In this new Channel Five cookery show, presenter Amanda Lamb tours the UK’s towns, challenging a couple of local chefs to shop in the market and then cook a two-course meal with the produce in a head-to-head competition.

The first in the series is set in York, and it’s my brother’s TV debut.  Rob has been a chef since leaving school and is a regular demonstrator at food festivals and events around Yorkshire.

If you’ve ever seen Rob cooking on stage, you’ll know that he’s made for this sort of thing.

That’s Rob on the right, the one looking nervous because he’s stood next to the lovely Amanda Lamb.

Try and catch it – it promises to be good.

Street Market Chefs

Tuesday, 7.30pm, Channel Five

There’s more info on the Street Market Chefs facebook page.

The Romans have a slightly different way with pizza.

Their bases are thin and crisp, in contrast to the softer and fuller Neapolitan style.

A good Roman pizza will crack at the edges when you bend it, and if it’s cooked properly, the edges will be scorched.

Finding a decent pizza in Rome isn’t difficult – eating badly in the Eternal City is next to impossible – but the pizza served at Il Leoncino just off Via del Corso in the Centro Storico must rank among the best I’ve ever had.

No, scratch that. I’m going to go further.  It was the very best I’ve ever had – the absolute finest pizza that I’ve ever eaten.

As with all eating experiences, some of this has to do with the context. Il Leoncino is a small restaurant, more of a canteen than anything else.  The tables have plastic tablecloths and the light is fluorescent.  It’s a little shabby around the edges.

It’s the genuine article – a proper Roman pizzeria, full of Italians eating pizza.

The waiter added to the atmosphere, a big, gruff man with an exemplary moustache and a white apron dusted with flour and soot from the oven.  He didn’t speak any English, and my Italian doesn’t extend beyond a few words, so we pointed at and mispronounced our order.  I wanted some focaccia, but a good deal of hand waving and gesticulating told me that we weren’t getting focaccia, not on top of two pizzas and a mixed salad, anyway.  Too much to eat, apparently.

Pizza pictures this way…

I seem to always pick the one recipe in a book that revolves around some new and exotic ingredient that I’ve never even seen before, let alone used.

The other week, it was goat.  This week, it’s sumac, the dried, ground fruit of the rhus plant.  Sumac is common all over the Middle East, where it’s a common ingredient in mezze dishes and added as to salads for its sharp lemon flavour.

It might be common in Turkey, or Iran, but it’s nowhere to be seen in Yorkshire.

Three supermarkets and two Asian stores were barren of sumac, and then in the third Asian store, a small packet of sumac, the last one, the name spelled somaq on the front.  One packet of spice took me over two hours to find.

I’m that dedicated.

You need to start this dish the night before by soaking 450g of dried butter beans in plenty of water with two tablespoons of bicarbonate of soda.  Inevitably, you’ll forget this step, so feel free to experiment with canned beans.  They won’t be as good, but they’re definitely convenient.

More this way…

Leon is a small chain of London restaurants with an unusual approach to a sensible goal.

They believe that  “food should taste good and do you good. And that everyone should be able to enjoy it”, which is a noble belief that underpins many a restaurant venture.  How have they done it?  In their own words, they’ve “set about to change the face of fast food”.  That’s the hard part.

They talk of imagining “what a high-street fast food joint might be like in heaven: a place where fresh, unprocessed, satisfying meals are served with pride”.

I must admit to some skepticism here.  These are lofty aims, and I take my hat off to anybody who has the bottle to even try to achieve them.  Opening a successful restaurant is one thing, but delivering an alternative to a fast food operation based on fresh and healthy food is quite another.

But they’ve tried, and succeeded, succeeded like you wouldn’t believe it possible to succeed.  A single outlet has grown to nine branches across the capital, each serving a diverse menu of good, fresh food at remarkably low prices.

A book was inevitable, and yes, it arrived to equal acclaim and success.  This is Leon’s second outing in print, a cookbook split neatly in half – fast food that can be cooked in under twenty minutes and slow fast food, food that can be made in advance and then squirreled away for when it’s needed.  It’s a very good idea.

More Leon this way…