[french].

That's welcome to France to you and me.

I'm traveling throughout this beautiful country to explore the very best in French cuisine.

Bon appetit.

It's a personal journey.

It's just about the best place I've ever been to.

It's where I learned to cook.

Now, this is spectacular.

And it was the home and inspiration for one of my biggest food heroes, Keith Floyd.

And what's more, I've bought his motor.

This was Keith Floyd's very own car for 16 years, and it's now mine.

Gives me goosebumps.

So join me as I rediscover the food destination that has it all.

Look at that.

[giggle] [theme music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Today, my French adventure brings me to a magical lake fed by crystal clear Alpine waters and a town where meandering canals meet ancient, winding streets.

This is Annecy.

And if it sounds like a fairy tale, just wait until you see the food.

[light music] ♪ ♪ My journey so far has taken me to some spectacular places, but I didn't know this ever existed.

I've never been here before.

When you think of lakes like this, you think of Lake Como in Italy.

But this place really is spectacular.

Annecy is the capital of Haute-Savoie in Eastern France, less than an hour's drive from the Swiss border.

The town straddles the mouth of the winding Thiou River, at the northern tip of France's third largest lake, the beautiful mountain-fringed Lake Annecy.

[upbeat music] What you have is Annecy at the far end and all dotted around the lake are small, tiny little villages.

And inside the villages, you have some amazing restaurants.

Some of the finest restaurants in France.

Yep, this is a special place, all right.

And where there are fantastic restaurants, very often there's great produce to be found.

♪ ♪ And today's extra special.

It's market day.

[lively music] ♪ ♪ Twice weekly at 7:00 AM sharp, the streets of Annecy's beautiful old town come alive with the sound of.

[sneeze] Not that, but hundreds of shuffling market goers-- ♪ ♪ Hungry for fresh fruit and veg, pastas, and local speciality sweets, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And this morning, I'm joining the throng.

I couldn't help but spot this.

This is what, us as a kid, you used to call Sputnik veg.

Kohlrabi, it's just wonderful.

Brilliant pickled.

Really just simply peeled, thinly sliced, and just with a little bit of vinegar, salt, and sugar.

We used to serve that to the pigs.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ What a wonderful market this is along the river.

From plums-- these are quite interesting.

All manner of different, sort of, squashes as well.

Generally for savory dishes, but these are amazing in desserts.

They make wonderful ice cream combined with ginger.

And that goes for pumpkin as well.

But Italy's not too far away from here, and they use a lot of pumpkin inside of ravioli and that kind of stuff with a little bit of almonds.

Delicious.

Another thing that's really good for desserts is this.

You wouldn't normally associate fennel.

But fennel in a chocolate cake, just a few slices of this in the bottom of a dish, put the chocolate cake mix on the top, and bake it, and the fennel comes all the way through.

Just look at this in front of us, Rob.

Look, lemon.

Merci.

Now, for this classic dish, I'm going to make a vierge.

It's a dish that I first learned when I came to France originally, and it's just basically a warm dressing of tomatoes, herbs, lemon, and olive oil.

It's a classic, classic dressing and a sauce that goes with most fish.

[french] of this.

[speaking french] You can always tell the good market stall as well because it's generally got few people buying it of a certain age.

You see, it's a good tip.

And judging by the crowd, there's loads of good stalls around here.

Just look at those, tomatoes on the vine.

Reminds me of them at the bottom of my garden.

[speaking french] Fabulous.

Right.

That's the souvenir hunting done.

Time for a spot of lunch.

And my crafty crew have found the perfect spot for my first cook.

Now, this dish is a true French classic.

Well, part of it anyway.

This is a classic sauce vierge, or otherwise known as the virgin sauce.

I like to keep it nice and light with just some fresh herbs, tomatoes, touch of onion, a little bit of garlic, and some coriander seeds.

Now, what you have to do with these tomatoes is de-skinned and deseed them.

It's called concasse.

And what you do is just de-skin them.

And to do that, take the eye out.

A little cross in the bottom.

You're not cutting it all the way through.

This just helps when it comes to peeling them really.

And then what you need is a pan of boiling water, put them in the boiling water, and count to 10, maybe 15.

Firm tomatoes like this will probably want about 15 seconds.

