-Action! -Now, this is
a professional, TV-friendly kitchen,
and it has in it everything you could ever imagine
you would need to cook.
But all of this stuff--
this massive fridge,
the double oven, the pots and pans,
the-the equipment in the drawers,
the five-ring hob,
the pantry full of unimaginable goodness--
all of this counts for nothing
without the one vital implement
on which TV cooking shows depend,
and that is...
a home economist.
Mine is in here,
and she's called Nikki.
-Hello, Nikki. -Hello, James.
We'll be seeing you later. Goodbye.
Now we've cleared that up, let's start the series.
Hello, viewers. I'm James May, and I can't cook.
Welcome to my cookery show.
It's not entirely true that I can't cook.
I have mastered about three dishes.
Horse's arse.
But if you can cook a few things passably well,
I believe you can learn to cook anything.
I mean, I'm not saying it will be easy.
Oh, God.
It's not burnt. It's just well-done.
However, it can be done with confidence...
Yeah!
...common sense...
I learn. You learn. And then we are all fed
by knowledge.
...a bit of rudimentary organization...
The hilarious thing here is I can't remember which one
was which when I put them in.
-Hi. -Nikki, hello. Would you like to come
and check on my progress?
...and, of course, Nikki, who's worked
with some of the TV cheffing greats.
All those things you see being cooked
on the television are actually made
by Nikki and people like her.
Not celebrity chefs.
Celebrity chefs can't actually cook.
I'll be learning as I go.
That's perfect, look.
-I didn't say you could do it. -Sorry.
Trying out the latest kitchen gadgets.
Sometimes I will succeed...
-Mmm, mmm. Mmm! -Mmm, mmm.
...and sometimes I will fail.
-It's nasty. -It is. Actually, it's disgusting.
I don't know why I'm trying to...
- It's absolutely vile, isn't it? - Nasty.
I'll also be learning what it takes
to make your own cookery show.
- Can I make a suggestion? - No.
- It would be such a lovely intro... - I said no.
But there will be enough great recipes and,
thanks to a very expensive TV cameraman,
enough slow-mo shots of really great food
to stimulate your gastric senses.
So, there you go. We've learned...
nothing.
Today, I'm paid a visit by some big movers
in the world of publishing,
because by some miracle, they have paid me to write
a cookery book.
So I'm out to impress
with some rice and noodle-based dishes.
That's the noise of waiting
for a Chinese takeaway, isn't it?
There's fusion.
There you go, we got the picture. Can we eat it now?
And a bit of confusion.
I can't remember where I was going to use the limes.
I'll be using some unlikely ingredients
and dishing up an exotic breakfast...
That's murderous.
...a stunning stir-fry
and a very unusual ramen.
Nikki, I've screwed up.
We'll start with a starter.
Hello, viewers. Now, in Jewish and Australian cooking,
chicken soup is regarded as the cure for everything,
what William Langland might have called
the font of peace
and the most precious of virtues.
We could make a standard chicken soup here, like a broth,
but we're going to make Thai chicken noodle soup.
This exciting procedure begins
with preparing some ginger.
Now, this is a trick I've just been taught,
or it's just been explained to me.
Rather than try and use my ancestral peeler,
apparently, you can use a spoon. Hey.
This actually works. Look at this. Are you getting this?
A spoon, a teaspoon peels ginger.
And I don't need that whole piece.
I need roughly a teaspoonful of grated ginger.
Um, and then,
using the surform, which is here,
we will grate that onto a thing.
Just cut round this.
-Nikki? -Hi.
Sorry, I need a-a small white plate.
-A small white plate? -To grate the ginger on
because it's got to be white 'cause the publishers are here,
-and they say everything's got to be white. -I'll go get one
from the special white plate department.
As I said, the publishers
of the book that accompanies this series are present.
They like white plates.
-Your special white plate. -Thank you very much.
Sorry about that. Would you like a glass of wine, actually?
