-Action! -Now, this is 2
a professional, TV-friendly kitchen, 3
and it has in it everything you could ever imagine 4
you would need to cook. 5
But all of this stuff-- 6
this massive fridge, 7
the double oven, the pots and pans, 8
the-the equipment in the drawers, 9
the five-ring hob, 10
the pantry full of unimaginable goodness-- 11
all of this counts for nothing 12
without the one vital implement 13
on which TV cooking shows depend, 14
and that is... 15
a home economist. 16
Mine is in here, 17
and she's called Nikki. 18
-Hello, Nikki. -Hello, James. 19
We'll be seeing you later. Goodbye. 20
Now we've cleared that up, let's start the series. 21
Hello, viewers. I'm James May, and I can't cook. 22
Welcome to my cookery show. 23
It's not entirely true that I can't cook. 24
I have mastered about three dishes. 25
Horse's arse. 26
But if you can cook a few things passably well, 27
I believe you can learn to cook anything. 28
I mean, I'm not saying it will be easy. 29
-Oh, God. -[metal clangs] 30
It's not burnt. It's just well-done. 31
However, it can be done with confidence... 32
Yeah! 33
...common sense... 34
I learn. You learn. And then we are all fed 35
by knowledge. 36
...a bit of rudimentary organization... 37
The hilarious thing here is I can't remember which one 38
was which when I put them in. 39
-Hi. -Nikki, hello. Would you like to come 40
and check on my progress? 41
...and, of course, Nikki, who's worked 42
with some of the TV cheffing greats. 43
All those things you see being cooked 44
on the television are actually made 45
by Nikki and people like her. 46
Not celebrity chefs. 47
Celebrity chefs can't actually cook. 48
[laughs] 49
I'll be learning as I go. 50
That's perfect, look. 51
-I didn't say you could do it. -Sorry. 52
[James]Trying out the latest kitchen gadgets. 53
Sometimes I will succeed... 54
-Mmm, mmm. Mmm! -Mmm, mmm. 55
...and sometimes I will fail. 56
-It's nasty. -It is. Actually, it's disgusting. 57
I don't know why I'm trying to... 58
-It's absolutely vile, isn't it? -[laughs] Nasty. 59
[James] I'll also be learning what it takes 60
to make your own cookery show. 61
-[man] Can I make a suggestion? -No. 62
-[man] It would be such a lovely intro... -I said no. 63
But there will be enough great recipes and, 64
thanks to a very expensive TV cameraman, 65
enough slow-mo shots of really great food 66
to stimulate your gastric senses. 67
So, there you go. We've learned... 68
nothing. 69
♪ ♪ 70
Today, I'm paid a visit by some big movers 71
in the world of publishing, 72
because by some miracle, they have paid me to write 73
a cookery book. 74
So I'm out to impress 75
with some rice and noodle-based dishes. 76
That's the noise of waiting 77
for a Chinese takeaway, isn't it? 78
There's fusion. 79
There you go, we got the picture. Can we eat it now? 80
And a bit of confusion. 81
I can't remember where I was going to use the limes. 82
I'll be using some unlikely ingredients 83
and dishing up an exotic breakfast... 84
That's murderous. 85
...a stunning stir-fry 86
and a very unusual ramen. 87
Nikki, I've screwed up. 88
We'll start with a starter. 89
♪ ♪ 90
Hello, viewers. Now, in Jewish and Australian cooking, 91
chicken soup is regarded as the cure for everything, 92
what William Langland might have called 93
the font of peace 94
and the most precious of virtues. 95
We could make a standard chicken soup here, like a broth, 96
but we're going to make Thai chicken noodle soup. 97
This exciting procedure begins 98
with preparing some ginger. 99
Now, this is a trick I've just been taught, 100
or it's just been explained to me. 101
Rather than try and use my ancestral peeler, 102
apparently, you can use a spoon. Hey. 103
This actually works. Look at this. Are you getting this? 104
A spoon, a teaspoon peels ginger. 105
And I don't need that whole piece. 106
I need roughly a teaspoonful of grated ginger. 107
Um, and then, 108
using the surform, which is here, 109
we will grate that onto a thing. 110
♪ ♪ 111
-Just cut round this. -[drawer opens] 112
-Nikki? -Hi. 113
