Food Stories episode 4 - Northern Ireland
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00:00I've been a chef for over 50 years, but I've come to realise that the food we eat tells
00:08a story about who we are.
00:13So I'm on a mission to find out what we all like to eat today.
00:17Oh, that is good.
00:19From our traditional dishes.
00:21Long live the Yorkshire pudding.
00:23To those we've made our own.
00:25I mean, that is multi-faceted Britain on one page.
00:28Our meat producers.
00:29There you see a robot, he's picking them.
00:32I find a lot of craft beers too hoppy.
00:34I don't know why, but it tastes all right.
00:38Some of our best chefs.
00:40We're picking scurvy grass, pretty punchy.
00:44Plus those keeping traditions alive.
00:46We've just got to finish.
00:48I have no hope.
00:49I'll see how food brings us together.
00:52Digging!
00:53Lovely, that sort of hot garlic, fabuloso.
00:58And from my home in Padstow, I'll bring you great dishes of my own.
01:02Love stuff like this.
01:04So join me as I unearth the stories behind the food we all love to eat today.
01:20It's a mild summer's evening and I've just arrived in the cathedral quarter of Belfast.
01:34Here stands St Anne's Cathedral, whose strikingly modern spar of hope celebrates the progress
01:41this city has made in the last few decades.
01:46The early 1960s when the Beatles came to town were relatively carefree days here in Belfast.
01:54Then during the troubles from the late 60s to the 90s, violence spilled onto the streets.
02:02But now they're bustling again with people enjoying themselves in busy bars and restaurants.
02:11There's something of a food revolution happening here in Northern Ireland.
02:15Ever since the Good Friday Agreement, there's been a transformation with world-class restaurants
02:22and food producers popping up everywhere.
02:24I mean, 25 years ago, Belfast was no real destination, but now it's absolutely buzzing.
02:37Down one of these back alleys, I know there's a mural of someone whose music I've long admired
02:43for its sheer originality, Van Morrison, who's from Belfast and wrote his first hits here in the swinging 60s.
02:59And there he is, a very young Van, probably even pre-Brown Eyed Girl.
03:09I bought Brown Eyed Girl in the 60s for my disco, because it was just such a sort of fresh, lovely, lively song,
03:16but also it was clearly about somewhere, which is, of course, Belfast.
03:27Belfast was the inspiration for so many of Van's songs.
03:32Even his food memories of the city came into some of them.
03:36A Sense Of Wonder is one song which springs to mind.
03:41I just remember the lines, pasty suppers down at Davy's Chipper, gravy rings, wagon wheels, barn prags, snowballs.
03:54Well, I've always wondered what gravy rings were, and I've discovered, I thought, how do you get rings of gravy?
04:01But they turn out, actually, to be little fried doughnuts.
04:06And in Belfast talk, the gravy is the frying oil, so that is a gravy ring.
04:18I don't think it's an overstatement to say the food, drink and indeed music of Belfast
04:24have played their part in pulling the people of this so recently divided city together.
04:33A century ago, Belfast, with its coastal location, was a city with a global outlook.
04:39It was famous for its shipbuilding industry.
04:42The Harland & Wolfe shipyard, where the Titanic was built, was the greatest shipyard in the world.
04:50Today, that positive, outward-looking feeling has returned, and Belfast, like most major UK cities,
04:57is home to people from all over the world, and happily for me, their cuisines.
05:05I've heard that amongst the shipping containers in the city's trade market,
05:10there's an amazing Filipino food stall, and I'm particularly keen to try it.
05:17It's run by Nelaine, originally from the Philippines via Canada,
05:22who arrived here in Belfast five years ago.
05:25Very nice to meet you. Hi, Eric, nice to meet you.
05:28Do you know, I've never, ever tried Filipino food before.
05:30Have you not? I've been all over the place, but never been there.
05:34So what are you cooking there? We're cooking adobo today.
05:37Adobo means to cook in vinegar, so it's soy sauce and cane vinegar, garlic and bay leaves.
