James May: Oh Cook! (2020) s02e03 Episode Script
70's Dinner Party
1
Hello again, viewers, we're
in episode two of Oh Cook!
[director] Oh, hold up. Just welcome.
- We don't know
it's definitely going to be two.
- Okay.
Hello again, viewers, and welcome back to
another episode of Oh Cook!
And today we are going
to produce a whole authentic
'70s dinner party menu, and this gives us
a lot of things to talk about.
In this episode, I get tossing
Down and forwards and Oh!
And there it is.
share some culinary know-how
Boil the ass off it.
- Boil the ass off it, exactly.
- Or out of it.
and reach a dramatic conclusion.
It's the food equivalent of
Paul McCartney's "Mull of Kintyre."
[Nikki laughs]
Before we go any further,
actually, I've decided
I'm going to have a Babycham.
Oh, yes.
Other fake champagnes
made out of pear cider
might be available.
Actually, I'm being a terrible
host already because I'm
- sure Nikki's gonna want one.
- [knocks]
I've been looking forward
to saying this all my life.
- Nikki?
- Good morning.
Would you like a Babycham?
- Ooh, yes, please.
- I thought you probably would.
Do you mind awfully pouring them for me?
- I shall.
- Whilst I talk about
our first item on the menu,
which is, of course,
vol-au-vent.
Vol-au-vent being French for, effectively,
blown away by the wind.
They're not even a starter, are they?
They're something that you just nibble
whilst you're assembling
in your trouser suits
and your medallions before you
sit down for the meal proper.
And this begins with
a pan with some vegetable stock,
which we're going to bring up to the boil.
And to that we are going
to add and these
would have been extremely exotic
in the 1970s, and available
only because of
the rise of the supermarket,
which was a new thing
dried porcini mushrooms.
- Extremely disappointing.
- What was disappointing?
- The pop.
- Oh, was it a suboptimal pop?
More of a "pfft."
Pfft. There were a lot
of great things about the '70s.
There was great music, you know,
there was The Jam
and the Pistols and The Enid.
But there were also some very
terrible things about the '70s,
apart from the dinner party food.
Britain was falling to bits.
A lot of it was still black and white
and covered in soot
and smelled a bit nasty.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
Oh, it's fantastic, isn't it?
- [coughs] No.
- No, it's lovely.
- It's nice. It's really nice.
- I shall return to my cupboard.
Yes. Sorry about that.
Um, anyway
Keep the mushrooms bathing
in the 150 milliliters
of veg stock on the hob
until it all turns
a nice '70s tobacco brown.
Then grab 500 grams of puff pastry.
We're going to make the casings
for the vol-au-vent,
and I'm going to roll
this out to approximately
three millimeters thick,
and even three millimeters was
quite controversial in
the 1970s because we were
beginning to abandon the imperial system.
Three millimeters is, in rough
terms, an eighth of an inch.
And we're going to use
the cutters in front of me.
Any memories of the '70s
from the old farts in the room?
- [crewman] Power cuts.
- Oh, power cuts, yes.
Power cuts were scheduled in the 1970s.
You knew they were coming,
and you prepared for them
with candles, obviously, and games.
And one of the games
we used to play at home
God, we were miserable
was we had a clock,
not dissimilar to this one,
and we'd all sit in the dark,
and my dad had a little torch,
and he'd set it going,
and we had to guess when
exactly a minute had passed.
And which of the four
of us children got it right
won a potato or something.
[laughter]
Right, I'm going to make
eight vol-au-vent, so I need
16 pieces for reasons that
will become clear in a minute.
Here we go. So, I'm
gonna use the crinkly side,
because Yes, crinkles,
also a '70s thing.
Crinkle-cut chips, crinkly hair.
One, two.
Every other one of these,
or half of them, has to be punched out in
the middle thusly,
and those middles mustn't
be lost because they
are going to become the tops.
Once you've got eight tops,
middles and bottoms,
prick the whole ones, then add
the beaten egg to glue them together.
That's what they look like.
And then the oven is on at 200.
I'll slap those in there, and off we go.
Now, by the magic of television,
these will cook in a few seconds.
In reality they take about 20 minutes.
[knocking]
- Nikki?
- Yes?
- I've made a cock-up.
- Oh, no. What you done?
I got so excited about
making the vol-au-vent cases,
I forgot to glaze them.
Can they be post-glazed?
Yeah, we can put some glaze on those.
[James] A few dabs of egg wash later
Sorry about that. I'm just straining this
so that I've got the juice and
the porcini mushrooms separate.
Both elements are important,
I just want them apart.
And we begin the next bit
by making a classic roux.
For the roux, add equal measures of flour
and butter, and stir on a gentle heat.
Right, that roux is made.
And as with all roux, we will just let it
cook for a bit so that
the flour cooks out, then
we are going to add the mushroom juice.
Not the mushrooms yet,
because I want to be able to watch
how thick it comes.
Then at the end we will
put in our porcini mushrooms
and this tin of whole button mushrooms.
Got the tin this way around
because I'm not allowed to say
the brand, but if you need
some, they're from Sainsbury's.
Right, here we go.
Oh, and this smells fantastic,
because, of course,
the water is informed by
the flavor of the porcini
mushrooms that soaked in it.
I'm now going to add the porcini
mushrooms to my gloopy sauce.
It looks very, very thick,
but I've been told
not to worry about that.
It can't be too runny,
anyway, otherwise it will spill
out of small cracks in the side
of my vol-au-vent cases.
Oh, actually, what are
they like? Let's have a look.
I'm going to take these out and put them
to one side to cool down. There you go.
Shit, this lousy
Oh, that Spam oven glove is
definitely '70s spec as well,
i.e. not quite good enough.
Right, I'm going to keep
cooking that through
just a little, but I'm going to
add a bit of fake champagne,
'cause what the hell, it might
make a difference, mightn't it?
So now we will have sparkling vol-au-vent.
Oh, actually, that makes it
It smells a little bit
like premixed two-stroke petrol.
Right, we're going to
add some cream, 75 milliliters.
Okay.
This is beginning to look, I think, like
a serious gastric disorder,
or the fillings for 1970s vol-au-vents.
I'm not sure.
Let's get something out from series one,
which is the highly coveted herb scissors.
I don't think these
had been invented in the '70s,
although the '70s was an era of gadgets.
Think of the SodaStream machine,
the very first video games
that just played tennis
with two lines that went
[popping]
What else did we have, '70s people?
[director] Top Trumps is
a '70s game, isn't it?
Top Trumps is a '70s
game, as is Swingball.
I'm leading up to this,
because what I'm going to
get out of the bottom drawer is a gadget,
and it is, ow, the hands-free can opener.
[device whining]
Despite looking like something from Mork
and Mindy's kitchen, this gadget
is not from the '70s.
Yes! Look at that.
Strain the button
mushrooms, and then add them
to your hot mushroom mix, and stir.
I think it's too thick. What do we think?
I mean, it does have to be stiff,
otherwise it'll fall out, but
[director] That looks absolutely perfect.
Does it look perfect, do you think?
