The Naked Chef (1999) s01e01 Episode Script
Chefs Night Off
Naked's what I call my way of cooking.
What I cook in the restaurant isn't what I cook at home.
Cooking's gotta be a laugh.
It's gotta be simple - it's gotta be tasty - it's gotta be fun.
I suppose you could say it's stripping down the recipe to its bare essentials.
Now way it's not me.
It's food.
So big boy are you going to come round tonight or what? Sure.
What's happening are you cooking dinner.
Yeah but I mean I could really do with a bit of a hand.
I'm going to do like this Thai scallops, clams and stuff.
And er - I'm going to do roast leg of lamb, just roast potatoes and stuff and some baked fruit.
Lovely - who's coming? I've asked Jeff - I've asked Brenley - and er - the other guys from the cafe.
I've got my old table football out mate - do you fancy your chances? FA cup finals - just gotta get out of here Right I'll see you - well come round as soon as you can yeah - take care.
ROAST LAMB I really really like roast lamb - I mean a roast anything but I love roast lamb and I do do it quite often.
My mum used to do it a lot as well but er - you know - I love it with just like Malvern sea salt over and roasted in the oven - that's lovely.
But I kind of get bored with doing the same thing all the time so I'm always trying to have like new ways of getting sort of flavour right stuck in there.
So first things first - what I want to do is get a knife and stick the knife down next to the bone at one end and just push your finger in there night - so that just makes a bit of room.
And then - at this end do the same again - right next to the bone - stick your finger in there.
Then in about sort of about 8 places around the lamb you want to get your knife about an inch and a half okay and stick it in at an angle okay and then shove your hand in there - your finger in there.
And just do that kind of randomly but kind of equally and let's do it on the other side as well.
One more I reckon.
Lovely - so that's that done.
Put that in the tray.
Now we're talking about flavour here - so what we'll do - I've got this sage here - I'm going to rip off just half of it so it's so it's just the leaves and I'm gonna keep that for later and then this half I'm going to put in a pestle and mortar with a clove of garlic.
It seems a very simple thing to do if you've got kind of chefs coming round - I'd expect you to do something incredibly posh and fussy I suppose.
Yeah well the funny thing is - is if you imagine chefs like the hours they do and stuff like that right - it's almost in their own time they wanna kind of be a little bit more sort of relaxed about it you know what I mean? So I know as long as I give them a really nice cooked piece of lamb you know - they're gonna be well chuffed and a glass of wine.
They're gonna be over the moon.
So with this sage, salt and garlic - just smash it up.
And that'll kind of get all the flavours really going.
And you can smell all that - do you know what I mean? - It's just so fragrant - yeah.
Right lovely and leave the rest of the sage that you've got left over whole okay? And then we're gonna have some olive oil - about you know 2/3 tablespoons just to sort - oil will help the oils in the flavour in the leaves to come out.
And er - some lemon juice - give it a little bit of that so - just squeeze that in there.
Get rid of the pips - so you've got your lemon juice in there and just chop up - roughly chop up this rosemary that I've got with it.
Just mush it up in you hands and - the first thing I'm gonna do is get a big handful and rub it all over the meat - so straight away the skin's gonna be tasty.
Lovely Jubbly.
Right - then we put that next to it and get everything else out here.
Right our job now - is in these cuts that we've made kind of push all these lovely herbs all the garlicky lemon stuff - get it right in these holes.
Push it right down and there's a little bit of salt in there as well - so you're seasoning it inside a little bit which is great.
Down the little holes that you've made - and that end up here - next to the bone which has gone down about four inches you know - it's right in there.
Loads of flavour.
Really get stuck in there.
Sound like David Bellamy shove it all in there.
What else could you use to flavour the lamb? Oh my God - I mean - basically at the end of the day like all cooking should be you know use - whatever you like with lamb you should do but I mean things I've done is kind of get some nice, really dried apricots with like smashed up thyme and butter - I mean that works beautiful.
Things like you know - simple things like anchovies and rosemary work so well.
They just work really well.
Now you've got all that flavour in there and the secret ingredient which I think is a thing called pancetta and basically it's the Italian version of our streaky bacon.
All you need really is about three or four slices.
And just shove it down the gaps you know.
Where do you get it from? You can get it from the Deli - you can get it from the supermarket - I mean it's all over the place.
It's got a slight smokiness to it - you don't want loads of smokiness but it's got a slight smokiness to it and that's really really nice.
And it works with the sage as well you know.
Get it in there.
Lovely.
So now we've done that I'm just gonna put a bit of salt on top - it's nice to have a nice salty skin and er - basically that's it done.
I know it's gonna be really really tasty - all we have to do now is take care of it and take care of it in the cooking.
So into a really really hot oven - about 250 full whack.
I'm gonna get the leg of lamb.
I'm gonna put it straight onto the bars right.
And put the empty tin underneath to catch all the goodness and all the drips and all that kind of marmity lovely jubbly stuff.