05:45Vinegar is very prevalent in a lot of Filipino dishes.
05:48The whole point is to cut through the heaviness of meat.
05:52So what are we going to have for lunch today, then?
05:54So we are going to make you a very traditional Filipino kamayan.
05:58Kamayan? Yeah, so it translates to to eat with your hands.
06:02So essentially, we can eat with our hands today.
06:05It's a very communal way of eating in the Philippines.
06:08It really just brings all the communities together, all our families,
06:12and just sit at the table and just talk, you know, just talk and converse.
06:17I always think eating together is probably the best thing to be doing in life, really.
06:22Nelaine tells me she serves a kamayan every week
06:26and that it's been a great way for her to make friends here in Belfast.
06:30Looks very appetising. I hope you're hungry.
06:34I think I'm overcooked.
06:37I suppose a kamayan is a Filipino equivalent of a Sunday roast,
06:41giving a chance for everyone to get together over some traditional and well-loved food.
06:48Welcome to our little kamayan feast, guys.
06:50So we have pork belly adobo, which is the national dish of the Philippines.
06:55We have our cubo barbecue.
06:58It's based in pineapple banana ketchup.
07:00Filipino beef spring rolls, or lumpia.
07:03We have Filipino fried chicken, mangoes and your garlic rice and all the fun stuff.
07:08Great.
07:10Let's dig in!
07:14So there's a little technique about eating your hands, so it's called pick, pack, push.
07:18So essentially, you want to take a bit of what you're eating.
07:21So you take your meat, you take a bit of the rice.
07:24So you pack it in your hands in like a little pile.
07:28And then you pack that pile together.
07:30Not quite as efficient as you, but I'm doing my best.
07:32Yes, you're doing great.
07:34And then take your thumb and you push it into your mouth.
07:37So that's...
07:39Mmm!
07:41That's really good!
07:42Pick, pack, push.
07:44Mm-hmm.
07:47Mmm.
07:48This adobo's really nice.
07:50I just want to try this.
07:51Just break it right in half.
07:52So this is beef?
07:54It's beef, yeah. So it's brisket.
07:56We braise it.
07:57I love brisket. That's so good.
07:59Keen vinegar, soy sauce, cloves and star anise.
08:02Fabulous.
08:05I'm really loving this.
08:07It's this whole sweetness, the sourness of it.
08:10There's just a lot going on, isn't it?
08:12Yeah, yeah.
08:13Is everybody enjoying it?
08:14Yeah, it's great.
08:16Belfast people have obviously taken to swimming, you know.
08:20There's a lot of you around the table.
08:22Yeah, it's been great.
08:23It's a very niche and very new cuisine to the city,
08:26but we do find that people are curious about it.
08:28Well, also, this is, for me, a very happy place to be, you know,
08:32because you suddenly realise that things aren't about
08:34sort of meat and two veg or fish and chips.
08:36Things are about sitting down, eating communally with you.
08:39It's the experience of it, right?
08:41Absolutely.
08:42It's just a really fun way of coming together around food.
08:45Thank you very much indeed.
08:47No, thank you. Thank you for joining us.
08:49Oh, I'm so excited for you guys to be part of the clean-up.
08:56Well, that was just wonderful.
08:58I mean, Sunday lunch, Filipino style.
09:02And I think it's particularly exciting to find it here in Belfast.
09:05I mean, I think one of the things about Belfast,
09:07because of the troubles, everything was sort of atrophied for so long,
09:12and then as soon as the peace happened,
09:14everything's just taking off all round,
09:16and this is absolutely typical of what I'm finding in this wonderful city.
09:22In the UK, more than most countries, I'd argue,
09:25we've always welcomed new foods into our cuisine.
09:30And in that spirit, I'm making my first ever attempt at Filipino food,
09:35pork belly adobo, with jasmine rice and mango achara on the side.
09:42So, this is the main part of the dish,
09:44the pork belly adobo,
09:46and I'm just cutting this pork belly up into sort of bite-sized pieces,
09:49I suppose you could call it.
