Original subtitles

Summertime is here.

And there's some incredible British fruit and veg

bursting with flavour and ripe for the picking.

From succulent strawberries

to tiny cherry tomatoes that are like miniature flavour bombs,

these are the incredible ingredients that are best right now.

They're at their most delicious, most affordable,

better for you and the planet.

So, if you've got a little bit of time

to make something special,

I've created some exciting meals for whatever

the occasion,

to make the most of what's in season,

taking fruit and veg to the next level.

Oarrgh!

What a dish.

From epic ideas for upgrading your roast dinner...

Come on.

...to delicious, vibrant soups,

the freshest salads and sizzling on the barbecue.

Getting that flavour of now.

And in creamy, sweet puddings and tarts.

Absolutely gorgeous.

So, join me at home in my shed,

as I spend the year cooking what's in season,

in the hope that it inspires you to have a think about

the way you cook, shop or even grow your food too.

And that, my friends,

is definitely the flavour of the summer.

I absolutely love plums. They're just perfect.

So fresh. The sweetness, tangy. When they're in season,

like right now, at their best, right now,

savour them. They're, like, amazing. It's the skin.

It's got this, like, superpower flavour

that's just kind of electric

and sort of, like, just so full of flavour.

When things are in season, there's always a glut,

but when we cook them,

we can enjoy it for the whole year,

turning it into jams and chutneys and pickles.

So, I'm gonna turn this into a nice little compote.

I can have it for breakfast,

I can have it with roast dinners, you know,

like apple sauce. Absolutely beautiful.

I always love it when you can hear the birds.

It's like that nice time of year where everyone's kind of happy.

Everyone's making hay while the sun shines.

What a joy.

I'm using these juicy fruits to make the easiest sweet

and sticky sauce to go with a summer treat of roasted duck

and a fresh watercress salad.

My simple crispy roasted duck with a spiced plum sauce,

perfect for summer celebrations without the stress.

One of the things that have always fascinated me is

the relationship between, like, crispy skin and rich food,

and then fruit.

That way of using sourness and sweetness to make deliciousness.

So, that's what I wanna do

to celebrate these beautiful summer plums

and even though this is gonna be a really nice little date night meal,

right, it's gonna feel a little bit posh,

it's really simple. Really, really simple.

So, first up,

I wanna get some olive oil on the duck,

so now it's gonna be sticky.

And then this is Chinese five spice,

one teaspoon.

It's got a lovely mix of different fragranced spices -

cinnamon, star anise, fennel seeds. And you can see

it sticks to the skin really beautifully.

Couple of teaspoons of salt all over it, like that.

And then I'm gonna grab some herbs,

like thyme, maybe a little bit of sage.

Give it a little rough up

and we'll stuff that in the cavity,

just to flavour the duck in the most beautiful way.

We're gonna cook this now for two hours at 180 degrees Celsius

which is 350 Fahrenheit.

It's gonna be delicious, so let's get it in.

I've got a pan here of lovely potatoes from the garden.

Super in season, parboiled for about 20 minutes,

just so they're nice and soft.

And while they're hot like that,

this is a really good time, really good time to flavour these

and make them incredible.

So, get yourself a bulb of garlic. This is my garlic, fresh.

I'm very excited about it.

When you roast garlic in their skins,

it's actually an incredibly mild

and sweet, delicious aroma.

So, this with the potatoes is gonna be amazing.

Let's get the duck out the oven. Smells incredible.

Look at that.

Gorgeous.

So, this is sizzling away.

One hour in

and you can see we've got this beautiful duck

and you got that fat, see there?

So what I'm gonna do is embrace the fat

and pour the fat onto some herbs

in a little jam jar like that

and put that in the fridge.

It's brilliant for starting soups and stews

and chilli con carnes and all that kind of goodness.

Now, get another little roasting tray.

Put these potatoes in with the garlic as well.

Steal some of this duck fat.

Salt and pepper.

Find a little fish slice or something like that

and just squash these potatoes.

You're creating more surface area and a kind of nice,

oozy fluffiness.

So it's a lovely little technique for making

the ultimate roasties.

