Tracking Down That Tune

Jotting down some useful tips for oven-roasted chips from Great British Food, presented by Tom Norrington-Davies (TND), which I saw a few days ago on the Discovery Travel & Living channel:

• Pat dry the potatoes with kitchen paper after washing; the reduced moisture will help the outer layer to crispen.
• Slice half through the middle, length-wise, and then again; one longish potato should yield four largish chips. I normally like to parboil my potatoes before roasting to ensure the middles are cooked as well as fluffy but this probably works for rounder potatoes which are halved whereas this long chip version is not as chunky and should cook through without parboiling.
• Heat duck fat in a saucepan while the seasoning for the chips are prepared (he used three cloves of garlic, fresh rosemary and sea salt which were roughly chopped together) and then pour the hot fat over the chips in a mixing bowl and mix (not with your hands, of course, as the duck fat will be finger sizzling good). I already knew that duck fat is the best oil to coat roasting potatoes with – it has a very high boiling point (unlike olive oil) and a taste that doesn’t overwhelm the potatoes (unlike peanut or sesame oil). But this simple step ensures that the oven’s heat can get straight to work, in tandem with the hot fat, on the potatoes instead of having to heat through the duck fat first. I had previously tried to preheat the duck fat in the roasting tray while preheating the oven (to the highest setting, around 230 deg C) but coating was highly uneven and lots of fat spitting everywhere in the process. TND’s method solves both problems while achieving the desired end result.
• Next tip is to arrange the chips onto baking parchment on top of the roasting tray, taking care to space out the chips evenly, together with his roast chicken (already in there) for 30-40 minutes. TND specifically advised against using normal grease-proof paper; only baking parchment can really take the high heat and ensure that the chips fall off the paper and tray quickly and without sticking to the cooking surface. Spacing it out (instead of just a haphazard pile from a random pour) prevents crowding which helps with an even cooking and crisping.

It’s a little frustrating and puzzling that there isn’t more information online about TND or the Great British Food program. Neither has a Wikipedia page or an official homepage; no results for the latter on Youtube either (script writer) and the top Google search results have turned up: .

• TND culinary background: via his 24 Nov 2005 Telegraph article, that TND started work at The Eagle (reputedly London’s first gastropub, a term purportedly coined by Time Out) from around 1995 and has since (around 2007) moved to the Great Queen Street restaurant (which doesn’t seem to have its own website either).
• He’s also published two cookbooks, Just Like Mother Used To Make (2004) and Cupboard Love: How to Get the Most Out of Your Kitchen (2005).

What really inspired this search though was my still unsuccessful attempt to track down the very jolly strings-heavy background music used throughout Great British Food including the ED. The end credits for Music are for Mike Stobbie but I haven’t been able to find the name of the BGM track. Have listened to all the samples available at:

• Classics for Relaxation (14 tracks, 1 Nov 1998)
• Dolphin Dreaming (17 tracks, circa 1 Jan 2000)
• Floatation Tank (15 tracks, circa 17 Nov 2008)
• Finde Deine Mitte – Find Yourself Vol. 3 (7/15 tracks, circa 1 Jun 2010)
• Mike Stobbie’s Audio Network page (50 tracks)

Starting to wonder if it was a custom track specially composed for GBF…