How long do you cook lamb for? Well I really like to cook the lamb so it's kind of pink - not bloody pink but kind of pink pink and er - to do that I cook it for about 13 minutes per pound and with an additional 20 minutes of cooking at the end of that and then what the trick is then is to rest it and I'm par cooking some potatoes now and when they're ready to go in after about 20 minutes when - you know it's coloured u - started to colour up nicely - I'll turn it down and I'll put the potatoes in with all that lovely goodness.
These potatoes I've just boiled for like five minutes.
Right and you wanna kind of chop up all the outsides - so kind of just toss 'em about a bit - give 'em a good old shake and then what I'm gonna do is just get 'em in the oven - where all that goodness has just been dripping in the old tray - loads and loads of goodness.
And just chuck in 'em there.
Yeah - smell it - oh it's gonna be mad.
And just put a little bit of extra rosemary in there - cos that won't hurt.
And then give 'em a good old shake.
Cos you wanna get them coated.
It's going to crispen up straight away - all nice and fluffy - perfect meat - perfect roast potatoes.
RED ONIONS I don't really understand why people don't use onions as a vegetable as they are really do you know what I mean? Cos they always think of them as a base for things like soups and stuff but like with any sort of roasted or grilled meats this particularly dish is superb and all you have to do is sort of remove the - a little bit of the core, the base to make a flat edge and then at the top just cut down until about a centimetre and a half away from the bottom so you don't cut it into quarters - so you've got it like that but you don't go all the way down.
You only go down to about there and then just take off maybe just the skin of maybe the first layer of flesh but nice and tender.
I'm using red onions cos I like them.
They're a good - you want them all the same sort of size er - and they're quite easily available and when you cook them they're lovely and sweet.
But things like shallots and stuff like that are ideal as well.
I wouldn't use the white onions because they're very big and you can't - I can't really imagine that on someone's plate you know - like one whole onion that size.
But I mean I do it quite often cos my blooming dad keeps giving me onions from the garden and keeps tying them all up like the French boy and I've got onions everywhere so have to make use of them otherwise I feel guilty.
Get a pestle and mortar.
Thyme and butter.
Butter's at room temperature.
Nice handful of fresh thyme in.
Have you got any tips for avoiding crying actually when you're chopping onions? No - I quite like to have a good cry at work cos er - you know you can get all your emotions out and you just pretend it's the onions.
What we're going to do now is put a good important - good pinch of salt in there and we're going to smash it up - and funnily enough even though thyme's quite a kind of woody herb when you smash it up it's quite juicy.
Right that's lovely and smashed up and the butter - I'll get a bowl actually.
So - put all the thyme in the bowl - you can put a squeeze of lemon juice in there actually would be nice.
I suppose you need about four, four and a half ounces of butter - and just kind of squelch it in your hand.
And then squelch in the thyme - There's nothing hard in it - and that's gonna to be lovely with the old onion.
But look just open up the onion - and what we're gonna do is put a little knob of butter inside it and really push it in and down the cracks.
Could you use different herbs or other flavourings in that butter? Oh God yeah - I mean - I think herb butter's something that not a lot of people use for some strange reason.
Right I mean you've always got a bit of extra butter kicking about - and you've always got kind of - when I guy herbs there's always like a little bit that I don't use you know - mash it up - you can do any flavour you like and just put it in the freezer.
It keeps for absolutely ages.
So basically you smear it over all of them.
Top all the other up.
And I think the nice thing about this - as these cook right the butter's gonna melt.
And it's gonna kind of drip right into the bottom of the onion where you've made those scores and - and you know it's just gonna give it all that flavour and there's salt in there too so it's gonna season the onion.
What I do now is just put - sprinkle some sea salt on the bottom and er - what this helps - just helps them stand up and also where you just trimmed off the bottom it will just suck up a little bit of salt which is lovely cos it helps season it around that area which you haven't cut down to.
All I have to do to that now is cook it for like half an hour - 35 minutes at about 220 degrees just until they kind of - kind of sag a little bit but they'll keep their shape.
Hello John are you alright? Yeah what do you fancy? Oh - mate - I'm after some scallops - oh they look good brilliant - hand me those.
I'll get myself nine is that alright? Cheers mate - a bit of parsley - lovely - anything that's free.
That's the lot mate thank you very much.
BAKED FRUIT So for dessert I'm gonna do baked fruit which is so easy you wouldn't believe.
Wicked fruit - I'm gonna make some vanilla - vanilla sugar which is outrageous and I'm gonna make some mascaponi cream which is just really moreish and gorgeous.
I mean all I've done right - is I've taken the bottoms off the strawberries - I've quartered and de-cored the peaches and put a bit of lemon juice over them - cos they get a bit dark if you don't.
Er - I've de pipped the cherries with an olive pipper.
I've sliced up the rhubarb nice and thing.
Er - and with the stoned fruits I just did 'em in half and just pulled 'em apart like an avocado.
Got rid of the pip and these figs I'm just gonna sort of slice but not quite down to the bottom like a star and then you just squeeze it like that and they look lovely.
