Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster - Ep 82: Thomasina Miers

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

Time to crack open the tequila, because ‘Masterchef’ winner and Wahaca co-founder Thomasina Miers is this week’s guest, in another pre-Covid recorded episode.Find out more about Thomasina Miers at www.thomasinamiers.comFollow Thomasina on Twitter and Instagram @thomasinamiersBuy Thomasina’s cook books on her websiteRecorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive Productions.Artwork by Paul Gilbey (photography and design) and Amy Browne (illustrations).Follow Off Menu on Twitter and Instagram: @offmenuofficial.And go to our website www.offmenupodcast.co.uk for a list of restaurants recommended on the show.Watch Ed and James's YouTube series 'Just Puddings'. Watch here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, listeners of the Off Menu podcast. It is Ed Gamble here from the Off Menu podcast. I have a very exciting announcement. I have written my first ever book. I am absolutely over the moon to announce this. I'm very, very proud of it. Of course, what else could I write a book about? But food. My book is all about food. My life in food. How greedy I am. What a greedy little boy I was. What a greedy adult I am. I think it's very funny. I'm very proud of it. The book is called Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy. And it's coming out this October, but it is available to pre-order now, wherever you pre-order books from. And if you like my signature, I've done some signed copies,

which are exclusively available from Waterstones. But go and pre-order your copy of Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy now. Please? James Acaster here. The Great Benito wanted me to tell you that this episode was recorded pre-Covid. Pre-Covid times. So it might sound a little bit odd some of the stuff that we're saying in it. Like, well, that's not how the world is right now, but it was pre-Covid. So the Great Benito wanted me to tell you that and let you all know that this episode is recorded pre-Covid. So thank you to Great Benito for keeping us all, keeping everything in context to a good guy. Enjoy the episode. Bon appetito, Mr. Benito.

Turn the microphones up to high and listen to the sizzle of Great Chat. Welcome to the Off Menu podcast. That is the voice of Ed Gamble. And that is the voice of James Acaster in a way that I've never heard it before. Yes, well, I'm a bit under the weather and it started off quite high and so I thought I'd overcompensate by going quite low. Yeah. And then it's just all, that is all I got. It's a podcast where we invite a guest into the dream restaurant and ask them their favorite ever start a main course dessert, side dish and drink. Who wouldn't love it? Exactly. And our guest this week, James, is Tomasina Meyers. Tomasina Meyers, the first ever winner of MasterChef. She is a chef and she founded

Oaxaca. Oaxaca, for those of you who don't know, is a Mexican food chain. What? Street food. I mean, one of the best chains. So great. It's so delicious. We go there a lot. I've been going there for some time. You've got material. You've got material about Oaxaca. I didn't, I guess, got material about Oaxaca. Yeah. About stealing the spoons. Try and remember to mention that. Oh, I would try and bring it up. But we absolutely love Oaxaca. We're very much looking forward to chatting to Tomasina. She really knows her shares when it comes to Mexican food. Yes. But listen, Ed, if she says a secret ingredient, I'm going to chuck her out the restaurant. Are you? Yeah, I don't even care. I'll do it. And what is the secret ingredient?

This is bound to trip her up. Because she likes Mexican food, right? Yeah. The natural fries from Taco Bell. You think she might mention the natural fries from Taco Bell? Look, I know that chefs, they get lured in by junk food stuff. Remember the cum carriage? Yeah. So I reckon she's going to have a secret little soft spot for Taco Bell and their dream side, the Nacho fries. If she says those Nacho fries from Taco Bell, she is out of here. Man, but what if we kick her out of here? Yes. And then we get barred from Oaxaca. I can't cope being barred from Oaxaca. That's the point. We'll get people going for us. Get the food. Send in the great Benito. Benito. In a little discount. No, but they barred him anyway because they think he's the guy from Benito's

hat. Oh, yeah, they do think that. They think he's a rival. I forgot that Benito's been banned from Oaxaca because they think he's Benito's hat. So if she says the Taco Bell Nacho fries, she will be removed from the restaurant. The trap is set. Okay. Well, I can see she's just arriving now, James. So get in your lamp. Oh, so it's squeezing in the lamp. See you later. And I'll go and open the door for it. Here is the off menu menu of Thomasina Meyers. Welcome, Tommy, to the dream restaurant. Hello. Welcome, Thomasina Meyers to the dream restaurant. We've been expecting you for some time. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. You took the genie in your stride there. That was a very relaxed approach. That's a genie that's just appeared in front of you.

Yeah. A genie waiter. Yeah. Yeah. He's great. He's great. He's, you know, handsome. Yes. That is that I think this episode we've ever done. You know, I don't know how many episodes we've done, but this is the first time anyone's called the genie handsome. Yeah. No, you are. Bit long enough. How do you feel now? I'll tell you what, wearing this sombrero paid off. I knew I'd get called handsome. What about the moustache? Yeah, that's true. I've been growing that for ever since episode one to be fair. Yeah. Only now has it reached like the handsome length. Yeah. Pretty happy with it. What's the most handsome length for a moustache, do we think? That's a good question. Well, there was a guy called Lalo who used to work in the

cultural attaché. He was the cultural attaché to the embassy and he had those wonderful curled moustaches. He once produced Como Agua para Chocolate, which is an iconic 60s film of the Laura Esquivel novel. So this guy is a proper dude and he's got the curled moustache. You said that name so fast. Yeah. I was very impressed. This is such a highbrow podcast already. Yeah. Let's bring it down. Does it naturally curl? I think he must. Can you imagine every morning looking at yourself in the mirror, he's got a really handsome twinkly. He must be about 75 or 80 now. Just looking at yourself and just curling with wax, your little ends of your moustache. He must be quite gratifying. Yeah. That's a nice thing to do and throughout the day,

something to fiddle with as well, isn't it? Oh, I've never seen him fiddling. I think actually a moustache fiddler has got to be quite low down in the humanity stakes. I don't want to ever kiss a moustache fiddler. Does that reduce handsome level? Definitely. Quite significantly. I reckon. They're twiddling their tash. You don't want to go anywhere near them. No. A kind of a grooming in the morning, that's fine. Yeah. But if you're twiddling it. What about a beard stroker? There's a lot of beard strokers out there. Yeah. I mean, now that beards are so omnipresent. I think it's just like having a cat on your face, isn't it? So you want to stroke it? Yeah. I think you probably want to stroke it. Yeah. Only time Ed said something that I thought was

weird. A little cat on your face. Are you a foodie? Am I a foodie? We ask everyone if they're a foodie and we realize how inherently ridiculous that question is with you. Well, I remember listening to one of your book asks and you're asking this question. Some people are really offended by that. Yeah, sure. And I am never offended by that because what is wrong with being a foodie? Someone who's obsessed with food thinks about it all the time, loves ingredients, loves just thinking what flavors go together and basically thinks about food 24-7. What's wrong with that? Yep. There's nothing wrong with that in the way you've described it. I think people think of foodies as there's some level of pretension to it, but I don't think that necessarily has to be. It doesn't have to be. It's

a British thing, isn't it? Being very repellent to the idea of like, you know, thinking too much yourself or whatever. And so they think the British reaction to being a foodie is, oh, that must mean like you're a lardy da, you know, even though I mean, classic British stuff, I don't want to be seen as a lardy da foodie and then vote Boris in. I mean, come on, guys. You can't have it both ways. Oh, no, I don't want to be one of those lardy da times, but I'll trust them to run the goddamn country. Sorry, it's not a political podcast. It's not, but wait, this is a guess my goat. Angry young man today. Well, I'll just say. God, talking about gaits now, that's a good meat. There we go. What an ingredient. Yeah, there we go. That's cool. Get back to that. Get back

