[theme music] Here we go!

JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): I'm going on my most ambitious British adventure yet.

It's going to put a smile on your face.

JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): Meeting some of the finest chefs in the world.

Raymond Blanc.

James.

JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): Cooking my way from the far south.

You've got beautiful blue eyes.

JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): To the northernmost reaches of the land.

It's a magical experience.

Whoa!

You've got to do this.

It's amazing.

And using some of the best produce you'll find anywhere.

It is a spectacular place full of amazing people and amazing food.

This is going to be a bit special.

And some of the places require a little bit more effort to get to.

JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): I'll be traveling by land, air, and sea TONY SINGH: There, look!

- Look, dolphins!

TONY SINGH: Dolphins!

JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): So join me as I explore the British Isles from islands to highlands.

♪ ♪ I've reached the last stop on my epic adventure, the remote and magical Shetland Islands.

It's the most northerly place in the UK, where in the summer, there are almost 19 hours of daylight.

This beautiful subarctic archipelago lies around 110 miles north of the Scottish mainland.

I've arrived at Sumburgh Airport, 25 miles south of the capital, Lerwick.

First, I need to find some wheels for my trip.

[upbeat music] You're not going to believe this, but there is a classic car club on Shetland, and they've rolled out a few for me to choose from.

Larry, great to meet you.

Good to see you again.

So tell me about this classic car club then.

It was formed in 1982 from just a huge local interest.

JAMES MARTIN: And you've got all manner of different stuff here as well.

Different ages.

LARRY: Oh, yes, different ages.

Just everything.

Did you realize there would be this many classic cars around?

There's an awful lot more.

Yeah, there's a huge interest in Shetland.

JAMES MARTIN: And you meet, what, once a month?

Twice a month?

We have a few local runs per year.

Yes.

Well, you've got great roads for it anyway, haven't you?

Good roads.

Good roads, very scenic.

Lovely area.

Well, I want to thank the owners because they've said that I could borrow one of these.

Yeah, this can be arranged.

I've spotted one over here.

It has to be this, doesn't it?

The 1980s Capri.

It's got to be this.

Shall we go for a spin?

Yeah, let's do it.

I'm looking forward to this.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ So this is a bit surreal.

LARRY: Driving across the runway.

Yes, that's very normal for us.

JAMES MARTIN: Yeah.

We just like to check that there are no planes.

Yeah, just double check.

Yeah.

See if the lights are working.

Yeah.

What's it like living here?

Because most people think of Shetland as a little dock, and it's not.

It's not a little dock.

We have the largest oil terminal in Europe in the North mainland.

It's a lot, going on.

The fishing industry, it's just a constant.

That's all been busy.

So what did your family do here then?

My grand folk, and great grand folk, and great, great grand folk were all seafarers and crafters.

JAMES MARTIN: And how do you find it with the daylight?

Yeah, we sleep all winter, we're up all summer.

- JAMES MARTIN: [laughs] And I heard you're outnumbered by sheep 4 to 1.

Is that right?

LARRY: I haven't counted.

JAMES MARTIN: In Shetland.

Somebody's bothered to count.

Didn't tell you that?

Somebody's counted.

And that's scary.

[laughs] JAMES MARTIN: It is a beautiful part of the world, Larry.

I have to say.

Very jealous.

Larry, this is where I leave you.

JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): I've dropped Larry off near the old Sumburgh Head lighthouse, now a popular visitor center and nature reserve.

♪ ♪ And I'm heading north to Lerwick.

[upbeat music] I'm exploring Shetland's capital and the Port of Lerwick, originally founded as an unofficial marketplace to service 17th-century Dutch Herring fleets.

And its relationship with the sea and fishing continues.

You see, you've got to love the weather in Shetland.

It doesn't put anybody off.

You've got a boat there from Sweden, one from Germany, one from France, one from Guernsey, and one from Rhode Island in America.

♪ ♪ And being here by this historic and beautiful seaport has inspired a lobster omelet.

I'm going to do a simple little lobster dish here, and it's a lobster omelet.

So first of all, you need a cooked lobster, a decent sort of size cooked lobster, which I've got one here.

And then I'm going to show you how to break it all down.

So what we're going to do is take the legs off first like that.

And the larger legs, take these off.

Next, we're going to take our lobster meat.

And we just compress this center part.

So remove this, and pop it all into the pan.

And then we can scrape out the insides.

Don't worry about the green stuff.

It's just green stuff.

It's all edible.

And then you can use a pair of scissors.

And we can cut all the way around.

And you've got a nice little garnish for our omelet a little bit later.