And it's a good idea to have some iced cold water here.

So when they're ready, you can lift these out now.

The skin should start to blister slightly.

And just stop the cooking in ice cold water, which they are.

And it only takes literally seconds for these to be ready.

And what you do with a knife, you see the skin just peels off.

This is why it's really quite important to use the firmer tomatoes.

If you've got ripe ones, you literally want them in the pan for no more than three or four seconds.

Keep the skins, of course, because you use these in a variety of different things-- stocks, sauces.

Lose that out of the way.

Next, to make the concasse of tomato, all you do is cut the tomatoes in half, in half again.

And then with your knife, carefully remove the seeds.

Now, it's quite crucial when you do this because you don't want seeds in the sauce.

The seeds tend to make the sauce go pink.

There's nothing wrong with that but just to make it look nicer as well.

And actually, it tastes a lot nicer.

So you've got these nice little petals of tomato.

It's very, very simple to do.

And then with another knife, we can chop these into a classic concasse shape, which is basically just dice really.

So there you have it, concasse of tomatoes.

Really simple, deseeded and de-skinned.

Now, for our fish, this is red mullet or rouget.

It's an amazing fish, highly prized, highly sought after.

This actually grows all around the Mediterranean.

I'm going to use this to go with our classic vierge.

Now, so often, I've heard it called goat fish back in the UK as well.

That's another name for it.

But rouget or red mullet, that's what it's known as.

It's very different to snapper.

May look like snapper, but the taste is very different as well.

So to fillet it, run the knife underneath.

Remove the nice fillets.

This is a round fish.

It's round, Rob.

Look.

Flat fish, flat.

There's four fillets on a flat fish, two on this little fella.

And what we do is just insert the knife under the gills 45 degrees really, flip the knife the other way, and slide the knife along the backbone like that.

Now, I'll move that to one side.

Next, a little bit of oil in our pan.

Now, you'd be surprised to see there's no butter in this.

You don't need it.

In goes the fish.

Now, when you're cooking fish like this, very, very quickly.

[sizzling] Literally fish like this is going to take probably a minute, no more, to cook.

So at this point, we can grab a little bit of black pepper.

Touch of salt.

No butter in here.

We just color this nicely just on one side.

Careful not to add too much oil to it as well.

You want it to almost dry fry really.

Get a nice, hot nonstick pan whenever you're doing anything like this.

Because particularly red mullet, it's got a skin that tends to stick.

If the pan's not hot enough or you're not using a non-stick pan, it will stick to the base.

This is a perfect example.

Look.

How to tell whether a fish is cooked?

See, halfway up the side of the fish, Rob, look.

It's halfway up the side.

Then all we do is then lift it over.

Flip it over like that.

We turn it over once.

We don't use the dreaded fish slice and keep turning it over and turning it over.

We leave it off the heat.

Look at that.

Beautiful piece of fish.

Really, really simple.

And next up, we can make our sauce.

And the sauce for this is so easy.

Olive oil, really good olive oil.

You must use extra virgin olive oil for this.

It doesn't work with veg oil.

And all I'm going to do is just warm this up, just gently warming it.

We're not boiling the ingredients inside it.

And this is where different recipes vary.

There's a famous chef called Michel Guerard that back in the '80s he kind of revived this sauce and made it really popular again.

It contains lemon and olive oil at its base and sometimes coriander seeds, which I'm putting in here.

But mainly, and a lot of the time, it's got garlic.

Now, way back in the '50s and '60s, it contained a lot more garlic than I'm going to put in.

I'm just going to put a light amount of garlic.

And then a selection of herbs.

So we've got some chervil.

This wonderful, aniseedy note as well.

A little bit of dill.

And this is where you can mix and match, but I'm going to use some chives.

And then this stuff I think is really important in a vierge, tarragon.

I love this stuff.

All we do is we just chop this nice and fine.

One other thing that I'm going to add is some onion.

I like red onion for this one.

And then, of course, lemon.

Lemon zest and lemon juice.

Lemon zest in first.

And it's a good idea just to warm this oil slightly.

It just infuses the coriander seeds, a little bit of garlic.

And if you think of it like a normal dressing, 3 to 1, that's really the ratio, 3 parts oil, 1 part lemon juice.

