RICK STEINS SPANISH CHRISTMAS
21 December BBC2 9pm
Very expensive Serrano ham (which is why the ham is sliced so thinly)and clams are eaten by the Spaniards at Christmas. The dish works well as both a tapas or an impressive starter at a Christmas do.
Rick Stein then samples some knock-out sherry. One of the sherries is described as ‘a Christmas pudding in a glass.’ Careful Steiny don’t want to get too tipsy after too many sherries.
Red goatsherd peppers are used in many regional dishes along with vibrant sauces. Stein waxes lyrically about the peppers and all the other ingredients on the programme, ‘oh the smell of piemento and paprika! the combination of Spanish and Moorish!’
Pickled aubergines from La Mancha are another topic and there is a very festive and colourful look to a duck and pears dish.
Then, Rick Stein goes bread buying up in the mountains. He buys fresh bread out of the back of a van.
Apparently, people that like fish are happier than people that don’t. The fish dish was bream and it was served simply with potato wedges and onions.
He certainly gets invited around visiting several families homes and sampling various Spanish Christmas meals in each.
A Spanish Christmas carol rounds the programme off and Rick Stein affably wishes us the best for Christmas and the new year.
Maybe Darren Clarke drinks a pint of Guinness too many to be Sports Personality of the Year (BBC1 22 December). He sometimes downs as many as 7 before a round on Royal Portrush, apparently.
Nevertheless, it was a marvellous win at The Open and he would have been my choice for the Sports Personality award. Luke Donald with all his consistency and prize money hasn’t nailed ‘the big one’ like Clarke.
His third Open round was one of the best I had seen on television for a long while. Proper links golf played in far from ideal conditions with everything in: superb iron shots, shanked iron shots, low skimming shots, super long putts and a couple of missed ones.
Clarke hasn’t really strung any results together since though and the 2012 Sports Personality of the Year award went to cyclist Mark Cavendish with long distance runner Mo Farah third.
The highlight of the Christmas period TV wise had to be Fast Freddie, the Widow and Me (ITV 9pm December 27).
A bloke was found guilty of drink driving and sentenced to do community service with a support group for troubled youngsters – one of whom turned out to be terminally ill (having spent his life in foster care.)
With his eyes opened to the needs of others, ‘Jonathan’ sets about making the lads (Freddie) dreams come true before he passed away, so he arranges a supposed family Christmas get-together. His ashes were sent up into the sky in ‘classy’ rockets as requested.
A brazenly sentimental, feature length drama of redemption which put the Robson Green rubbish to shame.
RIVER MONSTERS
ITV 1 7.30pm January 3
The programme was filmed in Papua New Guinea and was the first of seven episodes of a new series.
A local fisherman tells a tale of having his foot bitten by a creature in the Sepik River. Presenter Jeremy Wade tries to lure the creature in with various bait on the end of his rod. After catching a couple of ‘tiddlers’, he eventually succeeds.
The fish is known as ‘the ball-cutter’ thanks to its appetite for male body parts. When Wade holds the fish’s mouth open, the teeth don’t look very pleasant. The fish has made several attacks on humans in the river apparently.
NATURES WEIRDEST EVENTS
BBC2 8pm January 3
Chris Packham is our host for this programme which investigates unusual natural events.
Such as 1000 toads exploding near a German pond in 2009 and crows picking out their livers. Lovely.
A car cocooned by caterpillars in Holland and maggot-like creatures found in fishes mouths. Swiss waves which froze over and formed big majestic ice statues and fully encased nearby cars in ice.
‘If these images chilled you…..’ Wouldn’t go that far Chris.
How about ‘the mother of all dust storms’ – a monstrous cloud the size of Spain which turned Sydney crimson.
There was another big mouse plague in Australia last year apparently. Packham isn’t keen on killing animals – but these mice have to be poisoned.
Invasions of ladybirds in America. ‘A truly unique and wonderful spectacle.’
Back to the UK then – and beaches full of dead starfish and crabs. 25,000 of ‘em – dead from hypothermia. A lost bottle nose whale swimming in the Thames and stranded whales in Tasmania rounds it off.
The final episode the following evening took in fishes raining from the sky and flocks of starlings flying into each other and falling to the ground.
There was also some Welsh sailor bloke who had sailed out somewhere and the algae in the sea had illuminated the water making the sea and sky appear to merge together.
Steve Billingham