Product Description

With their irrepressible enthusiasm for great food, Si King and Dave Myers AKA the Hairy Bikers travel the length and breadth of Britain to discover our finest traditional foods. Touring the counties of Britain on their trusty triumphs, Si and Dave celebrate local recipes and chefs from the villages and towns they explore. Creating delicious meals from local produce they inspire with their bubbling enthusiasm. Find out where the best sausages are made, why Ludlow has become the foody Mecca of the Shires and discover the century-old recipe for gingerbread with a hint of rum and port. Si and Dave are self-confessed life-long foodies. They celebrate each ingredient and create delicious dishes while providing some laughs along the way. THE HAIRY BIKERS' FOOD TOUR OF BRITAIN puts the passion back into cooking and inspires readers to eat the best of British.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1118 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

About the Author
Born and bred in Barrow-in-Furness, Dave Myers joined the BBC as a make-up artist, and while travelling the world with hit TV series he picked up recipes with Si, Dave's travelling companion and the other half of the hairy bikers. Si King hails from North East England and is a big, blond-bearded biker with an infectious laugh. His love of food was established at a young age when his father bought exotic ingredients back from his Royal Navy voyages. Born and bred in Barrow-in-Furness, Dave Myers joined the BBC as a make-up artist, and while travelling the world with hit TV series he picked up recipes and Simon, Dave's travelling companion and the other half of the hairy bikers.

Customer Reviews

Hairy Bikers
Bought the book because I loved the TV series. Excellent set of recipes. Very easy to follow and made me try out some new stuff. Love the way it encourages you to use British products. Contains both the recipes the boys cook plus the professional chef recipes. Would make a lovely present.

A good book, but sadly not a great book...
Unfortunately the Orion team didn't bring a great book together. This is a real shame as it could have been one of the stand-out cookery books of the year.

I think the Hairy Bikers are great, loved the TV show etc etc etc...

BUT...

There are mistakes throughout the book, and they really should have been picked up before release
(and before I bought it! lol)

For example Rupert Rowleys slow cooked lamb: the recipe totally omits the pressed shoulder of lamb - although it helpfully tells you how to make the oatcake crust which should top it!

You can see the 2nd cut of lamb in the background of the picture but the shallow depth of field makes it impossible to easily identify the cut or method used to cook/prepare without having seen the series.

It kinda looks like they dropped bits & pieces to make room for photos which will only serve to frustrate when you wonder why there's a mismatch or what went wrong when you come to assemble the dish.

Anyways, it's a good book but not great and doesn't reflect well on the Bikers.

Hopefully either Orion or the Bikers will correct the errors and make the corrections/omissions or the actual full recipe available to print from a website.

If you have the series recorded on your Sky+ box - don't delete the episodes with meals you want to try before you double check and make notes of any differences/omissions.

Great fun
I am really enjoying this book. I have enjoyed the series and the book is a
perfect reflection of the tv episodes.

This is a well produced and glossy book with lots of photographs (including
one for each recipe, always invaluable) and clear text. The recipes include
both those made by the Hairy Bikers and by the chefs that they visited on
their travels. The Recipes are well laid out and easy to follow. The book is
organized by area, alphabetically, and there's a small map of the UK to show
where each area actually is geographically.

Each chapter is introduced with a swift lok at the area visited, with
various producers mentioned by name. At the end of the book there is a list
of producers and suppliers (telephone / web) followed by an Index which is
organized principally by ingredients (e.g. to find a recipe for trout look
under "fish").

The recipes are very varied, which is excellent. There's a good mix of meat
and seafood, with lots of sauces and vegetable accompaniments. Some of the
recipes, like Kevin Viner's Fillet of Monkfish in Cornish Wine with Pickled
Celeriac and Cucumber are delicate, finely dressed and very modern, whilst
others, like the bikers' steak and kidney pudding, are solid, full-flavoured
and traditional. That's a nice balance.

I have two small reservations, both of which echo the tv series.
- Many of the ingredients are difficult to source
- Many of the combinations delivered on the plate are far too extreme

The first of these is impossible to criticise in any meaningful way because
the whole point of the series was to visit different areas and use the
ingredients local to those places. It was always going to be a challenge to
get hold of some of the ingredients if you live somewhere which doesn't
produce similar types of food. That's okay when replacements are obvious,
but sometimes they aren't. Seaweed types, for example, which can be
absolutely delicious, are either difficult to source or horrendously
expensive for those of us who live in London. The same goes for some of the
seafood, like cockles, and meats like snails. A very minor complaint.

On the second point I find that the recipes provided, particularly by the
authors rather than by the visited chefs, pile too many different flavours
and textures onto one plate. That's not really a problem because you can
cook the bits together that you think will work well for you and leave out
the elements that don't appeal to you. An example is the Gloucester Guinea
Fowl with Apple Risotto and Baby Leaf Salad. It sounds relatively straight
forward until you look closer. The guinea fowl is divided into breasts with
fatty streaky bacon, and thighs which are stuffed with pesto made of basil,
rocket, hard cheese, pine nuts and garlic. The apples in the risotto are
caramelized and are added to the rice with bacon lardons, parmesan cheese
and sage. The baby leaf salad is dressed with orange juice, lemon juice,
vinegar, garlic, mustard and sugar. That's a right old mix of flavours and
far too much for my taste buds. But I could happily isolate one or two of
those elements and serve just those on a plate.

For me there are two many foaming sauces, mini mousses and cute little
jellies - they are simply too fussy for me.

Having watched the TV series I knew that I would be making those
observations before I ordered the book, so I really have no gripes on the
subject but thought that they would be worth pointing out.

This book is all about main courses. There are no starters or desserts.
That's perfect for me because I don't bother with either starters or
desserts at home.

The first two recipes that I have tried worked perfectly - one recipe by the
Bikers and the other by one of the chefs that they visited.

Very enjoyable.