Buff?

-They're incredibly rare.

-There they are.

Now that's what you call free range.

The chicken's a woodland bird, which is often forgotten.

In common with many of the traditional breeds, it's dual-purpose.

These ones are table birds and egg layers.

-Right.

-We also keep rare breed turkeys at Woodlands.

These originated from Norfolk, which is the next door county.

HE GOBBLES LIKE TURKEY

That's a good impersonation.

This is our breeding stock. We've got the lavender blue

and the bourbon red, the Norfolk bronze and the Norfolk Black.

These were saved from extinction quite recently, but they have the gamiest flavour of all.

Really delicious.

-Are you looking forward to Christmas?

-HE GOBBLES

THEY GOBBLE

-It's a windy part of the world, isn't it?

-Amazing wind.

-Nearly got me wig off.

What do we have here, Andrew?

We've got some Lincoln longwool rams here.

Three rams. They've been out mating with the ewes, and they've just come indoors now.

These are rare breed, and there are less than 500 breeding ewes left in the world.

Crikey. How have they adapted to suit the Lincolnshire landscape?

They have the longest wool of any sheep in the world.

When you have weather conditions like this, they're ideally suited.

Because it's flat and there is a lot of wind,

-their coats protect...?

-Exactly.

-Crumbs.

-Ooh.

-This is Mishak.

-And you'll be a Lincoln Red.

-He's a Lincoln Red, yeah.

He's a magnificent lad, isn't he?

Putting on a show, he is!

He's superb.

Steady on, dude!

-Are you itchy?

-He loves the fresh straw.

It's rather like having a shower for them, you know.

-He'd weigh about a tonne, I should think.

-Cor!

And he'll be put out in the spring with about 25 cows.

-25?

-Which is roughly the amount they'd be with in the wild, I think.

Well, you're very beautiful.

You are. I have to say, your bum stinks.

It clear these animals are fantastically well cared for

and that should surely make for great tasting meat.

OK, I've chopped up some fillet steak. This is Lincoln Red.

I'm looking forward to this. Country Life voted the Lincoln Red

as being the best beef in the country.

I reckon this will take not very long at all.

So Andrew, how long have your family been cooking your beef in this kitchen?

As a family, we would have been eating Lincoln Red beef for, God, hundreds of years, literally.

It's wonderful, isn't it, it really is a case of a proper family farm.

-Yes or no?

-Oh, God, yes.

Lincolnshire Red...

Delicious. Seriously good beef. It's hung for a long time, isn't it?

Three weeks, yeah.

The thing I like best, it's terribly tender.

It melts in your mouth.

I know exactly where this comes from,

where the animal's grazed and so on and so forth.

It's beef with a story. I think that's important too.

We're going to cook up Andrew's Lincoln Red beef in a herby suet pudding

with some of his lamb's kidneys cooked in sherry alongside.

But we need some good local veggies to go with this delicious meat.

Lincolnshire is so fertile. You could grow anything here.

Lincolnshire is one big veggie patch.

60% of Britain's cauliflowers are grown here.

Mark Nundy's family has been working this farm since 1946.

If anyone's going to know about the best local veg, it's him.

-Welcome to Lincolnshire.

-Wow, look at that!

This is the harvesting rig, boys.

This is what we cut the cauliflower with.

There's no bending down.

-We've still got to bend down.

-Do what?! Where do we go?

-Which way?

-This way.

-If you get on there, we'll get down the field.

-Go on, mate, go on.

-I'm in.

-OK, boys, shall we?

-Come on, mate.

-We've got some knives for you.

That's not a knife, it's a machete.

Right, let us at them.

So we're looking for something like that one.

Chop the leaves off first...

nice and level, nice and neat, and then we put it on a cup.

Bit of cheese, you've got dinner. I love cauliflowers.

There's a few to get through like.

Once we've got 1000, we'll pack up.

Oh, great, only 999 to go!

-OK, off we go.

-Wait a minute, there's nobody driving.

To steer it, and to change gear.

Look at this.

Fast, innit?

-Don't be frightened of the knife. Let the knife do the work.