And then with the tail cut along the back here with a pair of scissors, and then open it out.

[snap sound] Oh, don't do what I've done and wear a nice shirt for this.

Probably an apron would have been best.

But look, you just take out this whole piece of meat like that.

We can utilize the same bit, the opposite end.

So use the head and the tail like that as a little garnish.

Now for the claws, you trim this straight in half like that.

And then this one, break again in half.

And then depending on the size of the lobster, you can squeeze the lobster meat through the little hole.

Look.

Squeeze the meat through.

And then with these claws, hold this part.

And then just twist it and pull.

And then what you do is you basically do this in between a cloth, ideally.

Cloth, back of the knife.

[banging sound] Whack.

And then you can just break that open, and the lobster meat comes out like that.

So you do the same thing again with the other side.

Again, fold it over with a little cloth, back of a knife.

[banging sound] Whack.

And then the lobster meat should, in theory, just pull out in one nice piece like that.

I'm going to create a really simple little sauce.

All I've got in here is a bit of water.

And you just take a tomato, just fresh tomatoes in here, a little bit of brandy and some double cream.

And you bring this to the boil.

And you're going to cook this for just a couple of minutes.

Remember, this is just the shells, or the gubbins of the lobster that otherwise you would just throw away.

And just keep all those sort of flavors.

Grab yourself a blender.

And it needs to be quite a good blender for this one because you're just about to blend everything in here.

Put the lid on and just blitz it.

[blender sound] [upbeat music] What you end up with is almost like an essence of lobster.

♪ ♪ You just press this through.

And you've got this simple little lobster sauce.

You can add a little butter to this, just a touch, some salt and pepper.

This is called sea aster.

This is samphire or sampher.

Touch of water and a little bit of butter.

And you want to cook these for about a minute, flash them in the pan, and then out.

♪ ♪ So once you're happy with those, drain them off a little bit.

So our lobster, you can take the lobster claw meat, the tail meat, which you can then slice like that.

So this just sits in the oven for a couple of minutes.

Meanwhile, onto the lobster omelet.

And for that, I'm just going to use five eggs.

So the eggs, we've got the lobster meat as well.

We're going to add that to the mix, black pepper, and then just a touch of double cream.

And mix this together.

A little bit of butter in the pan.

A good omelet shouldn't have any color on it whatsoever.

Should be soft in the middle, perfectly cooked, and shaped.

So keep the pan on the heat, bring the egg in like that, and just the egg as it starts to set like this, you can see it now.

It's just starting to set.

Leave it.

We turn down the heat a little bit.

And we just keep your eye on it, now.

So you then take the omelet like this, and fold this over.

Now once you get to that stage, when you're happy with it, you can then just simply scrape it off.

And then we mold the omelet like a little rugby ball, and then lift off our cloth, grab yourself all the nice lobster, take your nice sauce over the top.

We can then take some of this wonderful little sea aster and everything else.

We can then use the claws for one end.

We take the lobster meat, put it all down the middle.

And then, of course, you can pop the tail on one end and the head on the other end.

And there you have it, Shetland lobster omelet.

Nice, eh?

[upbeat music] JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): I'm in the spectacular Shetland Islands, the most northerly place in the UK, where nowhere is far from the sea.

Earlier, I explored Lerwick harbor and cooked up a lobster omelet.

JAMES MARTIN: And there you have it, Shetland lobster omelet.

♪ ♪ So I'm heading now to Turriefield community garden, which is a project, like little allotments, where a group of people have producing some veg in this quite harsh climate really.

So I'm interested to see what they can grow there, and hopefully grab some to cook with.

JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): Penny Armstrong set up Transition Turriefield as a social enterprise with her partner, Alan.

How on Earth did this all start?

PENNY ARMSTRONG: Ugh.

Well, we decided we wanted to move back to Shetland.

Alan's from Shetland.

And we moved here in 2008 and realized that there was no fresh veg.

Everything was being shipped in for the supermarkets, and the people prefer to buy it from the supermarket.

I mean, it must have its challenges being here.

I mean-- PENNY ARMSTRONG: It's a late start.

The weather, it's really windy.

We don't get as much sun as you do down South.

Obviously, the temperatures don't reach that level.

And then the days get really dark in the winter.

So we are limited.

And what do you grow in these, the polytunnels?

PENNY ARMSTRONG: Things like courgettes, and pumpkins, and sweetcorn, fennel, French beans, because we can't grow beans outside here.

It's too windy.

[laughs] The whole thing is a bit of an experiment just to see what you can grow in Shetland.

JAMES MARTIN: But your compost in is all natural and all that kind of stuff.

