

Henry Dimbleby
Episode 4 | 44m 48sVideo has Closed Captions
Prue is joined by restaurateur and author Henry Dimbleby, who shows how to make Black Bean Shakshuka
Prue is joined by restaurateur and author Henry Dimbleby, who shows her how to make a one-pot veggie dish: Black Bean Shakshuka. He also lifts the lid on the latest revolution he’s been leading, which places chefs from high-end restaurants in school kitchens instead. Prue shares handy hacks for homemade guacamole and tortilla chips and makes an Orange and Polenta Upside-Down Cake.
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Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback

Henry Dimbleby
Episode 4 | 44m 48sVideo has Closed Captions
Prue is joined by restaurateur and author Henry Dimbleby, who shows her how to make a one-pot veggie dish: Black Bean Shakshuka. He also lifts the lid on the latest revolution he’s been leading, which places chefs from high-end restaurants in school kitchens instead. Prue shares handy hacks for homemade guacamole and tortilla chips and makes an Orange and Polenta Upside-Down Cake.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship♪ Leith, voice-over: I'm Prue Leith-- cook, restaurateur, cookery school founder, and writer of 15 cookbooks.
Looks good, doesn't it?
Leith, voice-over: I'm in my 80s, so I haven't got time to waste.
This series is all about the things that really matter to me-- family, fun, food, and friends, and some of those friends will be joining me.
We'll be sharing simple, home-cooked recipes... Alison Hammond: But I don't normally tell people about that bit, only people I like.
Ha ha ha!
Leith, voice-over: and celebrating the best produce.
For 47 years, I have been lucky enough to live in the astonishingly beautiful Cotswolds, and my long-suffering husband John is coming along for the ride.
Can you make that?
Under instruction.
Leith, voice-over: In today's episode, John makes a splash as he goes fishing before we cook up his catch.
You've got a tongue like a wolfhound, you know.
I mean... Leith, voice-over: I've got a surprising hack for making great guacamole, and food campaigner Henry Dimbleby will be making his one-pot wonder.
I'm dribbling.
Ha ha!
This is what we intend.
Welcome to my Cotswold kitchen.
♪ ♪ Leith, voice-over: I love cooking for friends and family, and there's one thing my husband is always keen for me to do more of.
♪ John says this house is a cake-free zone and he should have married Mary Berry, so here I am making a cake.
It's a caramelized orange and polenta upside down cake.
♪ It is delicious.
It's one of my favorites, and like most cakes, you need to start with a bit of prep, so I've got that oven turned on to 160 degrees with a fan, and I've lined the cake tin, greased it, and put a bit of parchment in it.
Now, for the orange, the easiest way to peel an orange is to take the ends off so that it sits nice and firmly on the board, and then just cut right round like that, each time making sure that the knife takes all the pith.
Then when you've got your orange peeled, you need to cut it into slices about that thick... and I'm going to start the caramel.
You need to get your pan on a nice, hot heat, stick in the sugar, and then wet it... ♪ and then add a squeeze of lemon.
Wetting the sugar helps to stop outside grains beginning to burn before the others are melted, and the lemon is there because the acidity will stop the sugar crystallizing.
Then you want to leave it on the heat until it starts to bubble.
Don't be tempted to put a spoon in there and stir it because the caramel will stick to the spoon and you won't be able to get it off, so just swirl it.
Now, do you see the bubbles are going quite slowly now?
Looks almost seething rather than bubbling.
Get ready with your orange juice, and you have to stand back when you add the orange juice because it's going to splutter.
Tip in the orange juice.
Going in now, 40 grams of cold butter... ♪ and now you can put the spoon in because now we've got a caramel sauce rather than just caramel, and it'll stick a little bit to the spoon, but it doesn't stick in a lump, and I'm going to pour it into my cake tin.
♪ My next job is to arrange the oranges in the bottom here.
Don't forget that when this cake turns out, that's going to be the decoration on the top, so we want them to look very nice, so once the caramel is a little bit cool, it won't squish too much up the sides.
Right.