Goat barber care. I mean, now that is good. That is good. It's kind of like mutton, quite a case to mutton in flavor, I think. Can you tell by looking at a goat if it's going to be tasty or not? I was about to say because I was actually witnessing some gates last week with my daughter and I was telling her that between a goat and a sheep with the tail goes up or down. She was like, nah, it's not true. It's true, isn't it? A goat's tail sticks up and a sheep's tail goes down. Yeah. And a shorn sheep does actually look quite like a goat because she was saying, obviously, they look different. It's not the tail. It's all the fur. Yeah. Oh, I've just got the pun of shorn the sheep. Oh, from the cut, from the, from the walls. I've just got it. You just understood

it. Yeah. Because if you shorn the sheep, yeah, if you share it, yeah, because yeah, because everyone knows that. I think so. Oh, yeah. All right. I just got it. Really? Kids knew that. Yeah. Kids knew that when it came out. I genuinely just got it. I thought they just picked shorn because it sounded a bit. Oh, man. Because of the sound. Oh, you're an idiot. It's pepper pig a pun. I don't think so because, okay, salt and pepper is good on pig, but yeah, I don't think so. I don't think they're talking about that. No. No. Okay. I just wanted to check because my world's been turned upside down. I know. I can see that. That's like, yeah. What's the past tense for if someone sheared, isn't it? Sheared a sheep. Yeah. Yes. A shearing.

There you are. He's got to be next. Yeah. You had a shearing on? No, but when we do have him on, you can share him. Can you share him? That'd be good. Well, he'd have to be the one shearing, right? Because it's Ed Shearing. Ed Shearing. Yeah. So we have to get him to share. Am I not the tash? You're going to lose the tash. Oh, yeah. He had to share my lovely, lovely tash on. Fair enough. If anyone should do it, it should be Ed. Yeah. I got to say. Shearing, not me. No, not you. No. You're going nowhere near it. Although my name's Ed Gamble, which is another sheep-based thing, I suppose. Gambling lambs. Gambling in the springtime amongst the daisies. There you are.

So, yeah. And I do do that. I've only just got the pun of your name. So you are a foodie. Yes. Yes. When did you first realise you loved food? My brother had an action man, and I had a Cindy doll. And we did like making them a kiss. And it was cool the way you could make your eyes go like from side to side. I thought that was really cool. But ultimately, I much prefer being in the kitchen with my mother. So my brothers used to play in the playroom, and I would cook with my mother. Wow. So that was quite early on. I think that was like six or seven, basically. It's quite early. Great. I basically like food quite early.

What sort of things could you cook when you were six? Well, I think, basically, it sounds a bit uncool, but I just liked being very close to my mother. So I would get a stool, and I'd sit very, very close so that my body was kind of pressed up against hers. And then I'd just look at what she was doing. And I always thought it was quite fun. So we didn't really do much as a kid. My father worked all the time. My mother worked all the time. It wasn't a fun, but then the cooking was fun. That was the one thing I could do. It was always fun. And she'd just teach me the cool stuff. She'd always have cheap ingredients, but she'd always make them taste delicious. So she'd show me how with an onion chopped and then

cooked for 20 minutes in butter, it would suddenly be sweet and soft and just smell and taste delicious. And then she'd just transform everything that went with those onions and the same with a tomato sauce or white sauce. You know, she'd show me how if you really burnt the flour in the butter and got it all caramelized and then added the milk bit by bit, it just tastes really good and cook out the flavor of the flour. So all those like small basic building blocks. That's what I learned when I was kind of really young. And then it was only when I was kind of getting a bit older, like at school, desperate for any money at all. I just try and cook for people or show off to my parents, friends. Like there was this one friend, he'd come in from South America. He was really

glamorous. And I used to try and every time he came, I was slightly in love with him. I try and cook something more and more fanciful. So like profiteroles, I try and cook partly so I could eat the chocolate, partly because I was in love with him. I thought, you know, if I could eat profiteroles, even though he was like 20 years old me or 30 years old me, never going to work. You can't deny profiteroles. It is hard not to eat while you're cooking them. I also like make something in the night. Yesterday, I was making pancakes and trying to focus on making the pancakes and during it without even thinking, I ate an entire gingerbread man. What did he do to you?

I think I just lay in there but I didn't even think about doing it. I forgot that I was making pancakes and I had pancakes on the way and I saw this gingerbread. Who has a gingerbread man in their house? Good question. I was giving it for Christmas and I didn't eat it. It's still lying around. I forgot about it completely. It's in the cupboard. It had a little Santa hat on, I see the Santa hat. I opened the cupboard looking for the pancake ingredients, saw him and just without even thinking, just straight down the gullet. Do you only eat seasonal products on the next seasonal day? I have to wait till the next day. The Miss Valentine's Day.

But you do have to eat while you're cooking. That's the main mistake. Most people who don't cook, who doesn't taste right, what did you taste while you're cooking? We've got to taste it. We've got to enjoy the process because otherwise... Everything we're going to serve you today, I've tasted it. Have you? Great. I'm glad. Even though we don't know what it is yet, you will taste it. I will taste it. Here's a question. In a kitchen when the chefs are tasting it, do they use one little spoon and then that's the last time they use that spoon? It depends on the restaurant. I've been in restaurants where they've got millions and millions of spoons or you're in a restaurant. In my test kitchen, we have a jug of hot water.

Then you can taste and then you can swim around. Actually, when we're doing that, it's just us two, mainly, me and Carlos, Mexican. Or you wash it under a tap and you keep the same spoon. That's what a lot of people do because it seems a bit weird to just use 20 spoons, 20 times. For my normal meals, I do that. Each mouthful I have a different fork, different spoon. No fingers? No fingers at all. Just different fork, different spoon. Sometimes if it's a really big meal, I'm down to like chopsticks and stuff at the end. Anything that I've got in the cutlery drawer. What about the measuring spoons? Normally start with them. Because there's five in those. Five in one go, yeah.

You were that gingerbread man with the corkscrew, didn't you? Yeah, I had to. Poor little fella. You're terrified. But James Bond, that's a good question about the spoons I read. Yeah, because I was very impressed with that question. Imagine if it's loads of spoons or whether, I guess, in some bad restaurants, they're double-dipping. We can flip it, too. You can flip it? You taste it with the thing and then you're like, oh, I'm not wearing a hat and you flip it and you use the handle. I thought you meant just flip it over. I thought you meant just flip it over. Asked who you're eating off the handle. I bought a spoon once for my mum in Italy.

It's a wooden spoon, so this is quite clever. You didn't spoon, did you? Sorry, I don't know why that came from a spoon in my mum. Just get that thought out. Spoon, my mum. And I certainly wouldn't have paid for it. I bought a wooden spoon and it had, so one end, normal kind of spoon. What's the bit called? I don't know. I'm just going to... What's the bit called? It's not the handle. The end that's not the handle. The bowl? The bowl, let's say. And at the other end, kind of like a smaller bowl, right? And then between the two, this groove that runs from one bowl to the other, so that what you can do is, if you're selling a spoon soup and instead of like

putting your mouth on that bit all the time, you bring it out and then you tip it back and the soup goes down the little groove. And down your sleeve. Into the smaller bowl. You have a little sip and then you can kind of stir it. That sounds really messy. Yeah, it does. But I said, when you tip it back, it goes down and burns your hand. Oh yeah, she's burnt her hand a lot. My mum is riddled with burns. From the spoon? Yeah, yes, completely from the spoon. We call his mum Kruger hand. Little Kruger, we call her. Little Krugs.