But there's nothing stopping you just using singular fruit and if something - the idea is if you're going down the market and you pick up something that's really juicy then buy it - you know.
Anyway let me show you how to make this vanilla sugar.
I've got these vanilla pods from my Deli- and I've got a kilo of sugar - just normal castor sugar and these vanilla pods are pretty amazing right - you can buy 'em in anywhere - get 'em in any sort of supermarket or anything like that.
But when you buy 'em look for like soft sticky ones like these.
These are pretty amazing.
And all I do is chop these into about five bits - er - just to make less work for your old magimix - pull this out - chuck 'em in there.
And like as soon as you open it the smell is completely amazing.
Chuck all your sugar in there.
Whizz it up and you're going to see the sugar go like from white - sparkling white to the most amazing kind of ashy colour.
Right - and when you think that's - you've given that a right good mixing - er - you wanna bowl - and you wanna sieve - a coarse sieve and what we're gonna do is just do little bit at a time and just sieve it out.
And what you'll do is you'll get all the little bits of root than haven't quite been chopped up enough and you have this outrageous sugar here.
Right so look at that.
Put the bus back in and we'll whiz 'em up one more time - get every little last bit of flavour out of there.
They cost a quid each - what's the point in wasting it? - None at all.
So let's give it some.
I'm only going to put half of this in now.
Lovely.
Right - so - again just sieve it and you can tell like cos this looks really dark and almost ashy in colour and I love all that.
And these are good things for presents you know - like Christmas - I gave one of these to my mum.
I just bought about ten quids worth of vanilla pods and made a massive great jar of vanilla sugar.
She's still got it a year and a half later and it's in an air tight container and it still tastes pucker.
So - get a little present.
Does that sound boring - as a present? She was quite pleased.
Least she said she was anyway.
And there you go.
You can keep on running it forever.
I'm gonna stop there.
So what I'm gonna do now is we've got these lovely fruit here.
And we're just gonna sprinkle it with sugar - now if - it's probably - I'm probably gonna use about four or five kind of good spoons of sugar so I cover absolutely everything.
There's so much fruit there - you gonna get through all that? Yeah there's loads of fruit there but I'm not scared about that at all - cos any left overs I just scoop up all the juice - all the fruit into a bowl and you can like put it in little pots with yogurt for breakfast or put it on toast and bake it for breakfast or you can put 'em in pots and put like just a normal old - crumble mix on top.
You know and just bake again.
I mean - there's no way you can waste anything from there and what am I looking for? Oh yeah brandy.
I'm gonna put brandy on here so imagine your tart fruit - your sweet sugar - and what this brandy and the sugar will do is kind of bake together to go really syrupy and dead tasty.
If you didn't have brandy - could you use something else? Cor yeah I'd say.
I mean any kind of nice sweet wines - whatever gets you going really.
But all you have to do now is bake it for about 15 minutes - just enough to soften the fruit - you don't want it - you wanna soften it enough so it's a pleasure to eat.
But you don't wanna cook it so much that it's like a load of old pulp you know - otherwise you could just boil it up.
And that's it really.
To go with that though - I think one of the most perfect things is er - mascapone cream.
And you can get - this is like an Italian soft cheese and it's really, really rich and it's what they use in like Tiramasu and stuff.
And you can get it everywhere now.
Supermarkets, Delis the whole caboodle.
It's so easy - I mean all I have to do is plonk it out - basically sweeten it to taste so at a guess one and a half spoons - this will be enough for like ten people - you only need a little bit.
That's the vanilla sugar again? Vanilla sugar again yeah - blooming useful.
And you've got all those lovely black dots in it from the vanilla.
Presumably you could just use normal cream? You could use double cream but mascapone - give it a whirl or even half and half - it's got an amazing richness.
Er - which I can't really explain.
Real silky and it's quite heavy - I mean it's quite fattening but you know who cares? And I just plonk that in the table - let 'em help themselves.
Lovely.
Eh Jamie how are you mate? You alright mate? Yeah good to see you.
Thanks for coming.
No worries - not too late am I? No - we're cracking away mate - most of its done.
NOODLE SOUP Right so for starter I'm gonna do er - a fusion broth which basically is like a noodle soup - you can do must about anything with it you know - vegetarian - chicken - meat - duck - whatever.
Ee - but I'm gonna do kind of a posh one today with seafood cos we wanna impress - don't we We do - we've got a chef coming round for dinner.
Got the big boss coming - so I've got some nice scallops in their shell - if you can't get 'em in the shell which you can't sometimes - you can get 'em from the supermarket and stuff - er - sort of in little containers already peeled and ready to go.
I've got some clams as well which are quite nice - when they open up - they've got loads of lovely juice and I've got some nice king prawns that bend sort of butterfly What do you mean by butterfly? Well basically we just cut down the vein here - remove the - the gravel sack - and then we just open them up along the - the spinal cord.
It's quite important to remove the vein isn't it really? Yeah you don't want to grit or anything like that.