Now I'm going to make the cake mix to go on the top there.
♪ Leith, voice-over: The cake mix is made of 155 grams of both soft butter and golden caster sugar which I cream, first with a wooden spoon and then an electric whisk.
♪ It's a little bit difficult to tell with creaming butter if it's golden sugar because it doesn't go quite as white as ordinary sugar, but I reckon if you give it 5 minutes, you'll have done it enough.
♪ Leith, voice-over: After whisking both eggs in... ♪ it's on to the dry ingredients.
Frankly, you can just put them all in together, so ground almonds, and I've also got polenta because I'm trying to keep it gluten-free and if friends are coming and you know some of them are gluten-intolerant, then, great, you've got a cake, and it freezes really well.
It also thaws very quickly, so it's a great standby.
The only other dry ingredients are half a teaspoon of salt, and half a teaspoon of baking powder, so all the dry ingredients go in once you've got the eggs in.
♪ When cakes say "dropping consistency," what it means is that when you do that, it will fall off, but it needs to fall off reluctantly, not run off, so this is a bit stiffer than normal but technically dropping consistency, but about like that.
Right, now the difficult bit.
I have to get this cake on top of all that caramel without all the caramel ending up up round the sides, so I'm going to be quite careful with it... so now I'm going to try and squish it carefully to the edges.
I'm not sure this is John's favorite cake.
It's my favorite cake, but tough.
Here we go into the oven.
♪ Leith, voice-over: That'll sit for an hour at 160 degrees in a fan oven.
You know, baking is an exact science, but we all make mistakes.
I had a customer once who wanted her daughter to have a very plain, beautiful wedding cake, and she specifically asked me not to put any of those silver wedding bells and little horseshoes made out of silver, no naff decorations, so I told the baker this, and I said, "None of that," but she misunderstood, and when my customer opened the box, this cake was absolutely covered in all the things she didn't want, and she was very horrified, and I said, "Oh, don't worry.
Never fear.
Prue is here.
We will fix it," and I scraped off all the decoration, but, of course, it looked terrible, and then I spied in the next-door neighbor's garden a whole lot of beautiful, yellow roses, so I whipped over the hedge, and I stole armfuls of these roses, and I covered the cake with roses.
They looked absolutely wonderful.
I piped some whipped cream round the edge, put a ribbon round it, and it looked fantastic, but when we came to cutting the cake, the bride standing there, we suddenly realized that the whole cake was covered in little, black beetles, and they had come out of all the roses, so that wasn't too good.
♪ ♪ Leith, voice-over: After an hour in the oven, this cake should be ready to come out.
♪ If you want to find out if a cake is cooked, you push the cocktail stick or a skewer into it, and if it comes out without any goo stuck to it, it's baked.
It is the surest way of knowing how your cake is doing.
I want to rest this cake now for half an hour, which sounds quite a lot, but the point is, there's a lot of hot caramel under there, and I don't want it all to run all over the place when I turn it out.
I want it to begin to set, to cool down a little bit.
Don't leave it for hours, though, because if that caramel sets completely, it will glue your cake to the bottom of the pan and you'll never be able to get it out.
Then, when it's time to turn things upside down, we come to the moment of truth.
♪ Let's bang it a bit... and pray.
Bang and pray, that's the answer.
♪ Ooh.
Right.
Cake.
Caramelized orange cake.
Hmm.
I think I need a slice.
I want to show you what the inside's like.
It's not that I'm greedy or anything.
This is so that you can see what the cake crumb looks like.
Do you see?
It's lovely, polenta-colored, yellow, beautiful, so a slice like that, and if this is a dinner party, I'd put a few pomegranate seeds on.
I'm a great believer in pomegranate seeds.
They have a little bite of acidity which is delicious, sweet and sour at the same time, and they look so pretty, so why not, and how about a nice, big dollop of creme fraiche to go with it?
Yum.
Perhaps that's a bit greedy.
Never mind.
♪ Mm.
Mm.
That is just so beautiful.
I might have to have another bite.
♪ Mm.
It really-- It is delicious.