And then finally, we can throw in the juice.

Squeeze that in.

You see that?

That's what the producer had in mind for me to do, to get off that and then start cooking.

Look at them.

They look like Adonises.

I'm not really built for paddleboards, to be brutally honest with you.

Bit of lemon juice.

And then race basically.

We throw in everything else.

Chuck the lemon in.

Chuck the onion in.

All the tomatoes right at the last minute because we want to keep the flavor of these tomatoes and the color particularly.

In we go with the herbs.

And then warm this all together.

This is what I love about this dish.

It's so, so simple, relies mainly on the sauce.

And you can serve this with so many different things-- fish, chicken.

Look at that.

Just so simple.

So colorful.

Key to it, you spend a little time doing those tomatoes as well.

And then finally, we've got some of this amazing red mullet.

Do you know what?

I'm chuffed with that.

Paddleboarding.

[upbeat music] So while I hunt out the water sports, take a look at my delicious pan-fried red mullet with sauce vierge made with those vibrant market tomatoes.

♪ ♪ My travels through France have brought me east to Annecy, often referred to as the gateway to the Alps.

Coming here is like taking a step back in time.

This place is just wonderful.

It's not lost its soul.

There's brasseries, little boulangeries, butcher shops all dotted around here.

♪ ♪ You get the feeling if this was anywhere-- anywhere else in the world, this place would be just full of, sort of, art galleries and souvenir shops.

That said, Annecy does have its own kind of art gallery.

But we're not talking about oils or watercolors, we're talking cheese.

Now, there are, of course, many places in France where you can find a decent cheese board, but I've heard that this guy takes it to a different level.

PIERRE GAY: Hi.

- Hi, Pierre.

- Nice to meet you, James.

Nice to meet you.

This is Pierre Gay, cheesemonger extraordinaire.

What a shop.

PIERRE GAY: You like cheese?

I'm in the right place if I do.

Pierre's grandfather set up shop way back in 1935.

And our man has carried on the tradition to the present day, winning the coveted craftsman title of Meilleur Ouvrier de France.

And his love of dairy doesn't just stop at cheese.

I haven't seen this since I was training as a young kid over here.

Yes, double cream.

It's from Switzerland.

JAMES MARTIN: We used to call this mountain cream.

PIERRE GAY: This one is a traditional cream.

JAMES MARTIN: Yeah.

PIERRE GAY: It's liquid.

It's very good for washing with tea.

Washing?

No, not washing.

Wash it, wash it, wash it in cream.

[laugh] No, to make a Chantilly, you know.

Yes.

Yeah, light.

Very light.

Yes, absolutely.

JAMES MARTIN: It's kind of like a single cream or whipping cream really are equivalent.

PIERRE GAY: This one, this one is 35% fat.

Yeah.

And this one is 55% fat.

JAMES MARTIN: This is what fascinates me about this cream.

Our double cream, it's got about 40% fat.

And when you think this has not been whipped, this literally-- this texture, look, that is literally how it comes like that.

It's not been whipped up, nothing.

It's really thick, delicious.

Absolutely.

It's better to eat it like that with meringue, Swiss meringue is with making with white eggs JAMES MARTIN: Yeah, beautiful.

Well, I want to see more.

Then show me your cellar.

Yes, you're welcome in my cellar.

[waltz music] This is pretty spectacular.

It smells unbelievable.

This is incredible.

Tell me about the Beaufort then.

PIERRE GAY: I'll show you this one.

This one is very big, please.

I mean, also, when do you see cheeses this-- I mean, look at the size of that.

And what's this in kilo?

- Around 40 kilos.

- 40 kilos?

PIERRE GAY: Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's 40 kilos bit.

[chuckle] Just a bit [indistinct].

You know, for making one cheese, around 400 liters of milk.

We use a string for cutting.

You see, with the string, it's very easy.

JAMES MARTIN: Yeah.

[light music] ♪ ♪ And you can smell because it's the first aroma inside of the cheese just on the side, you know.

One slice or two?

Just smell-- it smells delicious.

Yes.

I put this one on just here, and I show you we can cut.

JAMES MARTIN: So how old is this Beaufort then?

Two years?

- This one is two years, yes.

Two years old.

