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- I'm Darren McGrady, the Royal Chef. Former chef to the Queen, Princess Diana, Prince William and Prince Harry, and today I'm going to be making one of the Prince of Wales' favorite dishes, a rack of lamb with a wild mushroom risotto. (upbeat classical music) One of my favorite stories of the Prince of Wales, probably the first time I met him, Balmoral, the Queen had something called a Ghillies Ball. We were dancing and I didn't really know the dances well, but one of the dances I did pick up was the Dashing White Sergeant. You get in groups of six and you spin round and round and then three go this way and three go this way. As we were dancing around in a circle and then back again, you then break from your three and go backwards a little. As I went backwards, the man behind me went backwards too and we collided. And I rubbed my heel down his shoes, took off half of his shoe. Turned around to apologize, it was the Prince of Wales. (gasps) I thought I was gonna be sent to the Tower. I said, "Oh, sorry, your Royal Highness." He said, "Oh, oh!" That was a scary time, but something I always look back on. He was okay the next day. For the rack of lamb, I start off with seasoning, a little salt and pepper all over and then once that's on, I've got a hot pan with some oil. Then we're just gonna get a nice sear. I used to cook lamb a lot at Buckingham Palace. When the Prince of Wales was there, it was often on the menu. He'd request it, big fan of lamb. I really like Prince Charles. He was a foodie, he loved to know what was being served, where it was sourced from. He was into organic farming 30 years ago, before it was even invented, I think. So we've got a nice sear now, on the lamb. Normally, it would go straight into the oven, 400 degrees and just cook until we get a perfect medium-rare, but I'm cooking mine sous vide. Sous vide cooking is a method of water bath cookery and you actually cook the meat or the fish or the vegetables in a bag. Sous vide means under vacuum, and so that means taking the air out of what you've got in the bag because as it drops into the water, we need it to sink to the bottom so that it cooks. So using the machine, we can suck the air out of the bag and seal it at the same time. (machine whirring) Once the meat's sealed and we've taken all the air out, it then goes into a water bath. I'll cook this in the water bath for about an hour, an hour and a half, and once it's done, we'll slice into it and the meat will be medium-rare top to bottom. The Price of Wales loves wild mushrooms and I remember one time we were at Balmoral Castle and we heard that he was coming up to Balmoral and bringing his chefs and bringing a man to show them all around the estate where the best mushrooms were, the organic, beautiful wild mushrooms on the Balmoral, a 50,000 acre Balmoral Estate. We asked if some of our chefs could go along as well and they brought back an abundance of the most amazing Chanterelles and cepes, incredible. And the whole day was spent just sauteing them off in a little butter, a little tarragon and then freezing them to use through the year. The following year, we heard they were coming back up to Balmoral to get more mushrooms, but the day before they came up, the chefs, the Queen's chefs went out onto the estate to all of those places and harvested, I think the whole estate of wild mushrooms. When the Prince of Wales and his team came up there, they couldn't find any, and so I'm not sure what they thought, but we'd already cooked them and buried them at the bottom of the freezer. The Queen comes first to the Queen's chefs. I'm making a wild mushroom risotto right now, and I've got some dried porcini here and I like to mix them with the arborio rice for a little while and let all of those flavors go into it. Risotto is one of those dishes, it's little bit hard to make, but it's worth the time and it's worth the effort. You can't just put the rice on and leave it, you've got to stay with it all the time, and I promise you, that tender loving care and attention you put into it will reward you when you sit down later and eat. So start off with a little oil in the pan, then I'm going to add my rice. Stir that into the oil so all of the grains of the arborio rice are coated. Once I've done that, I can start adding my broth, a nice homemade chicken broth. I think one of the things that fascinates me about the Prince of Wales from a culinary aspect, is his passion for organic farming. They have all of this incredible produce down that The Duchy Estate where he lives at Highgrove. They have all the vegetables that he grows. He has an incredible vegetable garden, there's all this cattle, there's all this produce from his estate, all of this organic farming, it's fantastic for the chefs because the Prince is really keen about using the produce from the gardens. Risotto, and it's ris-otto, not riso-tto. (laughs) Risotto is a complicated dish to make, it really is. You've gotta keep stirring it. It's not like when you're just cooking rice, you can throw it on the stove and walk away and answer the phone or something. This one, you've gotta keep stirring all the time and the temperature of the stove needs to be on low and it just needs to be ticking away. It's almost like the Italian lifestyle. It's like sitting in the Piazza in Siena, just watching the world go