♪ Right.
I need to hide this because otherwise, John will eat the lot.
♪ Leith, voice-over: People often think that homemade food always means hard work, but there are lots of dishes with maximum taste and minimum effort, just like this speedy guacamole.
♪ If you want to take the stone out of an avocado, the easiest way to do it is this.
Hold this carefully or, probably safer, put it on the board.
Whack it in there like that.
Twist.
Knock it off.
Use a great, big spoon to fish the avocado flesh out like that.
Some people don't, but I like a bit of lime, and it's not too difficult to squeeze.
♪ Guacamole is mostly avocado, so that goes in, and then you want some tomato, nice and ripe, garlic, not too much.
Now, this is chili.
♪ That's quite mild.
Now, I like it really lumpy.
I don't like avocado mashed to a sort of paste.
♪ If you're going to make anything with an avocado in advance, like an avocado salad or this guacamole, and you don't want the avocado to go brown-- you won't believe this, but it really works-- the simplest trick is to put the flesh in a sieve and run the cold tap over it.
Don't worry about lemon juice and oil or any of those other old wives' tale.
Put them in a sieve like that and just run them under cold water, and they honestly will not brown.
♪ I think that is the perfect guacamole, and all it's missing is some tortilla chips, which I will show you how to make later.
♪ ♪ Leith, voice-over: Having people over to the house for food is such a huge pleasure, and what could be better than when they've offered to cook.
My guest this morning is certainly my food hero.
He is a tireless campaigner for good, honest, unadulterated food and better food education and good food in schools.
He has written extensively about our broken food system.
He's also a good friend.
Henry Dimbleby, welcome to my Cotswold kitchen.
Thank you very much.
I have to say, I have severe and powerful kitchen envy.
Good.
All right.
This is magnificent.
I particularly like this.
That's good, isn't it?
That's brilliant.
Yeah.
That's good, so, Henry, what I want to know is, what are you going to cook for me?
I'm going to cook something that we make regularly at home.
I've got 3 children, and we have been trying to eat a bit less meat, and this is a dish-- It's a shakshuka, which is a Israeli dish.
It's a breakfast dish normally-- we actually have it for dinner-- and it's going to be black beans cooked with spices with two poached eggs on top and then topped with some feta and some chilies and some coriander and a bit of chili sauce, as well... And I see some avocados.
and some avocado, as well.
They go on top, as well.
♪ The first time I ever cooked on television was when I was very briefly at the beginning of my career.
I was a chef, but I went with my mother, who's a cookery writer, on television to cook, and I had one job, which was to cook the garlic, and I was so nervous at the time that my hands shook so much, I couldn't slice the garlic.
Josceline Dimbleby, your mum, she's also a friend of mine.
I think she's a great writer.
Did she teach you to cook?
She taught me to taste, so, I mean, she's been a phenomenon.
She was never on TV, and she sold over 2 million cookery books, but we just ate all these amazing things, sometimes a bit out of season, so--and you'll know this-- if she was doing a Christmas book, you might have Christmas pudding in the middle of summer, and then you'd have salads all the way through December, but our whole relationship now is kind of built around food.
We're always texting and taking photos.
So I've got the onions.
I'm going to take them-- thank you very much-- going to put a little bit of oil in here... like that, and then I'm going to take the onions... [Sizzling] peppers, too.
Henry, I bet the thing that very few people know about you is that you started that great restaurant chain Leon.
It's kind of like many businesses.
It was selfish.
I was working too hard with my friend John Vincent, and we were traveling a lot, and you couldn't get any food that was quick and on the go, tasted good, and didn't make you feel terrible.
You could get delicious fried chicken, which made you feel miserable afterwards, or you could get very cold sandwiches in neon-lit chiller cabinets that tasted of nothing, and so we said, "Well, why can't you?
Why does fast food have to be bad food?"
and that was really where it came from, but that's a big challenge because one of the reasons that our food system is so messed up, the cheapest ingredients are refined carbohydrate, refined sugar, and refined vegetable oil, with the minimum amount of food added to make it a foodlike substance, so it's tricky.