No - cos it's what they've eaten so Do you two cook together quite a lot then? Yeah mate two years.
We've been working together for about two years - when I first met Jamie he was er - it's amazing actually - he was quiet head down and within about a month you know he was just like loud, sort of gregarious young lad hovering around the kitchen.
Quite infectious really.
What was Ben like then Jamie? When I first met - when I first met Ben actually - I thought Christ he looks like Don Johnson you know - a bit swarvy - bit of a sun tun - open - open shirt - bit of - couple of hairs you know there - and white pair of socks.
I don't know whether to pay you or sort of stab you Ben do you mind if we do some herbs mate? Get a nice big sheet of er - tin foil - toss us a bit of oil mate - salt and pepper.
Yeah lovely.
Imagine this is like a letter or a Christmas present or something like that - and er - just put a bit of oil on the bottom - some salt and pepper and clams are probably going to need the most amount of heat yeah - just put 'em in the middle and then the second thing what we need is the scallops - so just lay these on top - And then we put the prawns - cos they'll be last and they're quite happy to cook last really.
Bit of salt on top and then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna fold this over - so already we've got one sealed side and then on this side we just fold it over nice and sort of clean - and fold it over again.
Fold it over again and fold it over again - just until you start to feel the kind of - the clams or the seafood - and turn it over - that's the second side sealed.
And the second - on the third one here - do exactly the same and I can feel 'em there - so we're sorted there.
And on this last one - before we seal it er - we wanna get some moisture in there.
If you fancy you can use - you can use water - or vermouth or whatever.
I'm gonna put a bit of white wine - just a little lug - nothing too much.
Just make it steam basically - get all the juices flowing.
Presumably you could cook other fish and things as well? Oh God yeah - this is such a good way to cook - I mean you can do - well you can do all sorts of fish can't you - whole fish - filleted fish.
I know I used to do er - chicken - I used to do chicken at home - and put noodles in there - chicken in there - loads of herbs and white wine, some olive oil and just seal it up and then like if my flatmate came home - open up the fridge - chuck it in the oven - half an hour it's all done.
I mean it's a wicked way to cook.
So - anyway Nice flatmate to have? Now what I'm gonna do is just put that on something sturdy.
The important thing is you don't wanna - don't wanna crack or pierce the er - tin foil so the juice goes everywhere - and I just - put that in the oven for about 8 minutes you know - 6-8 minutes - just enough to open the clams up - and by the time the clams are open everything else will be perfect.
You're cracking on the herbs.
What have you got there? We've got basil - we've got chervil - bit or oregano - er coriander, dill - Not that important that you got loads of herbs - if you just like coriander and basil - then get those two.
The whole thing about this dish is it can be as easy or as complicated as you like.
It's really it's an assembly of things - so starting with your stock which is the base of most soups but especially this one - it's more like a broth - yeah - so we've got that and that's lovely and tasty.
I've got my herbs.
I've got the seafood in the oven.
I'm gonna start cooking the noodles.
I just got a - you can use whatever noodles you like - er- got these from Chinatown - they're rice noodles.
Fr - And I've had 'em before and they're quite nice.
Big handful of salt yeah - in the boiling water.
Like pasta - you've always got to have salt.
Right just move those noodles about so they don't stick.
Now what I'm gonna do is my stock's boiling away - I'm just gonna peel my ginger.
The idea really was with the chillie and the ginger is to slice it as thinly as possible.
I'm gonna put this into my broth which is ticking over nicely - these chillies are reasonably hot but we're taking the seeds out which is kind of the hottest bit isn't? So it's not gonna blow people's heads off but you'll get that lovely kind of fragrant warmth which is quite pucker.
Just cut 'em nice and thin.
I think these noodles will done now.
These just need to be cooked.
They're not like spaghetti or anything which is al dente - they're quite soft but - they're don't - they're perfect.
Shall I put those in a bowl now or? Yeah - you got to test this once.
Yeah lovely jubbly.
I'll have some of that.
So I'll give it a couple of nice clams - and a nice big scallop yeah.
Right - some mixed er - chillies - I've got some er - black beans here which I've cooked - they were dried so I've soaked them overnight - and just cooked 'em till tender.
Er - but you can use any kind of thing really.
The beans are quite nice cos they're like little you know what I mean they fall down the bottom but you know you tuck into 'em a bit later.
They're a really great colour and contrast.
And then you've got this boiling hot stock - serve it in this little teapot cos it looks funky.
Right - and chuck loads of herbs - Ben chuck a load of herbs in there and it's like a tea bag now - it's like a cup of tea - I mean all those fragrances lovely.
Come along - give it some of this - really is like a cup of tea isn't it? Um - looks fantastic.
Going to have a prawn first I think.
You little tiger.
Fantastic.
Do you like it? - Do you reckon they're gonna approve or do you reckon we're gonna get the old lip? No I approve mate - two thumbs up.
What's chef gonna say about that? More seasoning.