PIERRE GAY: Yes.

JAMES MARTIN: This is a good one though.

This is incredible.

You can taste the salt already.

PIERRE GAY: Yes, the salt.

JAMES MARTIN: The salt's coming through.

Yeah.

Like butter too, salt butter.

That's probably why I like it.

It tastes like butter.

And I'm taking this bit, but one I've just spotted here.

So Rob, just look at this one here.

Is this mimolette?

- Mimolette, yes.

Mimolette.

You know, it's a very old cheese.

This one is three years old.

JAMES MARTIN: What happens to the cheese here?

PIERRE GAY: So it's mites.

The mites around.

It's forbidden in America, but in England it's welcome.

JAMES MARTIN: So like a spider?

PIERRE GAY: Not like a spider.

It's very small, you see?

It's raining.

Oh, so these are-- these are-- Yes.

It's better to cut off around because three years old cheese, if you eat all in mouth, it's sometimes bitter, Yeah.

But you can eat it.

It's not a problem.

But in mouth.

[imitates crunching] Well, there you go.

I'll put it back on the shelf.

I don't fancy eating mites, to be honest.

Pierre, thank you so, so much.

It's amazing.

It's like the world's greatest cheese board down there, and it's given me a whiff of inspiration to make a cheese bake like no other.

Now, with so many different cheeses to choose from, I wanted to do justice to this and to another blue cheese, Saint Agur being another French blue cheese.

But this one, Comte, it's wonderful.

You could use Beaufort.

It's entirely up to you.

But this is a great dish.

It contains endive and brioche, and it's a simple cheese sauce bake.

It's really, really easy.

But it all starts off with these little fellas here, endive.

You can get different types, different colors, so many different flavors.

But generally, they're all quite bitter, which lends itself really well together with this and the brioche, which makes a fantastic dish.

What you're going to do is you cut these into pieces and just stick it in a pan and start to cook these.

Now, because we're going to bake this in the oven, what I'm trying to do is just add a nice little bit of color to the endives.

A bit of black pepper and a bit of salt.

You've almost got to char it like I'm doing here.

Creates a wonderful flavor with it.

[sizzling] So start the cooking process really like this.

And then what you do is grab yourself whatever dish you're going to cook it in and stick it in there.

And then because this is quite bitter, what you need to do is sweeten this up.

And what better way than to use brioche.

Chunks of brioche in a little bit of butter, of course.

[mellow music] ♪ ♪ It's pretty good.

Pour the entire lot over the top.

Get your hands in.

And just mix this up so you don't have all the brioche at the top like that.

So what we're creating is like a white cheese sauce.

And for that, you need just a little bit of butter.

[clatter] Then grab some flour.

And for this recipe, probably about 2 tablespoons of flour.

Now, as you heat it up, it starts to thicken.

♪ ♪ Then we can turn down the heat, change to a whisk, grab some milk first of all, and add-- and add the milk gradually a little bit at a time.

You'll see straight away it starts to thicken.

Look at that.

And you keep adding it.

Keep it on the heat.

And then this is where you can enrich the sauce.

You can then stop adding the milk and you can add some cream.

♪ ♪ Not too much.

And then you go back to your milk.

Now with cheese sauce, of course, it's got to contain cheese.

But it's also got to contain mustard.

And for this, it's got to be Dijon mustard.

English mustard is far too strong.

♪ ♪ So then what we can do is start to add our Comte, which is just this cheese is fantastic.

You can do this with Beaufort.

It is wonderful.

If you've just tuned in, you can just do this with cheddar.

But this is a French program, so that's why I'm using this, the king of all French cheeses, Comte.

But we grate it.

So once you've got your grated cheese, we can then throw this into the pan like that.

And a decent amount of cheese as well because this is a cheese sauce.

Take it off the heat.

Give it a nice mix.

[whisking] Seasoning.

Black pepper, a decent pinch of salt as well.

And then do is grab your pan here, grab some fresh thyme.

Just a touch of this and just sprinkle it over the top.

Like that.

And then grabbing your cheese sauce, pour the entire lot over the top.

[mellow music] ♪ ♪ Comte cheese over the top.

♪ ♪ And then we get some Saint Agur.

But just a nice little bit of blue cheese in amongst all this.