Using a spoon-like device,
such as a spoon, push down
the center of the cases so you
can load them up with the filling.
Finally, put their little hats on.
I've got a piece of wood
ready to serve them.
This is a piece of wood that I would have
acquired on my Spanish holiday,
because a lot of people
in the 1970s in Britain
were going to Southern Spain,
because you could have
all the comforts of home, like
egg and chips, but you
could enjoy dependable weather.
It was the death of the British seaside.
And here they are,
eight little vol-au-vent
- that hopefully won't
blow away in our wind.
- [knocks]
- Hi.
- Hi.
- Voulez-vous un vol-au-vent?
- Oui.
- Excellent.
- Oh, wow.
I've put a bit too much
filling in, because I got
slightly carried away,
and I wanted them to be
as delicious as possible.
But I think it sort of worked.
[Nikki] I like the little hats.
They're nice.
- That's bloody epic.
- Mmm!
- Mmm!
- I like these.
Well, while I was making those,
I was lamenting
the '70s a bit and making
it sound terrible.
I remember a lot of it as being terrible.
Now I've eaten that, I've realized
the '70s were actually F-A-B.
Flip your top. Cheers.
Okay, so your guests have arrived,
they've mingled, they've had
a vol-au-vent, they've put their
car keys in the bowl for
later on, and now we're going to
move on to the starter,
which is a prawn cocktail.
The ingredients for this
are prawns, for the prawn bit,
and for the cocktail bit it's mayonnaise,
salad cream and tomato ketchup,
to make a basic '70s version
of Marie Rose sauce,
but we're also going to
improve it a bit with
Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco,
bit of lemon juice, cayenne pepper
sprinkled on the top, of course,
and we're going to serve it
with some slices of avocado,
also an exotic thing in the '70s,
often referred to as an avocado pear,
and the whole thing will
be served on a bed of lettuce.
I think the expression
"bed of" actually comes from
the '70s or possibly the very early '80s.
Right, I'm going to boil up some
water in this sauté pan, add
a little bit of butter, about 20
grams, and when the prawns are
cooked through, which is
only going to take about three
minutes, you give it a final
stir and you lift them out.
They will be slightly coated in the molten
butter from the water, and that stops them
drying out and going a bit crinkly.
I need to put a bit
of salt in there as well.
Now, the prawn cocktail actually
originates on the West Coast of
America, unsurprisingly,
and it moved its way to Vegas
and eventually over to Britain.
And in the move over to Britain,
rather inevitably,
it was made a little bit
more bland, so it just became prawns
in a fake Marie Rose sauce, i.e.
tomato ketchup and salad cream.
Uh, we're going to go
back to something a bit
more like the American version.
I'm going to use a mixture of
salad cream and mayonnaise
to make my sauce,
because the mayonnaise gives it that nice
eggy volume, the sort of meatiness.
The salad cream,
I'm a massive fan of it, but
it is slightly acidic and,
in a weird way, at the same time
slightly sweet, and tomato
ketchup is of course very sweet.
So I'm going to experiment
a bit with the mixture.
Don't worry too much about
the proportions on this one
because you can make the sauce
and you can taste it and add
a bit more of that and a bit more of that.
Now, before I do the prawns, 'cause they
only take about three
minutes, I'd just like to
have a quick word about labeling.
This is nothing to do with
Amazon. It's not an Amazon rule.
It's actually more Ofcom.
They are worried about
what they call "undue prominence."
That's one of those TV words.
You can't promote
a certain brand,
so you're supposed to cover
things up so that you can't see
that that's Heinz salad cream,
you can't see that that's Tabasco,
because that's the rules.
I'm going to put the prawns in, and during
the three minutes that
they take to cook I'm going to
talk to you a little bit
about seafood in Britain,
because some things
that happened in the '70s were
the rise of the freezer and, indeed,
frozen food shops,
such as Bejam's and Iceland.
The big chest freezer
became very aspirational,
a sort of badge of middle-class
office, in the 1970s.
So you bought things and you froze them,
but that did allow
people to start doing things
like prawn cocktail, prawns Provençale.
Used to serve those
in a hotel where I worked
as a waiter at the age of 15,
until the age of about 15 and a quarter,
when I was fired 'cause I was crap.
Right, that's the prawns doing.
Once they're cooked
and they've turned uniformly pink,
I'll put them on there to cool down.
I think I will make the sauce next.
So, in this bowl I'm going to put
about 100 grams of mayonnaise
and salad cream.
Oh, look at the color of that.
That is absolutely fabulous, isn't it?
And then a couple of
tablespoons of tomato ketchup.
You can judge it largely by the color.
When it comes out that slightly
insipid pink, like the color of my math
teacher's corduroy trousers,
actually, in about 1975-6.
That looks about right,
and it smells about right.
And there's my prawns done.
Stop the clock. Stop the heat.
You can see how the butter
settled on the surface,
so if I get the prawns out with
a slotted spoon and just stir
it through, they will acquire
a slight coating of butter.
They go in that tray to cool off.
For the more authentic Marie Rose sauce,
add various amounts of lemon,
Tabasco, and Worcestershire sauce
to suit your taste.
Let's see how much
difference that has made.
I can smell Tabasco.
Yes. Now a slightly,
slightly trickier bit.
We're going to address the avocado.
Cut the avocado in half,
then try to throw the stone in the bin.
Then thinly slice, peel off the skin,
place in a dish, and cover in lemon juice
to prevent more '70s browning.
Right, the bed of lettuce.
Don't need a great deal of this,
'cause our glasses are not that big,
so I really can use
my Chinese chopper for this bit.
Do you require me to wash this
because it's had avocado on it?
No.
Chop your lettuce,
add it to the serving vessel,
add the beautiful avocado slices
and then the cooked prawns.
You could also go the extra
mile and pour some brandy into
the sauce to add richness.
Mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm!
- [director] James?
- Yes?
- Sorry, the gun.
- The gun!
Someone has just reminded me that we have
an exciting gadget. Here it is.
Now, this is called I can't
remember 'cause we've thrown
the packaging away.
It's called something like
the sauce gun or the sauce pistol.
- [crewman] Condiment gun.
- Condiment gun, thank you.
That's what it This is called
the condiment gun.
It's idiotic, really.
You take this cartridge out,
and then you put the fake
Marie Rose sauce in here,
and then you should
be able to squeeze the trigger
of the gun and fire it out.
This is stupid because
by the time I've done this
I could just have just put it
on the chuffing prawn cocktail, but
What it needs is a smaller
version of the condiment gun to
put the condiment
in the condiment gun cartridge.
Are we ready? The condiment gun.
It works.
It works for the first squeeze anyway.
Lashings of this.
We had lashings of
everything in the 1970s.
Most notably booze, actually.
There was a huge amount
of boozing in the '70s,
and the beginnings of wine drinking.
The first steps in
wine drinking were very,
very tentative in Britain.
There were only really two types of wine.
There was red wine or white wine.
Waiters would say to you,
"What color wine would you like?"
And then of course everybody
would drive home, because people
didn't worry about drinking
and driving in the '70s.
