“ The beauty of our journey was doing fun stuff together - as a dad it was great for me to be out with my lad again. Dick Strawbridge ”

Dick and James rustled up many a splendid dish during their journey sailing around the south coast. Here they tell us about the trials and tribulations of cooking on pilot cutter Amelie Rose and of their adventures meeting some of the best food producers between Cornwall and London.

How did the idea of your journey come about?

Dick: James and I had some ideas about travelling and cooking and so had a meeting with the production company and we came up with the idea of sailing around the coast because it would be such fun. I don't think there was ever any question of us not doing it because it seemed like such a great idea, so we had our fingers crossed. It was an awesome journey and a marvellous opportunity. Some of the things we did were a bit ridiculous though, like making sausages with a bike pump and cooking an egg in the sun. No one would believe it would work, but it did - we cooked an egg using a satellite dish. It was actually hot and steaming!

Why did you pick that stretch of coast?

Dick: Where we sailed out was about three miles from our farm house. Any journey starts from home, doesn't it? We could have gone around Cornwall, as we know it and it's very special, but we thought if we wanted to get variety and see what's happening we should head towards London. We see Devon, Dorset, Suffolk, Kent and there's a lot of changes there, so it seemed like a very sensible way of doing it.

What was the highlight of your expedition?

James: Early mornings and evenings after the sun goes down. When you're on a boat it suddenly becomes a lot quieter because the birds have gone to sleep and there are no people on the water, so it was very peaceful having that experience. Also, the pure challenge of cooking in such a confined space that wasn't always stable, and having to get used to being able to lay your hands on your ingredients and equipment easily was a really difficult thing to master. But by the end of the adventure I think we were very happy with cooking on board and really enjoyed it. Another thing is the boat itself had a really old-fashioned feel, so it really had character. Sitting below deck and sitting with a lantern in the evenings allowed us to be very imaginative and imagine similar settings and adventures hundreds of years ago.

Dick: Thinking of the number of different things that we did, I can think of two highlights. For me personally, it was when James and I did some fly-fishing together. I taught James to fly fish when he was a pup and although it wasn't a good day for it, it made me smile because the beauty of our journey was doing fun stuff together, so as a dad it was great for me to be out with my lad again. The other bit was when we were on a blow-up canoe after we'd been testing ten-year-old cider for about four or five hours. I was a bit squiffy and so was James. We hadn't had any breakfast. All we had all day, before we got in our canoe, was cider. I had a serious fit of the giggles while James was being grown-up and trying to look after his dad. That was very, very funny. There was a moment when I thought James would never get in a boat with me again!

James: Milking a buffalo was pretty cool too - scary but fun. And the lady who made jellies. She was talking about the alchemy and the magic of how the jelly sets and how you can suspend things. She was very wacky but lovely.

Were there any low points filming the series?

James Trimming goats hooves. That was the smelliest job I've ever done in my life! And fishing for dogfish, also known as rock salmon. We went fishing very early one morning and the grossness of having to prepare that many fish at sea while the boat was rocking around was pretty difficult.

Were there any tense moments filming on board?

James: Chefs need certain things, so in a small space, having a camera crew trying to film you while you while you're trying not to burn things and give someone a tasty plate of food meant it was very high octane sort of energy. My dad and I got on very well throughout, but maybe it would have been slightly less tense if it was just two co-presenters. Because we're related, it meant that we were quicker to get cross with each other but also we always made up. So we did have arguments but then very quickly it turned into a quick hug, or a pat on the back or a punch and we got back to work.

Dick: We're both fairly charged with testosterone, so between the two of us, we have been known to be grumpy, so it's not always smiles. We disagree sometimes, but overall we do love each other so it's a nice situation to be in and is quite special.

Were there any dangerous moments?

James: I think the most dangerous thing was when the tide was going out and the wind was going against it, which built up some very big waves and the bow - which is a very big wooden pole on the front of the boat - split. That was very, very scary. I don't think the camera crew got much footage of it because they were all clinging on! That made us awesomely respect the sea's power but at the time was a white-knuckle moment.

Dick: We did the proper crab fishing and I have nothing but respect for people who work with the sea because you really have to respect it. You have to respect it and the people who work with it all the time - there is an element of danger in that, which I think we were aware of.

Which flavours defined the coast for you?

James: I think seafood like the sustainably sourced mussels we tried, which were delicious, and potted shrimp. We were rubbish at catching them ourselves but luckily the experts gave us some to cook with. The other taste that stood out were slowly reared rare breeds of cattle, sheep, even venison. We met a lot of people who weren't just producing meat because it was a good business but because they respected the animals and loved the taste of the food.