Every time we go, where's little Krugs at? She comes out so fall asleep. That sounds my worst thing in the kitchen. Much worse than a foodie is a kitchen gimmick. Right, okay. I mean, that really gets my goat. What are your worst kitchen gimmicks? One present I was given by an unnamed relative. It was a rice cube. A rice cube? So it's plastic. It's a good pun. Cube, so that I could shape my rice into a cube. Finally, all those years of just having piles of rice.

I know, right? It wants corners to work with. So this is after you started working in food as well. So as soon as this happened, were you just getting loads of presents from family being like, she likes food. She knows what she's doing with food. I mean, this one, I just don't know where it came from. But also the cube. I don't know why a cube. You kind of think a rice could be a lovely round, you know. We could have a chainie ball. Round. Round and rice seems to work.

Round and rice works. Even a pyramid can be a bit, you know, 80s structural. But a cube, cubism, I suppose in the 60s, we could have had a cube. But also it's the idea of using that at home. Like, who's going to do that at home and go, I know I'm sort of by myself or with a couple of other people, but I really need my rice in a cube right now. Just spoon it out, wouldn't you? Also, what do you eat with a cube of rice? What sauce do you have with a cube of rice? Because also anything, any sauce that you put on the rice is going to damage the

integrity of the cube. Yeah. And then how do you get flavour onto the top of the cube? The bottom of the cube is going to be great, but then the top is going to be, I mean, I don't know. I guess whatever you're having with the rice, you also need a cube of that to sort of stack it on top. To all be cubes, like Lego. Yeah, Lego food. You build them all up like Lego and maybe make a big Lego figure of something you'd prefer to eat,

like a juicy ham. Jelly to juicy ham. Yeah. You could put a cube of ham on top. You could put a cube of ham. Big cube of ham. Rice. Got it, big cube.

Ham. Rice. Fried egg. Fried egg. And a cube of fried egg. Big cube of fried egg. Ham, egg and rice. If you were a cube of fried egg, would you want the yolk still in the middle of the cube,

so it's all white and you can't see the yolk, but you know it's in there? Or do you want it on the outside just for the first bites with the eye presentation? I mean, you might get so cuboid in your head. It might send you over the edge and then you start making cubed egg yolks. That'll be so wrong. Yeah. I mean, everything about a cube. You feel like you're eating in Minecraft.

Yeah, yeah. Kids love Minecraft though. Imagine that. Yeah. You make the cubed rice for your kids and you say it's Minecraft food and they love it. And you could do that with like food that maybe they were more reluctant to eat. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, famously. Yeah, a cube of Brussels sprouts.

Yeah, I don't know. Again, a Brussels sprout is nicely round. That's when they, you remember it was a while ago when they were all excited about the invention of the square watermelon. Oh, yeah. Do you remember the square watermelon? Remember that? I'm just thinking about blue watermelon now for some reason.

In my head, there's a blue watermelon. There may well be, but I'm talking about the square watermelon. I've never seen a square watermelon. It was in the news. It was on news round. And in Japan, they'd invented a square watermelon and they cost like $100 each. But they did it so they could stack them in fridges better in Japan. I stole a watermelon once.

Did you? Yeah. Where from? Here we go. Call the cops. It was from a shop in Mallorca. I was there after my A-levels. We had a dare about who could steal things.

And I thought, you know, go for a break. So I ran down the road with a watermelon. The most difficult thing to steal. Yeah. Did you subtly steal it or did you just pick it up and run out? I think I was like literally like shaking with laughter as I ran down the street. Because I was so... Laughed.

It's like a true criminal. Yeah. I even get like the joker running away laughing with a watermelon. Screaming. I just want to watch the world burn. Yeah. There's no way of concealing a watermelon to steal it at all, is there? Does she pretend to be like pregnant with child?

Yeah. But you can't be not pregnant when you go in a shop and then come out fully pregnant. In the mat click conception, in the mat click growth. In the back of a shop. Yeah. Yeah. As you leave it, just shout, that food was sexy. Still a spark in water.

A sparking. Depends actually. My, you know, my daily bread is still. But when I'm sitting down in a restaurant, I love a bit of fizz. Yeah. It makes it feel a bit special. It is what I think now. Obviously, you know, it's a bit of something special.

If it's so lovely and special and you like it so much, why not just have it every day? Well, I guess your soda stream is not always everywhere. Like, you know, at Wahaka, we've got it on tap, the fizziness. But if you haven't got it on tap, you don't really want to buy a plastic bottle just so you can have fizz. That feels a bit wasteful. When you got the first fizzy tap in Wahaka,

what's it the best day of your life? It's so exciting. It's so exciting. But then my dentist told me it's not that good for your teeth. It's just a bit of a let down. So in my line of work, why taste food 24 seven? Yeah. Permanently got food in my mouth.

So apparently that's not very good for your teeth. So then when the dentist said, and fizzy water is not very good, that made me feel a bit a bit saddened. So before then I was going crazy with the fizzy water. And now I try and, you know, just obviously I eat all the sweets all I want all day. But the fizzy water I've just got to draw a line at. Right. Yeah.

Kaila bottles fine. Fizzy Kaila bottles, flying saucers, you know, Kaila cubes, all that kind of fine. Yes. Fizzy water just got a limit. Now, I like that initially when we were talking about it, you said you don't like to have too much fizzy water because of the plastic bottles in the environment. And now the truth's come out.

And it's just because you want to eat more sweets. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You've got me. This dentist, are they a bit of a punk? Sounds like they sound a bit, you know,

like they should keep their opinions to themselves. Do you think he's like, the killjoy. He's the fun police. Yeah. Gone mad. Yeah. You mean I can't have some fizzy water.

Fizzy water. Also, you know, you're tasting food all the time for your job, stuff like that. And they're trying to like take all the fun out of it for you. Yeah. They're basically saying it's bad for your health. Your job is bad for your health. So you think this dentist should keep their opinions

about dentistry to themselves? Yes. So what would you suggest the dentist say to Tommy when she goes in for a checkup? Talk about whatever box sets they've been watching. And you know. Jaws. Yeah.

Just talk about religion, religion. Keep it off teeth. Like politics and religion. Politics and religion. So essentially, you're saying you don't think they should be a dentist. They should just be sort of a friend looming over you. Yeah.

Yeah. And just have a sneaky look at your teeth, but in a way that you don't really notice. Give them an excuse to catch up with pop culture. Yeah, exactly. You can get on board with stuff and whatever. Because otherwise, if you're a dentist and you just talk about teeth,

you might think, you know, when you go to a party at night. Or what do you talk about? Can't keep talking about teeth all night. I mean, I met an ear surgeon at a party once and he talked a lot about ear surgery, which, you know, was kind of interesting up to a point. But then after a while, you think, well, you know, maybe that's all I need to know about ear surgery.

I would have said to him, I don't need ear surgery after this conversation because you're fucking doing my ears in with the stupid stories. He would have said that as well. Yeah. I can feel my ears are about to fall off. If you say another thing about ear surgery, you're boring bastard.

I like the way you say, boring bastard. You're boring bastard. I need to cultivate that. And then hear that. See how he likes the sound of that. Why did you point at your teeth when you said that? Because I would point at my teeth when I'm talking about ears. That's the way I work.

Pop it up, it's all bread. Pop it up, it's all bread. Thomasine and Myers. Pop it up, it's all bread. Bread, rubbed in garlic, chard, blackened and olive oil. Oh my God, I made garlic bread last week. It's so good. And here she is, the savior of the podcast.