PENNY ARMSTRONG: Yeah, well, we make a lot of our own compost, obviously with the stuff that we have.

We use old silage from the crofts around the place as well.

But we use horse manure and we use seaweed, which is all local resources.

And you're using a lot of the resources in terms of volunteers.

Volunteers, yeah.

Our volunteer team is the best ever.

We couldn't run this without the amount of people that we have.

So not only do we want to be local, but we want to be as fossil fuel free as possible.

And our volunteers, some of them are our customers.

They come and give us a few hours every season.

And some of them, like these ones over here, are our hardcore volunteers who come just for the sheer joy of wheelbarrowing things.

And I see you-- I see you've got a little veg box, honesty box, at the end here.

PENNY ARMSTRONG: Yes, that's-- JAMES MARTIN: Most of the stuff you produce is in a little box scheme.

PENNY ARMSTRONG: We run a box scheme, and we also deliver to hotels, and restaurants, and local rural shops as well.

And it's really kicked off since you've been doing it.

In the 10 years that we've been doing it, it's gone from doing, I think, five veg boxes, we now do 30 veg boxes.

The same again goes to the shops and the hotels.

And we've got a five-year waiting list.

It shows you the demand of it, doesn't it?

Yeah, a lot of people do wait for the five years.

[laughs] It is.

It's crazy.

But we need to get more people growing their own veg in Shetland.

And if we can do that through the use of our carbon classroom, where we run training courses for people to learn how to start growing in Shetland, then we can be more sustainable as a local community.

JAMES MARTIN: So it started off as like a Scottish government grant.

PENNY ARMSTRONG: The Climate Challenge Fund is a grant that's administered to keep Scotland beautiful.

And it's about doing things to reduce the amount of carbon emissions that Scotland are producing.

JAMES MARTIN: Why all tires?

Because there's thousands of them.

PENNY ARMSTRONG: Tires are about, I suppose, recycling and reusing.

They act as windbreaks.

We use them for compost piles, we use them for holding the doors of the polytunnel open, things like that.

They've just got a multitude of-- Holding stuff down in the winter.

Holding stuff down in the winter.

Definitely.

Well, congratulations everything.

It's a lesson for everybody, I think, isn't it?

PENNY ARMSTRONG: Yes.

[relaxing music] JAMES MARTIN: I do have a fascination with growing my own produce.

But what is amazing about coming here, I left home literally a couple of weeks ago.

And my tomato plants are here.

The tomatoes are literally like this.

Here, even in the polytunnels, they're only a foot high.

But I've spotted one thing that really does go well here, as well as the onions.

These are amazing.

Great salads as well.

And the great thing about these, you just cut, and they grow again.

That's the great thing about these.

If you ever got your own little plot, little allotment, it doesn't have to be something as fancy as this, but it's amazing what you can grow just in there.

But then I've spotted some of these.

And this is the weird thing.

My cauliflower at home are useless.

Here, they're amazing.

Look at this one.

So what we'll do, we'll just trim this off.

♪ ♪ Look at that.

My gran used to call these a heart of gold.

And cooked properly, they taste amazing.

♪ ♪ I mean, just look how beautiful this place is.

That's Ronas Hill over there, the highest point in Shetland.

And the thing about living on an island like this, it's all about improvisation.

Just look at my table.

It's pretty cool, isn't it?

What we're going to do with this is going to turn this amazing veg, look at this beautiful cauliflower that I've just picked.

And together with all these wonderful herbs, I'm going to do a veg curry with this, keep it really simple.

But the point of our veg curry is the onions to start off.

So I'm just going to take some onions.

Now there's two reasons why I'm doing a curry, one of which is that I'm going to use this amazing veg.

The other one, that it's cold-ish.

So veg oil in a hot pan, and this is a hot pan, really hot pan.

Onions, straight in there.

Now while they're happening, we can turn our attention to our garlic.

This beautiful fresh garlic.

Look at that.

It's just literally from there.

Fresh garlic like this tastes absolutely delicious.

Look at that.

And we can just open this all up.

If you've never grown garlic, literally, have a go at growing it.

And that's the great thing about this.

It's amazing that it grows all the way up here.

All right.

So in we go with the garlic.

It's going to go in the pan as well.

While that's happening, we can take our tomatoes.

I'm going to use a combination of tinned tomatoes, and fresh tomatoes.

So tomatoes go in.

In the pan together with some ginger, ginger paste.

Pop that in.

And then I'm going to add my fresh tomatoes with this as well.

The whole point about this curry is actually making the sauce first.

So we're just going to add a touch of water to this.

And then I've got two leaves, Bay leaves.

