The Cook and the Chef

Root Veg & Guinea Fowl (3x25)

Data de estreia: Jul 30, 2008

After the exhilaration of the New Zealand trip this week’s show opens with Maggie back on home soil – and almost knee deep in it too! She’s trekking through mud with vegetable grower Dominic Scarfo in search of a vegetable that is often overlooked and undervalued: the swede. Dominic gives Maggie a ride on his tractor and shows her how the swede gets its amazing gradation of colour, but discourages her from attempting to grow the delicious veggie in her back garden. Maggie loves Swedes when they’re small and young, so back in the kitchen she prepares a dish in which small tender swedes are the heroes rather than merely bit players, braising them before adding stock, currants and belly bacon. Simon also tackles root vegetables in the form of an old Irish classic, colcannon. Made with potato and cabbage, the dish is surprisingly tasty and Simon is a big fan. There are not many people who like game birds as much as Maggie does, but this week we meet one of them: her farm manager Jeff Matthews. Maggie’s visiting Jeff’s farm to check out his amazing collection of birds which includes quails, chooks, bantams, ducks and various types of pheasants. Maggie is mainly interested in one particular bird though: the guinea fowl. These flighty, skittish birds are often found on country properties because they make fantastic watchdogs; Jeff tells Maggie that his guinea fowl once alerted him to the presence of a brown snake and they even chased a fox off the property! What’s more, they don’t trash the garden like chooks do, and they make for fantastic eating. Back in the kitchen Maggie prepares her guinea fowl using a classic marinade she learnt from Cheong Liew, and serves it as part of an amazing warm salad. Simon also rises to the guinea fowl challenge, deboning a bird and then improvising an amazing way to roll and stuff the bird employing a used soft drink bottle. Served atop his colcannon, the fowl tops off another tasty episode of The Cook and the Chef. R