Garlic bread's the best bread. It's just a revelation. I was cooking a recipe for my column and I was like, this has got to have garlic bread. It was mussels and saffron and pernose because we're going a bit of French root. And I was thinking, garlic bread is what we need. And then I thought, I mean, I can't swear.

I was not going to swear. But not just parsley, you did actually. Okay, not just bastard parsley. What about some tarragon too? Because tarragon and butter. So I like loaded up this butter with salt and pepper and tarragon and parsley. Softly went and then slathered on the bread.

And that's the thing about butter. You can't be stingy. You can't be stingy. Now this is the other thing, butter, right? Do people finally realise that butter's good for you now? I feel like there are still some people who think, for me, butter is like a health food. Weirdly, my parents don't agree.

But butter, my granny grew up eating loads of butter. She was like a model type. She used to hang around with like modally people and few actors and people like that. She was like glamorous. She like married a kind of racing driver. She was cool. She slathered butter on everything.

Every day, butter on toast. At work, some of the young kids think butter's bad for you. And they have spreadable margarine in the fridge. Now that stuff, that stuff is bad for you. And it's got like, what are those ingredients in it? They're not even natural, they're man-made. Butter is like full of wonderful micronutrients and amigas and all that good stuff.

People are putting butter in coffee now. Have you heard about this? Bulletproof coffee. Yeah, that is mad. It's like coffee and then like grass-fed butter. A slug of, yeah. Grass-fed. I do think the butter should be from cows that eat grass

and not kept in huge sheds. Apparently, this is the one you've got to have for this coffee. I'm too scared to try it. Yeah, I got to say, I eat butter with a lot of things, like a lot. Like, I mean, this is the other crazy thing that people do these days. They have a scone and clotted cream and no butter. I mean, then they realize that the butter is the saltiness

and then the clotted cream is sweet and creamy. They're different. They provide different taste elements to the scone. Why would you just have a clotted cream? I feel stupid. I've definitely been doing that. I've definitely been doing that as well. You've got to have the layer of butter first.

Yeah, I mean, it's a whole different taste of it. Peanut butter and taste, claggy and dry without the melted butter. I agree with that. I totally, of course, go butter, peanut butter. But the clotted cream, you've given me permission now. I'm definitely doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, it's good. In our family, we take the dairies to extreme. Mince pies. So you can buy a mince pie. That's fine because we're short of time these days. Get some mince meat as well. You can either buy it or you can make it. If you bought it, you've got to start extra brand

into the mince meat. Then you put your mince meat in the oven. Then you take it out. No, you put your mince pie. You open it up, put extra mince meat in because they never have enough. They're a bit stingy, aren't they? Yeah, yeah.

Then you put your big doll at the rum, brandy butter, whatever, in. Inside? Inside. Oh, here we go. No, no, no, hang on. You bake it first. Mince pie, mince meat with the brandy stirred in.

You've got all the shots. In the oven. Get it out. It's all like golden and crusty and steaming inside. Open it up. Put in the rum butter. Pour in the cream. Extra tequila if you want.

Yes. With my father, he then adds ice cream as well. But basically, that's the mince pie extravaganza. So you're just like pimping up a store bought mince pie? I mean, it's so good. But hold on. Are you taking off the lid and putting the cream and the butter? After, after.

And the ice cream in it and then putting the lid on it? Yeah. So you then, the lid goes back on? No, no, not with the cream. So you put the lid back on with just with the butter. So the butter then melts all over the thing. And then you pour the cream on top of that. And then the brandy goes on top of that.

If I wanted to though, could I put everything in the mince pie and then put the pastry hat back on top? You have permission to do that. It just sounds fun. It would have to be a big mince pie. You'd have to make, you could make a big mince pie from scratch. I've got, I've got pictures in my veins. Completely loaded mince pie.

I do like the sound of that a lot. Yeah, it's so good. Looking at me and Ed, do you think you can tell which one was raised on butter and which was raised on margarine? I don't know which I was raised on. Do you know which one you were raised on? Yes, I thought I knew Ed as well. No, I don't think you do.

Are you margarine boy? I'm a little margarine boy. That's a little margarine boy. See, weirdly, I think we had margarine in our house as well. Yes. Yeah. Well, they did, they did, they, they sold it well. Yeah.

They sold it well. They really did. They really did. My parents didn't forfeit. They'd be wet. Yeah. Now, if I, it'll be, I don't have margarine in the fridge now. It'll be butter.

Straight up butter. I've currently got both in the fridge, but I don't know why. I don't know where the margarine came from. I don't remember buying it. Butter tastes better. Yeah. You got it for some Swiddens' Day, didn't you?

Yeah. Well, some Swiddens' Day. I don't even know. It's a day, it's a day that I buy margarine on apparently. It's supposed to be good for baking. It's supposed to be good for baking. I was trying to do a joke about you eating things on the wrong days, but then the only seasonal day I could come up with was St Swiddens' Day,

which is, so it just didn't seem like the, the right. Ed went to public school. I was wondering if he was. So you can kind of, they probably did something on St Swiddens' Day. Yeah. Kissed the girls. Kissed all the girls. Boy's school.

More of a challenge. We'd all run out of school. We'd all get on a bus and we'd go and see if we could see some girls. Hello. Happy St Swiddens. Pucker up. I did it, Georgie. Am I on the lips?

I said, I said life. Yeah, that was me. So your dream starter. It's really hard, this stuff, right? Just like going down to like your favorite one thing. So like for my starter, I cheated massively. So when I'm cooking, I like tea lots of different flavors.

I think a salad is a great starter, but not just like a lettuce leaf with no dressing on. I'm talking about, you know, you go down to your market and you see what's in season, and then you put that thing on the grill and you chuck in some toasted nuts and you chuck in some, you know, lovely colored leaves and you chuck in some cheese or you chuck in some parma ham.

You've made an amazing dressing. You've thrown some herbs. So like chargrilled, Jerusalem artichokes, toasted hazelnuts, blue cheese and radicchio. Or in the summer, it could be, you know, laser rocket and mustard leaf and maybe just some garlic rubbed toast and some delicious goat curd on.

Just like whatever is lying around and looking really delicious. Mainly, so there's an excuse to put a really killer dressing on because I think anything with good olive oil tastes really good. And then, and then dressings are just amazing. And again, fat is good for you. Olive oil is really good for you.

And then, and then just vegetables are so great. So it could be chargrilled asparagus with like a chili oil drizzled over it. Some, you know, burnt butter breadcrumbs or, you know, just, just getting excited by whatever is lying around. But I like that because you can make it in advance. Just throw it on the table. And also something quite fun about tossing a salad.

You can chuck on the herbs. The salad leaves can look fun. There's lots of texture. You can make it pretty with height. It's never good at looking, making pretty food. When I did MasterChef, they were always like, looking at my plates of food. Just looking, what the, what, what is that?

What is that? Like there was one round. Cube of rice? There was one round. Well, I had this pork chop and then I made this plum sauce, which tastes great. The pork chop's beautifully cooked and I just didn't know what to do with the plum sauce.

And it was kind of pink. And I, in a fit of panic, I poured this pink sauce all over the beautifully caramelised like charcoal pork chop. And it just looked awful. Should have used the sauce to write like a little message to the judges. I know. Like, yeah, don't pick me.

But then I went and worked with Sky, Gingel in Peace and Nurseries. And it was an all-female brigade. And a lot of them were artists. And they just made the food look so bloody beautiful. And I got really into the vegetables there too. And we used to go into the garden and just pick stuff. Like pick the radicchio with these brilliant pink leaves

and then all the artichokes or the stuff. And then, yeah, it was just fun. And then making like garlicky, like parsley oils or basil oils or coriander pestos to drizzle on. So loads of flavour. Definitely don't skip on the dressing. And, you know, just stuff loaded on. Like satisfying, hearty, beautiful.

