´óÏó´«Ã½

Ellie Harrison is in Scotland, where autumn first takes hold. She’s in Perthshire, ‘Big Tree Country’, consistently voted one of the best places to see autumn colour in the world. That’s down to its sheer variety of broad-leaved trees, many of them planted to help teach young foresters at the former Forestry School. She finds out a little more about the old school with the help of Mike Cheesewright, a former student. Ellie then looks to the future with Forestry Commission District Manager, Charlie Taylor, as he thins out the existing trees to make room for new growth.

Matt Baker is at the other end of the UK, in Kent. With national Apple Day on the 21st October, he explores the changing face of British orchards. Matt heads to one of the country’s top apple growers and hears how this year’s total crop of English eating apples is expected to be the heaviest for 20 years. Matt also see the cutting edge processes involved in processing the perfect British apple. It’s complex and impressive stuff, especially the computer programmes that help with predicting plant disease. But is all this really necessary to safeguard the future of the British apple industry?

In deepest Devon there’s a rare breed making a colourful mark on the landscape – Lavender sheep. Gillian Dixon and her husband Ian run a smallholding and have combined their love of colourful animals and farming to help develop this new and colourful flock. We find out how this extraordinary breed was first created and the challenges to keep it going.

John Craven has come to West Yorkshire, to a farm in Pontefract where they are harvesting liquorice. Not quite the black sticky stuff of childhood sweetshops, this is the natural plant root. John visits Heather Copley, a local farmer, as they gather the town’s first liquorice crop in more than 50 years. John also chats to Tom Dixon, the last apprentice liquorice boiler in Pontefract who worked in the factories in the 1950s. Tom explains to John why Pontefract’s liquorice garths (fields) failed to survive the economic changes of the 20th century. Then who better to cook up an autumnal desert than the queen of 2014’s Great British Bake Off, Yorkshire lass Nancy Birtwhistle. With some autumn berries gathered from the garden, they cook up a colourful autumnal feast infused with chocolate and liquorice custard.

You can find Nancy’s recipes at the bottom of this page

Adam Henson is at a Cotswold red deer farm helping out with an annual task. Deer are one of the least domesticated livestock because generally they need little husbandry. That is great - until they do need handling! It’s rutting season and at this time of year stags are fuelled with aggression and for safety reasons their antlers need to be removed. This involves darting the stags to sleep and removing their antlers with a saw. But, when the stags wake, they will have the surprise of their life, as 30 hinds will be waiting to greet them.

Ellie Harrison is in Perthshire and it is here in the north that the season’s colour first takes hold – but why? She learns from Countryfile weatherman, John Hammond, how the colours of autumn are created. With the help of his secret woodland cinema, John explains the science behind the dramatic autumn displays. The dominant green colour, due to the pigment chlorophyll, is what we see for most of the year - but what lies underneath? John makes everything clear with some unusual props - an egg, an aubergine and a flamingo.

We follow the making of a wild food book with a difference. Artist, papermaker and forager James Wood, along with co-author Fergus Drennan, is working on The Foraged Book Project. It is a book about foraging with a difference as the ink, paper and binding are being made entirely with foraged ingredients. James started by researching the making of paints from plants. Then followed paper made from funghi, binding made from nettles, and ink made from oak tree tannins. The lads take us through the creation of the book and we follow them as they take the artwork through its final stages, being bound into the finished product.

Matt finds out more about the future challenges for the domestic apple industry at a place that has never opened its doors to TV cameras, the East Malling Research Station. Matt digs into its history and finds out how research at East Malling focuses on what is happening below ground – including elaborate observation tunnels with glass panels at root level which are used to measure and record every aspect of apple trees. He then heads out into their test orchards to taste some apples of the future - products of 20 years research. It’s a colourful selection and the varieties include ‘Red Love’ – which has red skin and red flesh!

