Tony and Cyrus visit East Sussex. In Hastings, they spice up some locally caught fish - dover sole with lime and ginger - before taking on traditional fish and chips, making a spicy marinade for their cod fillets. They then travel inland and visit a farmer who breeds rare middle white pigs. After slow-cooking pulled pork with cinnamon and cloves, Tony and Cyrus demonstrate the dazzling effect cinnamon and chilli powder can have on vanilla ice cream. Spices can also give a whole new dimension to leftovers, a delicious example being bread and butter pudding with orange and cardamom. Throughout their journey, Tony and Cyrus offer practical advice on how to buy, store and utilise spices, showing how easy it is to enhance simple dishes at home.
This journey begins in the Cothi Valley in Carmarthenshire where they make goats' cheese from the milk of animals feeding on a yearly cycle of wildflowers, herbs and berries. These cheeses have a delicious freshness that varies with the seasons. Tony bakes a golden goats' cheese, red onion and caraway seed tart. It's served with refreshing spiced pickled onions, spiked with chilli flakes, lime juice and pomegranate molasses. Next they head for Bridgend and a family run toffee business that's been going for over 100 years. Tony slips a couple of handfuls of whole aniseeds into a pan of bonfire toffee. The sweet shop's young customers give the aniseed-flavoured toffee a definite thumbs up.
This journey begins in Tony's home town, Edinburgh. When, as a young man, Tony asked his father why his family came from the Punjab to settle in one of the coldest parts of the world, he said, 'Well, the streets were meant to be paved with gold and the rivers ran with whisky'. Ever keen to showcase the best of Scottish produce, Tony makes cranachan - a traditional dessert made with Scotland's finest honey, raspberries, oatmeal and whisky enveloped in double cream. For his cranachan with a wee twist, Tony infuses the honey with sensuous, aromatic cardamom and adds a splash of fragrant rose water. In the Leith Street community café we discover the origins of Tony's love of spicing up British food. Here his mother Kulvinder volunteers in the kitchen and makes haggis pakoras.
In the fields of west Suffolk Cyrus and Tony extoll the virtues of rapeseed oil. They then use it to cook Cinnamon, Ginger & Red Chilli Chicken Wings. At the beautiful stately home, Melford Hall, in Long Melford, Tony and Cyrus persuade the National Trust to allow them to spice up their traditional afternoon tea. The Trust provides the basic ingredients for cucumber sandwiches and Victoria sponge which Tony and Cyrus transform, adding a salt and chilli blend to the cucumbers and a delicious fennel and orange butter cream to the Victoria sponge. Forty sceptical members of the local Women's Institute turn up for tea. The green fields of West Suffolk are dotted with ruby-coloured cows, the traditional Suffolk breed, Red Poll. Tony and Cyrus meet Denise Thomas, from Lavenham Brook Farm, who tend a herd of Red Polls and learn that the slow-growing grass-fed herd produce wonderful meat and milk. Next an exercise in painting with spices. Cyrus uses a colourful array of ground spices to cook a fantastically tasty, easy peasy Splendidly Spicy Beef Burger with chilli, cumin and coriander. Not to be left out, Tony who, as a Sikh, does not eat beef, tucks into a spicy cumin and chilli chip butty. The annual Hadleigh agricultural show in Suffolk draws farmers and producers from across the county. They come to show off their produce, play on the fun fair and enjoy traditional strawberries and cream. Tony and Cyrus want to show how spices can enhance fruit so they take over the strawberry stall, add black pepper and cinnamon to the fruit and offer it to a surprised but appreciative public. Finally, they cook a clever twist on a British classic, a mouth-watering Apple Crumble with Star Anise. Throughout their journey Tony and Cyrus give practical information on how to buy, store and use spices, to get us all eagerly cooking with spices at home.
Hear the word Somerset and you immediately think of cider. There is nothing new about mulled cider, but how about boiling a gammon joint in it? In Cyrus's exceptional gammon with cider and cinnamon the cider is infused with cinnamon sticks, red chilli and coriander seeds. Roger Wilkins is a legend among Somerset's cider drinking fraternity. His cider farm at Mudgley is open seven days a week and you can pitch up almost anytime to enjoy his CAMRA award-winning ciders. There is nothing Roger doesn't know about mulling cider, but Tony is determined to take Roger's experience to another level. He creates a spiced buttercream and pours warmed cider over it for a sceptical Roger to sample. Somerset is home to Britain's most popular food product worldwide, cheddar cheese. But few cheddars compare with that aged within the caves of the famous Cheddar Gorge. Inspired, Cyrus cooks a chilli cheese toast extravaganza with beer, egg yolks and for that spicy magic, fresh green chillies and lashings of English mustard. For their next visit, Cyrus and Tony alight on a relatively new culinary enterprise. Chocolatier Al Garnsworthy is renowned for making delicious chocolate covered honeycomb. Honey and fragrant cardamom are perfect bedfellows and the effect of combining them in the frothy effervescence of honeycomb is truly sensational. Tony bakes a miraculously easy chocolate and cardamom mousse cake with cardamom honeycomb. Emboldened by their success, the boys set out to take on Britain's most hallowed food - the Great British breakfast. They are spicing up the holy trinity of sausage, egg and beans. To see if it passes muster they persuade Dawn, head waitress of the Nunney Catch Transport Café, to serve their spicy breakfast. Their journey now at an end, the boys exhort us all to adopt the habit of using spices in our favourite dishes.