They're gonna be crispy,

they're gonna be delicious

and what I wanna do is actually add a little bit of herbs in there.

I love sage, especially at this time of year.

And even flowering sage there, look at that.

Lay 'em out flat. Look at that. Squashed,

roasted, garlic potatoes with sage and duck fat.

It's gonna be good, right?

Now, I'm just gonna borrow that tray for a second.

You've got all the sticky goodness in here, right?

So now we're gonna go in

with some of these gorgeous plums.

This is when the fun starts, right?

So, that yin yang of sweet and sour and richness

and crispy skin is gonna be amazing.

Eight plums' worth in there.

And then two red or white onions

and we'll mix it up in all those lovely, sticky juices.

And this will roast underneath

the duck for the next hour.

All those gorgeous drippings that would normally make

a gravy are gonna go into

that beautiful plum sauce.

It's gonna be epic. Let me wash my hands.

Right, let's get these roasting, OK.

Duck back in, beautiful potatoes, one more hour.

The smells in here are outrageous.

Oh-ho-ho-ho! Look at that.

Crispy skin, blipping plums, sweet onions. I love it.

We'll let that just cool down a little bit

and then I can strip the meat off.

What's left in here, though... Look at these colours!

Oh, wow.

The sourness from the plums, just...

Ah. It's got that attack.

It's gonna be so good with the crispy duck.

So look, we got spuds and garlic. We got the duck,

we got the sauce and cos it's summertime,

I wanna have a nice salad, so watercress, I absolutely love.

Take a lovely yellow plum.

Not much of that. I'm gonna take this little purple one here as well.

Let's get some colour happening.

And then, a little onion, half an onion. Let's...

...finely slice it.

And then a tablespoon of vinegar

to three tablespoons of olive oil,

and I'm just gonna kind of dress that on the board.

The colours of summer right there.

Then the watercress.

And in here, I've got some hazelnuts that I've just lightly toasted.

Give those nuts a really good pounding.

Destroy 'em...

And that flavour, with all of this,

is gonna be a game changer.

I'm just gonna take this duck

off the bone

and what we wanted to achieve was meat that just fell off

the bone like that.

So tender, so juicy.

Can you hear that crispiness?

Every single bit gets shredded.

Now, with the breast, get a nice little slice.

Let's plate some up. I'm very, very excited about this.

It's all about the plums.

The bounty of summer fruit, roasted.

Oh, listen to that crunch.

Oh-ho-ho!

Crazy good.

I'm gonna go for some of that plum compote.

Oargh!

So good.

The sourness and the fragrance of that plum.

So delicious, with a little bub of garlic.

HE CHUCKLES

The watercress salad works really, really well.

Using the plums in a very different way,

this is like the most straightforward, fancy meal.

An amazing way to bring the fruits of summer together

with a beautiful roasted bird.

Every mouthful is pure summer joy.

Delicious.

Keeping bees has been one of the greatest pleasures.

Um, being able to pull honey is just a joyful thing.

What's really nice about this is I don't have to open up

the hive, I don't have to upset any of the bees.

It's very chilled, it's very relaxed.

What you do is you crank it

and the hexagon splits so the honey just drains out.

It makes you properly tune into

nature and the seasons, it really does.

At the very beginning of spring,

the first honey is mainly from the rapeseed from

the farmland so it's not particularly exciting,

but now in summertime, this is darker.

The flavour's completely changed because the diversity

of plants that they've been taking nectar from is huge,

pollinating not just flowers and trees but all the vegetables.

Nowadays, you're seeing more and more farmers producing honey,

not because they wanna produce honey

but cos they want pollinators

to make their crops more predictable

and get better yields.

Bees are integral to all of our lives,

whether we know it or not.

Without pollination around the world,

we would struggle to feed our families.

You know, it's as simple as that.

You can see just how much honey has come out.

Absolutely amazing.

It's not just the honey that's a gift, it's these bees.

Have a look at these. Ha-ha! So exciting.

Peppers. What a joy.

Part of the same family as tomatoes,

aubergine, potatoes, the nightshade family.

You can get peppers all year round,

but at this time of year, in our summertime,

peppers are at their very, very best.