Sorry, I need a-a small white plate. 114
-A small white plate? -To grate the ginger on 115
because it's got to be white 'cause the publishers are here, 116
-and they say everything's got to be white. -I'll go get one 117
from the special white plate department. 118
[James] As I said, the publishers 119
of the book that accompanies this series are present. 120
They like white plates. 121
-Your special white plate. -Thank you very much. 122
Sorry about that. Would you like a glass of wine, actually? 123
-I'm gonna have one. -Can I take it to my cupboard? 124
Yes, of course you can. 125
Now, uh, this is a Sancerre 126
because we're dealing with spicy food. 127
Spicy food without any sort of fattiness... 128
-Plenty, thank you. -...or, um, oiliness 129
in it, so it can go with something quite mineral. 130
Quite flinty, as the wine bores would say. 131
So, this is a Sancerre. 132
Should be absolutely delicious with this. 133
[fridge closes] 134
-[Nikki] Cheers. -[James] Cheers. 135
-[Nikki] Thank you. -[James] See you 136
-in a few minutes, I suspect. -See you later. 137
[James] White plate, white wine. Let's start again. 138
A teaspoon of ginger. 139
Two cloves of garlic. 140
Lemongrass. 141
And a couple of teaspoons of Thai green curry paste. 142
You could make this from scratch. 143
Very complicated. We've got this out of a jar. 144
Let's cook that for a minute. Then we're gonna chuck 145
the chicken in, and it will be beautifully coated 146
with all these things. 147
I'm using 450 grams of sliced chicken breast. 148
You can make this with leftover chicken 149
from your Sunday roast, in which case 150
you put the chicken in at the end. 151
This is looking great already. 152
And it smells... [sniffs] 153
fantastic. 154
This is gonna have rice noodles in. 155
A little bit of history about rice noodles. 156
They actually came into their own after World War II 157
when the rice harvest in Thailand was very poor, 158
mainly because of flooding. 159
And the Thai government realized that by turning the rice 160
into noodles, 161
you actually doubled the size of the harvest, 162
because a kilogram of rice 163
makes two kilograms of rice noodles. 164
And the Thai government actually invented a dish, 165
pad thai, 166
as a sort of national way to help 167
make the, um, food go a bit further. 168
To eke out their harvest and their supplies. 169
It's still popular to this day. Everybody eats pad thai. 170
♪ ♪ 171
[man] James has got something in his hair, guys. 172
-What? -Something in your hair. 173
-Bit of garlic or something. -Where? 174
-[man 2] Calm down. -[man] It's not in any... 175
Well, it-it doesn't really matter, does it? 176
It's not a bloody fashion sh... 177
-[man] Hang on. -[woman laughs] 178
Oh, I put that there this morning. 179
♪ ♪ 180
Right, the chicken has gone in. 181
It's cooking very quickly. 182
Smells like the Thai café down the road from my house, 183
which always smells fantastic. 184
Even when it's shut, actually, it smells fairly fantastic. 185
You sort of get the spiciness. 186
It's in the woodwork or something. 187
There you go. Now, if you could just quickly cut 188
to a shot of the publishers 189
looking nervous in the background. 190
Because they're here today, I can check the instructions, 191
which I've put in this drawer. 192
The presence of the publishers, 193
who've paid me in advance, 194
means I have to be on my mettle. 195
So earlier, on their arrival, 196
I made a very sophisticated breakfast. 197
♪ ♪ 198
And it was this. 199
Now, you might be thinking, that just looks like 200
a load of rice and seaweed. 201
Itisrice and seaweed. 202
Sticky rice. 203
It's a popular breakfast in Japan, 204
where it's called noritsukudani. 205
You take a quantity of rice-- 206
in this case, 200 milliliters-- 207
and then add half as much again in water, 208
so that's 300 milliliters. 209
This is Thai sticky rice. 210
You can also use Japanese sticky rice. 211
And this will cook by the absorption method. 212
That is, it's cooked when all the water... 213
is absorbed. 214