It's a message that's really difficult to get through to people who are used to cooking meat and two veg... Yeah.
and particularly in schools.
I eat meat.
I'm not against it.
I love meat.
It just takes up a lot of land, takes up about almost 80% of our farmland, and we need a bit of that land back to do other things... That's right.
but theoretically, you know, eating 30% less meat, you know, it's one meal a day or two days a week.
It's not a lot, but when you're used to that thing of a chicken breast that you can fry or a lamb chop or to say, "OK. Well, I'm going to make the beans the center of it," or whatever it is, that is very difficult, and most people, you know, they've got a lot on.
What's going in next?
So next, we're going to put in the spices, so we've got a bit of cumin here, which we're going to put in like that, and then we've got a little bit of sweet paprika, so this is a dried pepper, not the hot form-- lovely, warm, smoky flavor-- and then just a few little chili flakes, and then we have just some tomato paste.
Leith, voice-over: Henry has been instrumental in changing how the UK's school dinners are provided, though his move into campaigning wasn't entirely planned.
I'm very much an accidental campaigner.
Because of what we were doing with Leon, we were asked by the government at the time, John and I, to look at schools, and so we did some work on school food, which led to free school meals for all infants, new cooking standards, cookery lessons.
One can of tomatoes, chopped tomatoes... Leith, voice-over: I love the simplicity of any recipe that can be done all in one pot.
and then one jar of beans... With all the juice.
with all the juice in it, yeah, and actually, these beans, they're so good.
You should just try a little bit because they're so good.
♪ They are.
And we'll just-- We won't need any salt because there's a bit of salt in here, and we'll just put these in like this.
Let's talk a bit about Chefs in Schools.
I started Chefs in Schools because the cook at my children's state primary school left.
I was a governor at the time.
The head teacher said, "We're looking for a chef," and I tweeted, "We're looking for a chef for this school," not thinking I'd hear anything about it, and this extraordinary woman, Nicole Pisani, who was the head chef at Yotam Ottolenghi's upmarket restaurant NOPI, had been wanting to do something with more purpose, and she got in touch and said, "Can I do this job?"
so I went to the-- Good Lord.
I went to the head teacher.
I said, "Look.
We've got this head chef at this incredibly grand restaurant."
She said, "That's not going to happen, but it did happen, and Nicole came, and she spent a long time standing by the bins, seeing what they were throwing away, asking them why, but over about 3 years, she really cracked it, and then a friend of ours said, "My children's school is terrible.
You should be doing it more broadly," so we set up this charity Chefs in Schools, and what we do is, we work with schools to help them if they need to recruit a new chef or train up their teams.
I've only been to one of your schools-- no, two of your schools-- one in Soho and one in Hackney-- and both of them, the children loved the food and loved their chefs and would talk about it to you.
Real change, you need people who care doing it from the bottom up, and that's what we hope to be part of.
I'm going to put some lime into this now... Go on, then.
so this will just give it a bit of a tang, and then we're going to put the eggs on top to poach them.
80% of the how good the dish tastes is that last moment when you're putting a bit more acid in and a bit more oil in, a bit more salt and pepper, and you can cook a dish that would be amazing if you don't get that acid and base stuff on, so we're now going to put the eggs on.
The idea is to put them on.
You crack them on top of it, put the lid on so the steam poaches from the top.
They get cooked from the bottom.
The idea is to have them runny in the middle, so we're going to put that on there.
♪ Leith, voice-over: The eggs are cooked in just a few minutes before the final pieces are put in place-- the toppings of feta, jalapeno, avocado, and coriander.
♪ Perfect.
Take that out like that.
Oh, yum.
Doesn't that look beautiful?
I'm dribbling.
Good.
Ha ha ha!
This is what we intend.
Oh, doesn't that look perfect?
It's a really simple weeknight supper.
♪ Mm.
Too hot?
No.
It's absolutely lovely.
♪ Leith, voice-over: As well as being home to some wonderful food producers, the Cotswold countryside offers all sorts of activities that my husband John and I really enjoy.