You can see little baby fruits or peppers growing off here,

so they'll grow out like that, but look,

we've already got some nice ripe ones which are beautiful.

You get different shapes, sizes, colours.

Wonky ones, long ones, fat ones,

and they all do have very different, unique flavours.

These, I can't wait to cook.

Some are perfect for stuffing,

some are perfect for grilling.

I'm actually gonna burn and blister these

and that'll help me to remove the skin to reveal

the delicious inner flesh

and that is amazing in all kinds of recipes. Beautiful.

I'm taking sweet peppers at their very best this time of year

and grilling them on a barbecue to give them a smokiness

and draw out their sweetness before pimping them up in

a tangy tomato dressing with hits of anchovy,

garlicky bread and other seasonal veggies.

My take on an Italian sweet pepper panzanella salad

really bigs up the bounty of summer.

There's nothing better than cooking over a bit of fire.

You can use a grill or a griddle pan if you wish,

and what I'm gonna do now is kind of

the opposite of what you're always thinking cooking -

I wanna burn it. Please burn your peppers.

Put it on the coals like that.

What's genius is the skin is protecting the actual fruit,

the flesh, but also lightly smoking it.

We're not gonna eat the skin,

we're gonna let it steam and we're gonna peel it off.

In our summer,

we can celebrate these incredible vegetables.

That's the joy of seasonal growing and seasonal shopping

and seasonal eating.

You're getting something at its best,

at its most nutritious and at its most delicious,

even if you're burning it. God, it's got windy.

So, beautiful burnt peppers.

Put a nice, big lid on top and that will steam them

and then I can peel them

and I'll show you how to do that in a second.

Right, panzanella. It's a classic Tuscan salad.

Historically, panzanella would be stale bread

rehydrated in water to make it soft again

and then they'd mix it with sliced onion,

vinegar, olive oil, salt and that's the original.

And then tomatoes started infiltrating that historical recipe

and now, in Essex, I'm doing it with peppers.

So, bread, get some chunky slices,

and I wanna kind of make use

of this grill again.

Let that toast up a little bit.

So, tomatoes. Sweet summer tomatoes.

If you're down the supermarket or farmers' market,

or growing your own, look for the different colours,

shapes and sizes. Try and mix things up.

Cut it into nice little mouthful sizes.

This orange one can go in half.

So, let me show you how to get

the tomatoes tasting even more incredible.

Go in with a sprinkle of salt,

some nice extra virgin olive oil,

three or four tablespoons.

Tablespoon and a half of red or white wine vinegar.

A little seasoning of pepper and then capers.

You can get them in the supermarkets and these are brined.

This is gonna be amazing.

So the salt in here is gonna pull out

the excess moisture from these tomatoes

and if I make a little kind of like,

dam here, can you see all the juice that's coming out of it?

That's your dressing.

Now, if you wanna exaggerate that dressing,

take one nice, juicy red tomato

and then a little grater like this

and can you see it raining tomato pulp?

Just have a little look at this.

Whoa!

We've now got incredibly marinated tomatoes.

We've got steamy peppers and we've got toasted bread.

Just slice off a piece of garlic.

If you just rub that on your hot, toasted bread,

the power is extraordinary.

So, I'm gonna tear this bread into little thumb-size pieces.

Rustic, rough and ready, right.

I'm just gonna put those on top

while those tomatoes start to marinate.

Right, onion.

This is a homegrown one

but there's loads of seasonal onions in

the shops right now.

I might use those green bits later, I haven't decided yet.

That's very normal for me when I'm cooking.

Recipes are really handy,

but principles are more handy.

Like, you're always changing a little bit,

depending on what is in season.

Every ingredient we're using is just like a little cocktail

of incredible nutrients that your body is most likely

gonna thank you very much for.

So, this idea of cooking in season isn't supposed

to be like, hipster or cool,

or like, trendy. It's like, common sense.

So, take your time to really

finely slice the onion

so it's delicate.

You don't wanna big old chunk in your mouth.

How about that?

I wanna pick through some basil.

If you put it into some cold water,

it keeps it really fresh.

But today is a windy day,

so it's keeping it from blowing away.

And then last veggie before we get into the peppers,

celery. An incredible summer vegetable.