It's not French enough is it? No - right - let's we've had our little pre dinner taster so - get ready to do the full Monty mate.
What I cook in the restaurant isn't what I cook at home.
Cooking's gotta be a laugh.
It's gotta be simple - it's gotta be tasty - it's gotta be fun.
I suppose you could say it's stripping down the recipe to its bare essentials.
Now way it's not me.
It's food.
So big boy are you going to come round tonight or what? Sure.
What's happening are you cooking dinner.
Yeah but I mean I could really do with a bit of a hand.
I'm going to do like this Thai scallops, clams and stuff.
And er - I'm going to do roast leg of lamb, just roast potatoes and stuff and some baked fruit.
Lovely - who's coming? I've asked Jeff - I've asked Brenley - and er - the other guys from the cafe.
I've got my old table football out mate - do you fancy your chances? FA cup finals - just gotta get out of here Right I'll see you - well come round as soon as you can yeah - take care.
ROAST LAMB I really really like roast lamb - I mean a roast anything but I love roast lamb and I do do it quite often.
My mum used to do it a lot as well but er - you know - I love it with just like Malvern sea salt over and roasted in the oven - that's lovely.
But I kind of get bored with doing the same thing all the time so I'm always trying to have like new ways of getting sort of flavour right stuck in there.
So first things first - what I want to do is get a knife and stick the knife down next to the bone at one end and just push your finger in there night - so that just makes a bit of room.
And then - at this end do the same again - right next to the bone - stick your finger in there.
Then in about sort of about 8 places around the lamb you want to get your knife about an inch and a half okay and stick it in at an angle okay and then shove your hand in there - your finger in there.
And just do that kind of randomly but kind of equally and let's do it on the other side as well.
One more I reckon.
Lovely - so that's that done.
Put that in the tray.
Now we're talking about flavour here - so what we'll do - I've got this sage here - I'm going to rip off just half of it so it's so it's just the leaves and I'm gonna keep that for later and then this half I'm going to put in a pestle and mortar with a clove of garlic.
It seems a very simple thing to do if you've got kind of chefs coming round - I'd expect you to do something incredibly posh and fussy I suppose.
Yeah well the funny thing is - is if you imagine chefs like the hours they do and stuff like that right - it's almost in their own time they wanna kind of be a little bit more sort of relaxed about it you know what I mean? So I know as long as I give them a really nice cooked piece of lamb you know - they're gonna be well chuffed and a glass of wine.
They're gonna be over the moon.
So with this sage, salt and garlic - just smash it up.
And that'll kind of get all the flavours really going.
And you can smell all that - do you know what I mean? - It's just so fragrant - yeah.
Right lovely and leave the rest of the sage that you've got left over whole okay? And then we're gonna have some olive oil - about you know 2/3 tablespoons just to sort - oil will help the oils in the flavour in the leaves to come out.
And er - some lemon juice - give it a little bit of that so - just squeeze that in there.
Get rid of the pips - so you've got your lemon juice in there and just chop up - roughly chop up this rosemary that I've got with it.
Just mush it up in you hands and - the first thing I'm gonna do is get a big handful and rub it all over the meat - so straight away the skin's gonna be tasty.
Lovely Jubbly.
Right - then we put that next to it and get everything else out here.
Right our job now - is in these cuts that we've made kind of push all these lovely herbs all the garlicky lemon stuff - get it right in these holes.
Push it right down and there's a little bit of salt in there as well - so you're seasoning it inside a little bit which is great.
Down the little holes that you've made - and that end up here - next to the bone which has gone down about four inches you know - it's right in there.
Loads of flavour.
Really get stuck in there.
Sound like David Bellamy shove it all in there.
What else could you use to flavour the lamb? Oh my God - I mean - basically at the end of the day like all cooking should be you know use - whatever you like with lamb you should do but I mean things I've done is kind of get some nice, really dried apricots with like smashed up thyme and butter - I mean that works beautiful.
Things like you know - simple things like anchovies and rosemary work so well.
They just work really well.
Now you've got all that flavour in there and the secret ingredient which I think is a thing called pancetta and basically it's the Italian version of our streaky bacon.
All you need really is about three or four slices.
And just shove it down the gaps you know.
Where do you get it from? You can get it from the Deli - you can get it from the supermarket - I mean it's all over the place.
It's got a slight smokiness to it - you don't want loads of smokiness but it's got a slight smokiness to it and that's really really nice.
And it works with the sage as well you know.
Get it in there.
Lovely.
So now we've done that I'm just gonna put a bit of salt on top - it's nice to have a nice salty skin and er - basically that's it done.
I know it's gonna be really really tasty - all we have to do now is take care of it and take care of it in the cooking.
So into a really really hot oven - about 250 full whack.
I'm gonna get the leg of lamb.
I'm gonna put it straight onto the bars right.
And put the empty tin underneath to catch all the goodness and all the drips and all that kind of marmity lovely jubbly stuff.
