Original subtitles

There is one special place where I worked as a young chef that

has remained close to my heart.

Didn't think I'd come to France and find the Barnsley chop!

And one region in particular that is full of passionate producers

and incredible ingredients.

This is Provence!

We are going to be discovering the secrets of the very best

and simplest French cooking.

That is a discovery.

SHE LAUGHS

Nice and easy, simple dinner for one.

I'll be sharing tips, tricks and techniques...

We've got flavours of Provence.

That's sunshine for you.

..and enjoying a bit of friendly rivalry along the way...

That was close! I'm a little nervous.

THEY LAUGH

I knew I wouldn't be able to fool them.

Yes!

THEY LAUGH

..all in the name of bringing you a simple taste of Provence.

ACCORDION MUSIC PLAYS

Now there is one beautiful thing that we Brits and the French

have in common, and that's the pride we take in our local dishes.

I'm from a small seaside town called Southport

that's just on the border of Lancashire,

and there is one dish that is famous in that region,

and of course, that is the delicious Lancashire hotpot.

The hotpot is a deceptive dish.

It tastes like it takes a lot of effort to make

using top-end ingredients, yet it's incredibly simple

and uses cheaper cuts, making it cost-effective too.

And as my always-hungry kids agree - it's filling!

So I want to find out if I can create

a Provencal twist on my beloved hotpot

and see if I can give the original a run for its money.

The main ingredients of the hot pot are potatoes, onions and lamb.

But how do French lambs compare to the ones we have back home?

Before we visit the sheep, I want to understand what cuts of lamb

the French like to cook...

..so I'm in Maussane with fellow foodie Stephanie

to pay a visit to her local butcher.

Bonjour. Bonjour, Stephane. Ah, bonjour!

Wow. Great spread.

Where I'm from, we're famous for lamb, and we eat a lot of it.

Is that same here in this region?

Pendant l'ete, oui. Oui. During the summer, yes.

Et a Paques, pour les fetes de Paques. And during Easter,

folks will order legs of lamb. Legs, yeah. To celebrate and roast.

To roast. Yeah. They call it the gigot.

And then outside of Easter, springtime,

folks usually go for the cote, which is either in the rack...

Et voila. ..or separately cut as chops.

Yeah, because we've got like, we call a Barnsley chop,

and then they're just the plain chops there?

Yeah. They look great. They look beautiful. Exactly.

What makes the lamb of this region special?

They're not too big. They're still quite tender.

Ils ont entre trois et six mois maximum.

Between three and six months old.

Oh, wow. The lambs, yeah, yeah. OK.

Back home, we tend to eat lamb

that's between four months and a year old,

so it would be quite unusual to find lamb as young as 90 days.

What I see in front of me here is what I'd call restaurant quality,

because that is an expensive product. Right.

And I can tell by the size of these chops that it's quite small.

Right. But the elder lambs, where I'm from, they get older,

they get better, we're looking at the meat maturing.

The lambs which are older,

they are also more susceptible to be a bit fat. OK.

To kind of get a little bulkier as they age. Ah, that's the flavour!

Which is tasty, you're right! That's the flavour, there you see.

But it's not always what they're looking for. OK.

So whilst we might favour a fatter lamb, here,

a leaner, more tender meat is preferred.

But surely they wouldn't put these costly joints into a hearty stew.

For us, that's where the cheaper cuts come into their own.

Where I'm from in Lancashire,

we have a very famous dish called Lancashire hotpot.

Lancashire hotpot? Hotpot. OK.

Which is usually cuts of the neck or a bit of the belly,

what we call scrag ends of meat. OK.

And so what I'm looking for is what cuts of lamb are affordable

and that's regional.

Le collier, ici.

Ca c'est le collier, oui. That's the neck?

That's more like it! Neck is what we often use in a hotpot.

Ca c'est la souris d'agneau c'est le bout du gigot.

The leg of the lamb cut. The joint.

