Rick Stein's "Fresh Food"

New to Great Food audiences this season, Rick Stein continues in the best traditions of the BBC cooking shows with his series Fresh Food: combining practical and inspirational "how-to" cooking information with voyeuristic features, compelling human interest stories, insider trade secret tips and revealing and fascinating observational films.

"It's really good television," laughs Rick. "I introduce viewers to everyone from the man who found salvation in baguettes, to a woman whose whole life has been influenced by her love of herbs. And in between meetings these fascinating men and women, there is some seriously good cooking. Well known chefs, aspiring newcomers and amateur enthusiasts, who re-create their favorite dishes and reveal the stories behind them."

"One of my favorite pieces to film," muses Rick, " was a story shot in the back yard of a Yugoslavian immigrant. Periodically, he got together with some of his country's ex-patriots, and made Yugoslavian salami. And as we sat there, working long into the night, drinking and laughing, as we made his ethnic staple, I realized that food was a way these men transcended memory, geography and politics. It was really quite touching."

Rick Stein and his wife Jill are the proprietor of The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow to which thousands of fish lovers from Britain and abroad flock very year to sample his simple yet exquisitely flavored dishes. Rick's first book, "English Seafood Cookery," won the 1989 Glenfiddich Award for Food Book of the Year, and "Taste of the Sea" won the 1995 Andre Simon Memorial Fund Food Book Award and the 1996 Good Food Award for Cookery Book of the Year. Both books have become best sellers. Rick, Jill and their three sons live in a house overlooking the sea near Padstow, Cornwall.