-I'm gonna have one. -Can I take it to my cupboard?
Yes, of course you can.
Now, uh, this is a Sancerre
because we're dealing with spicy food.
Spicy food without any sort of fattiness...
-Plenty, thank you. -...or, um, oiliness
in it, so it can go with something quite mineral.
Quite flinty, as the wine bores would say.
So, this is a Sancerre.
Should be absolutely delicious with this.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
- Thank you. - See you
-in a few minutes, I suspect. -See you later.
White plate, white wine. Let's start again.
A teaspoon of ginger.
Two cloves of garlic.
Lemongrass.
And a couple of teaspoons of Thai green curry paste.
You could make this from scratch.
Very complicated. We've got this out of a jar.
Let's cook that for a minute. Then we're gonna chuck
the chicken in, and it will be beautifully coated
with all these things.
I'm using 450 grams of sliced chicken breast.
You can make this with leftover chicken
from your Sunday roast, in which case
you put the chicken in at the end.
This is looking great already.
And it smells...
fantastic.
This is gonna have rice noodles in.
A little bit of history about rice noodles.
They actually came into their own after World War II
when the rice harvest in Thailand was very poor,
mainly because of flooding.
And the Thai government realized that by turning the rice
into noodles,
you actually doubled the size of the harvest,
because a kilogram of rice
makes two kilograms of rice noodles.
And the Thai government actually invented a dish,
pad thai,
as a sort of national way to help
make the, um, food go a bit further.
To eke out their harvest and their supplies.
It's still popular to this day. Everybody eats pad thai.
James has got something in his hair, guys.
-What? -Something in your hair.
-Bit of garlic or something. -Where?
- Calm down. - It's not in any...
Well, it-it doesn't really matter, does it?
It's not a bloody fashion sh...
Hang on.
Oh, I put that there this morning.
Right, the chicken has gone in.
It's cooking very quickly.
Smells like the Thai café down the road from my house,
which always smells fantastic.
Even when it's shut, actually, it smells fairly fantastic.
You sort of get the spiciness.
It's in the woodwork or something.
There you go. Now, if you could just quickly cut
to a shot of the publishers
looking nervous in the background.
Because they're here today, I can check the instructions,
which I've put in this drawer.
The presence of the publishers,
who've paid me in advance,
means I have to be on my mettle.
So earlier, on their arrival,
I made a very sophisticated breakfast.
And it was this.
Now, you might be thinking, that just looks like
a load of rice and seaweed.
Itisrice and seaweed.
Sticky rice.
It's a popular breakfast in Japan,
where it's called noritsukudani.
You take a quantity of rice--
in this case, 200 milliliters--
and then add half as much again in water,
so that's 300 milliliters.
This is Thai sticky rice.
You can also use Japanese sticky rice.
And this will cook by the absorption method.
That is, it's cooked when all the water...
is absorbed.
Here comes the steamed-up camera shot.
Rice cooking by absorption.
-Did you steam up? -No.
Oh.
Add water to five sheets of nori seaweed,
the stuff you use to make sushi rolls,
and two tablespoons of cooking sake.
Let that simmer and reduce.
At the point where it's correct, it will look
a little bit like a thin Italian pesto.
You then chill it,
and then you spoon it into your hot sticky rice.
Now, in the interest of cultural misappropriation,
I'll deliver the rest of this recipe
using Japanese haiku,
three-line poems of five, seven and five syllables.
Seaweed steams in pan.
I will add sesame oil
and then some soy... oil.
Sauce.
Your cooking is great,
Antony Worrall Thompson, but mine's steeped in verse.
The seaweed is done. It can go
into the fridge to chill for a bit.
We're going to garnish this
with fresh sesame seeds
because it looks nice
and it adds a little bit of flavor.
The rice. That's just done.
Seaweed cools quickly
by the magic of TV.
It's called editing.
And we can spoon some onto our rice
and end up with this.