Finish off with a light dusting
of cayenne or paprika,
and there you have it,
the pinnacle of 1970s chic,
the prawn cocktail.
[knocking]
[gasps] Wow!
Thank you. It's quite peppery.
I slightly overdid
the pepper because the holes
in the tea strainer
were bigger than I realized.
Prawns are nicely cooked.
Oh, it's fab, isn't it?
[Nikki] It's very good.
The prawn cocktail is one of those things
that we, you know,
we deride, but the fact is,
it is a product of the '70s,
and it's a bit like Abba's "Dancing Queen"
or Boston's "More Than a Feeling."
You pretend you don't like them,
but if they come on in the car
you sing along because they're good.
Owing to self-imposed
time constraints, we're unable
to show you the hilarious making
of this next culinary delight.
So here it is, the star of many
a 1970s occasional table,
the bon vivant of
dinner parties, I present
to you the inaptly named
cheese and pineapple hedgehog.
Now, our '70s dinner
party is going terribly well.
We've had the vol-au-vent,
we've had the prawn cocktail.
My mother is now comatose
behind the G Plan sideboard,
and we're going to make
the main course, which is a beef
Stroganoff, hence I'm
having a glass of wine.
Now, Stroganoff.
Its origins are slightly uncertain.
It sounds Russian, and it could be.
There was a story about it being
made for the Stroganoff family
in Imperial Russia
by their French chef, although
some later research suggested that
this chef that supposedly made it would
have been making it
for a Stroganoff who was 130
years old, so the story didn't
quite stack up.
Anyway, we do know that it made its way,
somehow, to pre-communist China,
and from there to the United States,
and from the United States to Britain,
just in time to become
a '70s dinner party staple.
Mmm, that's an excellent red.
For this Russian staple,
the main ingredients
are 600 grams of beef, two sliced onions,
250 grams of button
mushrooms, 150 milliliters
of beef stock,
250 milliliters of sour cream,
40 grams of butter,
and a tablespoon of mustard.
We are inevitably
going to soften the onions
in oil and butter,
and whilst they are in, I will attempt
to develop a little bit
my new recipe shorthand
on the back-of-door
blackboard, because this
is a one-pan operation,
so we can have "pan."
Oil and butter in, and then
you had onions go in,
and then we take them back
out again.
And then I put the beef in,
and then it also comes out again.
And then we effectively
start again in the pan with oil,
and then you add the mushrooms,
which stay in,
and then you put the onions back in,
so they go to there,
plus some mustard, and then when
all that is correct,
you then add the stock
and you add the sour cream
and then you put the beef back in.
That goes back in, and then the parsley
goes around the whole lot,
and then you serve with rice.
So does that, that sort of makes sense,
doesn't it? That only takes
up half a page in a recipe book.
Right, this will take about
five minutes for those to soften.
The beef is cut up into strips so
that you can sort of flash-fry
it, almost like you were doing
it in a wok. We have to get
the pan much hotter than that.
The onions are doing gently.
We're just softening them.
I wonder if you know.
The best-selling single of the 1970s
I'm really sorry to have to tell you this,
but it was "Mull of Kintyre."
If anything signifies
the spiritual, intellectual
crisis that we were enduring in the 1970s,
it's not the Austin Allegro,
it's not bell-bottoms or
watch straps that were twice
as wide as your watch,
or platform shoes. None of that.
It was "Mull of Kintyre."
Same year we had the Sex Pistols.
It was the same decade
that we had the Sex Pistols
and The Jam and The Enid.
We can turn that off just for the moment.
Now, pan, properly hot.
Smoking hot.
Uh-uh, I was about
to drink the stock then.
Did you see that? Very easily done.
Once the pan is hot enough,
cook the beef strips for a few minutes
to get them brown,
then set them aside on a plate.
Next, turn down the heat and add
the mushrooms to the pan.
Once brown, add the cooked
onions, mustard and beef stock.
The stock will join with
the mustard and turn it into
the brown color that
characterizes beef Stroganoff.
Brown, of course, being a very '70s color.
We had brown cars, brown bathrooms,
brown shirts, brown nylon bedsheets.
Unrelenting brown on brown on brown unto
eternity in its brownness.
That is just not very nice.
I'm adding some sour cream,
which will help turn this
into something a bit more saucy,
and a slightly lighter brown.
I'm going to say it
doesn't really look very nice,
beef Stroganoff,
but it should taste pretty good.
Bit of beefy juice with my beefy pieces.
Turn the heat up a bit.
Don't want it to boil,
but I do want it
to sort of chunter away a bit.
The five most popular meals
in 1970s Britain were
roast beef, roast chicken,
fish fingers, beans on toast,
and shepherd's pie.
So, pretty much like
living in my house in 2022.
I'm going to get Nikki out,
and hopefully she will have
thought to make a nice
big bowl of steaming plain rice.
[knocks]
Do you have a bowl of? You do.
- I have a pan of rice.
- Fantastic.
- Smells nice.
- Does smell all right, doesn't it?
- Smells lovely.
- Looks about right as well.
It does.
Um, maybe we should chop
some parsley to finish it.
Yes, that's a good point.
I did put that parsley there
so that we could stir a bit in.
- Do you have a serving plate?
- I do, in the plate warmer.
- [mutters]
- [Nikki chuckles]
You've turned it up, haven't you?
- No, I haven't.
- You have. I can see from the knob
- you've turned it up.
- Oh, maybe.
Maybe a little bit.
[James] I'm so sorry,
I meant to say as you came out,
- would you like a glass of red wine?
- Yes, please.
Shall I do it '70s style,
so it's rice round the outside?
- Yeah, go on.
- Strog in the middle.
[James] See, I think it lacks
I've always thought this.
- The color?
- Yeah.
- It needs
- It's just brown.
- It's '70s brown.
- It is, but I was just talking about that
whilst you were in your cupboard.
It is '70s brown, and it
needs something like a carrot
- on the top.
- No.
Just to make it look more palatable.
That is so relentlessly beige and brown.
But don't you think quite a lot
of things were brown then?
Yeah, they were, but that was
my objection. It's too brown.
So here it is, beef Stroganoff
with added parsley.
I could have done the steak a bit less.
- Not that good?
- It is very comforting.
It's not horrible, but it's
in modern terms, it's "meh."
- Yeah. Meh.
- Isn't it? It's meh.
One might say it's slightly boring.
It is boring. It is the food equivalent
of Paul McCartney's "Mull of Kintyre."
[laughs]
[bagpipes playing]
Well, I'm not really sure at this point
where we're up to with the 1970s.
Were they good, were they bad?
But I know where we're up to
with our dinner party.
The guests are now all completely hammered
and thinking about the long
and meandering drive home
in the XJS.
We can rescue everything
the reputation of the decade
and my guests with a crêpes Suzette.
A dazzling finale
to the '70s dinner party.
We got it from France, obviously,
and it is a form of posh pancake.
[James] To make the crepe batter,
add one tablespoon of caster sugar,
a pinch of salt, 125 grams of plain flour,
and stir.
