Rick Stein's Cornwall

Rick returns to Cornwall in the spot where his passion for seafood began, at the exposed rock pools below his parents' old house on the Cornish Atlantic coast. With his freshly foraged mussels, Rick heads home to Padstow, where he rustles up a delicious seafood omelette for breakfast.

On Bodmin Moor, he and son Jack reminisce about the Cornish ghost stories Rick used to tell, but this time Rick has a tale that he's never told before: the horrific murder nearly 200 years ago of a young woman called Charlotte Dymond.

Below the moor, Rick meets a former car mechanic and cleaner who now farms over 200 goats. Using their artisanal goat's cheese, Rick shows off his his foolproof method for making perfect cheese souffles.

Rick meets the author of The Salt Path, Raynor Winn, and her husband Moth in the ancient apple orchard where she and Moth make delicious cider, filtered through straw, in the way it was a hundred years ago.

Inspired, Rick cooks a chicken, leek and cider gratin for his old friend John Harris, head gardener at Tresillian House, who regales Rick with his memories of cider-making as a boy.

Rick also delves into the rich history of the Cornish sea shanty, meeting an all-female group whose shanties celebrate the colourful lives of some fascinating Cornish women.

Rick visits Europe's largest tea plantation beside the River Fal in Cornwall, where conditions are just right for the perfect cuppa. He indulges in his greatest pleasure, afternoon tea, with a freshly baked fruited tea loaf and some plum compote. Afterwards, he takes a day trip to Penzance and an invigorating dip in the UK's largest outdoor sea water lido, with its stunning art deco design and modern geothermal heating system.

Rick also uncovers the fascinating and little-known story of Charles Dickens's time in Cornwall and how the county found its way into one of the most famous novels of all time, A Christmas Carol.

Rick glimpses life in Cornwall 2,000 years ago as he explores the atmospheric ruins of the ancient village of Carn Euny. He soaks up the lively ambiance of Truro cattle market, an important social hub for local farmers but one of only a few live cattle markets still operating in the UK.

He cooks his favourite Sunday lunch, a hearty steak and kidney pudding, and goes for a bracing ride on a beautiful hand-built boat, a replica of one of the most famous and fastest vessels to sail the waters around Falmouth a hundred years ago.

Rick encounters a fishing method frozen in time, going under sail without engines or winches for what he considers to be the best oysters in the world. Back on dry land, he cooks a warming fish soup called Cullen Skink, the perfect lunch after a morning on the water.

He discovers the surprising story behind Charles Napier Hemy's famous painting of oystermen at work and the equally surprising story of Cornwall's former capital, now the sleepy town of Lostwithiel but once a cosmopolitan and internationally significant port, which boasted an important political and administrative complex of buildings.

Rick meets Pip and Matt Smith, with their herd of 600 red deer, on a north Cornish farm that has been in Pip's family for over three centuries. With some very fine organic venison, Rick returns to his kitchen in Padstow to make a magnificent venison wellington.

He spends an afternoon on Porthgwarra beach with the artist Hannah Woodman, whose work is inspired by the sea-worn landscape of west Cornwall – one of the oldest of the land masses that make up the British Isles. And over a pint with the Cornish comedian Jonny Cowling, he attempts to define the thing he loves most about the Cornish – their sense of humour.

Rick boards the King Harry Ferry to enjoy a crossing voted one of the most scenic in the world. Once safely across the River Fal, he explores his passion for fresh and unusual salad leaves, with a mosey around an organic market garden called Soul Farm, and is inspired to make a radicchio tart.

He shares memories of his friendship with the famous composer Sir Malcolm Arnold, who won an Oscar for his film score for The Bridge on the River Kwai, and is joined by BBC radio broadcaster and Cornishman Petroc Trelawny to talk about how Cornwall inspired Arnold's best work.

Rick delves into the stories of those who worked in Cornwall's mines, from the men who laboured in extreme heat a full hour's journey beneath the earth's surface to the young women known as 'bal maidens', who earned their living breaking rocks with heavy sledgehammers.

In the heart of mining country, he discovers a church with some astonishing 600-year-old wall paintings, which rank amongst Britain's greatest church treasures. And after a merry visit to a maker of botanical spirits, he adds a cheeky nip to his version of the 'platinum pudding' created for the late Queen's platinum jubilee.

Rick's idea of bliss is to spend an afternoon scaling and gutting a freshly caught sea bass before using it to make a simple yet delectable dish which ranks amongst his absolute favourites – steamed sea bass with garlic, ginger and spring onions.

He travels to the far west of Cornwall to meet a potter whose work captures the rugged beauty of her surroundings, before heading to the far east of the county on the trail of the poet Charles Causley, who spent his entire life in the Cornish border town of Launceston. There, Rick meets another illustrious Cornish writer, Patrick Gale, who has written a book on Causley's fascinating life and considers him this country's greatest Second World War poet.

Rick drops in on the fishing port of Boscastle and finds a fabulous seafood restaurant in a building which once housed rockets used to fire safety ropes out to sinking ships. A trip to Cornwall's only dedicated organic mushroom farm inspires him to cook a stir fry with lion's mane mushrooms, which are said to regrow neurons!

After a surreal afternoon spent watching a German film crew at work in the fishing village of Mousehole, he discovers that a major reason so many Germans love Cornwall is a long-running TV series, watched by millions, that is based on the romances written by Rosamunde Pilcher and set in Cornwall.