Great British Food Revival

Michel Roux Jr gets passionate about our heritage pears. Concerned that eighty per cent of the pears we eat are imported, Michel wants to find out what can be done to persuade people to buy British. He also prepares a delicious selection of dishes including a fabulous pear souffle. Veteran food campaigner Clarissa Dickson Wright takes up the plight of British garlic, often not even recognised as a British-grown ingredient. Clarissa takes us to a garlic farm to discover the amazing taste and range of garlic that is grown in the UK, then digs back through her history books to prove that garlic has a long heritage in Britain. To prove her point, she cooks a recipe straight from the medieval court of Richard II.

Gregg Wallace reminisces about rhubarb and heads to Yorkshire to meet the plucky growers who have triumphed in the face of adversity. In the kitchen, he demonstrates that rhubarb has more to offer than a filling for crumble. Meanwhile, Ainsley Harriot reminds us of the taste of a fresh pea straight from the pod. Over ninety percent of the peas grown in Britain are frozen and he argues that we're missing out on one of our best homegrown treats by not eating them fresh.

John Torode champions British beef, heading to Scotland to meet a farmer hoping to revive the fortunes of the Aberdeen Angus breed of cattle, before cooking a four-bone rib roast with Yorkshire puddings. Valentine Warner explores domestic seafood, discovering most of the UK's mussels are exported and the cockle industry has shrunk to almost nothing. He prepares several shellfish dishes in a bid to persuade people they are easy to cook.

Saturday Kitchen Live presenter James Martin meets duck and quail egg producers and prepares a sponge cake, while chef Richard Corrigan champions the taste and health benefits of locally caught mackerel and cooks a range of dishes with it.

Angela Hartnett encourages cooking turkey outside the festive season, suggesting the slower-reared heritage varieties of the bird might help to combat the meat's reputation for dryness. Raymond Blanc explores the plight of plum orchards suffering due to public indifference to their produce, and prepares dishes with the fruit in a bid to get more people using it in their cooking.

Greedy Italian Antonio Carluccio discovers the shocking truth that we've lost half our beetroot fields in the last 30 years. He doesn't share the memories of over-cooked, vinegary, pickled beetroot we detested in our school dinners, and can't understand why we don't make more of this wonderful veg in our cooking. He opens our eyes to some fascinating varieties, and finds ways to cook beetroot we may never have thought of to inspire us to rediscover a love of beetroot. Matt Tebbutt takes time out from his busy restaurant to champion the cause of British currants in all their magnificent colours. Although we grow plenty of blackcurrants, most are turned into cordial - growers would like to see this super-fruit soon rival the blueberry. Meanwhile, our other currants are no longer easy to get hold of. Redcurrants mainly go into making jelly and the production of white currants has almost ceased. So it's going to be a huge challenge for Matt to make people rethink their attitudes to this native fruity little gem and demand them once again.

Gary Rhodes is fanatical about the quality of the produce he uses, in his relentless pursuit of perfection in the kitchen. He's horrified to discover that, not only have we lost the vast majority of our cherry orchards, but hardly any of the cherries we eat in the UK were grown here. His campaign takes him to meet growers who are trying to buck the trend and fight back, not only with new strains of sweeter, larger cherries, but with old-fashioned heritage varieties. Gary's powers of persuasion to make us fall back in love with the British cherry come to the fore in the 'Revival' kitchen, where he prepares some exceptional dishes, including his signature dessert - a delectable cherry clafoutis. Award-winnnng food writer and restaurateur Yotam Ottolenghi is passionate about nuts. He uses them in many of his recipes as they are an integral ingredient in Middle Eastern cookery. He discovers that although Britain has a rich history of growing nuts, most of us are completely unaware of this tradition. We can grow fantastic walnuts in the UK but not enough for them to be commercially viable, so most walnuts we eat are imported. Yotam wants this to change and for us to get behind our native nuts like the British cobnut - a nut that most people have never heard of unless they live in Kent, where it is grown. To get us to appreciate these homegrown delicacies, he creates some fantastic sweet and savoury dishes including a magnificent cobnut crumble cream and roasted aubergines with an amazing walnut salsa.

Following her Great British Bake-Off triumph, Mary Berry demonstrates a genuine passion for fresh herbs and wants the world to know how easy they are to grow, use and store. She questions a commercial herb grower about why more herbs are not available fresh in our supermarkets and she visits the largest collection of organic herbs in the UK. Mary introduces us to three of her favourite herbs and cooks three delicious meals to showcase them including a superb lemon balm ice cream. Award-winning chef Jason Atherton is passionate about only using fresh, seasonal fruit and vegetables in his restaurant kitchen. Cabbage has always been a staple on his menu but it has an image problem and is shunned by the younger generation. On Jason's revival campaign, he seeks the advice of a young cook and food blogger to find out how to get more young people eating cabbage and he leads by example, using the various cabbage varieties we produce in Britain in truly inspirational ways in the Revival kitchen.