09:51As I've discovered, Filipino food is packed with strong flavours.
09:56We get the pork belly browning nicely.
09:59And this, the national dish, is no exception.
10:03After browning the meat, add an onion and nine, yes,
10:07nine cloves of crushed garlic.
10:10It's smelling wonderful.
10:12I mean, you can't go wrong when you've got such incredibly positive flavours.
10:17In goes that key Filipino ingredient, cane vinegar,
10:21plus soy sauce, fish sauce, brown sugar, bay leaves and black pepper.
10:29So, I'm just going to leave that now for half an hour to cook.
10:33I'm going to serve my adobo.
10:35I'm just going to leave that now for half an hour to cook.
10:39I'm going to serve my adobo with a mango pickle called achara.
10:43I actually made it earlier because the flavour needs time to develop.
10:47So, here's what I did.
10:49I put a couple of sliced unripe mangoes into a jar
10:53with two tablespoons of raisins.
10:56Over a medium heat, I mixed cane vinegar with bay leaves,
11:01cloves, peppercorns, garlic, sugar and salt.
11:07When the sugar had dissolved, I poured the warm mixture over the mangoes,
11:12then put it to one side for a couple of hours.
11:18My pork belly has been simmering away for 30 minutes.
11:22The liquid has reduced right down and it's ready to serve.
11:26Jasmine rice is the perfect accompaniment,
11:29along with, of course, my mango achara.
11:33So, here we jolly well go.
11:37It is so intense.
11:40The belly pork is beautiful, really tender.
11:43And as for this pickled mango, it's just amazingly strong,
11:48but in a totally delightful way.
11:50You'd have to say that Filipino cooking was a sort of study in vinegar.
11:55Personally, I love vinegar. I can't have enough of it.
11:58But I've never been to the Philippines. I must go.
12:08I've headed out of Belfast today and into farming country
12:12because what underpins the flourishing food scene
12:16here in Northern Ireland is fantastic produce.
12:22This is the Glenarm Estate,
12:24which has been owned by the Earls of Antrim for the last 400 years.
12:29It's home to a herd of beef cattle,
12:31whose meat has won a host of foodie prizes.
12:36I've always thought that beef from Ireland is really quite special.
12:41And I think if you're doing something that little bit extra
12:45with cattle here, you're on to a real winner.
12:50Estate manager Adrian tells me
12:53that the secret of their success here is the breed.
12:57I love the way they're following us.
13:00These cattle are not the leaner continental kind
13:03farmed across much of the UK these days.
13:06They're a native breed called shorthorns.
13:09An old traditional breed of cattle
13:11that was designed for its meat-eating qualities
13:14because of the high fat content over its back
13:17and the marbling through the meat.
13:19I mean, a fatty beast, then?
13:21Yes, a fatty beef.
13:23So you need that fat there to get the flavour, you see.
13:27They're very friendly.
13:29Yeah, and that's one of the eating characteristics as well.
13:32Really?
13:33Yeah, they're very quiet and timid
13:35so there's no adrenaline pushing through their system.
13:38It's a combination of things
13:40and the fact that they're very quiet helps the meat as well.
13:43That's so interesting.
13:45I have to say, Adrian, I'm personally interested in shorthorns
13:48because I was born and brought up on the farm and we had shorthorns.
13:51I do remember them as being rather friendly.
13:54They're a pleasure to work with.
13:57And the life of the farmer can be extended by using shorthorns as well.
14:01The stress levels are a lot lower than they used to be.
14:04If you walk down to a field of continental cattle,
14:07they just rushed out the other side.
14:09Now, as you can see today, when you come into a field of shorthorns,
14:12they come and say hello and lick your trotter legs.
14:15They've got me down as well, actually.
14:17They've got that effect.
14:22There's another key factor that turns the meat from Adrian's herd
14:26into the special end product that's served in some top UK restaurants
14:31and that's the way it's butchered and aged.
14:35Hello, Peter. Nice to meet you.
