(egg cracking)
(frying)
(upbeat music)
- Hello, everyone and welcome to Sorted Food.
- Now thanks to your amazing suggestions
on a recent community tab post
we have a sterling lineup
of potentially pretentious ingredients
for our normals to play with.
- Yes, we want Barry and Jamie to taste test
and articulate that thoughts for you guys at home.
Are you ready boys?
- Yes please, bring it on.
(upbeat music)
- Lift the cloche.
- Oh, mm, oh.
- Play dough.
- Oh, I know what that is.
- Oh no.
Oh, I know what that is.
- What is that?
- Let me double check.
- Such confidence at first.
- It's some horseradish.
- No, it's mustard.
- So these are mustard balls from Tewkesbury Mustard.
A mustard ball is the only true Tewkesbury mustard
popular from the 16th to the 19th century,
only sold in this form.
Never in jars or containers.
Mustard balls traditionally were dried naturally
to aid preservation to help with transportation.
- [Ben] This is cool, this is a slice of history.
- So thank you to Dan Beale Cocks
who suggested that we review mustard balls.
What'd you think?
- (bleeps).
- Whoa!
Oh yeah.
- Little bit goes a long way doesn't it?
Lucky we're not playing poker face.
- Whew! - Damn!
- Oh, no, it's really good.
It's--
- (bleeps).
- [Jamie] It's--
- I thought Mr. oh, I love wasabi, I can deal with this.
He's having a shocker.
- It is the wasabi horseradish, but it's--
- It's more burn-y.
- Sweeter than normal horseradish wasabi.
I really like it.
- So--
(Barry coughing)
The mustard's pounded and combined in this instance
with horseradish, you are correct, and a bit of cider.
But back in the day, pounded mustard, roll it into balls.
And then you'd rehydrate the mustard
when you wanted to use it.
- Like a stock cube.
- Right okay, so that's why it's more intense.
- It's like a travelling stock.
- [Mike] So that one there has come up to room temperature
so it's a bit pasty and malleable.
We've stuck one in the freezer
because another recommended use of it is to shave it
over food.
While we're on the subject of food.
Do you want to eat something?
- Mm. - Mm.
- Yes, why do you think I'm here?
What's that, what's that, what's that
what's that? - What's that,
what's that, what's that?
- What's that, what's that coming over?
- [Barry] They're sandwiches, they're sandwiches.
- [Mike] So guys you have a posh ham sandwich,
glazed ham, aioli, loads of salad, cheddar.
Open it up, get some mustard in there and give it a whirl.
- Oh.
- This looks amazing.
- So a couple of methods here.
Jamie's going for the grating method.
Baz is rehydrating the mustard ball with some water.
Now, back in the day in the 16th century
when these were used, couldn't rely on the water
not giving you some sort of poisoning.
So they used to actually dilute this with alcohol.
- Oh it's a good sandwich.
- Cheers, great sandwich.
- I am fascinated.
- Not what I expected.
It's more familiar to a wasabi.
It hasn't the flavour of mustard.
It has the aroma of mustard but the flavour of horseradish.
- Interesting.
- It's very much more horseradishy than it is mustardy.
- So I know what you're thinking,
why is this in a pretentious ingredients episode?
And we thought, cor,
Wouldn't this be a fantastic opportunity
to give a nod back to history,
but discuss now in real life whether this has a purpose
and whether if Barry brought this to the table
while you're around his, for some dinner
you would think that he's being pretentious or not.
- It feels to me like it's just that things have moved on
and that we don't need mustard balls.
- I like how you could do some really different things
with that.
- This excited me most because of its historical prominence
and the fact that Tewkesbury's preserving something
that would otherwise be lost.
Knowing about it is 90% of the way there.
But I don't know if I would actually have a ball at home
cause actually a big jar of good mustard would work.
But I love the fact that somebody
is looking after this tradition
that has been around since the 16th century.
- Okay, let's talk about price.
How much do you think a 40 gramme ball, one of those costs?
- Two pounds.
- Four pounds.
- [Mike] 6.99.
- [Jamie] That's the kind of money that I'd go.
Do you know what, I'll give that a try, I'd do that.
- I'd rather a jar for a couple quid.