And the reason why I've wrapped it like this, they'll literally probably end up on that hill over there if I don't.

And then I've got some curry leaves.

I only wanted a few.

They're going to go in.

While that's cooking, we make our yogurt marinade.

A little bit of yogurt, and then I take the spices.

This will be fun.

Chili powder.

In there.

A little bit of ground cumin.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ A little bit of garam masala.

And then mix this before it ends up in Norway.

So mix it all together.

I've got some gorgeous rosemary here, which is grown here as well, some beautiful sprigs of rosemary.

I've got some nice marjoram.

Marjoram is a wonderful, wonderful herb.

And then we turn our attention to our cauliflower.

And for this, you want sort of chunks of cauliflower, like that.

Is that sunshine?

It is, isn't it?

Wait a minute.

Gone.

That's summer.

Right.

Take your nice little bits of cauliflower.

And what you can do with this is cut this up quite chunky, mainly because the minute you put it on the barbecue, it's just going to fall through the griddle plate.

And then mix this all together.

It's a beautiful thing, veg, when it's simply done.

Our sauce is ready.

And you can finish this with a little bit of chili if you want.

Red chilies and green chilies, that's going to go in.

A touch of cream.

And then what I love in curries, a little knob of butter.

1, 2, 3.

Salt and pepper, and season it as well.

Black pepper and salt.

And then what I'm going to do is just leave that to one side.

And then we're going to take our cauliflower, and then use one of these, and take the whole lot and just pop it on our griddle, like that.

So this is all the yogurt, all the herbs, everything.

Spring onions on here as well.

Shut this up.

And cook this over the coals.

♪ ♪ And then what we do, when your cauliflower is ready, at least that is, we can then pop our pan back on, take this out.

So you put all your cauliflower back into your pan because this is only just colored.

We'll take all this.

But don't forget the yogurt and the spices, because that is what adds to the Curry as well.

All in there.

And then we're going to cook this now for about three or four minutes.

So just to finish this off now, what I'm going to do is take some coriander, that goes in here.

And this is what I love about doing stuff like this.

It's all about real food.

I do love it.

You get your pan, ow your fighter.

That's hot.

And then some almonds.

Sprinkle almonds.

People think there'd be a wind machine behind you, wouldn't they?

And there you have it, my veg curry.

Now I know what you're thinking.

The hat clashes with the jumper.

It's the only thing they had in the shop.

JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): It looks good to me.

Let's see what the hard-working volunteers think.

WOMAN: Oh, that smells good.

Definitely done it justice.

[upbeat music] JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): I'm in this stunning Shetland Islands, the most northerly part of the UK.

Earlier, I dropped in on a project successfully growing vegetables in this challenging climate and used them to make a perfect curry.

♪ ♪ Now I'm meeting David Poulsen from Thule Ventus to learn about traditional fish salting.

North sea cod came off the MSC sustainable list in October 2019.

So now David uses line-caught cod, landed from small day boats, a more selective, viable form of fishery.

How are you doing, boss?

- Not too bad at all.

- Busy at work.

- Absolutely.

Great to see you as well.

How are you doing?

Now I've been looking forward to this.

Yeah.

Are you the only person on the island that's doing this?

Probably the only person that's doing it commercially.

Right.

Hundreds of people will be doing this in little buckets.

Little buckets.

Yeah.

DAVID POULSEN: Just with what they catch themselves, or what they buy from the shops.

JAMES MARTIN: So what have you got in here?

DAVID POULSEN: Well, I've done a kind of a traditional butterfly split for you here just to show you how it used to be done.

JAMES MARTIN: You get the fish whole like this, and you've got to do it?

DAVID POULSEN: A friend of mine has a fishmonger shop.

So he does all the filleting for me.

Then we get it from him, and we salt it down, and then we just-- JAMES MARTIN: I haven't been to the Shetlands that long.

But I know that everybody's got a friend to do stuff.

Everybody's got a friend who does something.

So I've got a friend who-- JAMES MARTIN: OK.

DAVID POULSEN: --who processes fish.

JAMES MARTIN: And once it's filleted and in the salt, in these buckets, how long would it be in there for?

This will be in here for about a month.

- A whole month?

- It can be up to a month.

Yeah.

And do you have to turn it in there, or you just leave it?

We tend to just leave it.

Everybody has a different idea on how to do it.

But we're trying to get back to the original way of salting fish.

And 200 or 300 years ago, the people of the Basque country started buying fish from Shetland.

And this is-- - Really?

Yeah, and this is their preferred method.

Fantastic.

OK.

All right.

I've got a mate of mine from the med.