by. That's what the grains of rice are doing in here and it's just such a fabulous dish to make. I just love this dish, whether it's sort of plain with some truffle oil in there and some Parmesan cheese or some pecorino grated into it, whether it's some fresh artichokes in there, wild mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes, whatever, adds to that flavor. But you do need a good base, you do need a good chicken broth that sort of gives the flavor in there, obviously the rice is not gonna add any flavor. But each time it starts to cook, those granules are opening up and so you have to keep adding a little more broth at a time. The reason you're adding a little at a time is because if you add too much at once, it's going to be soupy and we don't want it soupy. We want to be able to have it, when we put it into the dish, it just runs slightly and then sits and holds. That's the perfect risotto. One of the things I noticed about the Prince of Wales is his love of Italian food. And whether it was the wild mushroom risotto or whether it was polenta dishes, sort of healthy eating, that's what Italian food is, simple, elegant food. When Prince Charles, Princess Diana, William and Harry were all eating together, often Italian food was on the menu. Princess Diana loved it too, because it was simple and clean, lots of nice salads and things, a beautiful risotto like this one we're making. And for the boys, some Italian pizza. I mean, what boys don't love pizza? I know William and Harry do. As the arborio rice starts to take in the chicken broth, we can now add some white wine, a little chardonnay in there or pinot grigio, if you wanna keep it Italian. The Prince of Wales loved painting and I think going off to Italy and sitting there, and I think that is where his passion for Italy and for the beautiful countryside and of course, the food came from. When he's out painting in the hills, he'd take a little sandwich, a little picnic with him often, big thick sandwich like this, and then maybe a piece of plum pudding that they prepared at Buckingham Palace. When it comes to eating, no two days are the same for the Prince of Wales. Normally starts the day with some fruit for breakfast. Often some plums from the garden that have been lightly poached, a little juice and some muesli to go with it. And then lunchtime, there may be a lunch, there may not be a lunch. It could be a sandwich. Afternoon tea, he's been known to have boiled eggs. He's very fond of boiled eggs. So just a little toast and some boiled eggs. And then in the evening, something a little more substantial. The risotto's been cooking now for about 19-20 minutes and it's just all come together perfectly and smells amazing. Those wild mushrooms and the grains of rice have opened up. They're still nutty, that's what we want. We don't want overcooked rice. What I need to do next is put some Parmesan cheese in there, some pecorino cheese, and that's gonna thicken it up and make it the perfect consistency. Let's add the cheese. The cheese really brings this together. So some Parmesan cheese sprinkled into this. The perfect risotto. I've got Parmesan cheese in there, I've got some black pepper, a little salt if we need it, but be careful not to add too much salt because you've got the chicken broth. As that reduces down, you get that strong salty flavor from that, too. So add any salt at the end. And then of course, the truffle oil. That always makes it (speaking foreign language). The amazing truffle oil that just finishes this dish. And with the wild mushrooms, it smells divine. Look at the consistency in that. That's the perfect risotto. All we need now is the lamb. My lamb's been sitting in the sous vide water bath for about an hour and a half now. I'd love to say it smells amazing, but one of the joys of sous vide cooking is that when you're cooking in the water bath, there is no smell. It's not until you actually slit the bag you get to smell the incredible flavors that have all been sealed in as it cooks. The lamb now smells incredible. The searing is fantastic, we did that earlier. If you want to, you can do another sear, that's a double sear afterwards to make it crunchy on the top. But for me, this texture now of cutting through into the lamb. I don't think it gets any better than that. Look at that gorgeous, gorgeous lamb. The cheese is melted into that chicken broth and so we can put all of this together. You see how when we put this in the bowl is just runs a little? It's not like soup, it's not like boiled rice. It just runs til it finds its own level and then the beautiful lamb that we put in there. It's just gorgeous. All it needs is a little basil oil. I've mixed some basil with some olive oil, blended it together, a little salt and a tiny drizzle. For me, that's as Italy, that's as gorgeous, that's the Prince of Wales. That's just beautiful food. Now it's about the tasting. This lamb is so tender, the perfect medium-rare. And the risotto, it's just gorgeous. See how it just sits there? Those flavors together, the beautiful spring lamb, the risotto, the wild mushrooms, the truffle oil, that basil oil coming through at the end. It's a fantastic dish. I love Italian food, I love cooking like this. I can see why the Prince of Wales loved it too. Please follow me on Instagram, @darren_mcgrady. (mouse clicking)

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