Le, ca c'est le coeur. And then people use lamb hearts.

Oh, OK.

Offal we're not so good at,

but we do love other less expensive cuts.

There's another cut that we use a lot of,

and that's lamb belly. Is that common here?

Ouais. Ici, epigramme. The breast.

Nous on la transforme chipolatas, en mergeuz.

Oh, they make sausages out of it.

OK. Yeah, yeah, chipolata. Delicious.

And I would imagine that the belly on the lambs are so small,

they're not worth doing much to? Right.

So the belly ends up in the sausage or in something else. Yep.

Perfect. So everything gets used.

Everything gets used, yeah. Everything, everything.

The lamb in this butcher is about as local as it gets.

They come from a farm just down the road

where third generation farmer Laurent and his family

have been rearing them for 70 years.

Bonjour! Bonjour. Bonjour.

Ca va? Laurent, Marcus.

Laurent, enchante. Nice to meet you. Enchante.

Late summer is a busy season for these sheep farmers.

During the next two months, over 1,500 pregnant ewes

will return from their summer spent grazing in the much cooler Alps

to give birth here in Maussane.

Seeing lambs born in September is a first for me.

LAMBS BLEAT

They're so small!

Ouais. Ca c'est des agneaux qui ont er, deux jours. 48 heures.

Two days. 48 hours old! That's it? Yeah.

What's it like having all these little babies around?

I mean, there's a lot of little ones in here?

On s'habitue. He said he's used to it. He's used to it.

He looks like, he looks like a happy, tired farmer.

THEY LAUGH

I remember that feeling!

But Laurent has up to 700 lambs born a week in peak season.

That's a lot of babies.

Is it correct that they give birth more than once a year?

Deux fois par an. Deux cycles de reproduction.

Two cycles of... Two cycles? Two birth cycles per year.

Really? Yeah.

Provence's favourable weather provides the perfect climate

to rear lambs in both spring and autumn.

On est la seule region de France quasiment ou on peut irriguer

nos prairies. Donc toute l'anee, on a de l'herbe.

80% of their lives are spent outside.

Meaning the local butcher can be supplied with lamb

throughout the year.

Back home, Welsh lamb is a very special...

In fact, lamb all over the country back home is delicious,

but what makes his lamb so good?

Il voudrait savoir... And is it as good as ours?

SHE LAUGHS

Maybe I won't ask that!

Fair enough, but perhaps you could ask

what's happened to that famous Provencal weather?!

You brought the rain, I think. Every farm I've been to!

Nous on vous dit, on vous dit merci alors!

He said thank you! Oh, merci.

I come here for sun! That's right!

THEY LAUGH

I know.

Rain may be good for the grass,

but it's bad news for the newborn lambs.

They have a unique scent that lets their mothers know

where they are and ensures they aren't rejected.

A heavy downpour like this could wash that scent away,

so Laurent and his team have to work quickly

to get them safely inside the barn.

I'm keeping well out of the way!

MARCUS LAUGHS

Got all the little babies running in front

and all the mums behind trying to chase them.

The mums are like, "Whey! Slow down!"

It does look beautiful. You've got all the little baby lambs

just running around. Now they've gone backwards.

They've gone back the other way, look!

They are naughty!

It's interesting, the guys have got whips,

but it's just for the sound. They're just cracking them in the air,

but they're nowhere near the sheep at all.

This does not look easy.

It's quite an extraordinary sight, I have to say,

just watching them coming down the field,

the team effort of everyone coming together, plus their dogs.

There we are, job done.

The mums and babies are reunited and waiting patiently,

though not quietly, for the sun to come back out.

My goodness, it's noisy in here!

SHEEP BLEAT

It was really interesting asking Laurent what does he prefer,

spending his time with all the lambs

and the little babies all running around

or his two daughters?

He laughed and he had to think about it.

For him, this is an easier challenge,

working with thousands of sheep.