I'm going to wind him up now.

And this is still popular with locals?

Very popular.

Not so much the cod because cod was never the thing that was eaten.

I guess cod was the thing that you sold.

Yeah.

DAVID POULSEN: So it was mostly piltocks, which is coley or pollack, more of an inshore fish.

JAMES MARTIN: So you call it a piltock?

Piltock.

So it's only a piltock when it's salted?

No, a piltock is a piltock.

JAMES MARTIN: A piltock is a piltock.

A piltock is a piltock all the time.

But-- JAMES MARTIN: So what's a coley?

A coley?

Well, this is a moot point.

- It's a piltock.

- It's a piltock.

It's a piltock.

If in doubt, it's a piltock.

So what you've got from there, six weeks later, what do you do to get to this stage?

Well, this is probably you say, this is about six week old.

This has been in the salt for about a month.

And then it's been drying in here.

It's probably got another two or three weeks to go, because when it's properly hard, it should be just like that.

So classically, I mean, if I was going to reconstitute this, soak it in water overnight?

The bigger pieces, maybe 24 hours, the smaller, thinner bits, maybe 12, 15 hours.

It's really a matter of personal preference.

JAMES MARTIN: And then cooking wise, how do the locals cook it?

Because I was always taught to cook this in milk.

That's not done so much here.

It's usually just water.

This is going back in the days when it was a subsistence lifestyle.

Right.

So it was if you had milk, you didn't waste it.

So it would be water for boiling the fish.

Yeah.

It might be butter.

It could be anything from mutton fat and boiled potatoes.

- That's it.

- Glass of milk.

JAMES MARTIN: Nice and simple.

DAVID POULSEN: Or you can go down the full Mediterranean route and-- We'll keep it nice and simple.

Keep it nice and simple.

I'm looking forward to tasting some.

Good.

- OK.

JAMES MARTIN: You've reconstituted some and cooked a few bits.

I mean, explain the taste of it.

Because it's-- It's delicate, I think, is the word I would use, compared to-- JAMES MARTIN: It changes the structure.

It becomes a bit more meatier.

It's not soft flakes DAVID POULSEN: Yeah.

JAMES MARTIN: People think when you salt it, the strength and the smell would come out onto that.

It's not the case at all.

When you soak it, that takes nearly all the salt out of it.

JAMES MARTIN: Why is the two different color?

Because I thought piltocks, coley, whatever you like to call it, is white.

Fish is fish.

But this is-- a coley is a slightly darker fish.

JAMES MARTIN: It's not haddocky, is it?

DAVID POULSEN: No.

JAMES MARTIN: What is it?

It's piltock.

It's piltock.

That's what it is.

DAVID POULSEN: And I think the reason that this exists here and not anywhere else, it didn't have such a commercial-- Yeah, but you kept the good stuff to yourself.

That's what people do.

[laughs] JAMES MARTIN: Is there a classic way of doing this in Shetland?

As simple as possible.

Just break it into little bits like this, and then mix it half and half with potatoes, and-- - So like a fish cake.

- Fish cakes.

Yeah.

Some people call it hairy tatties because-- JAMES MARTIN: Hairy tatties.

Hairy tatties because there's tatties in it, and if you pull this apart, then it goes a little bit stringy.

And there's your hair.

So some people call it that.

We call them tattie bannocks.

Tattie bannocks.

Tattie bannocks.

Now you know.

[upbeat music] Do you know what's great about this, is this has been done for thousands of years.

It's pure, honest food.

Literally, salt, fish from out there, and time.

And you learn something new every day.

Piltocks.

Definitely cooking those.

♪ ♪ You're going to like this dish.

And I've fallen in love with Shetland.

I really have.

It is a spectacular place.

And I'm going to do cod two ways, really.

We're going to use some of this piltock and salt cod, and we're going to use this bad boy over here, this big, massive, great line-caught cod, big proper fish.

So the first thing we're going to do is start off with a stew.

For that, I want some shallots.

Dice these all up nice and fine.

So this is the garnish, it's the sauce.

It's everything.

For the garlic, and then in the pan, a good glug of extra virgin olive oil.

We've got the onions and garlic in the pan.

I'm going to use a selection of nice little tomatoes over here.

Literally, we just chop these and throw them in.

What you want to do is just soften down the tomatoes a little bit.

Take a glug of white wine as well.

And then the herbs that I'm going to add to this is just a little bit of basil to start with.

I'm going to put a little bit more in at the end.

Now while our tomatoes are cooking, we can talk about this amazing salt cod and piltock.

This is how you would buy it.