Yeah, that's like, I like that. I think that's a good starter. Just to whet the appetite. In a normal bowl or, and this is in the first place I had this, was we had a tortilla bowl. A tortilla bowl. Crunchy tortilla bowl. Crunchy tortilla bowl. Revelation for me when I went,

when I had that for the first time. Did you? At your establishment. My try, my try to add. Did you eat all the soggy bottom bit, which soaked up with all the juices and the dressing? That's the best bit. Yeah, that's the best bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the refo beans. At the bottom, all the refo beans and stuff, we'd all get, all sock up at the bottom of the bowl. And then you really scoop that up, have a lovely time at the bottom of that bowl. Just kind of bathing and. Yeah, yeah.

I was like, no one else knows about this. I'm real clever. Yeah, yeah. I'm glad you got that. I'm impressed. Yeah, it used to be my, my regular Oaxaca order. I basically go through phases all the time, wherever I go.

I do the same thing for a while. And it takes a lot to change it. Once I've changed it, you still got the cactus tacos. They're James's favorite. I was just about to say. Are they? They were my favorite.

And then they went away and I was heartbroken. Yeah, that was Christmas. We've currently got my favorite, which is going to come off in the summer. I'm kind of mourning and eating them even more. Grilled mushroom, marinated in ancho chili, which is sweet, not spicy,

rounded, deep, earthy flavor. Marinated in that, like ancho oil, grilled, and then served with grilled cheese and a kind of salsa verde, fresh, vibrant, citrusy, tamatillo salsa, corn tortilla. Grilled cheese, mushroom. Very nice.

The grill, the like bit of grilled cheese that you've had on like the steak as well is, I'd not had something like that before, and that is just brilliant. Yeah. I think you should serve bowls of those. I know, yeah. What in your cheese holes?

In some cantinas in Mexico, they serve just the cheese in this whole like, they call it chicharon, which is basically crackling, you know, pork crackling. Yeah. But they do a cheese crackling. They just do this whole like,

of grilled cheese. Oh, I mean, that's just a big bit of grilled cheese. Big whole bowl of grilled cheese bites. And you know what you can do with that stuff as well, which is really fun, is you can just crumble it. So when you really grill it, it really goes crunchy.

You can just crumble it over stuff, which is like little kernels of crunchy, crispy, caramelized cheese. What's the secret of those cactus tacos? There's something in there, there's something in there that keeps me coming back. Is it the sauce?

What are you putting in the sauce? Well, I think the ones you're talking about, it's new potatoes, kind of we saute onions, garlic. New potatoes in the sauce? No, not the sauce. The sauce, the cactus sauce. Do you remember any new potatoes in the actual taco?

No, I think this one, the cactus and courgette one. You talking about that one? Yeah, that's what we're talking about. Summary, there's a bit of new potato, there's some garlic, onion, olive oil, mint, tarragon, charcoal, courgette,

chunks of it. And then the cactus, which they have in smoothies in the morning in Mexico, so good for you, cactus. Delicious, the cactus stuff at Oaxaca. Always get whatever cactus stuff is on there. Do you? Every time.

Yeah, I'll look for it. Did you know that Mexico is mega biodiverse? This is what a scientist at Q told me the other day when I was doing this event. It's mega biodiverse. So in England, we have 1500 plant species. In Mexico, they have 30,000. Wow.

So when you go to Oaxaca, they have all these crazy world herbs, all these crazy things that taste so different to our herbs. So that's why we use tarragon and parsley and chives and mint and all these different things to try and get some of the flavors of those crazy herbs. Oh, man. I can't wait to make those tacos.

James, you're never making those tacos, right? You're never making those tacos. You can make those tacos. I can cut up a cactus? Yeah. But by a cactus from the garden shop. You can sort out an onion. Garden center.

Don't use a cactus from the garden center. Don't eat the spindles. They're bad for you. Yeah, I won't eat the spindles. But you can't. That's all you've got to do. Am I being an idiot? You can't go to a garden center, buy a potted cactus,

and then chop it up and put it in a taco. You've got to eat an edible one. You've got to eat an edible one, James. Yeah. Uh, if it goes in my mouth, I don't eat it up. What's that? I'm not coming to your house for cactus tacos. That's edible.

Probably find a bit of plant pot in there. No, no, no, no, no. Bit of soil, maybe. Gift for you, apparently. The texture. Yeah. You're like, buy a gem, buy a gut, buy a dude. Yeah, give for that.

So your starter is you've listed a huge amount of different salads and potential ingredients. It's a salad. And I know it's a salad, but does it have all of those things in it? It has whatever. Where, on my desert island, am I on my desert? You're not on a desert island.

You're in the dream restaurant. I'm in the dream restaurant. Unless you want to transport the dream restaurant to the desert island. So the dream restaurant, it depends. It depends what time of the month we're in. Whatever time of the month you want. Whatever month you want every time of the year.

You're telling me I have to be more specific. You have to be more specific. I don't know. I think it's pretty funny to have a professional chef on and the starter is a salad. Okay, do you know what I'm doing? Curveball now. I'm just going to change it right now as we speak

because I can't be more specific. So I'm going to go, I'm going to have a cheese souffle and I'm going to have a Castel Franco salad on the side with toasted hazelnuts and pickled shallots. What's Castel Franco? It is a really cool bitter leaf from Northern Italy. It's white with little pale pink flecks in it. It is the prettiest salad leaf you've ever seen.

Wow, like a butterfly. Yeah, it's like a butterfly. It is. So cheese souffle and butterfly salad. Yeah. Got it. Main course. Mutton.

A beef. Mutton. Okay, sorry. Barbacoa. Mutton barbacoa. Barbacoa is Ed's favourite band. Let's break that down. Mutton.

Old sheep. Old sheep. Old sheep. Flavour. Good flavour, like the goat. Tail hanging down to the ground. I mean the goat, the goatiness in that mutton. I mean it's got flavour.

It's been eating grass for a long time. It's had a lot of life experience. It's got depth. It's got story. Get the shoulder. Put in the oven. Let the oven do all the whole work. Can cook it as long as you want.

Last one I cooked was two weeks ago. I had to do, I had to have all the people from the Guardian Feast team for dinner. What? Yeah, like I had to cook for Otolenghi. What? I know. Never happened. That's petrifying.

Petrifying. Do you? God. Petrifying. Best Instagram account in the game, by the way, Otolenghis. Oh yeah? Makes me so hungry. I spent like an hour scrolling through that.

Oh, it's a food? Oh yeah, it's food. It's not just selfies. Having a great time. Yeah. He might have a different personal one as well. Yeah. So he came over for mutton shoulder.

Yeah. Who else did he have? Ronald McDonald. Yeah, he came too. And he really liked it. Yeah. Yeah. He said this please.

It's the bloody Big Mac. Yeah. Yeah. And the hamburger. He came over and went, you're lucky the lamb burger's not here. Different guy. Yeah.

My cousin. Yeah. Same outfit. Yeah. Wool. By the wool. The lamb burglar. He's behind bars.

Yeah. Come on. You've just learned about sheep puns, and now you're doing some of your own. He only just got short of the sheep, but now he's doing behind bars. Very, very impressed by you. I like that.

Proud of myself. Well done, buddy. Proud of myself. Thank you. Well done. Leaps and bounds. Barbecoa. Oh, and then he came around.