- Pretentious or not?
- It is not pretentious.
- Not pretentious.
(upbeat music)
- Okay boys, lift the cloche.
- Oh.
- [Mike] Why have you turned your nose up at that?
- Cause honestly it looks like duck (bleeps).
- [Jamie] It does look like duck (bleeps).
I will concur.
- [Mike] But if we put it in a cork topped jar
with rose gold lettering,
you'd buy it up for 49 pounds, wouldn't you?
- I would.
- We told you it would exfoliate your forehead if you--
- [Ben] You'd be spreading all over that forehead.
- [Mike] On smell alone I'm gonna go three, two, one,
I'd like you both to say out loud what you think this is.
- Okay.
- Three, two, one.
- Liquorice. - Demerara sugar.
- Wow. - Interesting.
- This is amazing.
Okay, give it a taste.
- I didn't expect it to be jelly-like in texture.
- It is, that is a dark sugar.
- Barry's getting like a molasses
almost sweetness coming through.
Jamie's getting like aniseed kind of?
- Less aniseedy when you eat it.
- It is less aniseedy when you eat it.
It's far more like molasses.
- Boys, you are eating black garlic paste.
Black garlic is essentially white garlic
that's been left in a humid environment to slowly warm up.
This recommendation came from Georgia and PG
so thank you very much.
Boys what do you think?
- It's pretty interesting but it's not like garlic.
- Well as you cook any onion, leek, garlic,
any of that family
it gets rid of all that kind of onion,
sulphury kind of flavour and mellows right down
that paste is a very different sort of flavour
but you can use it as a paste, literally spread on toast.
Now you've tried the paste and nibbled on a clove.
Would you like to try it in situe.
- Yes. - Yes.
- [Ben] You have some courgette fries.
So they're tossed in polenta and Parmesan, they're baked.
And that is what you're going to dip
into your black garlic aioli.
Which we've also added in a little bit of black tahini
in there as well, just to keep with that shocking wow factor
of the black dip.
- [Jamie] I love it.
- [Barry] It feels more like a Nutella.
- It's chocolate spready.
Cheers. - Cheers.
- [Mike] I mean, I think you guys
have done phenomenally with guessing the tastes
because according to the website of this particular product,
once aged black garlic is totally different to raw garlic
offering up a much more mellow taste,
but with huge complexity and depth
similar to tasting notes of molasses, balsamic, tamarind,
caramel, dates and much more.
So I'd say that they got that pretty bang on.
- It takes longer to deliver on the garlic flavour.
- I don't like it very much.
- Okay.
- In that situation as a dipping sauce,
for me it's not savoury enough.
- Interesting.
- These fries are delicious.
They're light, they're delicate, it's overpowering.
- Well they're based on a Packs recipe
- That's great advertising Baz.
Really simple cause you just whack them on a tray, Parmesan
polenta and then crisp it up in the oven.
Really awesome midweek hack
- Probably a good thing we said we like them then.
- Plug, plug, plug.
- [Ben] I think what's interesting is it has been available
in the industry, but it's more difficult to find it
in retail in the UK.
Pretty much until now
but application and explaining where to use it
is quite a difficult process.
- [Mike] So the garlic bulb
how much do you think that cost us?
- Four pounds.
- [Mike] Okay.
- I was gonna say three pounds.
- Jamie Spafford, you are correct, £2.99.
The garlic paste for 100 grammes was £4.99.
- [Barry] Price-wise justified because of the process
is quite unique.
Before trying it, understanding what it was.
I presumed it was pretentious,
because I thought it was a different breed of garlic
and therefore pick up a massive price tag--
- [Ben] Showy.
- Yeah.
But now I know there's a process behind it
to bring a whole different complexity to the flavour,
I can kind of justify it.
It becomes less pretentious.
- Knowing what to do with it and make the most of it
is a barrier.
- In that case, black garlic, pretentious or not?
- It's not pretentious.
- Not pretentious.
(upbeat music)
- Next one lift the cloche.
- Oh.
Okay that is--
- [Jamie] Dehydrated could be walnuts.
Could be mushrooms.
- It doesn't smell very nice.
- It's a bit cheesy.
- Yeah, it's gone off a little bit.