But then, I have got a daughter of my own

and I know exactly what he's talking about!

Oh, that's going to get me in trouble!

Sorry, Jess.

When it comes to cooking lamb in Provence, as always,

simplicity is key, and as it can be a more costly ingredient,

I want to share my top tips for searing meat

perfectly every time

so that you can make the most of the ingredients you have.

And this recipe is a guaranteed way to get

a quick and easy taste of Provence at home.

Doesn't that look good?

I have to say...

..didn't think I'd come to France and find Barnsley chop!

My pan's on.

Get it up to a good temperature.

Put a bit of oil in.

Choose the side that you're going to cook first, level it off,

pinch of your salt, twist of pepper.

If I was searing a piece of beef,

I'd probably put just a little bit of oil on the meat,

season it, nothing in the pan

because it's thicker, it's heavier,

and I want to get a much stronger char

on the piece of meat.

Lamb is a little bit more delicate, so I don't really need to

give it too much intense heat,

just enough just to get the colour.

So you can start to see the haze coming off the pan.

That's when you know your pan's ready.

Seasoned side down first.

SIZZLING

That's the sound you're looking for. Straight in, sear.

Don't shake the pan, let the fat cook the meat.

If you start to shake it,

you start to chill the pan down,

because you're getting air around the pan, under the pan.

Just leave it.

Just a touch more oil.

I'm not cooking it to a medium or a rare.

Lamb is generally pink. This meat is so light in colour,

so all I'm going to do is just sear it.

I'm about to turn the chop over.

Season it up.

Salt and pepper.

Turn it over...

Look at that.

Beautiful and even.

While the second side sears, in goes fresh sage and garlic.

You don't want to overpower the meat,

so it just goes in at the last minute

to give a subtle flavour.

Knob of butter.

And just before you take it out of the pan,

baste your meat with the now aromatic

and golden brown butter.

And that is it.

Onto my plate.

I'm not going to waste our butter,

or my garlic.

Cook your lamb chops or steaks like this

and I guarantee you'll have success every time.

Hot pan, oil in,

wait for the haze, meat in,

do not move it around,

and within about a minute,

you've got yourself a beautiful lambchop.

Perfectly seared.

All I've got to do now is taste it.

You know, whenever I go away and I cook,

I always compare it to food that I cook at home.

The beautiful Welsh lamb that we're all so familiar with

and the quality of it. And the question is, is it as good?

It certainly is. It's very good.

It's very good. Wow.

That lamb is absolutely sensational.

But you know what? I knew it was going to be.

Well, now I know the local lamb tastes good,

but I'm still on the hunt for a dish to rival my hotpot.

So I'm heading for the Big Smoke, Provence's port city of Marseille...

..where I've heard that Gagny, a self-taught chef from Mali,

loves to cook simple Provencal ingredients

but with a West African twist,

and I have something very British up my sleeve

to try out on him as well.

Aha, here we are, then. Bonjour! Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour, Marcus.

Gagny. Gagny, enchante. Enchante, bienvenu.

Julie. Julie? Enchantee.

Beautiful garden.

Wow.

It's incredible! Extraordinary.

Gagny and his wife Julie have invited me to try

their signature dish using lamb breast,

one of the cheapest cuts we get in the UK.

So, what is the dish?

Cos I've heard that Chef cooks the most incredible lamb.

C'est pour faire des burguers. Burger? Burguer. Really?

Why is this recipe special?

It's very special meat in Mali. Everybody eats lamb,

and the way of cooking the lamb is really traditional from Mali

but the burger is not Malian. Yeah, OK.

And sometimes he likes to cook it for 20 hours

because it's really, like, melting.

Low and slow is one of my favourite ways to cook lamb,

so I'm already sure this is going to be good.

Gagny adds a simple marinade of garlic and soy sauce.

What does Gagny think of French lamb?

All it needs now is a splash of water and some seasoning.

Pepper.

Oui, poivre.