-Right.

Don't be frightened of the knife. You let the knife do the work.

I will, filleting your giblets, in a minute!

I'm coming back here for my holidays.

Do you know, there's so much you can do with cauli.

Each individual cauliflower suggests a new recipe.

You could have cauliflower cheese,

du barry soup, goujons and aloo gobi.

It's endless.

-That one's a fritter.

-These have been in the ground eight months.

Some will be not quite big enough, so we'll leave them to grow on.

Why do cauliflowers do so well in Lincolnshire?

It's been traditionally grown here for generations. Basically, the area's nice and flat.

Hundreds of years ago, it was under water. So the soil's fertile and young.

-Is it true the soil in Lincoln is so good you can actually double crop most things?

-You can.

This field will be cropped again this year and planted and cut before Christmas.

-It's like Einstein's brain, isn't it?

-Try a bit of that.

-Lovely.

-You don't need to do any cooking.

-No, it's sweet, it's good.

-Fresh.

-We're cooking against Colin McGurran.

-We want to put Lincolnshire on a plate. We've got to have cauliflower.

-Definitely.

An important vegetable for the county. One which has put us on the map.

-What's your favourite cauliflower dish?

-Cauliflower cheese. Usually on its own.

-We've got to do a take on that, man.

-We'll try and do the best cauliflower cheese we can.

-Right, off we go.

-We're off.

We're doing a steak in red wine, suet herbed pudding.

With kidneys cooked in sherry.

All dressed with a cauliflower cheese puree.

And a few crushed peas.

-Yes, with a bit of gravy.

-Oh, yes.

It will be up to local diners to decide whose dish best represents the true flavours of Lincolnshire.

I'll do onions. Cos when you're making a beef suet pudding,

the first thing is basically to make a really good beef stew.

I'm going to cut some fine lardons of this lovely streaky bacon.

I'm going to get some oil warm, ready for his lardons,

cos we're going to render that down,

so we use the bacon fat to cook the meat.

-Where did you get this from?

-This is local.

-This is Lincolnshire Red.

-It is.

A red, short-horned beast indigenous to Lincolnshire.

What will happen is when that starts to cook, it will just separate out slightly.

With Lincoln Red, if you eat it, you know you're eating Lincoln Red. It's gamey, rich.

It certainly stands out above other beefs as well, in flavour.

I'm just doing some seasoned flour for the beef, two tablespoons of flour and some salt and pepper.

-So this is a mixture of all different cuts, is it?

-Yeah,

so we have to be careful we get everything cooked through.

But if some of the meat drops to bits, it's all to the good really, cos it's a pudding.

They're good in them copper pans. They absorb the heat a great deal.

-They're not cheap though, are they, Colin?

-No, they're not, no.

-What would that set you back, £100?

No, a copper pan like that is about 280, 290.

-£280?

-Yeah, for a pan like that.

I've lost the use of me knees there!

This goes to the seasoned flour, nicely covered.

Meat goes to oil and rendered down bacon fat.

-Just to get a bit of colour.

-Now I'm going to fiddle on with me kidneys.

Now there's a sinew that surrounds the kidney that we don't want.

And there's a core inside. We don't want that either.

You can take a pair of scissors, which is a very laborious way of doing it. But it's efficient.

I'd just hack it off with a knife, to be honest.

So there you go.

That's the core that you've taken out that you don't want and that's a lovely, clean kidney.

The beef's browned. Add the onions.

We want to sweat these down, we don't want to burn them.

And just stir those onions into the pan, half a litre of good beef stock.

And about 300 mls of good red wine.

Look at that.

Put a couple of bay leaves in, just let them moulder away.

I'm going to make a bouquet garni for that. Take some sprigs of thyme, some parsley.

I'm going to bind that with a bit of string,

like so.

Put that in there, just bury it.

And now there's two lovely little finishes for this.

Delia, in her steak and kidney puddings, always uses Worcester sauce.

Rick Stein, he always uses soy sauce.

Give me Worcester sauce any time.

And as we're on a French cultural exchange...

le cognac. Brandy and beef go great.