- Yeah.
- Well they look like really weird mushrooms.
This, aw--
- No.
- Okay I've got somewhere.
- [Jamie] Where?
- I'm gonna go for this
and I think it might be somewhere close.
It's not coral?
- Interesting.
Not anywhere close but interesting.
- Cause it smells a little bit like fish food
and it looks like it could have grown underwater.
- [Ben] They are Morel mushrooms.
- After all that, they're just mushrooms.
- Not just mushrooms. - [Barry] Sorry.
- [Ben] So these are wild Morel mushrooms or Morchella,
highly prized, woodland variety.
And this idea for a pretentious ingredient
came from Markman278, thank you.
- [Mike] So Morel mushrooms, ever heard of them?
- No. - No.
- No.
- So the thing with Morels is there is quite a short season
and therefore if you want to enjoy them
for the rest of the year,
drying them is a pretty good way of doing that.
Simply rehydrate them in boiling water
and then you can use them in all sorts of things.
And this liquid you end up with
you can use too.
- Where are they from?
- [Ben] A lot of them grow sort of over Europe
but they're not farmed.
So that is where their attraction comes from,
is the mystique of being out to get hold of them.
We still don't really know how they grow,
where they grow or why they grow.
And therefore they're really difficult to find
and therefore quite special when you do.
- Oh.
Oh.
- Pretentious.
(everyone laughing)
- [Ben] Basically a mushroom fricassé on a bed of polenta
with some bacon cooked out with masala and cream.
- Cheers.
(upbeat music)
- Oh that is special.
That's a really meaty mushroom.
- [Barry] Really meaty mushroom.
- [Jamie] Really a proper umami, cause this is delicious.
- Obviously fresh is a different product
that you'd use it in a different way.
And there's so many things you can do at
just sauteed in butter and put over again polenta.
But these dehydrated also should give you the option of stock,
which has a lot of that flavour.
- They're better than what I expected.
In flavour, spectacular.
- Just because something's rare, doesn't make it pretentious
- No, but the fact they had to explain why they're special
to help market it to you.
That's how you go, you know what?
These are worth spending the money on cause they're rare.
- Bit like a mustard ball and black garlic.
It's about, you have to explain the education
because it's less "normal".
- Have I got the skills to make the most of that ingredient
or am I being sold to, because this is the rarest mushroom
you will ever lay your eyes on?
- [Barry] Yeah the way to convince us on buying it.
The marketing will have to be quite extreme
and therefore push it into a pretentious kind of bracket.
But you as chefs you don't have to be sold to,
you know about it.
- I'm kind of with you.
I think maybe I'm pretentious in my quest
for what I want these to achieve
instead of the ingredient themselves being pretentious.
- Exactly.
- So there we go, for a tub that size 30 grammes.
How much?
- Did you you see that? - [Barry] I did.
- [Mike] No one saw that, are we rolling? Damn.
- £8.
- I had £10.
- Did you?
- Yeah in my head.
- [Ben] Add them together, £18.50 for 30 grammes.
- That's quite a lot of money.
- Okay then, pretentious or not?
- It reminds me more of truffles and truffles--
- [Mike] You gotta buy a dog and everything.
- When you think of them, you think pretentious.
- Yeah.
- But when you really think about them,
you go actually they're not.
This has taken me on the same journey.
- £18.50 is a lot of money,
that doesn't make it pretentious.
(upbeat music)
- Potentially pretentious ingredient number four,
lift the cloche.
- [Jamie] Purple salt.
- [Barry] Purple salt.
- [Jamie] It's purple salt.
- [Mike] Is it?
Give it a taste.
- Uh.
- Why is it eggy?
- It's eggy, yeah.
It's sulphur.
- Any salt at all?
- Yeah.
- It's salty.
- It's a seasoned, well seasoned egg sandwich.
- What you have is Korean purple bamboo salt
prepared by packing bay salt or essentially sea salt
into bamboo, sealing it with nutrient rich clay
and then baking it in an oven, very, very high temperatures
and the temperatures get higher and higher
and you cool it and bake it, cool it and bake it nine times.
Basically it gets all those flavours from the bamboo
that it's packed in.
So it kind of concentrates the minerally elements of salt
removes any of the other toxins.