Next, add two whole eggs.
And stir those in as well,
until the whole thing is, as
cooks would say, incorporated.
Oh, you'll also need
300 milliliters of milk.
This isn't working. Why is this
[Dan] Um, yeah, you have to start
putting the milk in, James.
- Apparently that helps it.
- No, I'm sure it will.
I'm just aware of having oases of flour
inside my eggy mix before
- [Dan] Give it some welly.
- Well, I'm weak.
I'm-I'm old, Dan.
[Dan] Did you have your
first drink in the '70s?
Yeah, I suppose I must have done.
But that just made me sick.
I don't know if people drink more now
than they did in the '70s or less.
We worry about people binge drinking
in this day and age,
but I know in the '70s
I remember everybody drinking vast amounts
of quite strong drink.
And it was also the rise of lager.
So traditional British ales gave way
to things like Slalom Lager
in plastic bottles
that you bought very, very cheaply
and took to parties
that your mates were having.
Add 25 milliliters
of melted butter to the mix
and give it a little whisk to
get rid of any lumps of flour.
Heat the tiniest bit of oil in the pan,
and then add some batter.
I'm rubbish at flipping,
I'm gonna tell you that now.
So I'm going to What, uh
Oh, no, I haven't thought ahead.
Uh, uh [groans]
[utensils clinking]
- Oh, God.
- [utensils clacking]
[quietly] Buggeration.
Crapping Nora! Nikki?!
- Yeah?
- Sorry, I'm having a panic. Sorry.
- Well, what are you panicking about?
- Because I can't
I-I'm no good at flipping, and I
can't find the big fat gazunder.
Use this. Use the little gazunder.
- I can't do it with that.
- Yes, you can. Watch.
I think it's a bit greasy.
- That's not bad.
- Hmm. Not bad.
[James] Let's save it.
You got your special plate?
I have my special plate
here in the warmer, which I turned down
- whilst you weren't looking, so
- That's okay.
- Piece of greaseproof on there
so it doesn't stick.
- Yup.
So it's safe.
[sniffs] It smells good.
I say that about everything
we do, but it does.
It smells correct. Here we go.
[James] Keep making crepes
until you have at least four decent ones.
[babbling] If I go forwards and up like
Nothing happens.
[laughing] It's still stuck somehow.
- Sure?
- Down and forwards.
Down and forwards. Down and forwards.
Uh, down and forwards. Down
Down and forwards, down and forwards,
- and down and forwards and
- Oh!
- And there it is.
- [laughs]
[James] The 1970s were big
on crap action replays,
so here's one for you to enjoy.
- [slow-motion speech]
- Oh.
We've got one.
[both laughing]
[James] Once you have
four not-crap crepes,
keep them warm
and crack on with the sauce.
Right. Shall we split
responsibilities? You can do
- zesting and juicing
- Yes, I can do that.
whilst I do caramelizing.
So there is your juicer.
- Thank you very much.
- There is your zester
- in the pot.
- Thank you.
[James] Gently melt 175 grams
of butter in a pan,
and if you have a helper,
like me, you can watch them zest
and juice two large oranges
and segment a third.
It's actually quite hard work,
zesting things, isn't it?
Next, combine 225 grams of
sugar to the melted butter
until it caramelizes.
♪
It's gone a little bit granular,
which, uh
which won't destroy the flavor, but
I think what's happened is
the butter wasn't hot enough
when you put the sugar in.
Let's just leave it for the sugar to melt.
[James] Patience.
What we can try is
we can put the juice in,
and then we can boil it rapidly.
- Boil the arse off it.
- Boil the arse off it.
- Exactly.
- Or out of it.
Here's the science bit.
The citric acid in the orange juice
will create what is known
as an inverted sugar reaction,
resulting in a thicker caramelized sauce
that is no longer crystallized.
Got that?
[Nikki] Oh, wow.
That steam's massive.
- Shall we give it a whisk?
- [James] Yeah, go on.
- Okay. It's looking good.
- Yes.
So I think we need to add the Cointreau.
- [James] Oh, yes.
- Three tablespoons of.
- [James] One, two, three.
- Yeah.
- [James] Yup.
- Right. Look at that.
- Ah!
- All back to normal.
That smells of Catherine Smith's
18th birthday party.
That's looking more Suzette-y, isn't it?
- That's all come back together, yes.
- Yeah.
[sniffs] It smells
of orange toffee, almost.
- Mm.
- Doesn't it?
I think we should put it
on a lower heat and just let it
settle a little bit so it's not
so frantically boiling hot.
[James] Well rescued.
Yes, you see. Reasonable temperature.
[Nikki laughs]
[James] Next, take each crepe in turn
and dunk it in the hot sauce.
Fold into quarters,
and repeat this process
for the four crepes.
Pretty good, eh?
Now, if this brandy is in good nick,
and we're doing this right,
we should be able to warm up this ladle
over one of those rings.
What, a couple of tablespoons?
[Nikki] Yeah, I think so.
- [James] Whey!
- [Nikki] Whey!
[James] Pour the flaming brandy
onto the crepes in the pan
and wait a few seconds.
There you are.
Supper is, in fact, on fire.
Finally, transfer your crepes
to a serving plate,
add the orange segments
and drizzle over the sauce.
That actually looks really
tasty, although it's brown.
[James] There it is,
the 1970s on a plate.
Would you like, with your
crêpes Suzette, a Baileys?
- [Nikki] Good Lord.
- [James laughs]
[James] That is an extremely
good pairing, isn't it?
Everything maintaining
the brown-stroke-beige theme.
- To the 1970s?
- Cheers. To the 1970s.
Brown the hatch.
That is good, though, actually.
Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Mmm.
It's quite nice actually.
It's like a just like
- an alcoholic milkshake.
- It is. Yes.
Tuck into that. See what you think.
Mmm!
- I like this.
- Do you?
You're a pudding sort
of person, though, aren't you?
I'd have the prawn starter instead.
Not for pudding, I don't mean.
I'd have a starter and the main.
Sarah, my other half,
always has a main and a pudding.
So there's that annoying bit
where I'm at the beginning
- eating the prawns,
and she's going, "Ugh."
- [laughs]
And then afterwards,
she's having this or something,
and I'm going, "Ugh."
- Then we have some cheese.
- [laughs]
I think it's good.
Mmm.
- I'm eating more.
- Yeah,
- but one is enough.
- Yes.
- Got some more treats for you,
if you wouldn't mind.
- Oh, wow.
I have Cool Mint
and Zingy Orange Matchmakers.
- Wow. Thank you.
- And
Famous Names chocolate liqueurs.
[Nikki] Well, I'm slightly overwhelmed.
- Thank you very much.
- [James] I'm not surprised.
I'm not sorry that
we're not in the '70s anymore.
I'm sentimental, but I'm not a nostalgist.
I know the modern world is better.
The one thing that will
be remembered of the 1970s,
in another 300 years' time,
is the prawn cocktail.
The rest of it can just be consigned
to the dustbin of history.
Thank you very much
for watching, and see you
for the next episode, when
we'll be doing something else.
