Rick Steins Road To Mexico

It was 1968 when I first came here to San Francisco.

I wanted to do my own road trip

from the United States to the Mexican border

and beyond. My dad had just died.

I'd finished school and I had no idea

what I wanted to do with my life.

It was the year after the summer

of love and things like enchiladas,

burritos, guacamole, I had only heard of from the radio,

but they sounded wonderful.

But it wasn't just the food.

I wanted to live a little bit dangerously...

And I did.

MEXICAN MUSIC

Mwah!

Mm!

In the 1960s there was a song

that really caught my imagination.

It started, "All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey.

"I've been out for a walk on a winter's day."

And it was, of course, California Dreaming.

And it sort of filled me with a desire

to come here to California,

where the sun shone all the time,

where the fruit was bigger,

where the vegetables were riper, and finally, I made it in 1968.

So, here I am again, starting a journey

here in San Francisco and going all

the way to Mexico.

Because I want to find what has changed,

what's Californian cooking

like and what's the food of Mexico that is so

much part of my culinary imagination?

Ladies and gentlemen, we're taking it down

to the dock of the bay right here in San Francisco.

Is there a better introduction or a more fitting place

to start my culinary jaunt?

I don't think so.

This is Fisherman's Wharf.

If you like seafood, or Otis, it's a must.

Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay, Otis Redding.

Right here in San Francisco.

Thank you sir, appreciate that.

You know what? That song is so

good, I might have to do it twice.

The famous Fisherman's Wharf was started

by Sicilian fishermen who came

during the gold rush of the 1840s.

It has a similar feel, I think, to Southend,

with a smidgen of Margate thrown in.

Anyway, instead of cockles and whelks and jellied eels,

there's cod and grouper with coleslaw, snow crabs,

fettuccine with scallops, chowder of course,

and loads of seafood cocktails.

Well, I was last here on Fisherman's Wharf aged 21 and my

first thought was, how has it changed?

Well, not a lot. It's got a bit more commercial.

But what matters to me is they're

still selling boiled Dungeness crabs

and clam chowder. So I bought myself

some picked Dungeness crab with some nice

cocktail sauce. I just really

like the way the Americans do a cocktail

sauce. It's just ketchup and horseradish. It works a treat.

And this Dungeness crab, wow.

It's lovely to be back

here in San Francisco.

I'm always sort of thinking, it's a small city,

it's more sort of European in its feel.

But that's something to be said

for many a city that's on the ocean.

There's a sort of feeling of, I don't know, excitement.

The one thing about America that I really think,

every time I get off the plane, I feel excited.

And a lot of people say, "Oh, America this, America that."

But I guarantee that most of them,

when they get to the States,

they feel the same way.

There's something exciting, there's something...

great anticipation, there's great food,

there's great sights, it's lively.

And San Francisco is that for me.

It's my city by the bay, too.

San Francisco is the start of my journey.

I'm going south, past LA, crossing the border into

Baja, Mexico and onwards through the mainland,

ending in Yucatan and the warm waters of the Caribbean.

Most of the time when I first came

here, for food I just grabbed what I

could. A hot dog, a burger, a pizza.

But one of my foodie friends in the UK... and remember,

I wasn't even a chef then, I actually wanted to be a DJ.

..one of my friends suggested that if in San Francisco,

you've got to go to the Tadich Grill.

By American standards, it's practically medieval.

168 years old.

It's been here ever since the Gold Rush.

In fact, it's as old as San Francisco

and their most famous dish is one called Hangtown Fry.

It's a sort of oyster omelette for those about to die.

The boss here is David Hanna.

So it's a bacon, oyster and egg frittata.

Very good. How did it get its name, then?

Well, Hangtown was a nickname of Placerville, California,

where they had a jail.

And obviously, they...

Hanged people. Hung people there, exactly.

So it was very difficult to transport eggs

to the Placerville area and to get oysters, fresh oysters,

from the Pacific there was very expensive, as well.

So... And it took a lot of time.

So what people would do who were on death row,

they would ask for a Hangtown Fry.

Seems an odd thing to ask for just

on the eve of your death!

Absolutely. But it would extend their life by a few days

because to get all three of those ingredients

in the same place at one time was kind of a feat.

They're good stories!

It's a great story and you know, it's a great dish.

We're one of the very few places that still serve this.

More important, for me,

is eating this very traditional Californian dish from

the Gold Rush days

in this beautiful restaurant which,

I mean, it's just so American.

This sort of enormous bar.

It's sensational. With everybody sitting round it eating.

Well, we love it. It's called the dining counter.

I mean, it's a great place.

We've had senators from, you know, from Washington DC

who have come out here and have a meal.

There are actors, actresses, other politicians.

People just up the street come in,

mix and mingle together and enjoy a meal together.

I was sort of thinking, yeah, I might

open a restaurant like this.

It's just so convivial, really, isn't it?

You know, you never know who you'll find

yourself sitting next to,

that's the thing.

I love the menu here

and this dish is the most sought-after.

It's a fish stew made with the best

of what's landed the night before,

plus a few clams.

Some say it's from Sicily, or maybe Liguria.

But anyway, it's definitely Italian.

I'm really liking this dish.

It's really simple. It's just a load

of seafood, bit of olive oil,

bit of white wine and their sauce,

tomato-based sauce, which actually,

Barney won't give me the recipe!

Which I perfectly understand!

Apparently it's called cioppino and it

was a recipe from Italian fishermen

who chipped in with various seafood,

presumably that they'd caught.

But the other thing I really like about this kitchen is

it's very hot in here. There's a charcoal grill here,

a coal grill and this solid top is really, really hot.

It reminds me of my first kitchen

which was similarly hot.

Sometimes it was hellishly hot,

but I feel quite nostalgic about it now.

I suppose a very useful by-product

of my travels is to find recipes

that I could cook when I got back home.

Especially to adapt the ingredients to what we find

in our shops and local supermarkets.

I got the idea for this dish in San Francisco,

but my version is very much a fish stew, Padstow style.

The first thing I do in order to make this Italian style stew

is to peel these raw tiger prawns.

And they DID come from my local supermarket!

Take the shells off, like so, and put

the skins, the heads, the tails,

into a well-seasoned fish stock.

So now to make the base. This is the sauce.

First of all, some butter.

Now, this isn't an Italian element,

I don't think, in this sort of dish.

This is very much Californian.

And now some olive oil, plenty of olive oil.

It really richens it up nicely.

And garlic. You might be surprised

about the amount of garlic,

but it really does pay off.

That's about five cloves, that.

And now some onions, a small onion, all chopped up,

because it's not going to be strained, this.

And now some celery. And again, this

is very much a Californian element.

You wouldn't get this in the Italian.

And neither actually, next, is the green peppers.

But this makes it different,

this is the way food moves from country to country and changes slightly.

There we go. In goes the green peppers.

And now some white wine, just any old white wine will do.