How long do you cook lamb for? Well I really like to cook the lamb so it's kind of pink - not bloody pink but kind of pink pink and er - to do that I cook it for about 13 minutes per pound and with an additional 20 minutes of cooking at the end of that and then what the trick is then is to rest it and I'm par cooking some potatoes now and when they're ready to go in after about 20 minutes when - you know it's coloured u - started to colour up nicely - I'll turn it down and I'll put the potatoes in with all that lovely goodness.
These potatoes I've just boiled for like five minutes.
Right and you wanna kind of chop up all the outsides - so kind of just toss 'em about a bit - give 'em a good old shake and then what I'm gonna do is just get 'em in the oven - where all that goodness has just been dripping in the old tray - loads and loads of goodness.
And just chuck in 'em there.
Yeah - smell it - oh it's gonna be mad.
And just put a little bit of extra rosemary in there - cos that won't hurt.
And then give 'em a good old shake.
Cos you wanna get them coated.
It's going to crispen up straight away - all nice and fluffy - perfect meat - perfect roast potatoes.
RED ONIONS I don't really understand why people don't use onions as a vegetable as they are really do you know what I mean? Cos they always think of them as a base for things like soups and stuff but like with any sort of roasted or grilled meats this particularly dish is superb and all you have to do is sort of remove the - a little bit of the core, the base to make a flat edge and then at the top just cut down until about a centimetre and a half away from the bottom so you don't cut it into quarters - so you've got it like that but you don't go all the way down.
You only go down to about there and then just take off maybe just the skin of maybe the first layer of flesh but nice and tender.
I'm using red onions cos I like them.
They're a good - you want them all the same sort of size er - and they're quite easily available and when you cook them they're lovely and sweet.
But things like shallots and stuff like that are ideal as well.
I wouldn't use the white onions because they're very big and you can't - I can't really imagine that on someone's plate you know - like one whole onion that size.
But I mean I do it quite often cos my blooming dad keeps giving me onions from the garden and keeps tying them all up like the French boy and I've got onions everywhere so have to make use of them otherwise I feel guilty.
Get a pestle and mortar.
Thyme and butter.
Butter's at room temperature.
Nice handful of fresh thyme in.
Have you got any tips for avoiding crying actually when you're chopping onions? No - I quite like to have a good cry at work cos er - you know you can get all your emotions out and you just pretend it's the onions.
What we're going to do now is put a good important - good pinch of salt in there and we're going to smash it up - and funnily enough even though thyme's quite a kind of woody herb when you smash it up it's quite juicy.
Right that's lovely and smashed up and the butter - I'll get a bowl actually.
So - put all the thyme in the bowl - you can put a squeeze of lemon juice in there actually would be nice.
I suppose you need about four, four and a half ounces of butter - and just kind of squelch it in your hand.
And then squelch in the thyme - There's nothing hard in it - and that's gonna to be lovely with the old onion.
But look just open up the onion - and what we're gonna do is put a little knob of butter inside it and really push it in and down the cracks.
Could you use different herbs or other flavourings in that butter? Oh God yeah - I mean - I think herb butter's something that not a lot of people use for some strange reason.
Right I mean you've always got a bit of extra butter kicking about - and you've always got kind of - when I guy herbs there's always like a little bit that I don't use you know - mash it up - you can do any flavour you like and just put it in the freezer.
It keeps for absolutely ages.
So basically you smear it over all of them.
Top all the other up.
And I think the nice thing about this - as these cook right the butter's gonna melt.
And it's gonna kind of drip right into the bottom of the onion where you've made those scores and - and you know it's just gonna give it all that flavour and there's salt in there too so it's gonna season the onion.
What I do now is just put - sprinkle some sea salt on the bottom and er - what this helps - just helps them stand up and also where you just trimmed off the bottom it will just suck up a little bit of salt which is lovely cos it helps season it around that area which you haven't cut down to.
All I have to do to that now is cook it for like half an hour - 35 minutes at about 220 degrees just until they kind of - kind of sag a little bit but they'll keep their shape.
Hello John are you alright? Yeah what do you fancy? Oh - mate - I'm after some scallops - oh they look good brilliant - hand me those.
I'll get myself nine is that alright? Cheers mate - a bit of parsley - lovely - anything that's free.
That's the lot mate thank you very much.
BAKED FRUIT So for dessert I'm gonna do baked fruit which is so easy you wouldn't believe.
Wicked fruit - I'm gonna make some vanilla - vanilla sugar which is outrageous and I'm gonna make some mascaponi cream which is just really moreish and gorgeous.
I mean all I've done right - is I've taken the bottoms off the strawberries - I've quartered and de-cored the peaches and put a bit of lemon juice over them - cos they get a bit dark if you don't.
Er - I've de pipped the cherries with an olive pipper.
I've sliced up the rhubarb nice and thing.
Er - and with the stoned fruits I just did 'em in half and just pulled 'em apart like an avocado.
Got rid of the pip and these figs I'm just gonna sort of slice but not quite down to the bottom like a star and then you just squeeze it like that and they look lovely.
