If you had to guess what Mary Berry would cook in a show called Classic Mary Berry (BBC One), I think you might get one dish – possibly more – correct. Perhaps not her eggs benedict florentine, since it is an amalgamation (“Why have one when you can have both together?” she asks, reasonably). But you might guess that her breakfast would involve bacon, toasted muffins (English ones, naturally) and poached eggs.
Mmm, it does looks good. She makes the hollandaise look like a breeze. But I have an issue with the whirlpool system of poaching: how can you do that if you are poaching more than one egg, which you almost certainly would be if you were doing eggs benedict florentine? You can’t make lots of vortices in one pan, can you? Staggered breakfast?
Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, guess the MB classic. So, lamb shanks, slow-cooked, with onions and carrots, in a red-wine sauce, sprinkle of rosemary, served with mash. So very Berry. (Interesting that she whisks her mash; actually she whisks everything, have you noticed?)
I think I could have guessed the lamb shanks and the boozy chocolate truffle pots. And her mushroom vol-au-vents. All right, they don’t have a well – she calls them galettes. I am still calling them vol-au-vents, OK?
In short, there are no huge surprises. No curveballs are thrown. If Heston is way out there, Mary is very much in the middle of everything, mainly of England. Whisks, not risks, if you will. I am sure, if you were to try doing one of her dishes, it would work and be delicious. That’s the main point of a cooking show, right? But where is the fun in that?
Here it is! In the form of an amiable, handsome young man from Sweden, Niklas. He is a chef with a Michelin star, Niklas Ekstedt. His thing is open-fire cooking. Suits Mary: she used to be in the Guides, she tells him. Really, Mary, I had you down as more of a sister gang kind of girl. They used to sing songs around the fire, she tells Niklas. Ging gang goolie goolie goolie goolie watcha, ging gang goo, ging gang goo ...
Niklas slaps a couple of whole celeriacs on to the flames. “There you go – fire and vegetable, caveman cooking,” he says.
“Ooh,” says Mary. “I quite like cooking with a caveman.”
Yes, Mary, that much is obvious. With this particular caveman, certainly.
While the celeriac blackens, Niklas prepares his meatballs. To ground venison and pork he adds onion and cream-soaked breadcrumbs, plus juniper berries, a bit of salt, a sprinkle of innuendo. Who needs Mel’n’Sue when you are alone in the woods, rolling meatballs with a Swedish caveman?
Will there be any kind of sauce, Mary wonders, as she rolls.
“Yes, I will make a sauce for you,” Niklas reassures her. “Don’t worry, you’ll have sauce, Mary.”
“I like a little bit of sauce,” she says, raising her eyebrows. Massive flirt alert!
There is nothing unsurprising or familiar about Niklas’s sauce. He takes a burning ember from his fire and drops it into a pan of cream. “What are you doing?” cries Mary, horrified and a little bit excited at the same time. “This is something absolute new to me.”
“But you’re an open-minded woman,” says Niklas.
The sauce – which is thickened, miraculously, using a strong Swedish vinegar called ättika – is absolutely delicious, of course. “Wow, it might be changing my way of doing things,” says Mary. Never too late ...
Actually, not so late any more. While Mary has been cooking outdoors and flirting outrageously, another miraculous transformation has taken place. It could be the ättika, the smoke or Niklas the Swedish fire man, but suddenly the years have been stripped away and Mary is half her age.
They go for a stroll in the woods. Niklas spots a birch tree, the wood he likes to use on his fires. “And also these branches like this, these leaves, these are what we use in the sauna,” he says, pulling a branch down. “To get … you know, to whip each other.”
“That sounds exciting,” says Mary. “How do you do it, then?”
He shows her; she has a go. “It sounds fun,” she says, whacking him playfully. “I think I’m coming to Sweden.”
OK, that’s enough fun now, this is pre-watershed. Get a room. Or perhaps a cabin. Or just a cave.