Barbecoa. They make in the center valley of Mexico. They dig a pit. Yes. They put wood in it. They marinate their lamb with a goat with ancho chili, soft, sweet, rounded, deep earthy. Guajillo, deep reddish, bricky color,

less flavor, but great coloring. You could put up this one. I had pasilla de oaxaca, or pasilla miche, which is a smoky chili from oaxaca. You can only get it in oaxaca. They hardly make it grow any of it anymore. It's smoky and petroleum tasting, almost. It's so incredible, the flavor of that chili.

So you basically get all these dry chilies, and you take out the seeds, and you taste them in a dry frying pan. Just gently cook quickly, because otherwise you burn them. You just want to bring out the flavors. Then you cover them with boiling water, rehydrate them, and then you grind them

with allspice, cinnamon stick, human seeds, clove, black pepper, you dry toast, onion, garlic, tomatoes, a bit of tortilla. You put it all in your up and down blender. You've got this really deep reddish paste, whole head of garlic. I did the garlic, didn't I? And then you cook it.

Then you manually slather it over your shoulder for a couple of days. The mountain shoulder. Yeah, I did try it on my shoulders once, but it stained. That's why I cover my shoulders all the time. I'm laying you straight on them. All over those shoulders.

All over those shoulders. And then I put it in the oven overnight, because I was really worried about cooking for Yotam. And would it be good enough? So I had to really slow cook this shoulder to make sure you liked it. Yeah, and then the next day I stirred it with more of the paste, added the chocolate, added a bottle of red wine,

cooked it down, cooked it down, until it became this kind of concentrated, like pasty, slow cooked shreds of mutton meat thing in my big cooking pot. And then we had it with corn tortillas and fresh slaw, wedges of lime, guacamole. That's what we had. That's one of my favourite food descriptions

on the podcast ever. That sounds so good. Do you have a pic to cook it in? No, but I have got, so my father's just built my kitchen. My father's just built all the staircases and windows and kitchen in my new house. Wow.

He's cool. 78, pretty good, no? And I got these, can I mention a brand name? Yeah. Gag and How, ovens. I find it hard to control my eroticism. These ovens, they are so amazing, these ovens. Horny ovens.

They are so horny. The way the door opens is so cool. Shout out to Gag and How. Actually, the gas hob is Fisher-Pykel, which is also great. Shout out to them too. Yeah, they're also great. Thank you, kids toys. This door, you said it's real sexy how it opens.

How's it open? It's just, there's something about the kind of smooth click and then it just goes, and it just glides open. It just sounds nice actually. Who does the ovens on the Great British Bake-Off where you open the oven and then you slide it inside? Memories. You know, they blow my mind.

It's like a DeLorean or something. Fuck that. Open those ovens and slide them in. Did they ask you on? Did you click on that? He's been on it. I've been on it. I've been on it.

Well, the word just has to get thrown around quite a lot. Delightful. It went so badly, it became a meme. Mine are high too. You don't want to kneel down for an oven. No, I don't want to kneel down. Yeah, they're way too low. Yeah, you want it high up.

Ridiculous. Yeah, so really, the kitchen is stacked against you on that show? No, James. You had it. They were nobling you. They were nobling me. They were nobling you, mate. I wanted a pit and they wouldn't give me one.

A pit? You wanted a pit, they wouldn't give you a pit. Shame on them. I love it. They look great if you went on Bake-Off and you just dug a pit in that tent. And then you just made your cake in that. And I'm not using those ovens, I'm doing pit cooking.

Might be wasting your time, your precious cooking time. Digging it. Yeah, but a bit of good episode though. I'm going to go back on it. Rematch. I don't think you're welcome. How did the dinner party go? Did everyone lose their minds?

It was really fun, actually. I did feed the mess girl. So that was good. Yeah, always do that. Ed loves that. Everyone loves that. You loved that too. We had a brilliant night where we had far too much of that.

Yeah, that was the last night that I loved it though. Too much. We went to a posh food testing thing in a test kitchen. Santiago lastras. Oh, Santiago. He's lovely. And it was so good and we got absolutely hammered. Yeah.

With Professor Green. Yeah, we did. He likes Mexican. It was a great night. It was a really good night. It was a great night. But his restaurant's opening soon, I think. It is.

Cole. Yeah. I can't wait. I'm going to go back. I want those skate tacos again. He's a deed. He's a deed. Sorry to plug another Mexican restaurant.

Santiago is a deed. We love him. Yeah. He's good. Also though, you will destroy him. Is that right? Will I destroy him? Yes.

Take him down. You aim to destroy him? Santiago, I'm coming for you. Yeah. If you're listening. Santiago came to my birthday party and drank so much tequila. Told on you. That should be a part of the podcasters that we have.

Chefs come on and snitch another chef. That's a good idea. That sounds so delicious, that mutton barbacoa. Yeah. I want to try it. It's essential that you pair it with really wispy shaved slaw, like really finely sliced radish that you can see through them and carrot and a bit of red cabbage, white cabbage.

So it looks pretty as well. And then crunchy. Mexican food is a lot about contrast of texture, I find. You know, so you can have soft corn, unctuous meat, crispy slaw, lovely salsa, fiery heat. So will the slaw be your dream side dish? Or is your dream side dish something else? No, that's the slaw's on the taco, James.

So what is the side dish? Okay. So the side dish is really good. Okay. So you get some spuds. It's quite nice with new potatoes, this dish. So you boil them or steam them till they're tender, and then you smash them a bit, which is quite fun.

The rolling pin or your hand or something. Depending on how angry you are. Yeah, or jammed or throw them against the wall. Yeah. And if they stick, they're cooked. Is that how? Yeah. Yeah.

Sounds good. Is that with all food? I don't think a new potato sticks. You're wrong there. They're never ready. He's a fraud. He's a fraud. And then you mash it.

And then you don't mash it, you just smash it a bit. So you just squash it a bit. So you break the skin a bit. You lean on them a bit. This is not a full mashing, but I'm coming for you. I'm coming for you. Yeah. So you lightly crush the new potato.

Yeah. Ben, my favorite instrument in the kitchen. You get your pesto mortar. It's a big one. It's none of these piddly small ones where you can't do anything because everything's flying out. It's a really big, heavy one. And in the bottom of it, you put three or four really fat

cloves of garlic. Not the supermarket kind, but the stuff you get from a proper food purveyor, like a market or something. Big fat cloves of garlic. Smash them up with some sea salt, some peppercorns. Loads of thyme. You can put rosemary in there too or oregano or margarine. But thyme is for Greeks.

You can buy it in the supermarket. Smash all that up. Then you put lots of olive oil on, like masses, 100 mils, five, six, seven, eight tablespoons. Mash it all up to this garlicky thyme black pepper paste. And you smear it all over the potatoes. And then you put it in the oven, really hot oven. And then you roast them until they're all crispy, crunchy,

golden, garlicky, delicious. How big is this pestle and mortar when you said about it? I bath in it sometimes. Right. Yeah, bubble bath. And the pestle. Actually, which is the pestle? Which is the mortar?

Good question. The mortar goes... The mortar's the baseball bat. The smasher one. The baseball bat. Yeah. Okay. And the pestle's the bowl.

The pestle is the bowl. Yeah. Pestle on its own is quite a funny word. Yeah, you never hear it on its own. No, I'm just going to just get me a pestle. Yeah, I've got the mortar. I've bought my mortar. It sounds like one of those things you put up your bottom.

Huh? What is one of those things you put up your bottom? What's that called? One of the things you put up your bottom. What is that? What is that? There's loads of different things that... Yeah, there's...

I mean, you've spoken to enough medical professionals in your time. You're a doctor friend, you're dentists. I'm sure you've spoken to some arse doctor. You've got many, many, many stories about all the people that you've got. A pessary. It's a pessary. A pessary. What's a pessary?