But there's nothing stopping you just using singular fruit and if something - the idea is if you're going down the market and you pick up something that's really juicy then buy it - you know.
Anyway let me show you how to make this vanilla sugar.
I've got these vanilla pods from my Deli- and I've got a kilo of sugar - just normal castor sugar and these vanilla pods are pretty amazing right - you can buy 'em in anywhere - get 'em in any sort of supermarket or anything like that.
But when you buy 'em look for like soft sticky ones like these.
These are pretty amazing.
And all I do is chop these into about five bits - er - just to make less work for your old magimix - pull this out - chuck 'em in there.
And like as soon as you open it the smell is completely amazing.
Chuck all your sugar in there.
Whizz it up and you're going to see the sugar go like from white - sparkling white to the most amazing kind of ashy colour.
Right - and when you think that's - you've given that a right good mixing - er - you wanna bowl - and you wanna sieve - a coarse sieve and what we're gonna do is just do little bit at a time and just sieve it out.
And what you'll do is you'll get all the little bits of root than haven't quite been chopped up enough and you have this outrageous sugar here.
Right so look at that.
Put the bus back in and we'll whiz 'em up one more time - get every little last bit of flavour out of there.
They cost a quid each - what's the point in wasting it? - None at all.
So let's give it some.
I'm only going to put half of this in now.
Lovely.
Right - so - again just sieve it and you can tell like cos this looks really dark and almost ashy in colour and I love all that.
And these are good things for presents you know - like Christmas - I gave one of these to my mum.
I just bought about ten quids worth of vanilla pods and made a massive great jar of vanilla sugar.
She's still got it a year and a half later and it's in an air tight container and it still tastes pucker.
So - get a little present.
Does that sound boring - as a present? She was quite pleased.
Least she said she was anyway.
And there you go.
You can keep on running it forever.
I'm gonna stop there.
So what I'm gonna do now is we've got these lovely fruit here.
And we're just gonna sprinkle it with sugar - now if - it's probably - I'm probably gonna use about four or five kind of good spoons of sugar so I cover absolutely everything.
There's so much fruit there - you gonna get through all that? Yeah there's loads of fruit there but I'm not scared about that at all - cos any left overs I just scoop up all the juice - all the fruit into a bowl and you can like put it in little pots with yogurt for breakfast or put it on toast and bake it for breakfast or you can put 'em in pots and put like just a normal old - crumble mix on top.
You know and just bake again.
I mean - there's no way you can waste anything from there and what am I looking for? Oh yeah brandy.
I'm gonna put brandy on here so imagine your tart fruit - your sweet sugar - and what this brandy and the sugar will do is kind of bake together to go really syrupy and dead tasty.
If you didn't have brandy - could you use something else? Cor yeah I'd say.
I mean any kind of nice sweet wines - whatever gets you going really.
But all you have to do now is bake it for about 15 minutes - just enough to soften the fruit - you don't want it - you wanna soften it enough so it's a pleasure to eat.
But you don't wanna cook it so much that it's like a load of old pulp you know - otherwise you could just boil it up.
And that's it really.
To go with that though - I think one of the most perfect things is er - mascapone cream.
And you can get - this is like an Italian soft cheese and it's really, really rich and it's what they use in like Tiramasu and stuff.
And you can get it everywhere now.
Supermarkets, Delis the whole caboodle.
It's so easy - I mean all I have to do is plonk it out - basically sweeten it to taste so at a guess one and a half spoons - this will be enough for like ten people - you only need a little bit.
That's the vanilla sugar again? Vanilla sugar again yeah - blooming useful.
And you've got all those lovely black dots in it from the vanilla.
Presumably you could just use normal cream? You could use double cream but mascapone - give it a whirl or even half and half - it's got an amazing richness.
Er - which I can't really explain.
Real silky and it's quite heavy - I mean it's quite fattening but you know who cares? And I just plonk that in the table - let 'em help themselves.
Lovely.
Eh Jamie how are you mate? You alright mate? Yeah good to see you.
Thanks for coming.
No worries - not too late am I? No - we're cracking away mate - most of its done.
NOODLE SOUP Right so for starter I'm gonna do er - a fusion broth which basically is like a noodle soup - you can do must about anything with it you know - vegetarian - chicken - meat - duck - whatever.
Ee - but I'm gonna do kind of a posh one today with seafood cos we wanna impress - don't we We do - we've got a chef coming round for dinner.
Got the big boss coming - so I've got some nice scallops in their shell - if you can't get 'em in the shell which you can't sometimes - you can get 'em from the supermarket and stuff - er - sort of in little containers already peeled and ready to go.
I've got some clams as well which are quite nice - when they open up - they've got loads of lovely juice and I've got some nice king prawns that bend sort of butterfly What do you mean by butterfly? Well basically we just cut down the vein here - remove the - the gravel sack - and then we just open them up along the - the spinal cord.
It's quite important to remove the vein isn't it really? Yeah you don't want to grit or anything like that.
No - cos it's what they've eaten so Do you two cook together quite a lot then? Yeah mate two years.