This is a bought celery. Mine's a bit small.

We can use all of that for cooking and soups,

happy days, but this inner part is the best.

Let me show you why.

Cut it off about four inches

and cut lovely little slithers of celery and its heart.

These yellow leaves here are the don.

So, I'm gonna keep some of these back

for sprinkling over and I'll slice up this celery here.

Now, peppers are

the ingredient that is infiltrating this panzanella party.

Sweet, summer peppers.

So, what's all this fuss about?

Peel as much of that burnt stuff off

and what you're left with is heavenly flavours.

It's like the most condensed flavour

of pepper and smoke and sweetness.

Let me just wash my hands.

Just take the seeds out

and just tear it into nice,

little rustic slithers.

This is a rustic dish.

Every pepper with a different flavour.

Let me have a little clean down

and then we can finish this beautiful dish.

Take some of these basil leaves.

Ooh, wind's blowing it away.

And I just wanna dress it all up.

The smell, oh, the sweet smell of peppers.

That is summertime cooking.

We're rehydrating the bread

with that incredible tomato dressing.

Absolutely gorgeous.

And there's one last ingredient that is often added to

a panzanella and that is anchovy.

You've got that amazing oil in there,

so you don't have to waste that.

And then here, those few anchovies add

an extraordinary depth of flavour.

Take that vinegar

and give it a little thimble,

just to draw out some of that saltiness.

Just knocks it back a little bit.

And then we'll lay the anchovy.

So there you go.

My expression of a beautiful, grilled,

blistered pepper panzanella.

A joyful, joyful thing.

And the weather has classically turned on us,

but I don't care about the grey skies

because I got my sunshine right there.

Let's do a little portion up.

And of course, the peppers.

Let's have a little try.

Oh!

Sweetness, sweetness, sweetness.

So sweet and so delicious.

The bread just soaks up

all of the flavour in the most beautiful way.

But also, our sunny, beautiful day

has now turned into rain.

My summer pepper panzanella, made with love,

blistering heat

and now pouring rain. I'm gonna leg it.

Look at this.

HE LAUGHS

I went through this bed

and I picked pretty much most of

the courgettes four days ago.

And in that time,

they've all grown again. At this time of year,

in summertime, you know,

the heat just gets the plants going.

June to September is the season for courgettes,

so if you're in the supermarkets right now,

or the farmers' markets, get out there.

Get them in all their glory,

straight, bent, wonky, yellow, green.

You get ones that are mottled, striped, ribbed.

So, let's have a little pick up

and get our head around what we've got.

This is probably what farmers would call

the optimum size but for a chef,

that's debatable because every size is beautiful.

Like this one is what I would call optimal.

They're really crunchy, really firm and the flowers,

the flowers are incredible.

You can stuff them with beautiful, like,

mincemeats, you know,

things like ricotta, parmesan, lemon zest, herbs.

You can put them in little batters and deep fry them. Just gorgeous.

Look at that haul. I can't wait to cook these.

I mean, nothing says summertime more than this, right?

I'm bigging up the flavour of these gorgeous courgettes

by fanning them out like a pack of cards

and serving them on top of fluffy,

crispy rice with a vivid green pesto,

sweet tomatoes and grilling them until golden

and crispy at the edges.

My Mediterranean rice is sure to bring some sunshine

to your plate, whatever the weather.

The thing about seasonal cooking is whether you grow it,

or you're going down the markets or supermarkets,

when you get a glut of something in season,

that means there's loads of it. Maybe too much of it.

That means that the prices are gonna be much lower

and then it's also gonna be delicious and nutritious.

So, I've got a dish now that I think is pretty humble

but it feels like a centrepiece.

It's really using rice to drive the whole dish,

to celebrate courgettes

and other seasonal veggies we got.

It's got contrasts,

deliciousness, surprise.

So, put the pan on a medium heat,

add a little bit of olive oil.

Then I'm gonna add a nice knob of butter

and I wanna get some garlic in the story.

Couple of cloves. Just remove the skin.

The birds are singing today.

Always makes me happy when I'm cooking.

Get that in the butter as it starts to melt and bubble.