It's men. It's men. They put something up your bottom. I thought that was a suppository. What's a suppository? That definitely is something that goes up your bottom, I think. Pupert. Yeah.

Yeah. But... But, yeah, I guess... Yeah. Stop saying that. Yeah. All right. Sorry.

Although, what we've learned is you can... Anything can go up there. Apart from your pestle, because it's too big, right? It's too big. You could fit a butt in the pestle. You could fit a butt in the mortar. Butt plug. What's the same butt plug as that?

She's lost it. Yeah. Tom has seen us absolutely lost it from the list. No, she said butt plug. And she's absolutely losing it, laughing her head off. Absolutely losing it. Just can't stop laughing now. We've done well to get her back in this episode.

Absolutely losing it now. Mate, I don't know if it was a... The first episode, we don't even make it to the drink. Yeah. The guest said butt plug and then laughed. Can't stop laughing about it. Mainly because you're thinking of the pestle as a bathtub. And so there would be a plug in the bathtub, wouldn't there?

Oh, yeah. There would be a plug in the bathtub. Maybe that's... Plug in the bathtub. Yeah, I didn't think about that either. Yeah, plug. Okay, put it together. Just wipe the tears away from you.

You're in the crime of base. I'm back. I'm back. I'm back. So that sounds... I mean... That sounds delicious. The potato sound delicious.

Even though we arrived. Yeah, the butt plug. That's not your side dish. The butt plug is not on the menu in any way. But the potato sound delicious. Stop saying that. What? Does that potato dish have a name?

Please don't say butt plug again. Crispy garlicky spuds. Crispy garlicky spuds. Spud plug. Your drink? Now, a lot of tequila going on in Oaxaca. I had the tequila flight once. Very nice.

I'm straight up Margaritas. I love tequila anyway, which way? I mean, tequila is just the best drink ever. So basically, your Garvey plant sits there in the sunshine for 10 years, sunbathing, and then all that solar energy is put inside a bottle. I mean, I wonder if it makes you feel so good.

And dance, dance. Do you want to dance when you drink? Tequila is different from mescal, by the way. Have you worked that out? That when you drink mescal, you don't have the same feeling. But when you drink tequila, I mean, I know that my more snobby Mexican aficionado friends think it's just mescal.

But there's something joyful about tequila. When I go to a music festival, I'm always armed with a bottle of tequila. That is like dance magic. I'd say mescal doesn't make me want to... As much as I enjoy drinking all that mescal with you, Ed, I did feel pretty sad. Yeah, mescal made me want to get an Uber home.

Yeah. But it was delicious, though. It had coffee. It tasted like coffee. Shmoky. It did taste like coffee. It was very, very nice. Yeah, and I love whiskey.

And mescal and whiskey taste, they've got lots of comparisons. Shmoky, piti, delicious. But yeah, I think tequila is a diamond drink. Tequila with chocolate is very good. So chocolate ice cream, homemade chocolate sauce. No, vanilla ice cream, homemade chocolate sauce with lots of tequila in it. That is killer.

Oh, wow. Sounds amazing. Sounds really good. Is that what I'd like to drink? Is that a drink? No, that's not a drink. Well, tequila poured over anything, actually. Any pudding.

Sorbet in a mousse. Yeah, I mean, tequila can be pretty good with anything. You could do a chocolate and vanilla milkshake with tequila in it. Would that work? Yeah, you could do that. But we're all agreed that if you pour tequila over anything, it makes it a drink.

No, we've not said that makes it a drink. If it's in a glass. If it's in a glass. The slice of apple pie in a glass and pour tequila over it is a drink. No, you lost your mind. What is your actual dream drink, Tomasina? Is it a tequila-based drink?

Well, I was going with the salad riff here, thinking, is it going to be wine? Is it going to be whiskey? Is it going to... I love beer, too. I love a shandy, really nice ale from a pub with a bit of elder sour. And you're just doing what you did with the starter, where you're naming all the drinks,

and then you're going to stop and look at us as if that's your choice. I remember a supply teacher once at my school, was teaching a lesson, and we had to write about our weekend or whatever. And she was like, so, you know, for example, I would say, if I'm talking about my weekend, me and my friends, we went to... Oh, there's this lovely lake near my house.

We went for a lovely walk around it. It's in the sunshine, and we stopped at a pub, and we had a shandy, and then a kid at the back of the class went, you're odd. I absolutely loved it. One of my favourite heckles at a teacher. We had a shandy, you're odd, miss.

Now, I enjoyed that story for a number of reasons. Firstly, the story itself. And secondly, when you said shandy, Tom has seen a very quietly whispering into the microphone, hand shandy. Is that what you said? Didn't even hear that. That's slander.

We're recording this. It's a butt plug. You were coming up to them. It's so blue. I was so engrossed in my own story, I didn't even hear the heckle. I was doing a story about a teacher getting heckled and getting heckled myself.

Hand shandy. He suggested my supply teacher told us all that they stopped at a pub and whacked each other on. No, that's disgusting. Yeah, that is disgusting, actually, Tom. Yuck. Tequila. I think tequila.

It's got to be tequila. With anything or just straight up tequila? I really like sipping tequila with beer. That's really good. So, like, you're sitting down, having your meal, and you've got a really good beer, and then you're sipping your tequila alongside. We can get you a cold beer and a little tequila.

Sipping tequila. That's great. What do you think about this, though? I'll go with a friend who does really big sips. It's me. I'm the friend. Big sips. That's his neat name.

I do big gulps. He does really big sips, and whenever we're out for a drink, he finishes his drink way quicker. So sipping tequila would not last two seconds with him. That's where you have the beer. Yeah, but I'd do that in two or three, I think. Just such big sips.

It's crazy. You're asking me to help this man? What do you think of it? What do you think of it? Like, it looks the same as anyone else taking a normal sip. So it's not like he goes, and he's really, like, going for it. He just goes, normal little sip,

and then puts it down, and half a glass is gone. And I'm like, how did you even do that? Look, a pelican. Just draining it. That look good. That's why I tend to burn out on a night out at around 10.30, though, I think. Yeah.

Because I've had such big sips. Maybe you need to get that, like, sparkling water alongside. Yeah, or maybe a sippy cup. Like a kid's sippy cup. Not going to be good for your look. No, I don't know. I can make it part of my thing. I could start dressing as a baby.

Yeah. Start dressing as a baby with his little sippy cup. Yeah. And then when anyone goes, why are you dressed as a baby? I was like, my sips were too big. What sort of beer are you having? I like a brown ale.

A brown ale. Or a brown lager. Or a kind of light ale. I quite like the old fashion, like John Smith. Or London Pride. Or what I discovered when I was feeding my baby. Because you're supposed to, like, drink Guinness. Feed your baby.

Brown ale? Brown ale to your little baba. As a mother, as a feeding mother, you're supposed to drink lots of Guinness. And then I discover this thing called milk stout. Now, that stuff is delicious. It's light stout, but it's got a bit of lactose in it. It's like this kind of milky, slightly, not sweet,

but just less bitter. It's bloody delicious. So would you like a milk stout and a sipping tequila? No, I'd like an amber. Amber. I'd like a brown lager. An amber. You only want the milk stout if you're breastfeeding, right?

Well, no, I still like it even when I'm not anymore. It's quite good. But maybe in the winter. Not really even my sipping tequila. Just separately, just as a like thing sometimes. So like an amber ale and a sipping tequila. Lovely. Here's a question for you.

When does a sip become a gulp? You're obsessed. Listen, man, I'm trying to help you. OK, let's try. You don't need to help me, I'm fine. That was a gulp. Oh, so the gulp is when it goes down. A gulp is the going down bit rather than the size of the amount of...