So this goes into the oven for a long, long time.

Slow cookery... Exactly.

..and just leave it to just marinade, like a jacuzzi.

Jacuzzi? C'est ca, oui!

THEY LAUGH

Ouais, c'est bien ca! Un peu de biere!

The twist to Gagny's burger is a simple onion relish infused with,

wait for it - no, not lavender,

but hibiscus, an alternative to rose which adds a sweet floral flavour.

Next, he gets to work slicing red onions.

How did chef end up in Marseilles?

He came because he was told to cook on stage for a show.

He was on stage? Yeah. As an actor? As an actor, as a cooker.

So he's not a trained chef? Wow.

He didn't go to school at all. OK. He learnt everything...

By his passion. ..by taste and curiosity.

That's superb. And love of the food.

All from his passion. Exactly. I love that.

OK, so we sweat off the onions.

So tell me, I want to understand the restaurant.

Est la cuisine de Gagny.

Is that the cuisine of, the cuisine of you?

It's not African food at all.

It changes every day? Yeah, it changes every day.

Combien de couverts? 43, 45.

45 covers. Yeah.

Wow. Beautiful colour.

Amazing smell.

How many chefs? One. One?

So one chef.

GAGNY LAUGHS

Oh! Wow.

Busy, busy!

Better get back to the relish, then.

How long does this take to cook?

25 minutes. 25 minutes. OK.

Time for me to whip up a British classic

that is a must with lamb back home - mint sauce.

I want to see what Gagny makes of it with his French lamb.

We have mint, malt vinegar,

sugar, sucre... Sucre.

..and salt. Sel. Et sel. That's it. OK.

Ah, ouais, c'est... Simple.

It's actually my mum's recipe, and I wonder if I can persuade Gagny

that we Brits know what we're talking about

when it comes to condiments.

OK...

Un petit peu le sucre. Le sucre.

Malt vinegar.

Un peu de sel. Un petit, oui.

Sweet, sour, mint. Menthe, ouais.

So three flavours, sweet and sour. C'est bien!

A no-cook classic from back home,

even more simple than Gagny's quick onion and hibiscus relish!

But will he like it with his slow-cooked lamb burger?

Time to find out.

That smells incredible.

Mm!

Mmm! You can smell the fat and you can smell the juice.

There's no fuss with the assembly -

simply onion relish, lamb and a handful of salad leaves

on a seeded bun.

Superb.

Voila, burguer d'agneau.

Burgeur d'agneau. Oui.

Bon appetit. Merci. Merci.

This is delicious.

The lamb is beautiful.

So, so soft.

Soft, juicy...

Tastes really good.

It's unique. Merci, chef. Really unique.

Si c'est moi, c'est parfait!

HE LAUGHS

And I've never had it in a burger.

And the same could be said for mint sauce.

Time to see what Gagny thinks of our classic British combo.

Just a petit peu.

There we are, voila.

Now we try it with the mint sauce.

C'est pas bon...

C'est tres, tres bon!

THEY LAUGH

C'est vrai, l'acide... ouais, c'est tres, tres bon.

Gagny is so taken with my mum's mint sauce,

he's going back for more.

Moi je vais mettre a ma carte.

He wants to put it on... On the menu?

Aww! Oui. C'est tres, tres bon. I'm honoured.

What's really nice is that if chef is going to put it on his menu,

then that's just leaving a little bit of Great Britain

here in France, and that makes me happy.

Gagny's burger is tasty, economic and super simple,

but I'm not sure it quite gives the Lancashire hotpot

a run for its money, so I'll need to come up with a dish myself.

Lamb will feature, of course,

but I want to put a Provencal spin on it,

and for that I'll need some local veggies.

Hi, Lilliana. Hi, Marcus.

Hi, so good to see you. Enchante.

Thank you for coming. Nice to meet you.

It's the end of the summer veg season,

so not many gardens have produce still growing,

but my neighbour Lilliana has a glut she doesn't want going to waste.