Now to cook this at home, you set the oven about 200 degrees centigrade and cook this for about 20 minutes.

However, at my house, I'm going to show you something slightly different.

Let me introduce you to my outdoor pizza oven.

Great for cooking, well, not just pizzas, but anything that needs a bit of charring.

But it's so hot in there, this dish doesn't need long.

How good is that?

But there you have it, baked endive beef with brioche and two-cheese sauce.

That is going to taste delicious.

[upbeat music] I've traveled to Eastern France and the Alpine Eden of Annecy to find fresh mountain air, fresh ingredients and even fresher ideas on food.

Now, away from these busy, bustling streets, I've heard of a very fancy restaurant with a couple of Michelin stars to its name that you don't want to miss.

♪ ♪ And it's this, 3 miles from town, the rather eye-catching Maison Bleue Hotel and Restaurant, elegantly perched on the edge of Lake Annecy.

Since 2010, Breton chef Yoann Conte-- there he is-- has been bringing his unique brand of seasonally-inspired cooking to this two-star Michelin restaurant.

So what's for lunch, Yoann?

We're going to do today my signature dish, the [french], the carrot mousse.

JAMES MARTIN: Parfait.

That's Yoann all over, simple seasonal veg given a refined modern makeover.

You have inside the carrots, steamed carrots.

After, we have some curd cheese, herbs from the garden.

So you have lots of herbs like chopped chives.

We have tarragon.

We have sage.

We have 12 herbs inside.

So it's very fresh.

When you put it in your mouth, it's like an explosion.

JAMES MARTIN: See what I mean?

YOANN CONTE: But when you eat in this restaurant, you need to do something very good.

But magic and with a surprise and a little bit sexy.

So if you put only a carrot in a dish, it's not sexy.

JAMES MARTIN: All right, Yoann, you had me at carrot.

Let's eat.

I love vegetables.

My grandmother worked in Britain and she had a lot of garden with a lot of fruit.

And so we went in the garden, and we-- we took all the time vegetables and fruits.

When I was very young, it was not my passion, fruit and vegetables.

You don't like that too much.

I prefer French fries.

I can't use caviar or John Dory or duck liver so I start only with vegetables.

It's not expensive.

It's good.

It's fashion because you need to eat some vegetables for your body.

And now it's in the [french].

You see a lot of flavor.

It's fresh.

It's not fat.

So what do you think?

Not too bad?

It's not too bad.

It's pretty good.

I like the salt with the carrots with the sorbet.

I love the caramel.

This is-- this is beautiful, the puree.

It's nice and fresh, and it's light, you know.

YOANN CONTE: Yeah.

But every single mouthful tastes fresh.

Thank you.

You're welcome, sir.

It was good to share this time with you.

Cheers.

It was delicious.

Cheers, indeed.

With a bit of imagination, it's amazing what you can do with simple, quality ingredients.

And this has given me an idea for a luxurious Annecy-inspired dessert.

Now, I got to be honest, I was struggling to think what I was going to cook after that amazing dish of carrots.

I didn't think anybody could make carrots taste off the scale, but he managed to do it.

But I was walking around Annecy, and I found so many different cafes, bars, and bistros.

And I was reading the menus from the outside and this was one of the desserts that was on there.

It's a classic creme caramel, but they funked it up with a little bit of cognac at the end.

But I just thought it was just a lovely dessert and one that I haven't done for years and years.

So I'm going to do it again.

Now we start off with two ingredients first of all, and that's water and sugar.

And that's the first part of this dish and that's the caramel.

And what you need to do is bring this to the boil and turn it into a light caramel.

[mellow music] It's looking good.

You can take this off the heat.

And then what you can do is just pour this mixture into each of your molds.

Now, one thing you've got to do with the caramel is make sure that it's not too dark, otherwise, it's too bitter.

But not too light, otherwise, it's a bit like sugar syrup.

You don't end up with any flavor, any caramel flavor to it.

And then we just leave that to cool slightly.

Meanwhile, we can concentrate on our filling.

It involves infusing cream and vanilla.

And while that's happening, we can get a combination of whole eggs now and sugar.

♪ ♪ Mix this together.

♪ ♪ So we've infused the vanilla in there.