And basically, to reconstitute this, what you need to do is soak it overnight.

That is what you end up with.

So this is the cod, and this is the piltock.

You can see the color is slightly, slightly different.

Just basically, just simply, cook this in water.

It takes about four to five minutes.

That's all.

And you end up with the piltock here and the salt cod here.

So there's a few bones in this as well.

So you've just got to just watch out.

But what we're looking at doing is just breaking this into nice flakes.

See that?

The nice flakes of the cod?

I'm just going to leave that to one side.

Meanwhile, I'm going to turn the attention to this fella, this bad boy.

A proper line caught cod.

You don't often see it like this, but I wanted to get this.

Look at this thing.

Look at that.

Amazing, one of the best fish in the sea really.

This is just phenomenal.

So what you've got to do is then fillet this, which is easier said than done.

JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): You might be best to get your fishmonger to do this for you, unless you fancy eating a lot of fish suppers.

[upbeat music] Now, a fish this sort of size, you need a decent sort of knives.

For the larger stuff like this, a serrated knife to get through some of the bones is the only way.

♪ ♪ Now also with this, you don't want to waste any of it when you get an amazing piece of fish like this.

And you can tell this is where these beautiful cod cheeks come from.

It's this muscle here.

It's just fantastic if you can get hold of it.

The French absolutely love cod cheeks and monkfish cheeks.

But-- ♪ ♪ And with that nice piece of fish, I'm just going to chop this up into a couple of pieces.

Now to simply cook our cod, I'm going to get some oil and butter.

Just get the butter foaming first before you put the fish in.

♪ ♪ So we can then season our cod.

You can see it cooking halfway up the side like that.

But what I do, I want to get a nice little color, flip that over.

Now because this is so thick, we can actually cook it on the stove we wanted to.

But I like to finish it off just in the oven.

200 degrees, only for about three or four minutes.

Now while that's in the oven, we can finish off our tomato stew.

We're going to keep this really simple in terms of flavor.

So I've got some tomatoes that have wilted down, a few bits of potatoes.

These have just been cooked.

Just a few diced potatoes.

I've got some wonderful beans here.

You can buy these online as well.

Just some nice pre-cooked white beans.

Then you've got this delicious salted fish.

Combination of the cod and the piltock.

And you put that in there as well.

[upbeat music] Now to finish this, we just put some black pepper.

And what you can do, if it starts to dry out a little bit, is add some more olive oil.

And then to keep the color, we use a combination of basil and just a touch of chopped parsley.

Once you add the beans, and the potatoes, and the oil, it starts to thicken up.

And you've got a beautiful little sauce, that.

♪ ♪ Now what's important with this, as well, not to overcook it.

What I like to do whenever I've got fish like this, I just like to finish it off with a little bit more butter, and just coat the fish.

Now it is important, really, not to overcook it.

The only way you can really tell is to just press the top.

You almost feel this resistance is going, but you can see that little flake just disappear-- there.

Just starts to break like that.

That fish is ready.

And it can sit there.

You don't have to serve it straight out of the oven straight away.

But our stew is ready.

Combination of the cod, the piltock as well.

But you've got this beautiful bit of line-caught cod to go with it.

And there you have it, a taste of the Shetland Isles.

[upbeat music] JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): I'm in the Shetland Islands, a peaceful place with pure air and glorious landscapes.

I've stopped off on my way to a charity event to show you something truly wonderful.

That is a Shetland sheep.

Behind that is a cow, or as they call up here, a "cooo".

But beyond that is St.

Ninian's.

Look at that amazing island.

And then this sandbar here, they call this a tombola.

It's the longest sandbar in the entire UK.

Tell me that is not beautiful.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ It's got a little bit of a Norwegian feel, this place.

I mean, Norway is only 200 miles away, but you can tell that.

And I've been to Norway.

It's very sort of similar in a way.

But this, I reckon, is more beautiful.

I really do.

I'm driving a Capri in Shetland in a jumper, a comfy jumper.

I'm loving it.

I'm absolutely loving it.

JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): Now on to Bigton Hall to meet Mary and an enthusiastic bunch of volunteers preparing a special Sunday tea, which attracts locals and tourists from far and wide.

[upbeat music] Oh.

JAMES MARTIN: Right.

You're clearly not Mary.

You must be Mary.

Nice to meet.

It's really busy out here.

Is this like this every Sunday?

MARY: You never quite know with our teas what it's going to be like.

JAMES MARTIN: But you've got plenty of food.

I mean, people are bringing this stuff in in their cars, they're just-- they're carrying it in.

I know.

And-- - It's fantastic.

- It's all voluntary.