Here comes the steamed-up camera shot. 215
Rice cooking by absorption. 216
[lid clangs] 217
-Did you steam up? -No. 218
Oh. 219
Add water to five sheets of nori seaweed, 220
the stuff you use to make sushi rolls, 221
and two tablespoons of cooking sake. 222
Let that simmer and reduce. 223
At the point where it's correct, it will look 224
a little bit like a thin Italian pesto. 225
You then chill it, 226
and then you spoon it into your hot sticky rice. 227
Now, in the interest of cultural misappropriation, 228
I'll deliver the rest of this recipe 229
using Japanese haiku, 230
three-line poems of five, seven and five syllables. 231
Seaweed steams in pan. 232
I will add sesame oil 233
and then some soy... oil. 234
-[woman laughs] -Sauce. 235
Your cooking is great, 236
Antony Worrall Thompson, but mine's steeped in verse. 237
The seaweed is done. It can go 238
into the fridge to chill for a bit. 239
We're going to garnish this 240
with fresh sesame seeds 241
because it looks nice 242
and it adds a little bit of flavor. 243
The rice. That's just done. 244
Seaweed cools quickly 245
by the magic of TV. 246
It's called editing. 247
And we can spoon some onto our rice 248
and end up with this. 249
♪ ♪ 250
Back where we started. 251
But now you know how it's made. 252
Blossom is fleeting. 253
♪ ♪ 254
[sizzling] 255
This is chicken stock, 256
which I made from the carcass 257
of a roast chicken I had last week. 258
Boiled up the carcass in water 259
with celery, bit of onion 260
and then let it reduce, and then I put it 261
in a mug, and I froze it. 262
And it lasts for quite a long time like that. 263
Now I've reheated it. 264
And with a lot of these Asian soups, 265
Japanese noodles, Thai noodles and so on, 266
it's all about the stock. 267
That's where the sort of mystery of noodles comes from. 268
If you get the stock wrong, you will just make... 269
liquid with noodles in. 270
I'm going to simmer that for about five minutes. 271
I have a new tool to try out. 272
♪ ♪ 273
And it is this. 274
It is a spring onion... 275
slicer upperer. 276
Multiblade. 277
I'd say that works. 278
Spring onion slicer upperer. 279
Recommended. 280
This recipe requires the zest and the juice 281
of a lime. This is a lime. 282
This is the thingy. 283
Look at that. That's enough zest. 284
Right, I'm going to add the rice noodles. 285
Rice noodles will take about three minutes 286
to cook in that broth, 287
but they're going to go in for one minute. 288
That's actually slightly too much, I think. 289
They're going to go in for one minute. 290
After one minute, I'm going to add the mange-tout, 291
which will take about two minutes, 292
and then the bean sprouts, 293
which will take another minute at the end, 294
giving us two minutes in total for mange-tout, 295
three minutes in total for rice noodles 296
and one minute for the-the bean sprouts. 297
Add a handful of halved mange-tout, 298
the spring onions... 299
Bean sprouts. 300
Bean sprouts are great things. 301
...and the lime. 302
That was the lime zest. Now we need the lime juice. 303
I reckon half of that's probably enough. 304
And then finally, absolutely vital, 305
fish sauce. 306
You want about a tablespoon, 307
but I'm just gonna guess it. There you go. 308
Something like that. I'm going to garnish it 309
with a small amount of chili. 310
I'm gonna... I'm gonna cut it on the slant 311
like chefs do in Thai restaurants, 312
'cause that sort of looks stylish, 313
I think. The ellipse. 314
The circle is a fairly interesting 315
but simple proposition. 316
Constant radius 317
from a point, whereas an ellipse 318
has two axes and two focal points and... 319
Anyway, I wouldn't worry about that. 320
That's just bloody nonsense. 321
As they say in the industry, 322
it's time to plate up in these bowls. 323
Coriander. 324
Here come the little bits of chopped chili. 325
Could do with something red in it, I feel, 326
to make the colors correct. 327
According to the color wheel, red would look good. 328
Edvard Munch would say give the man a red tie or whatever. 329
