-One thing about eels
A lot of people see these as snakes
and all the rest of them-- Well, they're not.
Very very nutritious
Very easily digested
And they're supposed to be an aphrodisiac.
What are you smiling at?
Pie and Mash is very traditional,
especially in the East End.
I would think that mostly because
it was a very very cheap and quick meal.
It was possibly one of the very first fast foods
Where you could walk in,
order your food,
and within a blink of an eye,
You've got it on a plate. You're sitting down eating it
My great grandfather, Robert Cook,
Apparently in 1862,
He decided to put a meat pie
with the mash potato
and parsley sauce, the liquor
And that was the very first time it was actually done.
As we know it. As pie and mash and liquor.
- I've been coming here since Joe opened this
I've been over South London
and they're not the same as this
This is the original.
- This little rubber thumb stall,
is because in the middle of the eel,
there's bones.
And if you are unlucky--
It doesn't happen all the time,
you put your thumb in,
and the bone goes up your thumb, which is a lot of fun
But it does double as a wart, which is very handy.
So I got some eels here that I'm gonna prepare
They are alive.
I've had them in water so they're not that lively.
Now you go basically behind the flippers,
or behind the ears as we call it,
Straight across, and he's dead.
It's as quick as that
Then,
across the belly,
She's run away
And then straight up
Like so
And here we go for the guts
I was born and brought up in a market.
I used to cut the eels up with my dad
when I was a tiny, tiny kid.
He'd get me one that was half knocked out
And I'd hack it's head off and
gut it off for fashion
You gotta be careful because I could
cut the head off and the blood
could squirt into your lenses
Better than that, it could go into your eye and that is--
fearsome I tell you.
It stings like buggery.
They're very, very meaty.
They're a beautiful bread, eel.
Got lovely, thick sides to them.
That is how we prepare to cook them.
These have to be washed
and they're beautiful, beautiful pieces of eel.
What we'll do now, while I'm waiting for the pot to boil,
so we can put the eels on,
Is go over to the making board and make some pies.
Ugly!
Here.
Right,
the dough obviously is already made.
We make that during the day
The bottom dough and the top dough
That's the bottom dough now
that's being squashed out.
It will be squashed in here and divided
into 36 equal dollies.
It will roll out through the rolling machine there.
Everything's all done from scratch. Everything.
Well this starts off as short crust pastry
but this being the bottom dough,
it needs to be
a firmer, more elastic dough than the crust.
So this ends up with the older cuttings from the crust
and the bottom dough
and flour and water.
This is the podger
And this is an old, odd piece of dough
that we use to make
the indentation for the meat to go in.
All these processes, although they're very simple,
by themselves,
are very important when they come to the whole.
This is our meat.
Scotch hind quarter flank
that I bone out every week.
And we've got salt and pepper
And a little bit of caramel for
a bit of gravy color, if you will.
And that's it.
We always have British beef. Sometimes Scotch.
But always,
always, very, very good quality.
I don't think there's anything
wrong with simple food, that's all. I never have.
Good quality product to start with,
cook it well, present it nice--
I don't think you can go wrong.
And that's as basic as pie and mash.
That's as basic as fish and chips
It's keeping consistency.
There's your pies, ready to have the top put on.
And you don't hold the pie like a brick.
You got no idea how gently I'm holding these pies.
There's no finger marks on them. No thumb marks.
I love cooking. Always have since I was a kid.
For my 21st birthday, one of my presents was
a crepe suzette burner and a frying pan.
But I call this,
with deep respect,
cooking by numbers.
I was a shit painter.
And my painting by numbers used to look awful.
Because I always used to overlap.
It's exactly the same as making these.
If you do it as it's supposed to be done,
you'll end up with a bloody good pie.
There's your batch of pies.
They're all ready for the oven.
Alright, if you let me have a quick little splosh,
we'll have a look at eels.
Alright.
Well, here's your pimentos.
I've got the water on here.
I've thrown the pimentos in.
There's your eels, ready to go in.
And they go into absolutely
boiling water.
And they'll simmer for about 8-10 minutes
and they should be done.
This is the part where we had the eels boiling
and they are cooked.
All you need to do is have a drop of your liquid
to help to make your jelly.
This is powdered gelatin
that you dissolve into your liquid.
Now what you do,
is take out your eels--
Handle them gently.
You don't have to bash them around
because they are quite tender now.
We'll stick that in there
so that they're nicely covered with jelly.
They'll cool right down now.
They'll go into the fridge
and they'll be jelly by the morning.
And then what you will end up with is...
jellied eels.
Alright. Lunch time.
Here's your pie, straight out the oven.
There's your mash
And here is the parsley sauce. The liquor.
And here's your jellied eels.
Here's your chili vinegar
You got the full kit there. The full one, see
Thank you and good night.
- The pies are done beautiful
And when you take the lid off the top the pastry,
there's all the gravy and--
and the mincemeat. It's lovely.
And the mash
It's all quite nice
I'll be eating that camera in a minute
-Piggy. How old are you now?
-Nearly 88
And I'm still here
Yeah, we know that