♪
Hello again, viewers, we're
in episode two of Oh Cook!
[director] Oh, hold up. Just welcome.
- We don't know
it's definitely going to be two.
- Okay.
Hello again, viewers, and welcome back to
another episode of Oh Cook!
And today we are going
to produce a whole authentic
'70s dinner party menu, and this gives us
a lot of things to talk about.
In this episode, I get tossing
Down and forwards and Oh!
And there it is.
share some culinary know-how
Boil the ass off it.
- Boil the ass off it, exactly.
- Or out of it.
and reach a dramatic conclusion.
It's the food equivalent of
Paul McCartney's "Mull of Kintyre."
[Nikki laughs]
Before we go any further,
actually, I've decided
I'm going to have a Babycham.
Oh, yes.
Other fake champagnes
made out of pear cider
might be available.
Actually, I'm being a terrible
host already because I'm
- sure Nikki's gonna want one.
- [knocks]
I've been looking forward
to saying this all my life.
- Nikki?
- Good morning.
Would you like a Babycham?
- Ooh, yes, please.
- I thought you probably would.
Do you mind awfully pouring them for me?
- I shall.
- Whilst I talk about
our first item on the menu,
which is, of course,
vol-au-vent.
Vol-au-vent being French for, effectively,
blown away by the wind.
They're not even a starter, are they?
They're something that you just nibble
whilst you're assembling
in your trouser suits
and your medallions before you
sit down for the meal proper.
And this begins with
a pan with some vegetable stock,
which we're going to bring up to the boil.
And to that we are going
to add and these
would have been extremely exotic
in the 1970s, and available
only because of
the rise of the supermarket,
which was a new thing
dried porcini mushrooms.
- Extremely disappointing.
- What was disappointing?
- The pop.
- Oh, was it a suboptimal pop?
More of a "pfft."
Pfft. There were a lot
of great things about the '70s.
There was great music, you know,
there was The Jam
and the Pistols and The Enid.
But there were also some very
terrible things about the '70s,
apart from the dinner party food.
Britain was falling to bits.
A lot of it was still black and white
and covered in soot
and smelled a bit nasty.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
Oh, it's fantastic, isn't it?
- [coughs] No.
- No, it's lovely.
- It's nice. It's really nice.
- I shall return to my cupboard.
Yes. Sorry about that.
Um, anyway
Keep the mushrooms bathing
in the 150 milliliters
of veg stock on the hob
until it all turns
a nice '70s tobacco brown.
Then grab 500 grams of puff pastry.
We're going to make the casings
for the vol-au-vent,
and I'm going to roll
this out to approximately
three millimeters thick,
and even three millimeters was
quite controversial in
the 1970s because we were
beginning to abandon the imperial system.
Three millimeters is, in rough
terms, an eighth of an inch.
And we're going to use
the cutters in front of me.
Any memories of the '70s
from the old farts in the room?
- [crewman] Power cuts.
- Oh, power cuts, yes.
Power cuts were scheduled in the 1970s.
You knew they were coming,
and you prepared for them
with candles, obviously, and games.
And one of the games
we used to play at home
God, we were miserable
was we had a clock,
not dissimilar to this one,
and we'd all sit in the dark,
and my dad had a little torch,
and he'd set it going,
and we had to guess when
exactly a minute had passed.
And which of the four
of us children got it right
won a potato or something.
[laughter]
Right, I'm going to make
eight vol-au-vent, so I need
16 pieces for reasons that
will become clear in a minute.
Here we go. So, I'm
gonna use the crinkly side,
because Yes, crinkles,
also a '70s thing.
Crinkle-cut chips, crinkly hair.
One, two.
Every other one of these,
or half of them, has to be punched out in
the middle thusly,
and those middles mustn't
be lost because they
are going to become the tops.
Once you've got eight tops,
middles and bottoms,
prick the whole ones, then add
the beaten egg to glue them together.
That's what they look like.
And then the oven is on at 200.
I'll slap those in there, and off we go.
Now, by the magic of television,
these will cook in a few seconds.
In reality they take about 20 minutes.
[knocking]
- Nikki?
- Yes?
- I've made a cock-up.
- Oh, no. What you done?
I got so excited about
making the vol-au-vent cases,
I forgot to glaze them.
Can they be post-glazed?
Yeah, we can put some glaze on those.
[James] A few dabs of egg wash later
Sorry about that. I'm just straining this
so that I've got the juice and
the porcini mushrooms separate.
Both elements are important,
I just want them apart.
And we begin the next bit
by making a classic roux.
For the roux, add equal measures of flour
and butter, and stir on a gentle heat.
Right, that roux is made.
And as with all roux, we will just let it
cook for a bit so that
the flour cooks out, then
we are going to add the mushroom juice.
Not the mushrooms yet,
because I want to be able to watch
how thick it comes.
Then at the end we will
put in our porcini mushrooms
and this tin of whole button mushrooms.
Got the tin this way around
because I'm not allowed to say
the brand, but if you need
some, they're from Sainsbury's.
Right, here we go.
Oh, and this smells fantastic,
because, of course,
the water is informed by
the flavor of the porcini
mushrooms that soaked in it.
I'm now going to add the porcini
mushrooms to my gloopy sauce.
It looks very, very thick,
but I've been told
not to worry about that.
It can't be too runny,
anyway, otherwise it will spill
out of small cracks in the side
of my vol-au-vent cases.
Oh, actually, what are
they like? Let's have a look.
I'm going to take these out and put them
to one side to cool down. There you go.
Shit, this lousy
Oh, that Spam oven glove is
definitely '70s spec as well,
i.e. not quite good enough.
Right, I'm going to keep
cooking that through
just a little, but I'm going to
add a bit of fake champagne,
'cause what the hell, it might
make a difference, mightn't it?
So now we will have sparkling vol-au-vent.
Oh, actually, that makes it
It smells a little bit
like premixed two-stroke petrol.
Right, we're going to
add some cream, 75 milliliters.
Okay.
This is beginning to look, I think, like
a serious gastric disorder,
or the fillings for 1970s vol-au-vents.
I'm not sure.
Let's get something out from series one,
which is the highly coveted herb scissors.
I don't think these
had been invented in the '70s,
although the '70s was an era of gadgets.
Think of the SodaStream machine,
the very first video games
that just played tennis
with two lines that went
[popping]
What else did we have, '70s people?
[director] Top Trumps is
a '70s game, isn't it?
Top Trumps is a '70s
game, as is Swingball.
I'm leading up to this,
because what I'm going to
get out of the bottom drawer is a gadget,
and it is, ow, the hands-free can opener.
[device whining]
Despite looking like something from Mork
and Mindy's kitchen, this gadget
is not from the '70s.
Yes! Look at that.
Strain the button
mushrooms, and then add them
to your hot mushroom mix, and stir.
I think it's too thick. What do we think?
I mean, it does have to be stiff,
otherwise it'll fall out, but
[director] That looks absolutely perfect.
Does it look perfect, do you think?