Don't rush it.

I don't want coloured or burnt garlic.

This is about flavouring the rice.

So, oregano, marjoram, thyme, even sage,

right. We'll put that in.

This is all just gonna give extraordinary flavour.

That's a really nice start to the story of rice.

Now, let me give you the method for the perfect fluffy rice.

Get yourself a mug, fill it up with basmati rice,

right to the top.

This'll be enough for four people

and the recipe is one mug of rice to two mugs of water.

It's called the absorption method,

it's perfect every single time.

So, before I put water into the pan,

we want to toast the rice

so it's translucent.

It's gonna take on that flavour.

I really feel that it helps keep those rice grains nice

and separate and light and gorgeous.

Put a little salt in

and put a little pepper in.

I can turn the heat up a little bit now.

Kettle on. Get that boiling.

Of course, when you're cooking rice,

if you're gonna use chicken stock,

it's always gonna be more tasty.

So, one organic stock cube goes in,

but it could be vegetarian.

Now I'm gonna go in with our first mug of water.

And then the second one.

So, as that comes to the boil,

it will just suck up all of that lovely stock

and herbs and flavour.

And just cook it for about ten minutes

so it'll be nearly cooked but not fully cooked,

and then the rest of the cooking will happen in the oven,

OK. We want it to be light, fluffy but crispy around the edges.

So, let that do its thing.

Now I'm gonna turn these beautiful veggies into

a thing of beauty.

Courgettes.

I want this base of lovely, fluffy rice.

And then slices of amazing seasonal veggies.

We're gonna go big on flavour, big on excitement,

big on colour. So this is like our topping,

kind of like a deck of cards, OK?

Cos we're gonna fan these out

in the most beautiful way.

Then we want some nice tomatoes.

Use any type of tomato you want.

Now a few onions. Again,

finely slicing it the same thickness.

And what's great about this dish is whatever you've got down

the supermarket or farmers' markets,

you can celebrate those. So we've got lovely,

sliced things here.

I might have gone OTT on the courgettes but

I've... I've got other things I can do with that.

HE LAUGHS

Sea salt, black pepper, very nice too.

We'll have that. A little olive oil.

And we'll just sort of dress it up,

and that means under the grill,

it will go golden and like, gorgeous,

and it will just cook in the most beautiful way.

That's had ten minutes now.

I'm gonna take it off the heat.

We want this to be a base

for this incredible summer bounty.

So, I've got some nice homemade pesto here

but you can use the jarred stuff. If I was a builder,

this would be my plaster, right? Bear with me,

I'm not a builder, but you know, right,

this is gonna be delicious, which plaster isn't,

actually, the analogy's not working.

HE LAUGHS

So, the pesto is gonna act as an amazing base to

the courgettes.

We're gonna do one little round of yellow.

Fill in any gaps if you feel you've been a bit stingy.

Now the tomatoes, a nice ring of red.

Then we'll do... some orange.

I was going to put the onion on

but it's going to spoil my look,

so I'm going to change my plan because that's what cooking's about

and I'll turn that into a salsa that I wasn't intending to make,

but it's going to be delicious.

So let's get that in the oven.

The grill is on medium-high

and I'm going to bang it under for about 20 minutes,

or until golden and delicious.

I'm left with this mess of over-enthusiasm.

So, to make a quick salsa...

...grab yourself a herb.

I think I'm going to go basil.

It could be any nice, soft herb that you love.

And just run your knife through.

Making a salsa is actually a really nice principle to learn.

Listen to that rain.

I mean, how unreliable is our British summer?

Although, the first thing I think is the veggie garden's going to love it.

Everything's going to grow like the clappers.

I'm going to go for vinegar.

About a tablespoon and a half.

And then a little chilli.

These are bang in season right now.

Just finely chop the chilli first.

Ah.

Ooh, yeah.

Wasn't planning to make it but that is a nice little summer salsa.

Right, let's get our beautiful dish out the oven.

It smells amazing. Whoa. Look at that steam.

Now, that's a little bit of sunshine on a rainy day.

I'm going to put it on a low heat

just to work on that crispy bottom.

Who doesn't like a crispy bottom, right?

