Great British Food Revival - Season 2

Michelin-starred chef and host of Masterchef - The Professionals Michel Roux Jr gets passionate about our heritage pears. Concerned that eighty per cent of the pears we eat are imported, Michel wants to find out what can be done to persuade people to buy British. He also inspires us all to cook with homegrown pears as he prepares a delicious selection of dishes including a fabulous pear soufflé.

Veteran food campaigner Clarissa Dickson Wright takes up the plight of British garlic, often not even recognised as being a British-grown ingredient. Clarissa takes us to one of only a handful of garlic farms to discover the amazing taste and range of garlic that is grown in the UK. She digs back through her history books to prove that garlic has a long and illustrious heritage in Britain and to prove her point, she cooks a recipe straight from the medieval court of Richard II.

Greengrocer turned Masterchef host Gregg Wallace reminisces about his love of rhubarb and can't understand why sales and production have plummeted. He heads to Yorkshire, the home of forced rhubarb, to meet plucky growers who continue with their traditional labour-intensive methods and who have triumphed in the face of adversity. In the Revival kitchen, Gregg aims to prove that rhubarb has far more to offer than just the filling for good old-fashioned crumble.

Meanwhile, Ainsley Harriott wants us to remember the taste of a fresh pea straight from the pod. There is no doubt that peas are popular but over ninety percent of those we grow are frozen. Ainsley argues that we're missing out on one our homegrown treats if we don't eat them fresh when they're in season. Even HRH Prince Charles is rooting for the fresh pea, as Ainsley discovers when he visits the kitchen garden at Highgrove House.

For Masterchef's John Torode, British beef is his passion. His quest is for heritage beef and is shocked to discover that five breeds are on the critically endangered list. He heads to Scotland to meet a beef farmer dedicated to reviving the fortunes of the original, traditional Aberdeen Angus. Amongst the dishes he cooks in the Revival kitchen is a stupendous slow roast four bone rib of beef complete with Yorkshire puddings. If anything will persuade you to try rare breed beef it will be this incredible Sunday roast.

Seafood supporter Valentine Warner wants to reverse the fortunes of British cockles and mussels. He discovers that the vast majority of our mussels are exported, and our cockle industry has shrunk to almost nothing. He is determined to remind us that these nutritious and plentiful fruits of the sea are fresh and available right on our doorstep. To encourage us to start buying them Valentine rustles up some delicious dishes in the Revival kitchen to show us how easy our shellfish is to cook.

Saturday Kitchen's James Martin wants to convince us to cook with different sorts of eggs, rather than always choosing the tried and trusted hen option. He travels to meet duck and quail egg producers who are trying to revive the fortunes of these once popular eggs. Among the dishes he creates in the Revival kitchen is a magnificent sponge cake made with duck eggs which looks nothing less than spectacular.

Irish-born chef Richard Corrigan is a keen fisherman and is passionate about fresh fish but he is shocked to discover that we export the vast majority of our mackerel catch. He is determined to change our attitudes to this rather overlooked fish by proving that not only is it incredibly good for us but that it tastes delicious too. He devises a range of wonderful recipes which showcase the benefits of cooking with locally caught fresh mackerel.

Renowned chef Raymond Blanc thinks it is a tragedy that so many of our native orchards are disappearing and is determined to try reverse this trend. One of his favourite fruits is the British plum, many varieties of which are now seriously under threat. He meets farmers who are struggling to sell their plums, many of which lie rotting on the orchard floor because there is no longer a viable market for them, and die-hard lovers of plums who, like him, are determined to revive the fortunes of this classic British fruit. In the Revival kitchen, Raymond creates a range of amazing dishes that are so mouthwatering that they make you want to go and plant your own plum tree.

Michelin-starred chef Angela Hartnett's campaign is to persuade us to cook with turkey outside of the Christmas season. She wants to reverse the perception of turkey as an over-cooked, dry meat that we only eat once a year and encourages us to embrace the slower-reared heritage varieties of turkey that produce succulent, tasty meat. Angela is determined to get us to be more experimental with turkey and cooks up some tasty treats to prove just how versatile this healthy and affordable alternative to chicken really is.

The UK has a fantastically diverse range of produce, yet it seems to be widely ignored in favour of cheaper or more exotic foreign imports. Some of our heritage varieties are genuinely in danger of being lost forever unless they are used once more for cooking and eating. Each episode of the Great British Food Revival sees chefs and foodies champion a different piece of British produce and demonstrate how it can be used in the kitchen.

Following her Great British Bake-Off triumph, Mary Berry demonstrates a genuine passion for fresh herbs and wants the world to know how easy they are to grow, use and store. She questions a commercial herb grower about why more herbs are not available fresh in our supermarkets and she visits the largest collection of organic herbs in the UK. Mary introduces us to three of her favourite herbs and cooks three delicious meals to showcase them including a superb lemon balm ice cream.

Award-winning chef Jason Atherton is passionate about only using fresh, seasonal fruit and vegetables in his restaurant kitchen. Cabbage has always been a staple on his menu but it has an image problem and is shunned by the younger generation. On Jason's revival campaign, he seeks the advice of a young cook and food blogger to find out how to get more young people eating cabbage and he leads by example, using the various cabbage varieties we produce in Britain in truly inspirational ways in the Revival kitchen.

Greedy Italian Antonio Carluccio discovers the shocking truth that we've lost half our beetroot fields in the last 30 years. He doesn't share the memories of over-cooked, vinegary, pickled beetroot we detested in our school dinners, and can't understand why we don't make more of this wonderful veg in our cooking. He opens our eyes to some fascinating varieties, and finds ways to cook beetroot we may never have thought of to inspire us to rediscover a love of beetroot.

Matt Tebbutt takes time out from his busy restaurant to champion the cause of British currants in all their magnificent colours. Although we grow plenty of blackcurrants, most are turned into cordial - growers would like to see this super-fruit soon rival the blueberry. Meanwhile, our other currants are no longer easy to get hold of. Redcurrants mainly go into making jelly and the production of white currants has almost ceased. So it's going to be a huge challenge for Matt to make people rethink their attitudes to this native fruity little gem and demand them once again.

Gary Rhodes is fanatical about the quality of the produce he uses, in his relentless pursuit of perfection in the kitchen. He's horrified to discover that, not only have we lost the vast majority of our cherry orchards, but hardly any of the cherries we eat in the UK were grown here. His campaign takes him to meet growers who are trying to buck the trend and fight back, not only with new strains of sweeter, larger cherries, but with old-fashioned heritage varieties. Gary's powers of persuasion to make us fall back in love with the British cherry come to the fore in the 'Revival' kitchen, where he prepares some exceptional dishes, including his signature dessert - a delectable cherry clafoutis.

Award-winning food writer and restaurateur Yotam Ottolenghi is passionate about nuts. He uses them in many of his recipes as they are an integral ingredient in Middle Eastern cookery. He discovers that although Britain has a rich history of growing nuts, most of us are completely unaware of this tradition. We can grow fantastic walnuts in the UK but not enough for them to be commercially viable, so most walnuts we eat are imported. Yotam wants this to change and for us to get behind our native nuts like the British cobnut - a nut that most people have never heard of unless they live in Kent, where it is grown. To get us to appreciate these homegrown delicacies, he creates some fantastic sweet and savoury dishes including a magnificent cobnut crumble cream and roasted aubergines with an amazing walnut salsa.