And the gulp is, yeah, it's not about volume. See, look at this. I've got that much water left. Yep. That's like a centimetre. Is that two sips for you? Yeah, or three. Really?

That's definitely three. Yeah, there it goes. I don't even know how you did that. That was just magic. I've never seen that before. That's like, he needs help. That's just a normal sip. It's not a normal sip.

You didn't see it from the outside. It looked freakish. Nothing normal about that. Yeah. How much water did you drink today? You disconnected your jaw like a python. We arrive at the dessert, my favourite of all the courses, and I'm feeling pretty optimistic because you've mentioned

minced pies in great detail, and you've mentioned put in tequila over ice cream. It sounds like a good course. We've got coming up here. I mean, it's just... This is quite a boring one. I didn't put much salt into the pudding, actually. Oh, no.

Hmm. He's... Interesting. Interesting. Because quite often, I just make these chili, spiced, tequila-infused chocolate truffles, and then we just hand those out at the end of a meal. And then I thought...

That sounds delicious, though. So then I thought back to... Yeah, because I like cheese as well. I do like cheese. In your face! I mean, my husband, for instance, would like a Welsh rabbit for pudding. Well, your husband can go to hell.

Your husband sounds like a good guy. I'm on board with that. But, listen, pudding, I think classics are the best, right? You can pick cheese if you want, Tommy. Well, I think you have to get... You want to join your husband in the eternal fires of pages. I think basically any booze with pudding, because it can't be too sweet.

I think pudding's too sweet, it slightly ruins it. Yeah. Booze offsets it, and also makes you drunk. I'm just a happy, you know, coincidence. Crème brûlée is pretty damn good. Yeah. Toasted, caramelised, sugar.

Yes. It's good, always. So I like that. And then creamy underneath, you could put a bit of, you know... So turn in there, you could put... Yeah, you could put any kind of booze in that. Cream.

I don't want to put stuff on my crème brûlée. I want it pure, purest, or tart. I mean, a tart is a wonderful thing. Yes. A crumbly... Yeah, you've made yourself laugh. Word tart, now, haven't you? You laughed first.

I didn't laugh? Yeah, you did, James. Yeah, yeah, I laughed. Yeah, because you knew what was coming. What are you insinuating? I know where this is going. A crumbly, buttery pastry that, like, melts in your mouth, like, is just so good.

So, like, a treat or tart, or a kind of nutty, almond pastry tart, with maybe some fruit on it, baked. So it's all caramelised and crispy and crunchy, and a bit, um, yeah. A bit, what's the word? Not crunchy, chewy, slightly chewy, when it's gone kind of caramelised.

That is good with lots of double cream pulled over. Yes. So which... Maybe I have the tart. Maybe I have the tart. I think you convinced yourself of the tart, there. Yeah. What kind of tart is this?

It is a frangipane. It's a fruit frangipane tart with some booze pulled over, vanilla ice cream. Double cream. Maybe it's a treacle tart. Do you like a treacle tart? Or the crème brûlée? No, the crème brûlée's out of the running now.

Crème brûlée's out. It's going to be... It's going to be... Treacle tart. Treacle tart with cold pouring cream. Yeah. Sounds nice. Not too sweet.

Pretty sweet, though. Lots of fresh lime, a bit of treacle. Lots of gone syrup. Old breadcrumbs, using them up, and that cold pouring cream. Nice. Delicious. Old breadcrumbs.

That said to nickname? Yeah. Old breadcrumbs, big sips. A region menu batch you now. Sparkling water. Bread, rubbed in garlic, charred. Starter, cheese souffle. Olive oil.

With olive oil on the bread, absolutely. Starter, cheese souffle, with the butterfly salad. Or Castle Franco. Olive oil. Olive oil on the starter, as well. Main course. Mutton, barbeque. With shaved slaw.

Side dish of crispy, garlicky spuds. Drink, amber ale with a sip of tequila on the side, and dessert, a treacle tart with cold pouring cream. Delicious. I would most like that, mutton. I want to try that so bad, and I want to try the spuds, actually, but you gave the recipe on that,

so maybe I think people should try and make that at home. Definitely. It's so easy. Got the full recipe there. But by the way, they shrink. The potatoes shrink. You always have to make double what you expect to eat, and they still always go.

Thank you very much for coming into the Dream Restaurant, Thomasina Meyers. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. There we have it. She said nacho fry. No, she didn't, James. She didn't say nacho fries.

Then who didn't just kick out the restaurant? You kicked her out the restaurant, but she was leaving anyway, so it didn't make sense. Oh, I was very rude to her. You shouldn't kick the guests in the bum when they leave. That's what I do every time. It's customary in the genie world. An amazing menu, wonderfully described,

got to say. Delicious. Mutton, barbeque probably goes up there with one of my favorite dishes we've ever had on the podcast. Yeah, I loved that description. Also, a lot of detailed descriptions, not just what the food's made of and the ingredients,

but how to make it. Yeah. So listeners, come on. Get involved. We want to see you making those potatoes. Send us some pictures. If you make the potatoes, listen to the podcast. She tells you exactly how to do it.

Make the potatoes, send us a picky. Go back, listen to the Marcus Samuelson episode. Listen to how he make nocky. Make it, send us a picture. Listen to how Susie's grandmother makes the lemon drizzle cake. Make that. Tweet them all up on Ito.

Listen to how Joel Domit makes a fizzy strawberry protein shake. Make it. Yes. Throw it in the bin. Don't send us a picture. And make sure when you tweet any pictures, you say, dear Benogorgon, I have made the dish.

Please don't kill me. Please don't eat me in the upside down, Benogorgon. So don't forget to message the Benogorgon on Out of Menu Official and Out of Menu Official. Instagram and Twitter, respectively, or the other way around. And pop yourself onto our website, off-menupodcast.co.uk.

Tomasina, a wonderful guest. Obviously, go to Oaxaca. If you've not been, what are you doing with yourselves? Check it out. You've got to go. You've got to go. They've got a cookbook all about how to cook Mexican food at home.

Get that as well. Remember, cook some dishes from that. Take a picture. Send it to the Benogorgon. As an offering. As an offering. Please, Benogorgon, don't kill me. Yes.

So thank you very much for listening to the off-menu podcast. We will see you again sometime soon. Goodbye. Bye. Ever wondered about the world's greatest mysteries? Who built the pyramids? Where is Bigfoot?

I'm over here. Is time travel possible? Oh, no. From invisibility to where the aliens are living amongst us. It's Microscope, the improvised comedy show from the award-winning John Kearns and me, Matthew Inns, an all-round nice guy. Where's it available?

I'll tell you. iTunes, Spotify, Acast and all the other places you get podcasts from. It's Microscope. Hello, it's me, Amy Glendale. You might remember me from the best ever episode of Off Menu. Where I spoke to my mum and asked her about seaweed on mashed potato

and our relationship's never been the same since. And I am joined by... Me, Ian Smith. I would probably go bread. I'm not going to spoil it in case. Get him on, James and Ed. But we're here sneaking in to your podcast experience to tell you about a new podcast that we're doing.

It's called Northern News. It's about all the news stories that we've missed out from the North because, look, we're two Northerners. Sure, but we've been living in London for a long time. The new stories are funny. Quite a lot of them crimes. It's all kicking off.

And that's a new podcast called Northern News. We'd love you to listen to. Maybe we'll get my mum on. Get Glendale's mum on every episode. That's Northern News. When's it out, Ian? It's already out now, Amy! Is it?

Yeah, get listening. There's probably a backlog. You've left it so late.