Back where we started.
But now you know how it's made.
Blossom is fleeting.
This is chicken stock,
which I made from the carcass
of a roast chicken I had last week.
Boiled up the carcass in water
with celery, bit of onion
and then let it reduce, and then I put it
in a mug, and I froze it.
And it lasts for quite a long time like that.
Now I've reheated it.
And with a lot of these Asian soups,
Japanese noodles, Thai noodles and so on,
it's all about the stock.
That's where the sort of mystery of noodles comes from.
If you get the stock wrong, you will just make...
liquid with noodles in.
I'm going to simmer that for about five minutes.
I have a new tool to try out.
And it is this.
It is a spring onion...
slicer upperer.
Multiblade.
I'd say that works.
Spring onion slicer upperer.
Recommended.
This recipe requires the zest and the juice
of a lime. This is a lime.
This is the thingy.
Look at that. That's enough zest.
Right, I'm going to add the rice noodles.
Rice noodles will take about three minutes
to cook in that broth,
but they're going to go in for one minute.
That's actually slightly too much, I think.
They're going to go in for one minute.
After one minute, I'm going to add the mange-tout,
which will take about two minutes,
and then the bean sprouts,
which will take another minute at the end,
giving us two minutes in total for mange-tout,
three minutes in total for rice noodles
and one minute for the-the bean sprouts.
Add a handful of halved mange-tout,
the spring onions...
Bean sprouts.
Bean sprouts are great things.
...and the lime.
That was the lime zest. Now we need the lime juice.
I reckon half of that's probably enough.
And then finally, absolutely vital,
fish sauce.
You want about a tablespoon,
but I'm just gonna guess it. There you go.
Something like that. I'm going to garnish it
with a small amount of chili.
I'm gonna... I'm gonna cut it on the slant
like chefs do in Thai restaurants,
'cause that sort of looks stylish,
I think. The ellipse.
The circle is a fairly interesting
but simple proposition.
Constant radius
from a point, whereas an ellipse
has two axes and two focal points and...
Anyway, I wouldn't worry about that.
That's just bloody nonsense.
As they say in the industry,
it's time to plate up in these bowls.
Coriander.
Here come the little bits of chopped chili.
Could do with something red in it, I feel,
to make the colors correct.
According to the color wheel, red would look good.
Edvard Munch would say give the man a red tie or whatever.
And if we had a red chili in the fridge...
Look at that, there's one right there in front of me.
You'd almost think I'd put it there.
Now, if I just make a few little slices of red...
Watch this.
How much better does that look?
Nikki!
Hello.
Uh, your Thai chicken noodle soup is ready.
Smells delicious. Let me taste.
-Mmm. That's good. -Mmm?
It's really good.
-Is it? -Really good.
Some chicken in this mouthful, little bit of chili.
-You had some ch... Too much chili? -That's lethal.
You've gone really red.
-That thing's bloody lethal. -Drink some more wine.
Geez, I only had a tiny bit.
Maybe my heat tolerance is better than yours.
No, I'm usually quite good at that.
That's-that's... that's murderous.
You know, it's slightly ruined the taste of the wine.
Oh, no.
Shall we try it on the publishers
-since they're here? -I think we should, yes.
-Definitely. -Cara,
would you like to try, um,
the Thai chicken noodle soup?
I'd be delighted to.
Try and sound convincing.
How's it looking? Mmm.
It's looking colorful.
It's good. It's got...
- Oh, it is hot. - Clears your tubes.
- Whatever your tubes are. I don't really know.
It's good. It's got
background heat, depth of flavor.
Okay. Cara, thank you very much
for taking part. There is your reward,
-your glass of Sancerre. -Cheers.
Cheers.
Publishing, eh?
It's ten past 9:00 in the morning.
So, the publisher
has gone home with a spring in her step.
Now, it might be the wine, but I like to think
it's because of my delicious noodle soup.