And if we had a red chili in the fridge... 330
Look at that, there's one right there in front of me. 331
You'd almost think I'd put it there. 332
Now, if I just make a few little slices of red... 333
Watch this. 334
How much better does that look? 335
Nikki! 336
Hello. 337
Uh, your Thai chicken noodle soup is ready. 338
[Nikki] Smells delicious. Let me taste. 339
-Mmm. That's good. -Mmm? 340
It's really good. 341
-Is it? -Really good. 342
Some chicken in this mouthful, little bit of chili. 343
♪ ♪ 344
-You had some ch... Too much chili? -That's lethal. 345
You've gone really red. [laughs] 346
-That thing's bloody lethal. -Drink some more wine. 347
Geez, I only had a tiny bit. 348
Maybe my heat tolerance is better than yours. 349
No, I'm usually quite good at that. 350
That's-that's... that's murderous. 351
You know, it's slightly ruined the taste of the wine. 352
[Nikki] Oh, no. 353
Shall we try it on the publishers 354
-since they're here? -I think we should, yes. 355
-Definitely. -Cara, 356
would you like to try, um, 357
the Thai chicken noodle soup? 358
[Cara] I'd be delighted to. 359
Try and sound convincing. 360
[Cara and Nikki laugh] 361
How's it looking? Mmm. 362
It's looking colorful. 363
It's good. It's got... 364
-Oh, it is hot. -[James] Clears your tubes. 365
-Whatever your tubes are. I don't really know. -[laughs] 366
It's good. It's got 367
background heat, depth of flavor. 368
[James] Okay. Cara, thank you very much 369
for taking part. There is your reward, 370
-your glass of Sancerre. -Cheers. 371
Cheers. 372
Publishing, eh? 373
It's ten past 9:00 in the morning. 374
So, the publisher 375
has gone home with a spring in her step. 376
Now, it might be the wine, but I like to think 377
it's because of my delicious noodle soup. 378
Later on, I'll be doing something with this salmon 379
and these vegetables. 380
But first, let's cue the special jingle. 381
[upbeat music playing] 382
Now, somewhere in the deserted pantry of my soul, 383
there is an instant noodle. 384
And instant noodles, of course, 385
have had a very bad press over the years. 386
But there are actually lots of excellent instant noodles 387
in the world, from Korea, China, 388
Thailand, and Japan. 389
And it should be noted 390
that Japan Airlines serves instant noodles 391
in the posh seats. 392
Or so I've been told by people who sit there. 393
I have here some Japanese instant noodles. 394
They are ramen flavor. 395
And their history is very interesting, 396
because, after World War II, 397
when the Japanese were pretty much starving to death 398
and they had been occupied by the Americans, 399
the Americans were worried 400
that a hungry nation would become a communist nation. 401
So what they did was flooded Japan with cheap American wheat, 402
in the belief that the Japanese would then make bread 403
and they would be fed. 404
But the Japanese said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. 405
We don't eat bread. 406
We eat noodles." 407
And enterprising people in Japan 408
used the cheap wheat to make instant noodles, 409
which were invented in 1958. 410
And then later, in 1971, 411
they were turned into the even more instant cup noodle. 412
So, this sort of thing 413
is one of those foods that saved a nation. 414
Now let's move west to another food that saved nations, 415
and that is, of course, Spam. 416
Other types of processed canned meat are available. 417
Spam was invented in the 1930s. 418
It is a processed quarantined pork product 419
and a very high quality one at that. 420
Now, we all know that it sustained armies, 421
the Allied armies, during World War II. 422
And after the war, when places like Britain were hard up, 423
it was a sort of substitute for things 424
like bacon... you could have it fried with eggs. 425
A food that saved nations. 426
A food that saved nations. 427
Ramen. Spam. 428
We're going to bring them together in the spirit 429
of peace and reconciliation and make 430
a sort of Western-Asian-American-Japanese 431
fusion food that we're going to call... 432