♪ I'm a huge fan of fly fishing, and on my 80th birthday, we took a bunch of friends fishing on the Spey River in Scotland for a week.
John and I did not catch a dicky bird, nothing, so I hope today he will bring a trout home.
After all, he's fishing in Bibury Trout Farm, which means, I think, pulling a fish out of a pond.
♪ Leith, voice-over: If John comes home with a trout, I've got a simple and healthy supper planned for tonight, but if he fails, could be cheese on toast.
I used to do a lot of trout fishing in my youth-- I suppose up till I was about 17-- and I haven't caught a trout since then, so let's hope I catch something here because if I go home emptyhanded, God help me.
Leith, voice-over: The person ensuring that doesn't happen is Steve Woodland.
Steve, how many ponds have you actually got here?
So we're a 15-acre site, and we've got 42 ponds across 3 different meadows here.
Well, Prue told me I had to come back with a trout, even if I had to wrestle it myself... Let's try and catch one.
so shall we try and catch one?
[Duck quacks] ♪ Why did they make a fish farm here?
I think as a site, it was just ideal scenario, really.
You got the River Coln that runs through the center of the site.
You got a manmade mill stream that runs round the back, and the Coln Valley itself is heavily spring-fed, so from a water-quality point of view, it was perfect, really.
Playfair: How many fish have you got in here, and what are their size ranges?
I think currently, we've got about 600 or 700 in this pond.
They're averaging about a kilo and a half at the moment.
Let's do a little bit of feeding.
♪ Do you feed them once a day?
Twice a day as a minimum.
If it takes 3 goes, 4 goes, then we'll keep feeding it until they've pretty much taken it all.
♪ Leith, voice-over: Let's see if John can reel one in.
He'll never live it down if he can't.
♪ Oh, well, Steve, what have we got here?
This is the sort of fishing bucket.
Yes.
It's what we call our catch-your-own or our beginner's fishery.
Right, with-- This looks to me like a reelless rod, so-- Bait has come off there, John.
Has it?
Right, so I think we need another bit of corn on there.
I have never done anything like this before, so let's see what's going to happen.
Go on.
Oh.
Ho ho ho!
Yeah.
Go.
Oh.
Oh, sorry.
Nearly come off the hook.
Putting some more bait on.
Leith, voice-over: Fishing normally requires skill, but John is fishing in a stocked pond in a fish farm.
Go on.
Is that it?
♪ Leith, voice-over: Well, that was easy.
Oh.
Nice rainbow.
How good is that?
Well, I tell you what.
Young Prudence is going to be delighted.
Can you tell her how I wrestled it to the ground and it was a very emotional experience?
Of course.
Thank you.
A lovely rainbow, my goodness me.
Isn't that a perfect size?
Leith, voice-over: Truly the catch of the day.
Top work, darling.
♪ ♪ [Dog barks] ♪ [Bark bark] Leith, voice-over: Next is one of my simplest time-saving kitchen hacks.
Earlier, I showed you how to make a lovely guacamole, but I was complaining about not having any tortilla chips, so I'm going to make some.
♪ ♪ These are just tortillas from a supermarket, and these are leftover.
Cut them up into tortilla shapes.
Put them in a bowl.
We need a little bit of oil... ♪ a bit of salt... ♪ bit of pepper... ♪ and I think a bit of cayenne pepper, not too much, just to make it a little bit spicy.
Turn it.
It's quite fun doing this.
It feels nice.
Spread them out so they won't stick together.
They need about 10 minutes in a hot oven-- well, anything between 180 and 220.
♪ Perfect.
♪ Mm.
They're lovely, and the tortilla crisp chips are really crisp right through and just a little bit spicy, but not enough to overwhelm the avocado.
♪ Mm.
Leith, voice-over: I'd call that absolutely cracking.
♪ I do love to shout about food heroes, including the people who put real time and effort into improving things.
♪ Earlier, we heard from Henry Dimbleby about his sterling project Chefs in Schools, and I wondered, what do the children think?