Using a spoon-like device,
such as a spoon, push down
the center of the cases so you
can load them up with the filling.
Finally, put their little hats on.
I've got a piece of wood
ready to serve them.
This is a piece of wood that I would have
acquired on my Spanish holiday,
because a lot of people
in the 1970s in Britain
were going to Southern Spain,
because you could have
all the comforts of home, like
egg and chips, but you
could enjoy dependable weather.
It was the death of the British seaside.
And here they are,
eight little vol-au-vent
- that hopefully won't
blow away in our wind.
- [knocks]
- Hi.
- Hi.
- Voulez-vous un vol-au-vent?
- Oui.
- Excellent.
- Oh, wow.
I've put a bit too much
filling in, because I got
slightly carried away,
and I wanted them to be
as delicious as possible.
But I think it sort of worked.
[Nikki] I like the little hats.
They're nice.
- That's bloody epic.
- Mmm!
- Mmm!
- I like these.
Well, while I was making those,
I was lamenting
the '70s a bit and making
it sound terrible.
I remember a lot of it as being terrible.
Now I've eaten that, I've realized
the '70s were actually F-A-B.
Flip your top. Cheers.
Okay, so your guests have arrived,
they've mingled, they've had
a vol-au-vent, they've put their
car keys in the bowl for
later on, and now we're going to
move on to the starter,
which is a prawn cocktail.
The ingredients for this
are prawns, for the prawn bit,
and for the cocktail bit it's mayonnaise,
salad cream and tomato ketchup,
to make a basic '70s version
of Marie Rose sauce,
but we're also going to
improve it a bit with
Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco,
bit of lemon juice, cayenne pepper
sprinkled on the top, of course,
and we're going to serve it
with some slices of avocado,
also an exotic thing in the '70s,
often referred to as an avocado pear,
and the whole thing will
be served on a bed of lettuce.
I think the expression
"bed of" actually comes from
the '70s or possibly the very early '80s.
Right, I'm going to boil up some
water in this sauté pan, add
a little bit of butter, about 20
grams, and when the prawns are
cooked through, which is
only going to take about three
minutes, you give it a final
stir and you lift them out.
They will be slightly coated in the molten
butter from the water, and that stops them
drying out and going a bit crinkly.
I need to put a bit
of salt in there as well.
Now, the prawn cocktail actually
originates on the West Coast of
America, unsurprisingly,
and it moved its way to Vegas
and eventually over to Britain.
And in the move over to Britain,
rather inevitably,
it was made a little bit
more bland, so it just became prawns
in a fake Marie Rose sauce, i.e.
tomato ketchup and salad cream.
Uh, we're going to go
back to something a bit
more like the American version.
I'm going to use a mixture of
salad cream and mayonnaise
to make my sauce,
because the mayonnaise gives it that nice
eggy volume, the sort of meatiness.
The salad cream,
I'm a massive fan of it, but
it is slightly acidic and,
in a weird way, at the same time
slightly sweet, and tomato
ketchup is of course very sweet.
So I'm going to experiment
a bit with the mixture.
Don't worry too much about
the proportions on this one
because you can make the sauce
and you can taste it and add
a bit more of that and a bit more of that.
Now, before I do the prawns, 'cause they
only take about three
minutes, I'd just like to
have a quick word about labeling.
This is nothing to do with
Amazon. It's not an Amazon rule.
It's actually more Ofcom.
They are worried about
what they call "undue prominence."
That's one of those TV words.
You can't promote
a certain brand,
so you're supposed to cover
things up so that you can't see
that that's Heinz salad cream,
you can't see that that's Tabasco,
because that's the rules.
I'm going to put the prawns in, and during
the three minutes that
they take to cook I'm going to
talk to you a little bit
about seafood in Britain,
because some things
that happened in the '70s were
the rise of the freezer and, indeed,
frozen food shops,
such as Bejam's and Iceland.
The big chest freezer
became very aspirational,
a sort of badge of middle-class
office, in the 1970s.
So you bought things and you froze them,
but that did allow
people to start doing things
like prawn cocktail, prawns Provençale.
Used to serve those
in a hotel where I worked
as a waiter at the age of 15,
until the age of about 15 and a quarter,
when I was fired 'cause I was crap.
Right, that's the prawns doing.
Once they're cooked
and they've turned uniformly pink,
I'll put them on there to cool down.
I think I will make the sauce next.
So, in this bowl I'm going to put
about 100 grams of mayonnaise
and salad cream.
Oh, look at the color of that.
That is absolutely fabulous, isn't it?
And then a couple of
tablespoons of tomato ketchup.
You can judge it largely by the color.
When it comes out that slightly
insipid pink, like the color of my math
teacher's corduroy trousers,
actually, in about 1975-6.
That looks about right,
and it smells about right.
And there's my prawns done.
Stop the clock. Stop the heat.
You can see how the butter
settled on the surface,
so if I get the prawns out with
a slotted spoon and just stir
it through, they will acquire
a slight coating of butter.
They go in that tray to cool off.
For the more authentic Marie Rose sauce,
add various amounts of lemon,
Tabasco, and Worcestershire sauce
to suit your taste.
Let's see how much
difference that has made.
I can smell Tabasco.
Yes. Now a slightly,
slightly trickier bit.
We're going to address the avocado.
Cut the avocado in half,
then try to throw the stone in the bin.
Then thinly slice, peel off the skin,
place in a dish, and cover in lemon juice
to prevent more '70s browning.
Right, the bed of lettuce.
Don't need a great deal of this,
'cause our glasses are not that big,
so I really can use
my Chinese chopper for this bit.
Do you require me to wash this
because it's had avocado on it?
No.
Chop your lettuce,
add it to the serving vessel,
add the beautiful avocado slices
and then the cooked prawns.
You could also go the extra
mile and pour some brandy into
the sauce to add richness.
Mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm!
- [director] James?
- Yes?
- Sorry, the gun.
- The gun!
Someone has just reminded me that we have
an exciting gadget. Here it is.
Now, this is called I can't
remember 'cause we've thrown
the packaging away.
It's called something like
the sauce gun or the sauce pistol.
- [crewman] Condiment gun.
- Condiment gun, thank you.
That's what it This is called
the condiment gun.
It's idiotic, really.
You take this cartridge out,
and then you put the fake
Marie Rose sauce in here,
and then you should
be able to squeeze the trigger
of the gun and fire it out.
This is stupid because
by the time I've done this
I could just have just put it
on the chuffing prawn cocktail, but
What it needs is a smaller
version of the condiment gun to
put the condiment
in the condiment gun cartridge.
Are we ready? The condiment gun.
It works.
It works for the first squeeze anyway.
Lashings of this.
We had lashings of
everything in the 1970s.
Most notably booze, actually.
There was a huge amount
of boozing in the '70s,
and the beginnings of wine drinking.
The first steps in
wine drinking were very,
very tentative in Britain.
There were only really two types of wine.
There was red wine or white wine.
Waiters would say to you,
"What color wine would you like?"
And then of course everybody
would drive home, because people
didn't worry about drinking
and driving in the '70s.