Spamen. 433
♪ ♪ 434
Please don't expect Spam fritters. 435
I will need flour, eggs, and... 436
cornflakes. Later, I will be adding 437
spring onions, chili, pak choi, 438
and another egg, hard-boiled. 439
First, remove the Spam from the tin, 440
recognized as one of the most challenging jobs 441
in human history. 442
Ah. Here we go. 443
Slice off, I would say, about... 444
somewhere between a quarter and a third of it. 445
Put the rest aside, because you will want that 446
for your Spam and pickle sandwich. [sniffles] 447
Are you zoomed in on this? We're going to cut the Spam 448
into three fingers. 449
Making sense? 450
Dip your pieces of Spam first in the flour. 451
Then in the egg. 452
Then in the cornflakes. 453
Let's move ahead in the filming to a point 454
where I've done all this successfully, 455
'cause this is quite dull. 456
That's gonna need probably three minutes. 457
Then I'll give it a turnover to make sure it's done completely. 458
Right. Let's make some noodles. 459
Fill it up. You don't need me to tell you this. 460
You fill it up to the line. 461
You leave it for a minute or so. 462
Give it a little bit of a stir to make sure it's mixed up. 463
Leave it for another minute and a half, and then it's ready. 464
Okay. 465
Those, I would say, are done. 466
They will stay hot for a while. 467
So let's... 468
Hmm. 469
Borderline overdone underneath. 470
But it's all right. If you film it from the correct side, 471
nobody need know. 472
[sniffles] Smells amazing. 473
[producers speaking indistinctly] 474
They're not burnt. 475
-[woman] They are so burnt. -[man] Yeah. 476
[James] It's not burned. It's just well-done. 477
[crew laughing] 478
Just... [exhales] 479
Cut round it. 480
-You do that with everything else. -We can't. 481
It's there. 482
Nikki. 483
I've screwed up. 484
-What's happened? -Well, they're saying 485
those are burnt. Are they burnt? 486
[Nikki] I'd say they were... 487
-nicely caramelized, but... -Thank you. 488
-[chuckling] -Um, yeah. 489
They're burnt? 490
♪ ♪ 491
Honestly, how can you say those are burned? 492
There's absolutely nothing wrong with them. 493
That I made earlier. 494
Good. Right. We're almost ready to do this. 495
I'm going to put my instant noodles into this bowl, ready. 496
They're gonna look a bit tragic by themselves. 497
Now we're going to... I think we need a couple of those. 498
Dunk 'em in there for about 30 seconds. 499
I'm going to arrange the boiled egg to one side of the bowl. 500
This is what makes it look professional, you see? 501
Can you see it there, camera people? 502
[sizzling, popping] 503
[woman] Careful! 504
What caused that? 505
Oh, a bit of water went into it there. 506
Bugger it then. 507
Two bits of artfully arranged... 508
bok choy. 509
I reckon two pieces of that is enough. 510
What do we think? 511
Like that. 512
A few bits of chili. 513
Dusting of spring onion. 514
And, finally, 515
I'm going to put in 516
a little spoonful of chili oil. 517
So, viewers, 518
for the first time on television, 519
behold Spamen, 520
where a utilitarian meat product from the 1930s 521
becomes the gastric phenomenon of the 2020s. 522
And it's all because of noodles. 523
Phwoar! 524
[director] Can you put your right hand down on the chopping block, James? 525
Move it three inches to the right. 526
Three inches. 527
Bit more. Bit more. 528
If-if your center 529
of the chopping action could be there. 530
-So the product is there. -Oh, dude, really? 531
-Yeah. We can see. -[laughter] 532
So far, despite having my hand in the wrong place, 533
we've done wonderful things with traditional Asian ingredients 534
such as Thai noodles, 535
seaweed, cornflakes, 536
and Spam. 537
But for my next recipe, 538
I will be using an icon 539
of Asian cooking. 540
♪ ♪ 541
What we are going to make here could be described 542
as Asian fusion, 543
that is, not a fusion of Asian ideas with Western ones 544
but a fusion of Asian ideas with themselves. 545
This is not Chinese. It's not Thai. 546
It's not Japanese. 547