14:37Very good to see you. Great to see you again. Come on in.
14:41Pete Hannon is an old friend of mine...
14:47..who spent a decade perfecting his process for dry-aging the beef
14:52he gets from Glenarm and other carefully selected producers.
14:56This here is our reception area.
14:58The beef all arrives here and sits here for a week.
15:02So this is the first part.
15:04This here was slaughtered this week.
15:07Look at the fat on it.
15:09I mean, you know an animal like that has had a happy life.
15:12You know, you don't get fat unless you're happy.
15:15I mean, a lot of people would look at that and say it's far too fatty,
15:18wouldn't they? No, fat is flavour.
15:20You have to have it there.
15:22If you don't want to eat it all, and my cardiologist would suggest
15:25that I'd eat no more than 75% of it, but...
15:28If you don't want to eat it all, fine,
15:30but it has to be there for us to give you what's here.
15:35Pete's ageing process lasts about 40 days.
15:38The idea is to extract the meat's moisture and concentrate its flavour,
15:43much as you're doing when you reduce a sauce or gravy.
15:47What Pete doesn't want is anything like mould creeping in,
15:51which would make the meat taste gamey.
15:53So the conditions in these rooms are tightly controlled.
15:58Oh, fabulous.
16:00This is the final stage, Rick.
16:03Well, this is special.
16:05Look at that. I mean, that is true ageing,
16:07but it's a beautiful thing, isn't it?
16:09At the last stage of the process,
16:11the meat is allowed to settle next to this amazing 12-foot wall
16:16of Himalayan rock salt.
16:19What I'm most interested in is what's behind you.
16:22That's a brick of salt, Rick.
16:24So this is all the way from Pakistan, is it?
16:26Pakistan.
16:28And there's 16.5 tonne of it on this wall.
16:30Really?
16:32It's the purest salt known to man.
16:34We don't know if any other salt would perform what it is we do,
16:38because when we found one that did, we didn't go looking for a second one.
16:41We just stuck with this here.
16:43So just explain exactly what it does do.
16:46What the salt allows us to do
16:48is to create the perfect environment in which to mature meat.
16:52So we have the right level of bacteria
16:55and the type of bacteria that we require.
16:58But it's one player in a six-member team.
17:01All of the other elements that bring our temperature, humidity, light, airspeed,
17:05all those things that are involved, we couldn't do it without those.
17:08But we most certainly couldn't do it without the salt.
17:11We have it now almost like a jet on autopilot.
17:15Everything is balanced, everything is controlled, everything is measured.
17:19I just love the way the Irish have this way of explaining things
17:23in a charming way, like a jet on autopilot.
17:26Well, we're from a long line of storytellers.
17:29Well, I know. It's a Blarney, I suppose.
17:32But you're not bad at it yourself, is it?
17:42Back in Padstow, I have some well-aged chuck steak from Pete
17:47and I'm making an iconic Irish dish, steak and Guinness pie.
17:53Using a whole pint of Guinness, why not?
17:55It'll have a nice bitter back taste but it'll be very satisfying.
17:59So, first of all, I'm going to put some flour in the beef.
18:04Turning that over a little bit.
18:06I'm going to fry my beef in lard instead of oil or butter.
18:10For those who do not know what lard is, it's pig fat and it really adds flavour.
18:16You'll note that I'm scraping the bottom all the time
18:19because I'm using a pan with no non-stick surface
18:22so the flour's catching a bit on the bottom.
18:24But I like that because it's caramelising as it catches.
18:28All that will actually turn into yumminess in the final sauce.
18:33Into the pan go your chopped onions, celery and carrot.
18:39Quite sort of roughly chopped up
18:41because sometimes I want finely chopped, neat and tidy things,
18:44other times I want a bit of ruggedness, you know?
18:47Horses for courses, I'd say.
18:49Then a dollop of tomato puree, a dash of soy sauce,
18:54some sugar and a generous amount of beef stock.
18:58And now for the star ingredient, a whole pint of Guinness.