Finish off with a light dusting
of cayenne or paprika,
and there you have it,
the pinnacle of 1970s chic,
the prawn cocktail.
[knocking]
[gasps] Wow!
Thank you. It's quite peppery.
I slightly overdid
the pepper because the holes
in the tea strainer
were bigger than I realized.
Prawns are nicely cooked.
Oh, it's fab, isn't it?
[Nikki] It's very good.
The prawn cocktail is one of those things
that we, you know,
we deride, but the fact is,
it is a product of the '70s,
and it's a bit like Abba's "Dancing Queen"
or Boston's "More Than a Feeling."
You pretend you don't like them,
but if they come on in the car
you sing along because they're good.
Owing to self-imposed
time constraints, we're unable
to show you the hilarious making
of this next culinary delight.
So here it is, the star of many
a 1970s occasional table,
the bon vivant of
dinner parties, I present
to you the inaptly named
cheese and pineapple hedgehog.
Now, our '70s dinner
party is going terribly well.
We've had the vol-au-vent,
we've had the prawn cocktail.
My mother is now comatose
behind the G Plan sideboard,
and we're going to make
the main course, which is a beef
Stroganoff, hence I'm
having a glass of wine.
Now, Stroganoff.
Its origins are slightly uncertain.
It sounds Russian, and it could be.
There was a story about it being
made for the Stroganoff family
in Imperial Russia
by their French chef, although
some later research suggested that
this chef that supposedly made it would
have been making it
for a Stroganoff who was 130
years old, so the story didn't
quite stack up.
Anyway, we do know that it made its way,
somehow, to pre-communist China,
and from there to the United States,
and from the United States to Britain,
just in time to become
a '70s dinner party staple.
Mmm, that's an excellent red.
For this Russian staple,
the main ingredients
are 600 grams of beef, two sliced onions,
250 grams of button
mushrooms, 150 milliliters
of beef stock,
250 milliliters of sour cream,
40 grams of butter,
and a tablespoon of mustard.
We are inevitably
going to soften the onions
in oil and butter,
and whilst they are in, I will attempt
to develop a little bit
my new recipe shorthand
on the back-of-door
blackboard, because this
is a one-pan operation,
so we can have "pan."
Oil and butter in, and then
you had onions go in,
and then we take them back
out again.
And then I put the beef in,
and then it also comes out again.
And then we effectively
start again in the pan with oil,
and then you add the mushrooms,
which stay in,
and then you put the onions back in,
so they go to there,
plus some mustard, and then when
all that is correct,
you then add the stock
and you add the sour cream
and then you put the beef back in.
That goes back in, and then the parsley
goes around the whole lot,
and then you serve with rice.
So does that, that sort of makes sense,
doesn't it? That only takes
up half a page in a recipe book.
Right, this will take about
five minutes for those to soften.
The beef is cut up into strips so
that you can sort of flash-fry
it, almost like you were doing
it in a wok. We have to get
the pan much hotter than that.
The onions are doing gently.
We're just softening them.
I wonder if you know.
The best-selling single of the 1970s
I'm really sorry to have to tell you this,
but it was "Mull of Kintyre."
If anything signifies
the spiritual, intellectual
crisis that we were enduring in the 1970s,
it's not the Austin Allegro,
it's not bell-bottoms or
watch straps that were twice
as wide as your watch,
or platform shoes. None of that.
It was "Mull of Kintyre."
Same year we had the Sex Pistols.
It was the same decade
that we had the Sex Pistols
and The Jam and The Enid.
We can turn that off just for the moment.
Now, pan, properly hot.
Smoking hot.
Uh-uh, I was about
to drink the stock then.
Did you see that? Very easily done.
Once the pan is hot enough,
cook the beef strips for a few minutes
to get them brown,
then set them aside on a plate.
Next, turn down the heat and add
the mushrooms to the pan.
Once brown, add the cooked
onions, mustard and beef stock.
The stock will join with
the mustard and turn it into
the brown color that
characterizes beef Stroganoff.
Brown, of course, being a very '70s color.
We had brown cars, brown bathrooms,
brown shirts, brown nylon bedsheets.
Unrelenting brown on brown on brown unto
eternity in its brownness.
That is just not very nice.
I'm adding some sour cream,
which will help turn this
into something a bit more saucy,
and a slightly lighter brown.
I'm going to say it
doesn't really look very nice,
beef Stroganoff,
but it should taste pretty good.
Bit of beefy juice with my beefy pieces.
Turn the heat up a bit.
Don't want it to boil,
but I do want it
to sort of chunter away a bit.
The five most popular meals
in 1970s Britain were
roast beef, roast chicken,
fish fingers, beans on toast,
and shepherd's pie.
So, pretty much like
living in my house in 2022.
I'm going to get Nikki out,
and hopefully she will have
thought to make a nice
big bowl of steaming plain rice.
[knocks]
Do you have a bowl of? You do.
- I have a pan of rice.
- Fantastic.
- Smells nice.
- Does smell all right, doesn't it?
- Smells lovely.
- Looks about right as well.
It does.
Um, maybe we should chop
some parsley to finish it.
Yes, that's a good point.
I did put that parsley there
so that we could stir a bit in.
- Do you have a serving plate?
- I do, in the plate warmer.
- [mutters]
- [Nikki chuckles]
You've turned it up, haven't you?
- No, I haven't.
- You have. I can see from the knob
- you've turned it up.
- Oh, maybe.
Maybe a little bit.
[James] I'm so sorry,
I meant to say as you came out,
- would you like a glass of red wine?
- Yes, please.
Shall I do it '70s style,
so it's rice round the outside?
- Yeah, go on.
- Strog in the middle.
[James] See, I think it lacks
I've always thought this.
- The color?
- Yeah.
- It needs
- It's just brown.
- It's '70s brown.
- It is, but I was just talking about that
whilst you were in your cupboard.
It is '70s brown, and it
needs something like a carrot
- on the top.
- No.
Just to make it look more palatable.
That is so relentlessly beige and brown.
But don't you think quite a lot
of things were brown then?
Yeah, they were, but that was
my objection. It's too brown.
So here it is, beef Stroganoff
with added parsley.
I could have done the steak a bit less.
- Not that good?
- It is very comforting.
It's not horrible, but it's
in modern terms, it's "meh."
- Yeah. Meh.
- Isn't it? It's meh.
One might say it's slightly boring.
It is boring. It is the food equivalent
of Paul McCartney's "Mull of Kintyre."
[laughs]
[bagpipes playing]
Well, I'm not really sure at this point
where we're up to with the 1970s.
Were they good, were they bad?
But I know where we're up to
with our dinner party.
The guests are now all completely hammered
and thinking about the long
and meandering drive home
in the XJS.
We can rescue everything
the reputation of the decade
and my guests with a crêpes Suzette.
A dazzling finale
to the '70s dinner party.
We got it from France, obviously,
and it is a form of posh pancake.
[James] To make the crepe batter,
add one tablespoon of caster sugar,
a pinch of salt, 125 grams of plain flour,
and stir.
Next, add two whole eggs.
