Former Great British Bake Off winner turned author and TV presenter Nadiya Hussain’s flourishing career has reached a new peak
Former Great British Bake Off winner turned author and TV presenter Nadiya Hussain’s flourishing career has reached a new peak – the ‘capital of the Peak’, in fact, as she came to Chapel-en-le-Frith to sample Ian Barratt’s authentic Derbyshire oatcakes for her new BBC2 series, Nadiya’s British Food Adventure.
Former Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain’s was cooking with gas – AvantiGas! – when BBC cameras filmed her making Derbyshire oatcakes with AvantiGas customer Ian Barratt.
Nadiya was filming for her BBC2 TV series Nadiya’s British Food Adventure, where she tours the country seeking out regional specialities and local food heroes.
One of them is Ian, whose family has been cooking traditional Derbyshire oatcakes since the 1940s. His farmhouse bakery at Owlgreave Farm, just outside Chapel-en-le-Frith, depends on AvantiGas to power their gargantuan, vintage, 18-foot hotplate, with its gas jets underneath cooking up to five dozen oatcakes at a time.
Ian has just had his third one-tonne LPG bulk tank installed, because as well fuelling heating and cooking for his farmhouse and bakery, LPG also fuels a holiday cottage and heats the toilet block on Ian’s campsite too.
Ian has been an AvantiGas customer since the company was founded after buying out Shell’s UK LPG business in 2011: “I’ve always been very well looked after,” said Ian.
The catering capabilities of LPG are important too because of Ian’s particular products: “Gas has a nice moist heat which is what you need for the oatcakes. Electric hotplates dry them out too much,” says Ian, and he should know. The recipe that underpins his business, Derbyshire Oatcakes and Pikelets, has been in the family since 1949, and they’ve owned the hotplate itself for over 40 years. So how did Nadiya’s team find out about their speciality?
“They found us through the Derbyshire Oatcake website. Nadiya thought she had tried them before, but it turned out she had only had Staffordshire oatcakes. She thought ours were a lot thicker and a lot tastier," says Ian.
Ian and his oatcakes feature prominently in the second edition of the series, to be shown on BBC on 24 July, 2017, when Nadiya samples Ian’s wares and finds out how the oatcakes are made before devising her own improvised speciality – Derbyshire oatcake samosas!
“You can make them sweet or savoury, but Nadiya’s vegetable samosas were crispy on the outside and had the moist and slightly spicy vegetables on the inside. I can see them becoming a whole new product line. They were absolutely delicious!”
Click here to access all availiable episodes on BBC2.