Now that is the filling for the steak puddings. Now we need to cover that.

Now, because the pan was £280, apparently we can't afford a lid, so just use a frying pan.

Now we leave that to simmer

for about two hours.

Then take the lid off and simmer for another half an hour to reduce that stock

to get the demi-glace, where all the flavour is.

-How's that? Is that enough?

-That's lovely, thank you.

The other kind of elemental part to a steak pudding is the suet.

We start off with self-raising flour, cos the baking powder in that gives it a bit of a lift.

Some shredded beef suet.

And about a teaspoon of salt. We'll put it in the mixture.

A teaspoonful of dried thyme and a pinch of dried sage.

Remember, it's a steamed pudding, and dried herbs, when they're steamed, give off loads of flavour.

-We make that into a dough.

-Once you've done that, do you have to let it rest?

Yes, but what I do is put an egg yolk in it, kind of get it really, really heavy dough, first.

I'm just getting elements prepped for our next dish to go with this, which is the kidneys in sherry.

Just put the yolk on there.

It's all herby and rich. Now that's that suet pastry.

Now we need to leave that in the fridge for about half-an-hour to firm up.

Now, I know what you're thinking

and I am not going to say. I've said it enough,

but we have got some stew that we cooked early this morning

and we have got some suet that we put in the fridge some time ago to firm up.

The chilled suet and this is the filling for the steak puddings.

-Two hours, been reduced and left to chill.

-Yours does look good.

It smells even better.

Plenty of butter. Dust these with flour. Give them a little knock out.

Now the rolling pin for making a suet pudding is indispensable.

It's not just for rolling out, as you'll see in a minute.

Take a snooker ball sized piece of suet.

I want it quite thin.

Form it like that.

Put that in there like that.

And then just shape it with your fingers.

Let me just start filling these.

Look at that. Loveliness. And I want them quite full.

-Could you do an eggy wash?

-No problem.

-Thank you.

-Looking good.

-Now, the lids.

Put the lid on, like so.

Pinch.

Now just run the rolling pin like that.

It cuts your excess pastry off.

And it seals the top.

Very good, very good.

And repeat.

And all that remains is for these to be double wrapped in foil,

placed in the steamer for 20 minutes to half an hour,

and you'll have a lovely pudding.

Lovely. Right, gonna do a creamed cauliflower cheese

with Lincolnshire cauliflower plucked by our own fair hands.

This is dead simple, but so tasty.

Do you put sugar in your puree at all?

No, do you think it's a good idea?

I'd put a bit in, because sometimes cauliflower gets quite bitter.

Cauliflowers are a much-underrated veg, aren't they? They're superb.

Just going to boil this till it's soft.

We're gonna make some gravy, so I'll put that in there to warm up.

Then we're gonna strain that, reserve the meat.

But all the liquor will just be really pure gravy.

This is the start of the kidneys in sherry. We've got onion, celery and some carrot.

What we're going to do is we're going to put those in a pan and sweat them off.

-A bit of oil.

-These potatoes, they've just been boiled till they're soft and left to go cold.

So I can peel them now. I'm just going to cut them into cubes.

And then all of the celery. And then most of the carrot.

I'm just going to put that back on the stove and just let that go for a minute or two.

Just need to get that nice and soft.

Look at that. Little squares, all uniformly the same.

We're gonna push all those lovely juices through the sieve

and that's gonna form the basis of our gravy. Smashing. Job's a good'un.

I'm gonna put the kidneys in this pan

and I'm not gonna overload the pan because if you do, they stew, and that's what we don't want.

For the cauliflower cheese puree, Lincolnshire Poacher.

Beautiful stuff, isn't it?

-I don't want to make it too cheesy.

-It's quite a powerful cheese.

-Yeah.

Look at that, lovely.

Now what I'm going to add to this pan is about a dessert spoon of fresh thyme.

-That does smell good, eh?

-We're just going to put those down to rest, put some garlic in there now.

The cauliflower goes into the turbo blender with some salt, white pepper

and about two tablespoons of good cream.

Look at that!

That's smoother than Brad Pitt on the pull.