Later on, I'll be doing something with this salmon
and these vegetables.
But first, let's cue the special jingle.
Now, somewhere in the deserted pantry of my soul,
there is an instant noodle.
And instant noodles, of course,
have had a very bad press over the years.
But there are actually lots of excellent instant noodles
in the world, from Korea, China,
Thailand, and Japan.
And it should be noted
that Japan Airlines serves instant noodles
in the posh seats.
Or so I've been told by people who sit there.
I have here some Japanese instant noodles.
They are ramen flavor.
And their history is very interesting,
because, after World War II,
when the Japanese were pretty much starving to death
and they had been occupied by the Americans,
the Americans were worried
that a hungry nation would become a communist nation.
So what they did was flooded Japan with cheap American wheat,
in the belief that the Japanese would then make bread
and they would be fed.
But the Japanese said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We don't eat bread.
We eat noodles."
And enterprising people in Japan
used the cheap wheat to make instant noodles,
which were invented in 1958.
And then later, in 1971,
they were turned into the even more instant cup noodle.
So, this sort of thing
is one of those foods that saved a nation.
Now let's move west to another food that saved nations,
and that is, of course, Spam.
Other types of processed canned meat are available.
Spam was invented in the 1930s.
It is a processed quarantined pork product
and a very high quality one at that.
Now, we all know that it sustained armies,
the Allied armies, during World War II.
And after the war, when places like Britain were hard up,
it was a sort of substitute for things
like bacon... you could have it fried with eggs.
A food that saved nations.
Ramen. Spam.
We're going to bring them together in the spirit
of peace and reconciliation and make
a sort of Western-Asian-American-Japanese
fusion food that we're going to call...
Spamen.
Please don't expect Spam fritters.
I will need flour, eggs, and...
cornflakes. Later, I will be adding
spring onions, chili, pak choi,
and another egg, hard-boiled.
First, remove the Spam from the tin,
recognized as one of the most challenging jobs
in human history.
Ah. Here we go.
Slice off, I would say, about...
somewhere between a quarter and a third of it.
Put the rest aside, because you will want that
for your Spam and pickle sandwich.
Are you zoomed in on this? We're going to cut the Spam
into three fingers.
Making sense?
Dip your pieces of Spam first in the flour.
Then in the egg.
Then in the cornflakes.
Let's move ahead in the filming to a point
where I've done all this successfully,
'cause this is quite dull.
That's gonna need probably three minutes.
Then I'll give it a turnover to make sure it's done completely.
Right. Let's make some noodles.
Fill it up. You don't need me to tell you this.
You fill it up to the line.
You leave it for a minute or so.
Give it a little bit of a stir to make sure it's mixed up.
Leave it for another minute and a half, and then it's ready.
Okay.
Those, I would say, are done.
They will stay hot for a while.
So let's...
Hmm.
Borderline overdone underneath.
But it's all right. If you film it from the correct side,
nobody need know.
Smells amazing.
They're not burnt.
- They are so burnt. - Yeah.
It's not burned. It's just well-done.
Just...
Cut round it.
-You do that with everything else. -We can't.
It's there.
Nikki.
I've screwed up.
-What's happened? -Well, they're saying
those are burnt. Are they burnt?
I'd say they were...
-nicely caramelized, but... -Thank you.
Um, yeah.
They're burnt?
Honestly, how can you say those are burned?
There's absolutely nothing wrong with them.
That I made earlier.
Good. Right. We're almost ready to do this.
I'm going to put my instant noodles into this bowl, ready.
They're gonna look a bit tragic by themselves.
Now we're going to... I think we need a couple of those.
Dunk 'em in there for about 30 seconds.
I'm going to arrange the boiled egg to one side of the bowl.
This is what makes it look professional, you see?
Can you see it there, camera people?
Careful!
What caused that?
Oh, a bit of water went into it there.
Bugger it then.
Two bits of artfully arranged...
bok choy.
I reckon two pieces of that is enough.