Are their chefs their food heroes?
♪ My favorite food that they make is the mac and cheese because it's very cheesy.
One is the tacos, and one is the Curry.
Either the pepperoni pizza or the fish and chips.
♪ Here, I'm just prepping some cauliflower, which we're going to roast, probably with just some salt, olive oil, maybe some rosemary.
Leith, voice-over: Octavia Spray trained as a chef, but after years of working in high-end restaurants and mixing with Michelin-star chefs, she decided she wanted to go back to school.
♪ Spray: I don't really love the back-of-house nature of being a chef.
I wanted to interact with people who were eating my food and explain how dishes had been prepared and maybe teach a bit more of cooking and cheer up a couple of the children's days, make them eager and look forward to eating.
♪ Leith, voice-over: Octavia found out about the scheme that puts chefs with her level of skill and experience in school kitchens across the country, schools like Redriff Primary in London.
We had a vision for what we wanted lunches to be like.
We wanted them to be nutritious but also delicious.
We knew that we needed some support, and that's when we started working with Chefs in Schools.
Leith, voice-over: Cooking for pint-sized punters does come with its challenges.
Spray: Because children are fussy, I think.
That's the thing.
Children are fussy.
They have their set ways.
Their mum cooks it this way.
Their dad cooks it that way.
A lot of it is trying to get a balance of different foods during the week, try and expand their palates a little bit, get them introduced to some new spices and things like that.
♪ This is cooking 16 kilos of pasta today, so often, it's cooking with a larger quantity of food, which, for me, has been a big challenge.
Leith, voice-over: So what's the appeal for chefs?
Recruitment is one of the jobs of charity co-founder Nicole Pisani.
♪ I think it's a mixture of work/life balance for chefs.
There's a lot of the school holidays which the chefs also get, and I think when you work out salaries that the school chefs are getting versus a salary in the industry, it's quite comparable.
♪ Spray: Cheffing is very hard gig.
I think most chefs would say that, and it's rather nice having my weekends back and my evenings back.
Leith, voice-over: Octavia also teaches the children where their food comes from, which can include the school's veg patch.
Spray: So this herb here is sage and is really good for your stomach.
We've got a absolutely fantastic kitchen team who engage really well with the children, and the children then engage really well with them.
♪ Thank you.
Vegetables are good for you.
You need your veg.
Spray: That's for you.
Would you like salad?
Since we've had the new chefs coming in, the food has been about 10 times better.
♪ Flavor and texture and lots of things like that.
Girl, voice-over: Before, dessert was the only nice thing.
Now it's just so much better.
♪ Girl, voice-over: Some of my friends, they see it, and they're like, "I don't think I'm gonna like that."
Then they try it, and they're like, "This is delicious."
Spray: Can I give you some of these seeds, as well, to try?
They're pumpkin seeds.
They're toasted.
They're nice.
Let me know if you like them.
Today we have these seeds that I've never eaten before because I don't normally eat seeds.
They were really nice.
♪ With the new chefs, the food is from different countries and with different styles and cultures.
I think it's important because then people will experience what it would be like for other people.
♪ Leith, voice-over: While many of the hundred schools taking part are in London, the scheme has also been adopted across the country.
At Redriff, the school provides the lunches for free, and the benefit to the children extends way beyond lunchtime.
We know that they're getting the nutrition that they need, and that, in turn, really supports them with their learning, especially in the afternoon, where sometimes you can see a drop-off, and then that, in turn, supports their behavior, as well.
Once you put food in the heart of a school, you could see the benefits of it for the children and for the community, the effort at the end of the day so worth its while.
Spray: There you go.
That's for you.
Child: Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Spray, voice-over: Genuinely seeing happy faces out in the dining room and they're excited to come in and have lunch, having that sense of it being a being a happy place for them is, for me, the most important part of my job, and that is where I get my satisfaction from.
♪ Leith, voice-over: It's time to cook supper, and I'm keen to get my hands on what John's brought back from his triumphant fishing trip.
John, you caught a fish this morning, didn't you, for me, I hope, a trout, right?