As that steam is coming out,

we take these beautiful, pearly white bocconcini mozzarella

and we just tear off a few bits.

And then, last but not least,

I've got some nice homemade, tangy, salty olive tapenade.

The mozzarella is sort of oozing.

If you can hear that sound...

...that little crackle,

that's crispy bottom.

So there you go.

Courgettes, man, bang in season. Get out there, get amongst it, buy some.

They'll be really good value.

Veg, when it's in season, incredibly cost-effective.

Don't forget the salsa.

Nice little wodge of that on top.

Let's get in there.

Mm.

It's so good.

The rice is perfectly cooked.

Got a crunch.

Those courgettes are so juicy, so delicious.

And mozzarella, that little ooze

gives you these kind of nice little stringy bits.

I think it's an amazing way to elevate a really good seasonal veg

that's in every single supermarket right now.

I can't stop eating it. It's so flipping tasty.

Beautiful summer cherries. I absolutely love them.

So nice.

I've got a few trees but the birds have stolen most of them,

so we're having a little bit of a ruck between us,

but you can get them down the markets right now.

Oh.

So juicy, so refreshing.

We've got amazing cherries for about three months.

Black ones, red ones, yellow ones,

big ones, small ones, sweet ones, sour ones...

And that's got me so excited.

Making tarts and dessert with lovely, fresh cherries,

things like that I absolutely love doing.

This is like the perfect flavour of sweet and sour.

Messy. Look at all that.

The most amazing colour.

So, when they're in season,

bless your body with all that goodness.

Get amongst it because they're really good right now

and they're super, super delicious.

For a delicious dessert worthy of any summer celebration,

I'm turning these sweet and sour cherries into a dark, sticky jam

and layering it inside shortcrust pastry,

topped with almond cream.

My sour cherry frangipane might just be the perfect end

to a long summer's day.

Right now, cherries are bang in season.

They're delicious, they're sweet, they're sour.

I absolutely love them.

British cherries are beautiful

and if you don't pick them and eat them, the birds'll get them.

So, I wanna make one of my favourite things with cherries,

a cherry and almond tart.

That is a combo.

So, let me show you how to do it.

We're going to make beautiful shortcrust pastry.

Normally, I would do it in a bowl by hand

but I thought I'd do the opposite

and show you how quickly you can do this.

A food processor.

If you haven't got one, we can do it by hand.

The old-fashioned recipe is half fat to flour,

so a pack of British butter, 250g.

Plain flour, double the amount, 500g.

We're then going to go in with a little pinch of salt

and then if you want,

you can accent the flavour of your pastry.

Vanilla, it could be lemon zest.

I'm going to go with orange because orange and almonds

and cherries are all very, very good friends.

So, just use a fine grater

and just that little bit of zest will make all

the difference in the flavour.

I want to sweeten that with 100g of icing sugar.

Lid goes on.

Rattle and roll.

And then what we're going to do is add two eggs.

Second one goes in.

And it's going to change.

Wait for it. Be patient.

Homemade pastry in a second.

Beautiful. How nice is that?

Roughly go in half

and what we can do is make some for now

and some for another day, for cooking other things.

Push it out as much as you can

and that'll stop you having to roll it out as much later.

The one for tomorrow in the freezer...

...the one for today in the fridge.

Pastry done.

My little shack is starting to leak.

Pan, medium high heat.

In here, there's about 300g of cherries.

I've just got a few more to do, actually.

Always taste your cherries.

Some are sweet, some are sour,

and some, if you're lucky, are sweet and sour, like these.

So, 300g go in.

Taste them and you only wanna add enough sugar

to give you a bit of balance.

So, about 150g of golden caster sugar in there.

I'm going to take that orange

and we've used the zest in the pastry,

so there's a consistency there.

I'm going to use a little masher...

...because I want it to be sticky and jammy and gorgeous.

So, this is a cherry and almond tart,

but actually it's kind of my cherry Essex expression of a Bakewell tart.

So, Bakewell tart,

almond frangipane on raspberry jam, old school,

up north, lovely, love it, I love that dish.

Well, we're going cherry.

Look at that colour! Come on!