What do we think?
Like that.
A few bits of chili.
Dusting of spring onion.
And, finally,
I'm going to put in
a little spoonful of chili oil.
So, viewers,
for the first time on television,
behold Spamen,
where a utilitarian meat product from the 1930s
becomes the gastric phenomenon of the 2020s.
And it's all because of noodles.
Phwoar!
Can you put your right hand down on the chopping block, James?
Move it three inches to the right.
Three inches.
Bit more. Bit more.
If-if your center
of the chopping action could be there.
-So the product is there. -Oh, dude, really?
Yeah. We can see.
So far, despite having my hand in the wrong place,
we've done wonderful things with traditional Asian ingredients
such as Thai noodles,
seaweed, cornflakes,
and Spam.
But for my next recipe,
I will be using an icon
of Asian cooking.
What we are going to make here could be described
as Asian fusion,
that is, not a fusion of Asian ideas with Western ones
but a fusion of Asian ideas with themselves.
This is not Chinese. It's not Thai.
It's not Japanese.
It's a bit like one of those Hollywood films
that is described as "based on true events,"
which is a very elaborate way of saying "not true."
What it is, is salmon
with a marinade,
accompanied by stir-fry vegetables.
And as with a lot of these things,
it's all going to happen quite quickly.
So I have to have my wits about me.
I have to be ready to summon Nikki,
who's in the cupboard, as usual.
But let's not do that yet. Let's start with the marinade.
Here is the salmon.
Two salmon fillets.
Here is a bowl.
Now, what you're going to see next is
a televisual trick that allows us
to shrink time and space to show you
several things at once.
We start with brown sugar,
which will turn the marinade into a glaze,
giving my salmon a sweet and sticky coating.
Add a crushed clove of garlic
and 30 millimeters of grated ginger,
a tablespoon of sesame oil,
a tablespoon of soy sauce,
and the juice of half a lime.
Stir vigorously.
Pour the marinade over the salmon.
And now back to the conventional space-time continuum.
Now, we're going to make this into a parcel.
When I say "a parcel," actually, it should be more of a bag.
You want a little bit of air in there
for steam and moisture to circulate.
All right, that's going on the tray.
That's going to go in the oven.
The oven is at 180.
That's all ready. But before I do that,
I'm gonna do a little bit more prep
and think about the stir-fried vegetables.
Now, I'm gonna do this in the wok.
This is my own wok. I bought it quite recently.
I'm not particularly skilled with a wok,
but I do know a little bit about its history.
Now, in China, in the ancient Han dynasty,
it's thought that fuel was in rather short supply,
so you couldn't have a fire burning for ages,
like we would in the West when you make a roast.
You had to have something that would cook very quickly,
which means food chopped up into small pieces.
Your fire doesn't last very long.
The other great thing about the wok
is that it gets hot very quickly.
It's very thin steel.
The-the heat will transfer from the bottom
round to the sides very quickly,
so you don't wes... waste time heating it up
like you would with a big copper-bottom saucepan.
The great thing about the wok--
or, at least, if you're very skilled at using it--
is that, um...
This one is designed to go on a, on a ring, by the way.
This is a concession to the West.
A traditional wok is actually curved on the bottom,
to make the heat spread evenly.
But you can... and you will, you will know this
if you've ever listened to people cooking
in a Chinese takeaway, you'll hear that...
ching, ching, ching, ching, ching.
They're moving things around, because the bottom of the wok
can be very hot on the flame
and the sides of the wok can be slightly cooler.
So you can move the ingredients around.
For example, you can do some fried rice,
push it to the side whilst you do the egg in the bottom
to make it egg fried rice and maybe add
a few onions and things.
Moving things to there, there, and there
is a bit like using the different-size rings
on your hob.
That all happens in the one thing.
It's very simple,
but it's actually extremely sophisticated.
But before we do it-- because that's all gonna take
something like three or four minutes--
I will consult the boss.