Pour that on the top.

Combine this together.

[whisking] Just pass this through a sieve.

This is just to get rid of any bits of the vanilla pod.

Now, once you've done that, you, kind of, got to check now to make sure that the caramel is set.

Because what you don't want to be doing is pouring it on too early, otherwise, it starts to separate out.

So fill up the dishes.

[mellow music] Now, before you put it in the oven, the reason why I put it in this tray with a little bit of paper, the paper will actually prevent the mixture from curdling.

But also what will stop the mixture from curdling is hot water.

So just run the tap and cook these in a tray of hot water.

♪ ♪ Now, you can set the oven about 180 degrees centigrade and pop these in the oven.

And they want to cook for about 20 minutes.

♪ ♪ Now, after 20 minutes in the oven, allow them to cool down.

And pop them in the fridge to go cold.

And we end up with these little fellas.

When I was walking around Annecy, I saw them serve it slightly differently and they use these.

And I couldn't resist buying them, golden sultanas.

Look at those.

They're just beautiful in color.

So all I'm going to do now is just take a few of these and whack a little bit of this in it, cognac.

And then this sits in there.

[growl] Now you can just leave that as it is and leave it to macerate overnight or however long you want it.

Just leave them.

However, over here, this is an idea that I got while I was wandering around looking at the menus.

What they did was basically just cook the sultanas with a bit of stock syrup, which is just a combination of sugar and water.

You just put a little bit of this together and make a puree.

So what I'm going to do is just blitz this.

[whirring] And also the key to this is just a little bit of butter.

Just a small amount to add to this.

[whirring] What you end up with is this-- this raisiner, they called it, or sultana butter.

It's just delicious.

[french] This is off the scale.

Now, to get these creme caramels away from the dishes, take a little bit of water and just warm the base up slightly.

And as it's warming up, you can cut round with just a table knife around the edge.

[mellow music] And then pray.

♪ ♪ Never any doubt.

Never any doubt.

[exhale] There was actually.

And then you can just take a little dollop of this.

And then not forgetting you've got your fruit around the edge.

♪ ♪ A great dessert like a creme caramel should always be on the menu.

That tastes fantastic.

♪ ♪ [upbeat music] I'm nearing the end of my French adventure in beautiful Annecy.

It's been my first visit here and I can honestly say it's been a revelation.

I do feel privileged to be able to do this journey.

Because when I had the idea, originally, I wanted to go back and visit all the places where I used to work.

But also on top of that, I wanted to see new things, visit new places, taste new types of food.

And already I've already done that in such a short space of time.

There's places here, like this place, that I'm definitely coming back TO Because you only see a snippet of it while you're here with the film crew, but it really is spectacular.

Speaking of surprising treats, there's a very special place in Annecy we haven't been to yet.

And we really should because these are the little masterpieces it sells.

This is La Patisserie Philippe Rigollot.

And here's the great man himself, a multi-award winning pastry chef who, along with his talented wife Elodie, is responsible for bringing a sprinkle of sweet magic to the taste buds of Annecy.

♪ ♪ Philippe, bonjour.

Bonjour.

[french] looks amazing.

[speaking french] JAMES MARTIN: I mean, just beautiful.

They say you eat with your eyes first.

Well, this is exactly what that phrase means.

The man is a genius.

Luckily for us, we're getting a glimpse into how Philippe concocts one of his extraordinary creations.

This is our laboratory.

Today, we are going to make apple pie for you, only for you.

[laugh] JAMES MARTIN: That's very kind, Elodie.

But come on, this is no ordinary apple pie.

This is pure pie art.

It starts with the base made from cream and cooked apple.

An Apple marmalade forms the second layer smoothed gently over the base.

And for the top bit.

Now, we are going to put a mousse vanilla on the top of the pie, and we are going to glaze it with the natural glaze.

JAMES MARTIN: The glaze is made mainly from natural apple juice.

In fact, there's very little in this pie that isn't made from real apples.

And finally, we put vanilla stick on the top of the apple pie.

JAMES MARTIN: Well, all right, apart from that bit.

♪ ♪ [speaking french] And this is our speciality, Mr.

Smith's Apple Pie.

Thank you.

[laugh] JAMES MARTIN: See?