Now, I have got a secret ingredient to make this extraordinary...

...bay.

So, orange and bay are like two little key ingredients.

That just gives it a nice little tutti-frutti flavour.

It's like a magic flavour.

It's going to make that cherry just pop.

So, let that kind of reduce down until it's shiny

and looks like a wet jam, OK?

So that can crack on.

Let's get this pastry out.

It's a nice thing to do, especially on rainy days.

If you're ever worried about your pastry sticking,

put a bit of greaseproof paper on top

and it'll protect it and stop it from cracking.

So, roll it out to about three quarters of a centimetre thick.

We're going to get that into a crinkly pastry tart shell.

This one is nonstick

and it's ten inches which is 25cm.

And what we're going to do is rub that with some olive oil,

right up the sides,

and into all the cracks and crannies.

Pick up the pastry

and just unwind it over the pastry mould.

And then shift it in there, shift it in, shift in.

Cor, it's cats and dogs.

I love the British summer but you wouldn't wanna rely on it, would you?

Gordon Bennett.

Rip a bit of this excess pastry off

and just push it up against those little crinkly sides.

Push it in, edge it up.

Thumb it off.

It's a nice little tip.

And give it a good forking to let the steam come through.

So there you go.

We are going to bake this blind.

It means half-cook the pastry.

If I screw up some greaseproof paper...

...and then just give it a little wash with some water...

There's a lot of water coming through here at the moment.

...then it becomes much more pliable

and I can just lay this in.

Put it right up to the corners.

Then I've got my baking beans.

It's just dried rice, chickpeas, beans.

That's going to weigh it down a little bit

and not kind of bow up your pastry.

Put that in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius, 350 Fahrenheit,

for ten minutes.

It won't colour the pastry

but it's enough to set the pastry so it's in shape,

ready and raring to go.

OK.

Perfect timing. Look at that.

That, my friends... is rather lovely,

molten lava, cherry genius.

Let's remove the bay leaf.

That's going to be amazing.

Amazing colour.

So, quick clean down.

So, let's use this food processor again

to make the almond frangipane.

OK. Really simple.

250g of blanched almonds

and just whizz them up.

Now, into that, 250g of butter.

So, 250, 250, OK?

And guess how much sugar? Golden caster.

250. Easy, easy as pie.

Beat up the sugar so it's nice and smooth.

Now, vanilla.

You can use vanilla extract

but it's quite nice to use the real deal.

Once it's halved,

put the knife inside

and what you get are these little seeds.

We'll then put the vanilla into this frangipane along with three eggs.

And then, last but not least,

just a little tablespoon of flour.

Whizz it up and you're done.

That is a very simple, easy-to-remember almond frangipane.

I think that pastry has had ten minutes.

Just take the corners up.

Carefully pick it up.

Don't drop it.

And we're going to put those back in the jar.

Now go in with our lovely cherry jam.

Look at that. Amazing colour.

And go straight in...

...with this lovely almond mix.

So, get all of that mix out.

Every last bit.

That in itself would be a beautiful tart.

But as we are in cherry season,

it's quite nice to use a little reminder.

A few cherries, actually from my tree.

Take that little stone out.

Now, balsamic vinegar.

A little teaspoon does incredible things

with raspberries, strawberries and seemingly, cherries.

With a little shaking of sugar,

and a bit like the bay leaf and the orange,

like, funky things happen, magical things.

The smell is amazing.

Put it in and around... like that.

Cherry and balsamic juice, delicious.

Look at that.

A thing of beauty.

That goes in the oven for 50 minutes

at 180 degrees again, which is 350 Fahrenheit.

Absolutely gorgeous.

Should be ready. It smells absolutely amazing.

Right, carefully does it.

Look at that.

Absolutely beautiful.

Ah.

Finally, the rain has stopped.

Thank goodness.

Just as the sun is setting.

Gorgeous.

Me, Conker and a lovely tart.

Oh...

Look at that.

Little bit of creme fraiche.

Mm.

It's time for some British cherries.

You've got that layer of jam,

then that almond frangipane is just beautiful.

Nice crunchy top.

And I managed to save some of those cherries from the birds as well.

Absolutely gorgeous.

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