What do you grow?

A lot of tomatoes, aubergines...

Peppers? A few, yeah, green and red.

I've brought my clippers. Do you mind if I help myself?

Oh, no! I'm being a bit cheeky.

No, I'm more than happy to share.

Is that OK? Of course.

Regularly picking peppers when they're ready

will encourage more growth throughout the summer

and early autumn months,

but with the season coming to an end here,

these will likely be Liliana's last.

I feel guilty. No, not at all!

I feel like I'm emptying your plants here. Not at all!

Look at that, two for the price of one.

Half and half. You get a green and you get a red.

This is a magic! This is Mother Nature.

Exactly.

Right.

I saw some aubergines over there.

It's a summer dish.

I'm going the wrong way, aren't I?

I can tell. There we are. Ah, here we are.

Here you have some aubergines.

Now, this is your favourite, so I must leave you some. No, no, no!

I have another one on the other side.

Look at that. Cool!

Thank you so much for this. This is great.

Back at my rooftop kitchen with Lilliana's freshly picked vegetables

and some lamb from Maussane, I want to create a dish

that has the spirit of the Lancashire hotpot,

but the taste of Provence.

Simple grilled lamb chops with a Mediterranean stew

and crispy sauteed potatoes.

Lamb chops, one of my favourite cuts of meat.

And of course, being a Lancashire lad,

I absolutely adore a Lancashire hotpot.

But I'm in Provence and I've got to do something a little bit different.

Cut off what we call the belly,

but we're not going to throw those trimmings away,

we're going to use them.

Never throw your meat scraps in the bin.

If you're not using them right away, pop them in the freezer

and use them another time

to super-boost a home-made stock or sauce.

Also a tip which I think is really important -

I do this at home all the time,

Get your pan on, put it on number one,

and just let it warm up gently

five, ten minutes before you start cooking,

and that way your pan has got a beautiful all over heat,

rather than just on the base.

So we're going to stand these beautiful chops in.

And you see there's no sizzling, cos we're not frying them,

we're not cooking them, we're rendering.

And the reason why I'm standing them up like that,

because that's where the fat is, there.

Now for my scraps.

I'm just going to cut those up.

They're going to be little crispy bits

that are going to go in between my potatoes.

And next, my simple vegetable stew.

So I've got an onion,

garlic,

of course, a basket of goodies from Lilliana.

Everything gets chopped up,

so you don't need picture-perfect ingredients.

This a great dish for any wonky or overripe veg

you might have lurking in your fridge.

Back to the chops.

What I want in the pan is lamb fat, not fat and juices.

Just lamb fat.

There we go.

Now they're ready to take out.

Little bit of fat in there, look.

Now we're going to add in our little scraps.

Scraps are cooking away.

Pan's on for my Provencal vegetables.

First of all, oil.

And you don't need to use the most expensive olive oil.

Just any olive oil will do.

You just don't want to be using a vegetable oil

for a dish like this, because this oil is going to be

in the flavour of the dish itself.

Lovely little lamb bits are just beautifully cooking away.

You can see all of the lovely oil.

In fact, I might just put these on the barbecue

so I can concentrate on my stew.

Onions go in.

Pinch of salt.

The nice thing about this is that you can do all your prep

as it's sweating and cooking away.

What I love about sauteing or frying or sweating onions

is that that smell, that aroma.

Back home in Southport, there was onions in everything.

My dad loved onions. In fact, he still does.

Let's get our peppers in.

You certainly wouldn't find these in a Lancashire hotpot,

but they're a classic around here.

In with some thyme.

Very, very familiar ingredients, just loving,

all enjoying themselves there in the pan.

And no Provencal stew would be complete without aubergine.

So just chop that up.

In they go.

Gently sweat the vegetables

along with some chopped fresh tomatoes...

..and a jar of passata.

Also got some chopped-up tinned tomatoes too...

..for a bit of texture.