It's a great way through the summer of making money for whatever cause you're trying to raise some money for.

So for instance, today, it's all going to watch the hall upkeep.

So it'll be on to our hall funds.

JAMES MARTIN: So what-- I mean, you've got soup, literally, all over the place in here.

MARY: Yeah, we've got four different kinds of soup today.

OK.

This is reestit mutton.

Do you know about reestit mutton?

- Reestit mutton?

- Reestit mutton.

Is that the salted mutton?

That's the salted mutton.

Right.

So mutton that's been soaked in brine and then dried.

In the olden days, it would have been hung up above your fireplace.

So it would have the smoky flavor from the peat or whatever you were burning.

So what have you got-- this smells lovely.

What have you got in here then?

MARY: So today, you're getting potato soup with a difference.

This is carrots, and swede, and leeks that's put in the broth that you've cooked the meat in.

- OK.

And then we've shredded the meat.

And we're going to add to that that.

And I think we'll just add that-- So you always add it at the last minute, do you?

MARY: Well, yes because this is cooked.

So-- JAMES MARTIN: So this dialect that you have over here.

MARY: Speaking about dialect, we've-- JAMES MARTIN: I've got a present.

MARY: You've got a present.

[upbeat music] So-- Well, so what have we got here then?

So the first one you've got on there is black fantin'.

Now if you're hungry, then you're fantin'.

But if you're really, really hungry then you're black fantin'.

- You're black fantin'.

[laughs] I'm always black fantin' me.

Right, what's a bronie?

A bronie is-- JAMES MARTIN: Bronie.

A bronie is a type of like, a bannock or whatever.

JAMES MARTIN: And what about preeve?

And again, if we leave the soup long enough, and it's all going to get dry and all congealed, then you would say it's sturken.

OK, so we need to go before it gets sturken.

You do.

That's going to get sturken.

- Right.

Let's off.

We're off.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ Thank you.

JAMES MARTIN: Happy with that?

I love this.

If this doesn't show you the sense of community in a place, nothing will.

Literally nothing will.

Can you get a photo?

Yeah, it's fine.

10 quid though, yeah?

It's to raise money for the hall.

OK.

Thank you.

JAMES MARTIN: So this goes on all afternoon then, does it as well?

MARY: This will go on all afternoon.

JAMES MARTIN: Brilliant.

MARY: Yes.

JAMES MARTIN: And how do people find out about it?

I mean, it's here every Sunday?

Or-- MARY: No, we do them maybe five or six times a year probably.

OK.

But you just put it in the local press.

And again, social media-- So if there's not the one this week somewhere, there's one somewhere else.

MARY: Somewhere.

There's usually one every week somewhere on the island.

JAMES MARTIN: Brilliant.

♪ ♪ How are you then, guys?

I saw you in the queue.

- Thank you.

It's very busy.

You look much taller here than you do in television.

You're supposed to say slimmer.

Oh, yeah.

Definitely slimmer.

Slimmer.

Slimmer is the one.

The slimmer is the one.

And somebody told me that you're-- a little birdie told me, was it you that into amateur dramatics, is it?

Oh yeah.

Actress.

Actress.

Yes.

JAMES MARTIN: Yeah, I've been told to watch you.

Yeah.

JAMES MARTIN: [laughs] If there's one trouble in the village all, it's you.

Is that right?

Kind of unique this, isn't it?

This-- - I've never seen-- I mean, it's unique.

It must be unique to island life, really, because you're a relatively small community.

But the best way to bring everybody together.

Oh, definitely.

JAMES MARTIN: I suppose the best thing as well is if you are on your own in a house, it gives you something to look forward to as well.

WOMAN: That's right.

You don't have to plan anything.

JAMES MARTIN: Yeah.

You just come.

And then it saves us making Sunday dinner.

It saves you making Sunday dinner.

♪ ♪ What a fantastic idea this is.

Still, people keep coming.

People keep going.

More food keeps arriving.

It's just the hub of the community.

I love it, absolutely love it.

[upbeat music] JAMES MARTIN (VOICEOVER): Now I'm off to the beach to meet some more locals.

Just look at this place.

Just look at this.

How beautiful is it here.

Absolutely stunning.

And I thought I'd do a dish that really reflects the whole place, the whole vista.

And I thought I'd use all the great sort of seafood from around here and do a little dish from Spain.

Sounds really weird, but I'm going to do a wonderful little paella because they do a lot of sharing food over here, as we all know.

So the most important bit with paella, really, is the pan and the rice.

The pan must be a paella pan.

The reason for that, it's thin, it cooks nice and evenly, it basically absorbs nice and evenly, and allows it to cook nice and evenly.