As if nature’s display wasn't spectacular enough at this time of year, the Faskally woodland is being used as a canvas for even more spectacular show of colour. By night, Faskally is transformed into an enchanted forest, with the trees surrounding its loch illuminated with coloured lights. As Ellie helps rig the forest display she hears how this can only take place for a few weeks in autumn, as the leaves need to be the right shade to be an effective canvas to ‘paint’ the light show. If they were still green and waxy the reflections would not be as impressive.

You will need a 22cm loose-bottomed flan tin lightly greased.

For the sweet shortcrust pastry:

240g Plain flour

150g butter chilled and cut into dice

75g Icing sugar

1 egg and 1 egg yolk

For the liquorice concentrate:

4 sticks dried liquorice root, each stick broken into three pieces

(you can buy dried liquorice roots from sweet shops and health food shops. If you are using fresh root you will need double the quantity)

1 whole star anise

Strip of orange zest

For the filling:

350g Pumpkin flesh cut into 2.5cm dice

Remaining zest of 1 orange grated finely

60ml liquorice concentrate (see above)

75g sugar

2 eggs and 1 egg yolk

275ml single cream

Method:

Begin by making the liquorice concentrate.  Place the root, star anise and orange zest in a small saucepan and pour over 300ml water.  Bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes until the liquid has reduced in size and you are left with about 50ml.  Leave to go completely cold then discard the roots, peel and anise.

Place the prepared pumpkin between two sheets of foil and bake in the oven at 190 degrees for 20 minutes until tender.  Remove from the foil and place in a mixing bowl and add the orange zest, sugar and liquorice concentrate.  Mix well.

In a separate bowl place the eggs and egg yolk – bring the cream to a simmer in a pan and pour over the eggs, mixing well the whole time.  Transfer this mix to the pumpkin mixture and give everything a really good stir.  I then pass the whole lot through a sieve to remove any fibrous parts of the pumpkin but this is not essential.

Make the pastry, chill for an hour then use about half of the pastry (freeze the other half) to line the tin.  Roll out to about the size of a £1 coin, prick the base all over.  Chill for 10 minutes then bake blind for 10 minutes at 190 degrees, remove the lining paper and bake for a further 3-4 minutes until just golden brown.  Reduce the oven temperature to 150 degrees.

Trim the pastry case then pour the pumpkin and liquorice custard into the shell.  Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes until there is a gentle wobble left in the centre.  Leave to go completely cold. 

Delicious decorated with a few autumn berries.

Serves 8-10

You will need a 22cm loose bottomed flan tin lightly greased.

For the sweet shortcrust pastry:

240g Plain flour

150g butter chilled and cut into dice

75g Icing sugar

1 egg and 1 egg yolk

For the liquorice concentrate:

3 sticks dried liquorice root, each stick broken into three pieces

(you can buy dried liquorice roots from sweet shops and health food shops. If you are using fresh root you will need double the quantity)

1 whole star anise

Chocolate and liquorice filling:

300g Dark chocolate chopped

60ml Milk

60ml Liquorice concentrate (see above)

230ml double cream

2 eggs

Autumn berries to decorate

Begin by making the liquorice concentrate.  Place the root and star anise in a small saucepan and pour over 300ml water.  Bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes until the liquid has reduced in volume and you are left with 60ml.  Leave to go completely cold then discard the roots and anise.

Make the pastry, chill for an hour then use half  (freeze the other half) to line the tin.  Roll out to about the size of a £1 coin, prick the base all over.  Chill for 10 minutes then bake blind for 10 minutes at 190 degrees, remove the lining paper, trim and bake for a further 3-4 minutes until just golden brown.  Reduce the oven temperature to 100 degrees.

To make the filling – place the chocolate in a heat proof bowl and melt over a pan of simmering water.  Heat the cream, milk and liquorice concentrate and pour this over the eggs which have been beaten together in a separate bowl.  Mix thoroughly then pour over the melted chocolate.  Give everything a good stir then pour into the cooked pastry case.  Bake in the oven for 50 minutes.