And what you're left with is like the purest form.
It can be any colour, red, white, blue
there's different stages.
The most premium that goes up to 1700 degrees celsius,
liquid salt, once it cools, it's purple.
- Wow. - Oh.
- I find these kind of processes so interesting
because somebody at some point thought
let's shove that in some bamboo and heat it up
and see what it's like.
And they go nine times and then somebody
must have done it 10 times and gone, whoa, no, no just nine.
- Interesting you say that
because it's been used for centuries in Korean herbal medicine
and they did it once or twice.
It was a Korean herbalist just over a hundred years ago
that kind of fine tuned this nine stage process.
And it takes so long, that final one
that goes to so-so hot takes two days to cool.
- Wow.
- [Ben] Before they can even use it, that's how hot it gets.
Would you like to try it on something?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Egg sandwich?
- Wow.
- Flipping heck.
- A simple... throw together dish
- Yeah it sure is.
- [Ben] Tuna tartar but also with some pickled radish,
some Pak Choi and some coriander oil,
little bit of sriracha.
More importantly, we want you to take the salt,
grind some up and season it to taste.
And maybe one of you could do some regular sea salt.
It's often added to foods and drinks, teas, smoothies
cold drinks, hot drinks, but also soups and broths and stews
and we thought this was a nice way of celebrating it
in a fairly raw form.
- Let's try Essex salt first.
- [Jamie] Right.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
- Okay. - That is delicious.
- [Mike] And this is the purple.
The egg has been mellowed.
- There's a more rounded flavour.
- Wow. - To the tuna
that isn't salty.
- Yeah it's less harsh.
- Obviously we're not health professionals
but beyond its taste,
it also has lots of claims around the added benefits
with nutrition and health in mind, rich in antioxidants.
It removes a lot of the toxicity when you heat it.
So if we think about the moment micro plastics in our sea
if you're heating it to 1700 degrees Celsius
you're getting rid of all micro plastics.
That also comes with the caveat that the WHO in 2016
released a report that said
whilst there's nothing in it harmful,
that's gonna cause any problems.
They haven't yet proven whether there's any benefits either
all still pending, not enough science.
- [Mike] Which one do you prefer, A or B?
- B, I think is far more interesting.
Cause it's more unusual.
It's making me question more what I'm eating.
Cause it's taken me to different places.
- I like them equally.
Well I wouldn't choose one or the other I don't think.
- Okay so let's have a guess at price from you
as a comparison, Malden sea salt,
roughly the same weight £1.99.
How much for that?
- [Mike] Should we make it interesting?
How about the person closest to the price gets to take home
all the pretentious ingredients?
- Make it fair, same time.
- Yep.
- [Mike] Three, two, one.
- £23. - £25.
- Oh. - Whoa!
- So For that pot of Korean purple bamboo salt
we paid £135.60.
10 times more expensive than Himalayan pink salt.
- £135 worth of salt.
- And not my decision it's thanks to a Arook and Cassandra
and LVandPandSands, lots of other people.
They suggested we got some
Pretentious or not?
- I'm not paying for the health benefits.
I'm not paying for the flavour,
you're paying because of the process its been through
which doesn't actually impact me at all.
So for me to spend that money, it feels pretentious.
- The only application I can see this being useful in
is in a Michelin star restaurant
where they sprinkle little bit on top
and then they tell you
that they've sprinkled a little bit on top
and therefore it's pretentious.
- A Michelin star winning chef would also know
why they're using it and it would make a difference.
- Mm hmm.
- Good day.
That concludes another episode of pretentious ingredients.
- Yeah, massive thank you for all of you
who contributed ideas and products for us to try.
Please keep them coming.
- Yeah that's exactly what we want more ideas for next time.
Comment down below.
- [Mike] Take the hassle out of your mid-week cooking
while saving money, reducing your food waste
and using chefy shortcuts to cook like a pro.
Check out our five-star rated Meal Packs app
for a whole month free, link below.
- Have you been to the Isle of wight festival,
garlic Festival?
- Not to the--
- [Mike] He's talking about the music festival,
you're talking about the garlic festival.
- The Isle of Wight garlic festival, it's fantastic.