Put some caster sugar in, take away the bitterness.

This was Colin's suggestion and, by crikey, it's a good'un.

I'm just going to warn that through and melt some cheese into it.

Some of the Lincolnshire Poacher. Shall I get the potatoes on?

Just fry them till they're golden.

What we're gonna do is just push the kidneys through.

And then we want about a dessertspoon of sherry in there.

Meanwhile, we've got to do the peas. We just want those blanching a bit till they're soft.

Knob of butter to the gravy.

Creme fraiche, le puddings.

Ah! They are hot.

They would be, they've just come out of the steamer.

I'm just finishing this with some parsley.

-Right, look at that.

-That looks very, very good guys.

Very, very good.

That's the way to do it.

Yes.

Look at that.

-Looks good.

-Gravy?

That's it.

Right, there we have our taste of Lincolnshire on a plate.

Lincolnshire red beef, steak and wine suet pudding,

with fabulous kidneys and sherry, cauliflower cheese puree and crushed local garden peas.

With a snowstorm of Parmentier potatoes.

-Oh, yes.

-Very, very good, guys.

OK, well, suet has to be my favourite thing, so I'll stick into that first.

Oh God, it's terrible this. "And the winner is..."

What do you think, what do you think?

I think it's fabulous.

I like the herbs in the suet. But more than anything, this cauliflower puree is fabulous.

Works really well, really, really well. I'm not surprised if that won't be on the menu.

Those kidneys should just melt.

It's very, very good.

It's not complicated,

it does what it says on the tin.

But the puree of cauliflower and cheese is great, especially with the freshness of the peas.

Well done, lads, really nice. It's gonna be a close one.

It's crunch time.

The diners here will taste both dishes but without any idea who cooked which.

First up is Colin's haslet beignet with a rhubarb puree and a sage foam.

That's really good.

-Mmm.

-It's beautiful. Oh!

Presentation, out of 10 - 10. No problem at all.

As soon as I saw it, I thought, that looks good. And it was. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The pink, vibrant rhubarb was a really good contrast to the other colours.

The haslet was lovely.

That is a local thing, so that's good for Lincolnshire.

The texture of the dumpling was fairly coarse and it was very interesting.

The sage was slightly overwhelming.

I didn't think it was gonna be a trotter.

I've never eaten it before and it was absolutely lovely.

The sage and the pork, it's a tried-and-tested combination, it works very well.

So it was a good representation of Lincolnshire.

They seemed to like that, but now it's our turn. Fingers crossed.

-That's gorgeous.

-Oh, that's lovely.

It reminds me of the steak and kidney puddings I used to have as a child.

The beef was succulent, the gravy was tasty, and I liked the vegetables as well.

Suet was just a little bit heavy for me. But because it wasn't an enormous portion, it was enjoyable.

In my schooldays, we used to make some money going pea-pulling, so it's definitely Lincolnshire.

And that cauliflower, wow!

Anybody who didn't like kidneys, I think, would be encouraged to eat them having tasted that.

Hello, how are you all?

Well, what a wonderful dining room. Isn't it a wonderful restaurant?

-Isn't it?

-We've had a good old rake around Lincolnshire, haven't we?

-Oh, we have, great county.

Veggies particularly, you're all a bit green fingered, aren't you, really?

Wonderful. Great meat, fabulous. Had a great, great time.

Right, we need to get down to business.

So, for the haslet beignet, could I have a show of hands?

So that's two for the haslet beignet.

And for the steak and kidney pudding, please, a show of hands?

Seven.

The haslet beignet was Colin's and we did the steak and kidney pudding.

I do have to say, we've been the guests of a great chef.

Oh yes, we've learned so much off Colin.

Yet again, yet again.

I'd just like to say, it was a very close call.

I enjoyed them both very much. It was a very difficult decision.

Thank you very much, Colin. It's been a wonderful experience cooking in your kitchen.

Amazing! We won, Dave.

Colin's haslet beignet was such a good taste of the county.

The flat land of Lincolnshire

is rich with veggies and wonderful meat.

This is a place we'll definitely be returning to.

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