We've been working together for about two years - when I first met Jamie he was er - it's amazing actually - he was quiet head down and within about a month you know he was just like loud, sort of gregarious young lad hovering around the kitchen.
Quite infectious really.
What was Ben like then Jamie? When I first met - when I first met Ben actually - I thought Christ he looks like Don Johnson you know - a bit swarvy - bit of a sun tun - open - open shirt - bit of - couple of hairs you know there - and white pair of socks.
I don't know whether to pay you or sort of stab you Ben do you mind if we do some herbs mate? Get a nice big sheet of er - tin foil - toss us a bit of oil mate - salt and pepper.
Yeah lovely.
Imagine this is like a letter or a Christmas present or something like that - and er - just put a bit of oil on the bottom - some salt and pepper and clams are probably going to need the most amount of heat yeah - just put 'em in the middle and then the second thing what we need is the scallops - so just lay these on top - And then we put the prawns - cos they'll be last and they're quite happy to cook last really.
Bit of salt on top and then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna fold this over - so already we've got one sealed side and then on this side we just fold it over nice and sort of clean - and fold it over again.
Fold it over again and fold it over again - just until you start to feel the kind of - the clams or the seafood - and turn it over - that's the second side sealed.
And the second - on the third one here - do exactly the same and I can feel 'em there - so we're sorted there.
And on this last one - before we seal it er - we wanna get some moisture in there.
If you fancy you can use - you can use water - or vermouth or whatever.
I'm gonna put a bit of white wine - just a little lug - nothing too much.
Just make it steam basically - get all the juices flowing.
Presumably you could cook other fish and things as well? Oh God yeah - this is such a good way to cook - I mean you can do - well you can do all sorts of fish can't you - whole fish - filleted fish.
I know I used to do er - chicken - I used to do chicken at home - and put noodles in there - chicken in there - loads of herbs and white wine, some olive oil and just seal it up and then like if my flatmate came home - open up the fridge - chuck it in the oven - half an hour it's all done.
I mean it's a wicked way to cook.
So - anyway Nice flatmate to have? Now what I'm gonna do is just put that on something sturdy.
The important thing is you don't wanna - don't wanna crack or pierce the er - tin foil so the juice goes everywhere - and I just - put that in the oven for about 8 minutes you know - 6-8 minutes - just enough to open the clams up - and by the time the clams are open everything else will be perfect.
You're cracking on the herbs.
What have you got there? We've got basil - we've got chervil - bit or oregano - er coriander, dill - Not that important that you got loads of herbs - if you just like coriander and basil - then get those two.
The whole thing about this dish is it can be as easy or as complicated as you like.
It's really it's an assembly of things - so starting with your stock which is the base of most soups but especially this one - it's more like a broth - yeah - so we've got that and that's lovely and tasty.
I've got my herbs.
I've got the seafood in the oven.
I'm gonna start cooking the noodles.
I just got a - you can use whatever noodles you like - er- got these from Chinatown - they're rice noodles.
Fr - And I've had 'em before and they're quite nice.
Big handful of salt yeah - in the boiling water.
Like pasta - you've always got to have salt.
Right just move those noodles about so they don't stick.
Now what I'm gonna do is my stock's boiling away - I'm just gonna peel my ginger.
The idea really was with the chillie and the ginger is to slice it as thinly as possible.
I'm gonna put this into my broth which is ticking over nicely - these chillies are reasonably hot but we're taking the seeds out which is kind of the hottest bit isn't? So it's not gonna blow people's heads off but you'll get that lovely kind of fragrant warmth which is quite pucker.
Just cut 'em nice and thin.
I think these noodles will done now.
These just need to be cooked.
They're not like spaghetti or anything which is al dente - they're quite soft but - they're don't - they're perfect.
Shall I put those in a bowl now or? Yeah - you got to test this once.
Yeah lovely jubbly.
I'll have some of that.
So I'll give it a couple of nice clams - and a nice big scallop yeah.
Right - some mixed er - chillies - I've got some er - black beans here which I've cooked - they were dried so I've soaked them overnight - and just cooked 'em till tender.
Er - but you can use any kind of thing really.
The beans are quite nice cos they're like little you know what I mean they fall down the bottom but you know you tuck into 'em a bit later.
They're a really great colour and contrast.
And then you've got this boiling hot stock - serve it in this little teapot cos it looks funky.
Right - and chuck loads of herbs - Ben chuck a load of herbs in there and it's like a tea bag now - it's like a cup of tea - I mean all those fragrances lovely.
Come along - give it some of this - really is like a cup of tea isn't it? Um - looks fantastic.
Going to have a prawn first I think.
You little tiger.
Fantastic.
Do you like it? - Do you reckon they're gonna approve or do you reckon we're gonna get the old lip? No I approve mate - two thumbs up.
What's chef gonna say about that? More seasoning.
It's not French enough is it? No - right - let's we've had our little pre dinner taster so - get ready to do the full Monty mate.