And stir those in as well,
until the whole thing is, as
cooks would say, incorporated.
Oh, you'll also need
300 milliliters of milk.
This isn't working. Why is this
[Dan] Um, yeah, you have to start
putting the milk in, James.
- Apparently that helps it.
- No, I'm sure it will.
I'm just aware of having oases of flour
inside my eggy mix before
- [Dan] Give it some welly.
- Well, I'm weak.
I'm-I'm old, Dan.
[Dan] Did you have your
first drink in the '70s?
Yeah, I suppose I must have done.
But that just made me sick.
I don't know if people drink more now
than they did in the '70s or less.
We worry about people binge drinking
in this day and age,
but I know in the '70s
I remember everybody drinking vast amounts
of quite strong drink.
And it was also the rise of lager.
So traditional British ales gave way
to things like Slalom Lager
in plastic bottles
that you bought very, very cheaply
and took to parties
that your mates were having.
Add 25 milliliters
of melted butter to the mix
and give it a little whisk to
get rid of any lumps of flour.
Heat the tiniest bit of oil in the pan,
and then add some batter.
I'm rubbish at flipping,
I'm gonna tell you that now.
So I'm going to What, uh
Oh, no, I haven't thought ahead.
Uh, uh [groans]
[utensils clinking]
- Oh, God.
- [utensils clacking]
[quietly] Buggeration.
Crapping Nora! Nikki?!
- Yeah?
- Sorry, I'm having a panic. Sorry.
- Well, what are you panicking about?
- Because I can't
I-I'm no good at flipping, and I
can't find the big fat gazunder.
Use this. Use the little gazunder.
- I can't do it with that.
- Yes, you can. Watch.
I think it's a bit greasy.
- That's not bad.
- Hmm. Not bad.
[James] Let's save it.
You got your special plate?
I have my special plate
here in the warmer, which I turned down
- whilst you weren't looking, so
- That's okay.
- Piece of greaseproof on there
so it doesn't stick.
- Yup.
So it's safe.
[sniffs] It smells good.
I say that about everything
we do, but it does.
It smells correct. Here we go.
[James] Keep making crepes
until you have at least four decent ones.
[babbling] If I go forwards and up like
Nothing happens.
[laughing] It's still stuck somehow.
- Sure?
- Down and forwards.
Down and forwards. Down and forwards.
Uh, down and forwards. Down
Down and forwards, down and forwards,
- and down and forwards and
- Oh!
- And there it is.
- [laughs]
[James] The 1970s were big
on crap action replays,
so here's one for you to enjoy.
- [slow-motion speech]
- Oh.
We've got one.
[both laughing]
[James] Once you have
four not-crap crepes,
keep them warm
and crack on with the sauce.
Right. Shall we split
responsibilities? You can do
- zesting and juicing
- Yes, I can do that.
whilst I do caramelizing.
So there is your juicer.
- Thank you very much.
- There is your zester
- in the pot.
- Thank you.
[James] Gently melt 175 grams
of butter in a pan,
and if you have a helper,
like me, you can watch them zest
and juice two large oranges
and segment a third.
It's actually quite hard work,
zesting things, isn't it?
Next, combine 225 grams of
sugar to the melted butter
until it caramelizes.
♪
It's gone a little bit granular,
which, uh
which won't destroy the flavor, but
I think what's happened is
the butter wasn't hot enough
when you put the sugar in.
Let's just leave it for the sugar to melt.
[James] Patience.
What we can try is
we can put the juice in,
and then we can boil it rapidly.
- Boil the arse off it.
- Boil the arse off it.
- Exactly.
- Or out of it.
Here's the science bit.
The citric acid in the orange juice
will create what is known
as an inverted sugar reaction,
resulting in a thicker caramelized sauce
that is no longer crystallized.
Got that?
[Nikki] Oh, wow.
That steam's massive.
- Shall we give it a whisk?
- [James] Yeah, go on.
- Okay. It's looking good.
- Yes.
So I think we need to add the Cointreau.
- [James] Oh, yes.
- Three tablespoons of.
- [James] One, two, three.
- Yeah.
- [James] Yup.
- Right. Look at that.
- Ah!
- All back to normal.
That smells of Catherine Smith's
18th birthday party.
That's looking more Suzette-y, isn't it?
- That's all come back together, yes.
- Yeah.
[sniffs] It smells
of orange toffee, almost.
- Mm.
- Doesn't it?
I think we should put it
on a lower heat and just let it
settle a little bit so it's not
so frantically boiling hot.
[James] Well rescued.
Yes, you see. Reasonable temperature.
[Nikki laughs]
[James] Next, take each crepe in turn
and dunk it in the hot sauce.
Fold into quarters,
and repeat this process
for the four crepes.
Pretty good, eh?
Now, if this brandy is in good nick,
and we're doing this right,
we should be able to warm up this ladle
over one of those rings.
What, a couple of tablespoons?
[Nikki] Yeah, I think so.
- [James] Whey!
- [Nikki] Whey!
[James] Pour the flaming brandy
onto the crepes in the pan
and wait a few seconds.
There you are.
Supper is, in fact, on fire.
Finally, transfer your crepes
to a serving plate,
add the orange segments
and drizzle over the sauce.
That actually looks really
tasty, although it's brown.
[James] There it is,
the 1970s on a plate.
Would you like, with your
crêpes Suzette, a Baileys?
- [Nikki] Good Lord.
- [James laughs]
[James] That is an extremely
good pairing, isn't it?
Everything maintaining
the brown-stroke-beige theme.
- To the 1970s?
- Cheers. To the 1970s.
Brown the hatch.
That is good, though, actually.
Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Mmm.
It's quite nice actually.
It's like a just like
- an alcoholic milkshake.
- It is. Yes.
Tuck into that. See what you think.
Mmm!
- I like this.
- Do you?
You're a pudding sort
of person, though, aren't you?
I'd have the prawn starter instead.
Not for pudding, I don't mean.
I'd have a starter and the main.
Sarah, my other half,
always has a main and a pudding.
So there's that annoying bit
where I'm at the beginning
- eating the prawns,
and she's going, "Ugh."
- [laughs]
And then afterwards,
she's having this or something,
and I'm going, "Ugh."
- Then we have some cheese.
- [laughs]
I think it's good.
Mmm.
- I'm eating more.
- Yeah,
- but one is enough.
- Yes.
- Got some more treats for you,
if you wouldn't mind.
- Oh, wow.
I have Cool Mint
and Zingy Orange Matchmakers.
- Wow. Thank you.
- And
Famous Names chocolate liqueurs.
[Nikki] Well, I'm slightly overwhelmed.
- Thank you very much.
- [James] I'm not surprised.
I'm not sorry that
we're not in the '70s anymore.
I'm sentimental, but I'm not a nostalgist.
I know the modern world is better.
The one thing that will
be remembered of the 1970s,
in another 300 years' time,
is the prawn cocktail.
The rest of it can just be consigned
to the dustbin of history.
Thank you very much
for watching, and see you
for the next episode, when
we'll be doing something else.
♪