It's a bit like one of those Hollywood films 548
that is described as "based on true events," 549
which is a very elaborate way of saying "not true." 550
What it is, is salmon 551
with a marinade, 552
accompanied by stir-fry vegetables. 553
And as with a lot of these things, 554
it's all going to happen quite quickly. 555
So I have to have my wits about me. 556
I have to be ready to summon Nikki, 557
who's in the cupboard, as usual. 558
But let's not do that yet. Let's start with the marinade. 559
Here is the salmon. 560
Two salmon fillets. 561
Here is a bowl. 562
Now, what you're going to see next is 563
a televisual trick that allows us 564
to shrink time and space to show you 565
several things at once. 566
We start with brown sugar, 567
which will turn the marinade into a glaze, 568
giving my salmon a sweet and sticky coating. 569
Add a crushed clove of garlic 570
and 30 millimeters of grated ginger, 571
a tablespoon of sesame oil, 572
a tablespoon of soy sauce, 573
and the juice of half a lime. 574
Stir vigorously. 575
Pour the marinade over the salmon. 576
And now back to the conventional space-time continuum. 577
Now, we're going to make this into a parcel. 578
When I say "a parcel," actually, it should be more of a bag. 579
You want a little bit of air in there 580
for steam and moisture to circulate. 581
All right, that's going on the tray. 582
That's going to go in the oven. 583
The oven is at 180. 584
That's all ready. But before I do that, 585
I'm gonna do a little bit more prep 586
and think about the stir-fried vegetables. 587
Now, I'm gonna do this in the wok. 588
This is my own wok. I bought it quite recently. 589
I'm not particularly skilled with a wok, 590
but I do know a little bit about its history. 591
Now, in China, in the ancient Han dynasty, 592
it's thought that fuel was in rather short supply, 593
so you couldn't have a fire burning for ages, 594
like we would in the West when you make a roast. 595
You had to have something that would cook very quickly, 596
which means food chopped up into small pieces. 597
Your fire doesn't last very long. 598
The other great thing about the wok 599
is that it gets hot very quickly. 600
It's very thin steel. 601
The-the heat will transfer from the bottom 602
round to the sides very quickly, 603
so you don't wes... waste time heating it up 604
like you would with a big copper-bottom saucepan. 605
The great thing about the wok-- 606
or, at least, if you're very skilled at using it-- 607
is that, um... 608
This one is designed to go on a, on a ring, by the way. 609
This is a concession to the West. 610
A traditional wok is actually curved on the bottom, 611
to make the heat spread evenly. 612
But you can... and you will, you will know this 613
if you've ever listened to people cooking 614
in a Chinese takeaway, you'll hear that... [sizzling sounds] 615
ching, ching, ching, ching, ching. 616
They're moving things around, because the bottom of the wok 617
can be very hot on the flame 618
and the sides of the wok can be slightly cooler. 619
So you can move the ingredients around. 620
For example, you can do some fried rice, 621
push it to the side whilst you do the egg in the bottom 622
to make it egg fried rice and maybe add 623
a few onions and things. 624
Moving things to there, there, and there 625
is a bit like using the different-size rings 626
on your hob. 627
That all happens in the one thing. 628
It's very simple, 629
but it's actually extremely sophisticated. 630
But before we do it-- because that's all gonna take 631
something like three or four minutes-- 632
I will consult the boss. 633
Nikki. 634
[knocking] 635
[sniffles] Hello. 636
-[Nikki] Hi. -Hi. [sniffles] 637
I'm-I'm gonna bring you in for this, because it's all... 638
-Where are we up to? -It's... Well, I've done the marinade. 639
-I thought it would make sense to do a bit of prep. -Yes. 640
-Don't need brown sugar anymore. -No. 641
But I do need... ginger? 642
-Yes. Cut into matchsticks. -Cut into matchsticks. 643
Okay. I'm going to use my extremely sharp 644