Under fairly easy conditions, not exactly a hard-- Did you scoop it out with the net?
Yes.
I did.
Yep.
Well, it's a lovely fish, and this is only half of it, so this is our supper, might do the other half tomorrow, so I'm going to do a grilled trout with a grain salad.
♪ Let's get the trout under the grill.
The most important thing is to cut a few little slits-- you have to have a good, sharp knife-- through the skin like that because if you don't, the skin as it grills tends to curl up and the whole thing curls and then you get burnt edges and it's not even, so nice, little holes all the way along, and then this is actually a nonstick pan, so I probably don't need to do this, but if you don't have a nonstick pan, it's worth greasing the bottom of it, putting the trout on it, little more oil on the top like that, and then some sea salt, which I like it to be on the fish skin.
I love fish skin.
You're not so keen on the skin.
No.
I always give it to you.
And I usually eat it.
Anyhow, that's going under the grill in here.
♪ John, darling, do you mind swapping this knife because it's fishy?
And I'm going to make kale crisps, which is so easy.
You can You can do it in an air fryer, or you can do it in an oven.
Most of you aren't old enough to remember Fanny Cradock on television, but she was one of the first cookery stars, and her assistant was her husband Johnnie, and she bossed him around like anything, so I'm taking a tip from her.
He was always in a dinner jacket, wasn't he?
They both were.
She wore long earrings and evening stuff.
Anyway, you want to hack it up.
If you buy it from a supermarket, it's all chopped up already usually in a packet, but kale used to be really unpopular and only fed to cattle, but it's one of the most nutritious of vegetables, and if it's young, it's delicious.
To be honest, if it's old and scraggy, it's a bit too bitter, but when it's young like this, it's absolutely lovely, so all you need to do is to put a little bit of olive oil, just a tiny bit, turn it so that each leaf gets a bit of oil on it... put quite a good dollop of salt in it... and then put it in the oven, and you don't want it in a grilling oven.
You want it a little bit about in the middle of a 160-degree oven.
Then halfway through, every now and again, you need to just look at it because what you're trying to do is dry it out completely so it's all crisp and delicious, so we'll shove it in that one.
Thank you.
This is actually going to be a mighty healthy supper because the kale is good for you.
Fish is really good for you.
It's especially good for your brain.
Oh, I need that.
Ha ha ha!
Do you need a lot-- It's a good combination, perfect.
I think the trick with fish is to try to get sustainable fish because we are depleting our seas of fish, but this one was caught by you.
Well, it's in a fish farm, so...
It's in a fish farm, and actually-- so living a happy life.
and good, well-run fish farms are much more sustainable and better for the sea and everything else.
♪ I don't want to say the best thing about you is that you do like a tipple, but we both like cocktails, so-- Well, I've got one here which I'm going to do for you.
I mean, normally, as you know, I like my very, very vulgar cocktails with lots of cream and umbrellas in them... Oh, they're disgusting.
but I've got a herb garden vodka and tonic cocktail... Good Lord.
Slightly different from our usual ones...
It sounds positively healthy.
but this is going to be new.
Could we have a healthy cocktail?
We have 150 grams of sugar.
All right.
OK.
In it pops, and we've got a 150 mil of water, and then we-- Wiggle it around.
Then I'm going to be, I think, generous so you get a real taste of basil and swirl it around a bit.
Look.
Oh, I say, that looks good.
Doesn't that look nice?
That's marvelous.
OK. Well, I'll stick it here for a minute.
Leith, voice-over: After a few minutes on the hob, the syrup is left to cool.
Then it's combined with a splash of vodka and a bottle top of French vermouth.
So do I put the syrup in there?
OK. Do I?
Yes.
That's what you do.
Well, that looks very, very good.
Give it a little stir around, and then there we go.
All it is is vodka, Noilly Prat, and basil syrup.
And tonic.
See what happens?
I'm going to add a little bit of lemon juice, and then we'll just see to taste.
We might need some more tonic, but-- We might have to have to test it many times...
Yes we do.