Dick: For me, the variety defined the south coast. It's very easy to think of the coast and think of fish and we tried different fish and shellfish and were very, very fortunate but we also made little trips inland and some of the pork and the beef and the lamb that we had was phenomenal. We also had some of the earliest strawberries that you can have in the UK. We met the most amazing collection of vegetable-growers, including a man who grows about 200,000 aubergines a year. We've been growing and rearing our own food for years and as a consequence we know what it means to be in contact with your food and all the businesses we met and had dealings with, they all had the same sort of passion. It's a hard time for businesses, a lot people are having to work hard at it.

So, do you think the future's bright for independent producers?

Dick: I think it should be but local food at the moment is expensive compared to a lot of the stuff that is bought in cheaply. That needs to change because at the moment it's actually cheaper to buy food that's been imported from the other side of the world than it is to buy our own food because of our costs compared to other people's costs. The future is going to be hard because people see "locally produced", "organic" or "naturally produced" and think "comfy and cosy" as opposed to being the norm. From my perspective, we have a supermarket mentality where every apple has to be perfectly spherical or every cucumber has to have a certain amount of bend on it, that sort of nonsense. I think the future is good but it's a difficult question. There was a lot of of optimism in the people we saw and if pure energy determines success, then everyone we met will be successful because they were all going for it, big time.

James I do, primarily because they were all passionate, happy, funny people to hang out with and they took very positive attitudes towards their businesses and they all had found their niches. It was great to see products that I hope people will enjoy watching, such as micro-greens which seem really fancy but are actually really healthy sprouted crops - very small and very tasty.

What was cooking on a boat like? What kitchen kit did you really miss?

Dick: We didn't actually miss anything because on board you have everything, but in miniature. The only difficulty was Amelie Rose's oven had a mind of her own. Literally, we would put things in there not knowing how long it would take to cook. It was a small oven, so if you open it, it takes all the heat out of it, so for us it was very definitely experimental cooking.

James: In one way we missed the lack of equipment but in another we came up with ways around it. We didn't have a smoker, so we made one out of a sandcastle, little things like that. The thing I probably really missed was space. I've cooked in very, very small student kitchens but it's very different when it's at water level and you're moving around.

Which dishes were your favourites?

Dick: One thing we did was a little pasta competition, where we were in the woods and made different pasta sauces and both tasted very, very good. I suppose our biggest success was cooking the lamb on the beach in Eastbourne. We took one of our bikes apart to make a spit.

What are your overall outlooks when it comes to food and cooking?

James: I love the full cycle of growing something, digging it, getting tired, getting hungry and enjoying cooking it. It puts a whole new perspective on food. Also I'd say healthy eating and good ingredients are important. I have an eight-month-old son who I cook for three times a day at the moment and he really likes eating tasty food, so it's a real family thing. I've learned from my dad and my mum that cooking for your family is a really special thing and I'm really enjoying that. Also, my dad calls me arty and I love experimenting with food so much. I like to see what I can get away with. It's what every chef is trying to do, come up with an exciting dish and I've made it my mission too.

Dick: It's all about flavours for us. And that doesn't necessarily mean going purely for simplicity - we made sure everything we cooked on the show was the best we could possibly do with it. And it's not the same as working in a restaurant, where you have the stock on, the prep time - we didn't have the luxury of that - so it was a matter of saying: "what can we do with this that's going to be tasty?". Anybody who watches the programme can cook anything we cooked, there is no reason not to do it. We had a tiny cooker, a little tiny sink, nowhere to really put our chopping boards, yet everything we did was doable. If we did it in a little space like that then anybody can do it.

What are your food resolutions for 2012?

Dick I've got to lose some weight again! I have to because when we were doing the show we were probably having four meals a day! I've got to lose some weight but I've got to keep eating great food. Having done Masterchef and having cooked a lot of food, I do think that where there's fat there's flavour. So what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be trying to lose weight but keep my fat content in my cooking up. Exercise sound like it's the key and it's wonderful, but time is the problem! I'm also going to continue to experiment. James and I have a series of books coming out in May about all the different things people can do but we're still experimenting.

James: I'm writing a new recipe every day for the rest of the year. They've all been quite tasty so far and I'm just keeping an update of them. It's good fun, stops me getting used to doing too many of the same dishes and doing what we learned in this series, which was to take a fresh ingredient and try to do something new with it.

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