That's why you want a paella pan.

The other most important bit with paella is the rice.

It must be Spanish short-grain rice.

It absorbs all the nice flavors that you're going to put in there.

So the first thing we're going to do is put our pan on the heat.

It starts off with some onion.

And I'm just going to chop the onion through.

You can dice this up nice and small if you want.

Now if the table moves, it doesn't matter because the kind people here actually made this table for me.

Look, it's a door.

Or it used to be.

The pan's getting nice and hot.

A little bit of garlic.

This onion and the garlic, of course, come from those amazing people at that allotment.

I don't bang this too much.

It's safe.

A bit of garlic.

We'll just chop that through.

And then what I'm going to do is add some oil to the pan and start to color our chicken thighs because classically, paella wouldn't have fish in it really, if you ask the people of Spain.

It would have chicken and rabbit with the addition of snails.

While that's happening, we can start to cook our onions and our garlic in our pan as well.

So you want a little bit of color on the chicken, not coloring the onions too much.

That's pretty good.

Also from that allotment, I've grabbed some herbs as well.

I've got some oregano.

I've got some marjoram, beautiful fresh thyme as well.

Just chop that through, add that to our pan also.

And we just sprinkle the rice over the top.

Now unlike a risotto, this is the only time where you stir it because the minute you add the liquid, stirring is forbidden, literally forbidden.

Because you get a crust on the bottom.

It's not burnt.

It's a crust.

And that crust on the bottom of the pan is highly prized.

Now I learnt this from a paella master over in Valencia.

So I'm trying to replicate it in Shetland.

Then we can add our tomatoes, chop up the tomatoes.

So they're going to break down while it cooks.

Just look at that.

And then once we get to that stage you can add the stock for this one.

Now I'm going to use water for this.

But classically, people like to use a little bit of stock, some chicken stock, bit of fish stock, and then you get the flavoring and the color from either two things.

You can use saffron, but this is the key-- smoked paprika.

And you get two different types.

This is a sweet one, or you get a hot one.

This one is the sweet one.

What you do now is leave it.

You just leave it.

Now I did say on this journey that, of course, Yorkshire was God's own country.

But-- I think you've just been top trumped.

I really do.

[upbeat music] Wonder if that house is for sale.

Needs a bit of work.

♪ ♪ You see, it takes a little bit of time to make it properly.

But that is what we're looking for, just gently cooking away nicely.

And when we get to that stage, now we can start to add our fish.

We can season it.

Black pepper, some salt, over the top.

And if it starts to get a little bit dry, you can add a touch of water.

Just a little bit.

But you're going to get a little bit of liquor at the seafood that's going to go in there as well.

And what a selection of seafood that this place has to offer.

You've got amazing monkfish.

We've got beautiful mussels.

We've got amazing scallops.

Look at these.

And you can put whatever you want in there.

It's entirely up to you.

Now normally, when I'm doing this in somewhere like Whitby, I'm dodging seagulls.

Not here.

We've got a nice little bit of monkfish.

Now it's got a little bit of sinew on this.

So what you've got to do is remove that sinew.

Otherwise, it just toughens up in the pan.

And then we can chop our monkfish up into nuggets.

But look at the monkfish.

Beautiful piece of meat.

Then you can see our paella just cooking away nicely.

And then this is where we can add our monkfish.

We can then take our prawn, and then we've got our beautiful scallops.

Look at these.

Amazing.

Just pop these on as well.

And then mussels.

Fresh mussels.

Over the top.

Then, tin foil, and just pop this over the top.

And then we leave this to cook now for about 10 minutes.

All you need, just 10 minutes.

Cut to the shot of the fishing boat.

♪ ♪ A bit of parsley.

Enjoy that.

My Shetland-inspired paella on a beach.

Who needs seagulls when you've got these gannets?

I mean, crew?

♪ ♪ What a spectacular end to an amazing journey, zigzagging the entire length of the UK, starting with the Isles of Scilly, the white, sandy beaches, to then visiting the Jurassic coastline, hopping over to Jersey, Guernsey, then through Ireland into Wales.

Up the East Coast line, Bamburgh castle, unbelievable.

But the highlights for me have been the people who have joined me on my trip, my mates, visiting the places and food that I've tasted.

I've never tasted food like that in my life.

Some of the greatest meals I've ever had have been on this trip.

It's probably as good as it gets.

JAMES MARTIN: That's thanks in part to the amazing producers and the people who go out getting the food that we can enjoy.

And to finish it here, in Shetland, I think we found the perfect place.

And most of all, it's our home.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