The things I love about potatoes is they're so so easy, and potatoes are such hardy plants really.
I mean i've got some shooting potatoes here, they've got little sprouts coming out of them,
or you know if you've ever had in your larder like a potato that's started to sprout, you can use one
of those. Even if it hasn't sprouted you can use one of those, and if it's sprouted too much, you
can still plant it. And you know what if you go to a restaurant and you have a beautiful potato,
ask a chef to give you 10 raw ones. Let 'em seed, plant the old fellas. So I'll do this one here
- what I'm gonna do is just dig a little hole, six inches deep, and plop my boy in. Water in.
Cover it up and that'll grow. And the plant's job is to kind of get out into the light and start
doing all its business, but what you can do is as this little baby grows you can see every inch
there's like these little offshoots here, and they will turn into little strands that have a
clutch of beautiful little taters coming off of it. If you start piling more and more sort of
soil around it, and every time it sticks out say six inches you cover more mud up so there's sort
of three inches exposed, what happens is it has to keep, keep growing up, and more clutches of
potatoes comes out. So instead of getting sort of like 20 or 30 potatoes out of you know a plant,
you can actually get sort of 20 or 30 kilos out of a plant.
They call it earthing up which essentially is kind of like challenging the plant.
That's why potatoes are so fantastically popular around the world because to a square meter,
they're incredibly efficient at feeding you with good sort of energy food you know, so, brilliant.
I'm gonna do a cross between a Spanish omelette and a frittata. Spanish omelettes are generally
finished on the hob, frittatas are finished in the oven so they sort of souffle up a bit. But
I'm using chorizo and um, brilliant you know, quality pork. Sliced about a centimetre thick.
You know if you get a good one you've got good quality fat in there, herbs, secret ingredients,
smoked paprika which I love to bits. And what I've got in the oven is a pan, nice and hot, and
you get some oil straight in there. Right and we go in there with
the chorizo, and then in with the potatoes.
Give it a little toss about. And the great thing is you can see already,
that paprika starts cooking out of the sausage and that gives wonderful flavors. So you can see
what I've done in the wood oven, I've just put it on some coals. If you've got just a normal oven,
whack the oven on full whack and do exactly the same, no difference at all. And then I've got some
rosemary. Now, rosemary, chorizo, pork, potatoes, brilliant friends. So a little pile of that.
Lovely. So
I've got some lovely eggs. Right so I've got a bowl - I'm gonna use three eggs, nice large eggs.
You can see look at the lovely yellow yolks in there.
So three eggs, a little pinch of salt, a little pinch of pepper, give it a little whisk up.
You can see the lovely colour. And then you got lovely the chorizo and you know
the potato, I mean it's all the things you love really, sausage, potato, eggs.
Look at that. We've already got a nice color - delish! So what I wanna do
is just maybe flick off some of these.
All right and in the pan here you've got the fat in there
right, and that's good stuff. I'm gonna literally sprinkle that in.
And as soon as that goes crispy which is in about 15 seconds, like it's snappy and meaty and steaky
and delicious and fragrant. So literally do that, keep some in, and I'm gonna just pour in the eggs
like that, and then flick all my bits of sausage and rosemary back into this little darling.
Rosemary is important I mean just great flavour. It's looking good, straight into the oven.
And again, because it's got heat coming from above and below it's more like when you do
a souffle and that'll almost double in size, and there'll be bubbles and stuff like that.
So while it's cooking I wanna do a salad but not your sort of conventional salad,
I wanna big up parsley. Try not to use the really big leaves, get rid of any big stalks,
like that little fella he can go. And then I've got a shallot that I've just pulled out the garden
and, take the end off, take the end off, peel the old fella. Thick chunky bits of onion in anything,
I don't care who you are, are horrible. But you know if you start getting it wafer thin,
it's delicate and beautiful. I don't wanna eat a whole onion so just that much is enough in there,
and sort of concentrate on these onions for a bit, bit of salt, bit of lemon. And that parsley
will really need this lemon juice, otherwise it is just a herb yeah. Olive oil, and then let's
just dress this little bubba. But just before we dress it sort of pinch that lemon juice, pinch it
into the salt, really get the salt and lemon juice into it, and that'll take all the sting out of it,
and then bring the parsley in, right? Mix that up, have a little taste, with a bit of onion.
Delicious, you wouldn't want a whole bowl of it, absolutely not, this ain't a green salad.
But watch this - my boy here comes out the oven, give him a little slap,
fold him out. Light, fluffy, absolutely delicious, get my lovely parsley
like that. And for me that's what cooking is all about, exciting stuff, real deal. And
although that's not authentic Spanish if I gave that to a Spaniard he'd give me a little Olé.
Last year this was a potato bed. We had the artichokes here as well but this was you know
racked up with a couple of different varieties of potatoes, and we ain't done nothing to it,
so we've got weeds and stuff like that. I'm not really sure what we've got so I'm gonna
sort of see what we get. I can't remember what was here, let's have a little look.
Oh yeah, shamone! Look purple's got a big one here, never seen - look at the colour,
look at that colour. Absolutely fantastic. The truth is the purple potatoes aren't the best
tasting potatoes in the world. You can get some that are pretty good. But they look fantastic.
Bri...
Brian, go have a look at this mate um, we didn't plant these this year did we?
No, no I think they were planted last year, leftovers. There's some more. Look at 'em can you,
have you got a knife, can you cut one of these little fellas in half? And you know, purples,
no one in England really saw purple potatoes until about five years ago.
Mad though. What's been going on over here because I don't...
This should be quite interesting because I planted some of the early potatoes in these
buckets in February ((Yeah - just turn it out?)). Yeah just tip the whole lot up, see what we get.
Wow look at that root structure. There's nothing wrong with that!
Look there's the original, that's what I planted.
But isn't it amazing something
so scabby and horrible and ugly looking can produce such a lovely family?
I've got a grow bag here, you could grow it in a
little grow bag like this for example, like we do. I'll just make a demonstration...
Oh what you mean upside down instead of laid down?
Yeah, try that right like this, just slice the top - make sure it's standing up nicely.
I'll just demonstrate with one of these new potatoes.
Well can you plant that and it would work?
Possibly it would do, yeah.
It's just gotta get dry and sprout ((Yeah, yeah)). So what, if you didn't water that then...
Oh you'd have to water it, you know once it starts growing keep it well watered and stuff it down.
Just one or you can put a couple in?
I reckon you could probably put a couple inside perhaps, you make a
slit there ((What's the slit for?)). It's just to get the potato in,
that way you can get it around the bottom ((Ah brilliant)). It's just an experiment but er...
Tough to push in but i think that might work. Then the shoot will come out the side there.
You know when I first moved to London I had a tiny little garden, but it had a bit of sunlight,
you know I could have got three, four of these,
and just what put them up against the wall so you get the heat from the wall ((Yeah)), a bit
of sunlight, a bit of water in ((Yeah keep them watered)). And that's it.
That's it, that's all you need do.
Brilliant - nice one bro.