I told you, a genius.

Merci.

And apparently, this fella is one of the top 10 best pastry chefs in France.

Looking at this.

I don't doubt it.

Right.

That's dessert sorted.

Now for the main course.

And where better to cook my final dish than right outside Yoann's restaurant.

It's OK.

He didn't mind.

Well, I can't remember asking him.

Now, I was thinking long and hard about what to cook, to be honest, for this one.

I thought with this beautiful setting, I'd do it justice and just do a classic lobster pasta.

Really, really simple, but using this amazing fresh lobster.

First thing we're going to do is then prep up a little bit of garlic because the base of this is using a tomato base of the sauce.

You can do this with just olive oil at its base, but I think it really helps if you've got tomatoes with it.

So chop up the garlic nice and fine, first of all, like that.

Just leave that to one side.

I wouldn't fry that straight away.

Because often with garlic, if the pan is too hot, it will burn.

And when you end up with burnt garlic, you end up with bitter garlic and it's not very pleasant.

So we're going to take our tomatoes.

These are wonderful little vine-ripened tomatoes.

Throw these in the pan.

A little bit of oil.

Start cooking these down.

Tomatoes this small, there's no need to really chop them in half.

Just throw them straight into the pan.

And then really for this, I'm going to spice it up a little bit with a touch of chili.

Now it's purely optional, but I actually really like lobster and chili together.

It's actually one of my favorite things to go well with lobster.

That and chips.

That was weird, but really nice.

But you throw the garlic and the chili in the pan now.

Just a touch of white wine, not too much.

Predominant flavor of this comes from this stuff.

This is brandy.

[sizzling] Touch of brandy in and then almost start to stew this down.

Some tarragon and then double cream.

I can't actually remember the first time I had lobster before.

I can't remember what age I was to be honest.

It was probably when I was working in the kitchen and we used to portion it up and then nick a little bit before it went out into the restaurant.

Either way, once you've tried it, it really is spectacular and then really simple to prepare.

Now this is cooked lobster because lobsters are blue normally.

So when they're raw.

So this is a beautiful lobster here.

To prepare this, it's really simple.

Nature has been incredible.

Look.

It's drawn a line.

That's where your knife goes right down that line, as simple as that.

Now on a lobster, this fella here, you've got knives and forks.

This claw is its fork.

This is its knife.

What it does with this one is hold its prey together.

And you can see this claw is quite sharp, and it'll rip its food up before it eats it.

But to prepare the lobster, it's really simple.

Take the claws off first.

Hold it flat onto the board.

Put your knife in.

Straighten the top, straight the way down.

Flatten the tail like that, follow down the back.

Press it down straight down the middle and open it up.

Now with our claws, you treat these slightly differently.

Back of a knife now, not this end.

Just give it a quick tap.

[whacks] And the claw meat will open up.

Same again on the other side.

Quick tap and then twist the claw like that.

And then the meat will just come out.

In here, there's a little bit more meat in there.

Don't waste any of these shells because this is amazing for soups, sauces.

Even if you just boil them up with a little bit of veg oil, you just end up with a beautiful shellfish oil, which is delicious.

You've got to be quite careful with this.

Because the last time I did one of these on TV, I ended up in A&E.

Now, I don't know if anybody's been to A&E in Chiswick at 6 o'clock on a Saturday morning.

It was full of drunk ladies with broken wrists that have fallen over.

And then me with my thumb with a bit of lobster claw stuck out of it.

You don't want to use the back of a knife.

You can use basically a rolling pin, but the idea is to lift it all out in one go.

I'm basically just going to take all the meat and put it in our pasta.

But there are lots of flavor in here as well.

So I'm going to take all the bits out of here and put that in the sauce as well.

I don't really want to waste anything.

Now, our sauce is not far off.

All I want to do with this is just basically soften the tomatoes.

So just they should start to break up after about 8, 10 minutes in the pan.

Just soften up nicely.

Now purists will tell you, particularly my Italian friends, would be now shouting at the TV going what is he doing putting cream with lobster, particularly with pasta?

We're not in Italy, we're in France.

And particularly in this area, you can do what you want.

So that's why I'm putting cream in there with brandy.

It just really works with this dish.