Nikki.
Hello.
- Hi. - Hi.
I'm-I'm gonna bring you in for this, because it's all...
-Where are we up to? -It's... Well, I've done the marinade.
-I thought it would make sense to do a bit of prep. -Yes.
-Don't need brown sugar anymore. -No.
But I do need... ginger?
-Yes. Cut into matchsticks. -Cut into matchsticks.
Okay. I'm going to use my extremely sharp
and excellent French knife for this.
And... So-so,
little... little stringy strips.
I've never matchsticked anything in my life.
I start by making ginger chips.
-Thinner. -Thinner?
Okay.
Do you want to show me how to do it?
No, I don't go fast.
Oh, look at that.
It's virtually transparent.
So then...
Should we just do a little comparison for camera?
Nikki's.
Mine.
And with matchmaking over,
we can rattle through the rest of the ingredients.
Garlic,
corn,
pepper,
-pak choi. -Ba-dum.
And just to warn you,
when we cut back to the wide shot,
Nikki will have gone again.
She's on a zero-hours contract.
Right. I'm ready to do the stir-fry.
The salmon will cook for just 15 minutes at 180 degrees.
The salmon is going in the oven.
Are you ready?
Go.
Wok.
Ring. Heat.
It'll heat up very quickly. That is the point.
We're going to need some oil.
Going to need my spatula ready to make
the evocative "ching, ching, ching" noise.
See a little bit of smoke coming off of there.
The wok is ready.
Oil.
Less of the sesame oil.
Are you ready?
Ginger. Ah, listen to that.
Superb. Garlic.
Three minutes into the salmon.
Right. Sweet corn.
That will take a bit longer to cook 'cause it's dense.
Turn up the heat a little bit more.
Let's go with the peppers.
Okay, I'm just throwing the peppers in the middle.
It all happens extremely quickly.
Sugar snap peas. A handful of those.
Again, I'm gonna put 'em in the middle.
Hear that noise?
That's the noise of waiting
for a Chinese takeaway, isn't it?
I remember that from childhood.
It used to excite me immensely.
Chili.
This is a prime example of something that you
mustn't overdo.
It will be ten times better if you get it just right
than it will be if you do it for a minute too long.
Nikki.
Come and see what I've done.
What have you done?
I've-I've mixed vegetables.
That looks good.
- Well, we've got a nice combination of colors there. - It looks lovely.
Wonder what would happen if you stirred... stir-fried a sprout.
It would take a while, wouldn't it,
-because sprouts are pretty... -Not if you shredded it.
Yeah, I suppose if you, you know, just chopped 'em
in half or something.
I can't remember where I was going
-to use the limes... -You were going to put it on...
Once you'd plated up, you were gonna have the lime
-on the side and sq-squeeze it over. -That was it.
Okay. I'm going to put those in.
-What would you say? Yes? -Definitely cooked, yes.
That's cooked, isn't it?
It's gone... opaque.
The marinade seems to have worked.
Let's just skip to the beauty shot, shall we?
This is annoying, because you do have to eat these
in the artistry of the moment.
But we have to do the arty shot
on the electric revolving lazy Susan of food photography,
which is this terrible thing.
There you go. We got the picture.
Right, can we eat it now?
-I like the marinade. -Yeah?
Salmon.
I think it's beautifully cooked.
Mmm, that's spot...
that's really spot-on.
Yeah.
So, there you have it,
our dalliance with rice, noodles,
and stir-frying comes to an end.
And the first chapter of my cookbook is complete.
All of this entirely successful.
Well, assuming they cut out that picture of the burnt Spam
like I asked them to.
I think one of the conclusions f-from that,
especially the stir-fried vegetable bits,
is... wok skills-- difficult to master,
but they do improve your life.
Because it's a bit like doing live TV.
John Cooper Clarke once said,
"It happens once and then it's gone,
leaving bugger all."
Thank you for watching.