and excellent French knife for this. 645
And... So-so, 646
little... little stringy strips. 647
I've never matchsticked anything in my life. 648
I start by making ginger chips. 649
-Thinner. -Thinner? 650
Okay. 651
Do you want to show me how to do it? 652
[rapid whooshing sounds] 653
No, I don't go fast. 654
[James] Oh, look at that. 655
It's virtually transparent. 656
[Nikki] So then... 657
Should we just do a little comparison for camera? 658
Nikki's. 659
Mine. 660
And with matchmaking over, 661
we can rattle through the rest of the ingredients. 662
Garlic, 663
corn, 664
pepper, 665
-pak choi. -Ba-dum. 666
And just to warn you, 667
when we cut back to the wide shot, 668
Nikki will have gone again. 669
She's on a zero-hours contract. 670
Right. I'm ready to do the stir-fry. 671
The salmon will cook for just 15 minutes at 180 degrees. 672
The salmon is going in the oven. 673
Are you ready? 674
Go. 675
-Wok. -[clanging] 676
-Ring. Heat. -[clicking] 677
It'll heat up very quickly. That is the point. 678
We're going to need some oil. 679
Going to need my spatula ready to make 680
the evocative "ching, ching, ching" noise. 681
See a little bit of smoke coming off of there. 682
The wok is ready. 683
Oil. 684
Less of the sesame oil. 685
Are you ready? 686
-[sizzling] -Ginger. Ah, listen to that. 687
Superb. Garlic. 688
Three minutes into the salmon. 689
Right. Sweet corn. 690
That will take a bit longer to cook 'cause it's dense. 691
Turn up the heat a little bit more. 692
Let's go with the peppers. 693
Okay, I'm just throwing the peppers in the middle. 694
It all happens extremely quickly. 695
Sugar snap peas. A handful of those. 696
Again, I'm gonna put 'em in the middle. 697
Hear that noise? 698
That's the noise of waiting 699
for a Chinese takeaway, isn't it? 700
I remember that from childhood. 701
It used to excite me immensely. 702
Chili. 703
This is a prime example of something that you 704
mustn't overdo. 705
It will be ten times better if you get it just right 706
than it will be if you do it for a minute too long. 707
Nikki. 708
[knocking] 709
Come and see what I've done. 710
What have you done? 711
I've-I've mixed vegetables. 712
That looks good. 713
-[James] Well, we've got a nice combination of colors there. -It looks lovely. 714
Wonder what would happen if you stirred... stir-fried a sprout. 715
It would take a while, wouldn't it, 716
-because sprouts are pretty... -Not if you shredded it. 717
Yeah, I suppose if you, you know, just chopped 'em 718
in half or something. 719
I can't remember where I was going 720
-to use the limes... -You were going to put it on... 721
Once you'd plated up, you were gonna have the lime 722
-on the side and sq-squeeze it over. -That was it. 723
Okay. I'm going to put those in. 724
♪ ♪ 725
-What would you say? Yes? -Definitely cooked, yes. 726
[James] That's cooked, isn't it? 727
It's gone... opaque. 728
The marinade seems to have worked. 729
Let's just skip to the beauty shot, shall we? 730
♪ ♪ 731
This is annoying, because you do have to eat these 732
in the artistry of the moment. 733
But we have to do the arty shot 734
on the electric revolving lazy Susan of food photography, 735
which is this terrible thing. 736
♪ ♪ 737
There you go. We got the picture. 738
Right, can we eat it now? 739
-I like the marinade. -Yeah? 740
Salmon. 741
I think it's beautifully cooked. 742
Mmm, that's spot... 743
that's really spot-on. 744
Yeah. 745
So, there you have it, 746
our dalliance with rice, noodles, 747
and stir-frying comes to an end. 748
And the first chapter of my cookbook is complete. 749
All of this entirely successful. 750
Well, assuming they cut out that picture of the burnt Spam 751
like I asked them to. 752
I think one of the conclusions f-from that, 753
especially the stir-fried vegetable bits, 754
is... wok skills-- difficult to master, 755
but they do improve your life. 756
Because it's a bit like doing live TV. 757
John Cooper Clarke once said, 758
"It happens once and then it's gone, 759
leaving bugger all." 760
Thank you for watching.