You don't have to use both.

You can use one or the other. It's entirely up to you.

But I just love the intensity of the passata,

and the nice thing about passata is that

you don't need to cook it all down,

and the reason why I don't want to cook it down is that

if this was really wet now, I'd have to turn the heat up,

and what happens is, you'd end up boiling

all these beautiful Provencal ingredients

and they'll start to lose their colour, and that's not what I want.

To finish off the stew, some torn basil leaves.

Nice and rustic. It is a rustic dish.

Right. Now it's time for me to cook these beautiful chops.

Just a little bit of oil...

..pinch of salt, twist of pepper...

..and onto the grill.

Hotpot classically uses cuts that need to be slow-cooked,

but lamb chops take just minutes.

Personally, I love my lamb cooked pink,

but that's not what I'm looking for on a grill like this.

What I'm looking for is just a lovely charring on the outside.

So as soon as these are charred on the first side,

I'm just going to turn them over, get a good flavour on them.

Always when you're barbecuing, just move them around,

find the heat, find the best spot.

Just quickly, just keep checking underneath,

just make sure they're not going black.

Look at that, look how good that looks.

Phwoar!

I love barbecuing.

I've got to fight to get to the barbecue now.

My two sons.

They think they're Top Chef.

But I've still got my secrets.

An extra drizzle of oil will fuel the flames

and give the chops a lovely char.

And it wouldn't be any kind of hotpot without potatoes.

They've just been gently blanched so they're nice and soft, cold.

I'm just going to slice those up.

And as always, if there's any leftovers from another meal,

don't throw your vegetables away, put them in the fridge,

saute them up and you don't have to do this with lamb fat,

you can do this with just a little bit of oil or maybe just

a bit of butter.

It's all about maximising the flavour with minimum effort.

THEY SIZZLE

Phwoar, look at those!

Pinch of salt.

Rosemary and lamb... a marriage made in heaven.

Then it's back in with my crispy scraps.

A little sprinkling, just a little bit of paprika there.

Not much.

We've got flavours of Provence and this is the star of the dish,

the lamb.

It's not a hotpot as we know it from home.

But I'm not at home. I'm in Provence,

and this is a hotpot... let's call it Provencal style.

Delicious!

Oh, look, this bit just fell off.

Mmm!

In return for supplying me with home-grown veg

and for taking me to meet the Maussane lambs,

I've invited Lilliana and Stephanie to try my homage to the hotpot.

What will they make of my Lancashire-inspired recipe?

Hello, guys. Come and take a seat! The food looks lovely!

So I've been busy cooking.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.

The ingredients speak for themselves.

Lamb, and of course, your beautiful vegetables. Delicious!

Mm-hm. I was just wondering, are those really mine?!

They are yours, yep! They are yours.

Good work. Amazing. Mmm.

Mmm. It's so tender!

Food brings back memories. Mmm.

When we used to have hotpot at home with my dad,

he would eat right down to the bone.

There wouldn't be one ounce of meat, and he'd be sitting there for,

like, 10, 15 minutes just gnawing at the bone

as if he was some old dog! And this is what we ask also.

Our daughter, we're like, "You're finished?" No, no, no!

Not finished! Mm-mm, mm-mm.

THEY LAUGH

There's still something there. Yeah, pick it up! Yeah!

THEY LAUGH

Great fun, fantastic company, but at the heart of it was lamb.

I've been discovering the flavours of Provence

and can the French lamb stand up to the beautiful Welsh lamb

that we're all so familiar with back home?

And I think, yes, it can.

The love and the passion for farming over here is

equally as strong as it is back home.

Quality everywhere.

My sons just eat these like they're lollipops!

He's like, grrr! Well, they're lucky to have you!

THEY LAUGH

Right, ha-ha.

You know, next time I'm thinking about doing a hotpot back home,

I might just go a little bit Provencal style.

Yeah. Yeah. Chin, chin! Cheers!