So once you've got that, we can then grab all of our lobster meat.

That can go in our pan.

And then finally, really to cook our pasta.

Now, my Italian friends have told me some decent things over the years, one of which is how to cook pasta.

You don't put oil in pasta water.

The key to this is salted boiling water.

They said it should taste of the sea.

Clearly, they've never been to Whitby and stuck their tongue in the water.

Salted boiling water.

And then I've got this beautiful pasta that I got from the market.

This is tagliatelle.

It's fresh pasta With pasta like this, you almost make sure everything's ready.

So the sauce is not far off now.

Because fresh pasta like this, although it's drying in the sun, is only going to take two or three minutes to cook.

We just boil it all up.

[groan] Wash my hands, Rob, because we'll be getting letters.

Doreen from Somerset found out what Twitter is.

Why don't you wear a chef's jacket?

Why don't you wear an apron and a hat?

It's very unprofessional.

It's 35 degrees out here.

You cooking all that lot in your back garden?

Pasta, it's quite handy that.

There's a soap dispenser down there.

Next now, this is the second thing the Italian chefs told me is finish the pasta in the sauce.

It's really crucial, not just a pile of pasta.

And then put the sauce over the top so he gets all those nice flavors.

So finally, I'm going to take some fresh basil and just rip up the fresh basil in here.

A little bit of salt, some black pepper.

Just really simple.

And then finally, I got one these beautiful plates from the chef.

He's lent me it.

Switch off the heat.

You can almost just serve this all over the top.

Now, it's entirely up to you whether you want this next bit.

And that's Parmesan cheese.

I like to use one of these little fine graters.

These are perfect, in fact, so much so that I'm actually going to buy the entire crew on this shoot.

And there's about 56 of them.

A lot of them do nothing.

Look, there you go.

So I'm going to buy every single one of the crew, including you, Rob, one of these, mainly because we've got a producer who has an obsession with wearing sandals.

Now, I banned sandals on this shoot because he's got feet that look like Shrek.

And to be honest, this is what his feet would need, one of these graters.

As you grate it over the top, look at that.

You could do with a pedicure.

And now he's binned the sandals and he's got what looked like-- they kind of look like golf shoes Oh, by the way, the third thing the Italians taught me was all about women.

It's a different program.

Anyway, never mind that.

Focus on this beautiful lobster with fresh tagliatelle and a spicy tomato sauce.

What more could you want?

It's time for me to bid au revoir to Annecy and reflect on a place where people truly appreciate the craft behind good food.

This is pretty spectacular.

A place where simple ingredients are elevated to incredible levels of sophistication.

Just beautiful.

And where the beauty of its cuisine is reflected in the tranquil calm of its heavenly surroundings.

[record scratch] OK, OK, we ruined the silence.

And on second thoughts, maybe it would have been better to do this scene before eating a huge plate of tagliatelle.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ JAMES MARTIN: Take a look at my delicious pan fried red mullet with sauce vierge made with those vibrant market tomatoes.

[upbeat music] Coming up on my French adventure in Annecy, I get to grips with the cheese of epic proportions.

One slice or two?

And I take some cheesy inspiration back to my home kitchen.

♪ ♪ [theme music] [upbeat music] JAMES MARTIN: My travels through France have brought me east to Annecy.

JAMES MARTIN: Baked endive with brioche in two-cheese sauce.

That is going to taste delicious.

Coming up on my culinary adventure in Annecy, I meet a two-star Michelin chef who can really spice up a root veg.

It's very fresh.

When you put it in your mouth, it's like an explosion.

JAMES MARTIN: And when cooking at home, I get a bit heavy handed with the booze.

[growl] [theme music] [theme music] [upbeat music] JAMES MARTIN: I've traveled to Eastern France and the Alpine-- Should always be on the menu.

That tastes fantastic.

[mellow music] ♪ ♪ [upbeat music] Still to come.

On my French adventure in Eastern France, I meet Annecy's answer to Einstein.

The man is a genius.

And I cook up one of my most dangerous dishes yet.

The last time I did one of these on TV, I ended up in A&E.

Nothing like a bit of TV jeopardy.

♪ ♪ [theme music] [upbeat music] JAMES MARTIN: I'm nearing the end of my French adventure in beautiful--