Cin-cin.
There we go.
to make sure we get it exactly right.
Mm.
It's lovely, isn't it?
I think that's really good, And the basil is nice.
Yep.
In fact, I would say, that's one of the nicest cocktails I've had for a long time.
Right.
I think I need to check on my kale because it burns quite easily... and it does need to be turned over every now and again, but you see it's beginning to get nice and crunchy.
That looks fantastic.
That looks really good.
Can you hear?
[Rustling] I can.
Crunchy.
Mm-hmm, so good.
Is it going back in?
Back in just for a second or two.
♪ Now I should really get on with the salad to eat with the fish, so I thought we'd have this grain salad made with quinoa and bulgur wheat, and the easiest way to cook them is to simply get a pan full of water, chuck them in, boil for 7 minutes, drain them, and that's it.
What's the advantage of bulgur wheat?
It's a nice, ancient grain.
It's not been messed around with.
It's not full of anything nasty, and the same goes for quinoa.
They're both really good grains, and they taste great, and it makes a change.
You don't want to always be eating potatoes and rice...
It's a good marriage.
and it's a good marriage.
I often do mixed grains.
You know, sometimes when you think you're getting rice, you're getting rice and spelt and barley all together, so this is the quinoa.
In it goes, cooked quinoa.
That's the one I always pronounce wrong.
What do you say, kinoah?
Kinoah or something.
Quinoa, and this is bulgur wheat, and then we're going to have a dressing in there, so that's a little bit of olive oil, about that much-- two tablespoons, say-- and a squeeze of lemon, about one tablespoon... some harissa paste.
Harissa paste is basically chili paste, but it's very-- is much more flowery and much more gentle than most chilies.
This will be a sort of medium mild, not too spicy.
This is a teaspoon of pomegranate molasses, which is delicious.
It's sweet and savory at the same time, but if you haven't got pomegranate molasses, don't worry.
Balsamic vinegar does pretty well the same job, especially if it's a balsamic glaze, you know, sort of slightly sweetened thick one, so that's the dressing, and then what's going to go into this is much the same sort of mixture that Henry did for us before-- red peppers and tomatoes and onions, and they were all sort of sweated together.
Well, we did something pretty similar with cherry tomatoes, red peppers, garlic, and olive oil, and we just roasted them all in the oven, so that goes in there... with its oil.
Is this a Prue invention?
Do you know, I can't remember where I got this recipe from.
Then we're going to have some feta and some olives, which we can either put in or put on the top.
I think it will infuse better if it's inside, won't it?
Feta can be so good.
You want to find a feta that is creamy and not too salty.
It makes such a difference.
I must say, that looks very good.
Doesn't it look good?
Can you get the kale out?
Yep.
Don't burn yourself.
No.
I won't.
Use the-- Use the cloth.
Let's see.
[Oven closes] ♪ Then we want the fish on the top... ♪ and the kale all over it.
♪ You've got some lovely textures there.
So there we are.
That's grilled trout on a grain salad with kale chips.
Can we have a wee taste?
It looks so good.
Okey doke.
Shall I give you a little bit on here?
No, just little, tiny taste would be lovely.
You want to stick your fork in there?
No.
You go on.
Ha ha ha!
You go on, just a-- That's it.
Lovely.
Ooh.
There we are.
You don't like the skin, so-- That's all right.
That's it.
Lovely.
I might have to help you, you know.
OK. Can I-- Well, you've got a tongue like a wolfhound, you know.
I mean, I meant just easy.
It's only when you eat ice cream that I have a tongue like a wolfhound.
It's good, isn't it?
Really good.
I mean, the secret to the kale is, it has to be crisp, doesn't it?
I mean, the trout is absolutely delicious, really good.
It is.
I think I'm going to go back to catch another one.
Ha ha ha!
Good.
I hear on the grapevine that you made a cake this morning.
This is very unusual.
It is, but I didn't make it for you.
Oh, no.
I made it for Henry, and he took it home with him, so tough.
I'm going to get my rucksack and go and live with Henry.
[Both laugh]
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