19:02Guinness was first brewed in the 1750s in Dublin
19:05and is used to add an earthy tone to loads of Irish dishes.
19:10It goes particularly well with oysters.
19:14To your pie mix, add salt and pepper,
19:17thyme, bay leaves and your mushrooms.
19:21I'm going to leave that to simmer away gently for about an hour.
19:26Now, to make a melt-in-your-mouth shortcrust pastry,
19:29it's crucial your lard and butter are cold.
19:32That way they'll stay as solid little lumps in the dough
19:35and that's what makes it crumbly.
19:39And I'm just going to whizz this till I've got a sort of granular texture.
19:45Do you know what? These processors are so safe now
19:48that it's almost impossible to work out where the safety catch is.
19:53It's this.
19:55For this cooking log, it's really hard to think and do cooking
19:58at the same time and speak.
20:00I've been doing it, getting on, 30 years and I'm still no good at it.
20:04Ha-ha-ha!
20:06Best to use the pulse on this
20:08because you don't want to over-process the fats in there.
20:13As soon as the mixture resembles breadcrumbs,
20:16add a couple of spoons of cold water, then one last quick blitz.
20:21To make sure those breadcrumb-sized lumps of fat
20:24stay solid until cooking,
20:26pop the dough into the fridge before you work on it any more.
20:30Now onto the beef, which is looking delish.
20:33I've taken the trouble just to take it off the heat for some time
20:36so that it's cooled down nicely.
20:38It is much easier to put the pie crust on the top if the mixture's cool.
20:42And then I just happen to have kept one of my mother's little pie raisers
20:46and that's just keep the crust up in the middle.
20:51Once cooled, roll out the pastry on a floured surface.
20:55I have to say, me and pastry don't get on particularly well.
20:59Excuse me, just doing a few pat-chops.
21:02But another little tip I can give you
21:05is that brushing the edge of your dish with egg
21:08will make the pastry stick
21:10rather than shrinking off the side as it cooks.
21:15Bit of egg wash and then just a little hole in the pastry
21:19where that little shape is, just to let the steam get out.
21:24Give it about half an hour in a hot oven
21:27and after all that effort,
21:29your pastry should be lovely and crumbly, or short.
21:35I mean, I'm very pleased to report
21:37that my shortcrust pastry looks very short indeed.
21:43And it is.
21:45And what I'm really liking is the darkness of it
21:47and the darkness of the flavour.
21:49There's so much flavour in that.
21:51If you wanted to describe Ireland on a plate, this would be it,
21:55particularly with that stout.
21:57I mean, it's simple, wholesome.
22:01What more can you say? Beautiful.
22:10It seems to me that in Northern Ireland today
22:13there's an energy and excitement around food,
22:16whether traditional or new.
22:20My last stop on this trip is one I've been really looking forward to
22:24because A, it's to do with my favourite food
22:27and B, it's to see something intriguing and original being done with it.
22:33Well, for me, as a lover of fish,
22:35this is the most interesting trip I'm going to make.
22:38It's a young couple, started as fishmongers,
22:41and now they've got a restaurant, but they've stuck to their ethos,
22:45which is nose-to-tail eating.
22:49Well, I know nose-to-tail eating of pigs, of course,
22:52but fish? Well, let's see.
22:56Tucked just behind the Atlantic coast, on the River Ban estuary, is Lear.
23:02Hello.
23:03A much-loved fish restaurant run by Rebecca and Stevie McCarry,
23:08who believe not just in using every part of the fish,
23:12but also in using types of fish that other people wouldn't.
23:18To show me their zero-waste-style cookery,
23:21Stevie's going to make smoked dogfish carbonara.
23:27It's just basically an idea we came up with
23:29to use a really underutilised fish,
23:31but we've found a way to hopefully make it as tasty as possible.
23:34Don't people find dogfish a bit hard to take?
23:37It used to be called rock salmon in fish and chip shops.
23:40Yeah, that's it, yeah. It's had a couple of names.
23:45Dogfish are a common species found in UK waters.
23:49Now, I'm fond of dogfish, but many don't like it,
23:53and fishermen find them very difficult to sell.
23:58But Stevie snaps it up and smokes the belly of the fish
24:02to create what he calls dogfish bacon.
24:06At first we thought it would be a hard sell,
24:08but I think the idea of smoking it and the texture that comes across
24:11through the lardons, it's not dissimilar to guanciale
24:14or something that you would get in a traditional carbonara.
24:17Guanciale, pig's cheek. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.
24:20Stevie makes his carbonara by finely slicing some shallots
24:25and some chives.
24:27I couldn't help noticing the tattoos on your fingers.
24:29I'm not a great fan of tattoos, but I love these.
24:32My mum had the same reaction.
24:34I always say to people, I spend every day with my hands covered in fish.
24:38We might as well have fish on our hands all the time.
24:41That's what I call dedication to the job.
24:44Stevie's making fresh linguine as the basis for his dish.
24:48The whole thing is just a brilliant idea, I think.
24:51Putting a challenging ingredient like dogfish into something
24:54very familiar, like carbonara, makes it so much more approachable.
24:59Question is, how far is Stevie prepared to go with all this?
25:05I was just thinking, what about fish chitlings, then,
25:08if we're talking nose to tail?
25:10I'm talking about intestines, by the way.
25:13Yeah, I mean, we're early days for that stuff,
25:16but I love the idea of a fish offal or something like that.
25:19Do you? Yeah.
25:22For the carbonara sauce,
25:24Stevie combines egg yolks and pecorino cheese.
25:29Then fries shallots and the dogfish bacon,
25:32which he'll cook until the fish fat melts into oil.
25:37Just before the pasta's ready, he pops in some peas.
25:42Then it's time to put it all together,
25:44making sure everything gets coated in the smoked fish oil.
25:49Then it's added to the eggs and pecorino.
25:53If you wanted to make this fishy carbonara at home,
25:57Stevie suggests replacing the dogfish
26:00with cold-smoked oily fish like mackerel or salmon.
26:12Dig in.
26:16That's lovely.
26:18The dogfish bacon, nice smoky, meaty sort of flavour.
26:22It's a really successful dish and, I mean,
26:24also that you're using up fish that people
26:27don't generally think is nice, right?
26:30It's the way forward, it really is.
26:32It's really important, I think.
26:34Genuinely, the uglier the fish, the tastier the dish.
26:37Yeah.
26:40With getting people out of their comfort zone
26:43and making fish more approachable,
26:45we try and do it in a totally different range of ways,
26:48so we'll put it through street food,
26:50we'll put it in more refined concepts,
26:52more experimental kind of ways.
26:54We wanted to take the gentrification out of fish.
26:56You take a whole lobster, split it in half and serve it in a restaurant,
26:59it's going to be a lot of money, but if we can put it through a pasta
27:02or make it into a lobster roll, anyone can have it.
27:04You're so hungry to prove that you can sell fish
27:07to people that don't necessarily like fish.
27:09Yeah. It's really exciting.
27:11Yeah, it's nerve-wracking, too, I think.
27:14I don't think anyone else will do it, so somebody has to.
27:17Yeah, that's it, that's it, I think we're having off.
27:20Cheers.
27:22I must say, you've really made me feel
27:24that the future of hospitality in this country is in good hands.
27:33As I leave Northern Ireland, I'm filled with admiration
27:36for the fantastic produce here
27:39and the innovative food scene in this very special part of the UK.
27:52If you'd like to see more episodes of Rick Stein's Food Stories,
27:56press the red button now to watch on BBC iPlayer.
28:02Next time, I'm in Manchester.
28:05You've got tripe there, too.
28:07Lancashire calamari. Lancashire calamari.
28:10It is. Beetles, kinks.
28:1210cc. Life is a minestrone.
28:18Manchester's arriving. What would you say about it?
28:22Well, it does feel like a new era is on the horizon.
28:25Cheers. Yeah, cheers, mate.