Biking, belly dancing and eating worms; The Hairy Bikers have travelled the world eating the strangest things to bring us new culinary opportunities. Laura Davis reports.

Byline: Laura Davis reports

ONE of them had not seen a courgette until the age of 17, while the other had been brought up on exotic dishes. Yet together they make up the most unusual culinary double act since the Chuckle Brothers opened a cafe in an early '90s episode.

With long hair, beards and a pair of R1200 GS BMWs, they are living up to their adopted title of The Hairy Bikers - their second TV series just completed, a cookbook out this week, and a visit to Waterstones in Liverpool planned for later this month.

But Dave Myers, one half of the duo, did not feel his taste buds tingling with anticipation until he had left his Cumbrian home for metropolitan London.

"I had a rural Barrow upbringing in the '60s and '70s where an avocado was an object of worship and mystery. I never saw a courgette until I was 17," he explains. "When Asda arrived, we hadn't seen anything like it. I can say that coz I'm part of it, so I'm not being rude. Asda was mobbed - we'd never seen orange icing before."

Dave's mum was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when he was a teenager and his dad took over the family's meals.

"We had about three years living on Smash, tinned peas and mince until we decided enough was enough and I started cooking when I was about 14. Then I went to university in London and it was like a whole world revealed itself."

There was no instant mashed potato in Simon King's house, in the North East, where the kitchen was filled with spices his father had brought back from his voyages with the Merchant Navy.

"The spices that he imported into the family house were varied and numerous and, fortunately for me and my brother and sister, my mamwas really receptive to that and cooked with spices that she had absolutely no idea what to do with, other than the instructions my dad had written down for her as he bought them.

"So our palates were used to that and I'm the youngest of three so by the time I came along, there were tagines on the go in a pit village in the middle of the Durhamcoalfields."

So both men had developed an interest in food and loved motorbikes by the time they met, strangely enough behind the scenes of a Catherine Cookson drama.

Before embarking on their culinary roadtrips, Dave had been a make-up artist specialising in prosthetics (The Life and Loves of a She Devil and BBC's Spooks). Si, now 40, was a first assistant director and locations manager and had worked on the set of Harry Potter movies. "We were fed up with working long hours. We'd worked in the industry for a long time and it's that thing of trying to get a production of our own off the shelf," explains Dave, 49.

"What we know best is cooking and eating and riding motorbikes and we thought 'how can we possibly earn a living doing that?' It took three years to get off the ground because there's not much like it on telly.

"We do all the research ourselves, we go out for a couple of weeks to research the food and the trip. We pick a 1,000-mile motorcycle journey and we build the programme around that."

The latest series shows their journeys from Chennai to Alappuzha, in India; from Buenos Aires to Punta Tombo, in Argentina; from Marrakesh to Merzouga, in Morocco; and, rather less exotically, from Ostend, in Belgium, to Sigolsheim, in north eastern France.

There are certainly few cookery books which would feature cardamom chicken, from southern India, alongside Patagonian lamb adobe, Moroccan lamb pilaff and Belgian frites as The Hairy Bikers Ride Again does.

"Belgium is a very interesting country," insists Dave.

"People don't really know that much about Belgium, apart from Jean Claude Van Damme and chocolate but it's got more Michelin starred restaurants than France. Belgian home cooking is really good and the people are really, really, truly eccentric.

'T HE thing about the programme is that we've picked places we really don't know anything about. As we discover about the food and the places, that's what we want to share."

"I would love to go to Japan," he adds, as the couple begin reeling off dream destinations.

"I've always wanted to eat sushi at the fish market in Tokyo, but I bet that rural Japanese food there'll be grannies making noodles in those hills that are wonderful . . ." Si interjects: "I'd like to go to China, I don't really know what the culture there is all about, or Alaska, Australia, New Zealand . . ."

"I'd like to do a Christmas special in Nova Scotia," interrupts Dave.

"I could imagine building an igloo and having a vodka luge in the wall."

"You'd never run short of ice would you?" adds Si. "Lemons might be a bit difficult."

If you think this is getting confusing, you should try interviewing both the Hairy Bikers at the same time on speakerphone. To begin with, they state their names before speaking, but after five minutes they have become so enthusiastic by the tales of their travels that they forget to identify themselves and can be distinguished only by their accents.

They have scrubbed elephants in Kerala, got Che Guevara tattoos in Argentina, discussed EU policy with MEPs in Strasbourg, and learned to belly dance in Tamaloute.

It is hard to believe that their eagerness for new experiences could ever be dimmed, but there have been one or two occasions.

"We've eaten some things that local people would eat, particularly in Vietnam. It was cuisine of poverty. We had goat's penis, which was hideous," says Si.

D AVE takes up the story: "It was like a big set of tackle in a pot. It was horrible. And the mopane worms, in Namibia, which are like a caterpillar and they collect them by the bucketful and dry them on the roofs.

"They are the worst thing I have ever tasted. You bite into them and it's like the smell of old trainers going off in your head mixed with rotting beef."

"But then there's a pop to it, and there was like a grit that felt like sand in your mouth, but it wasn't, it was all the tiny little legs,." adds Si.

Hopefully the pan of Scouse or the Chinatown menus they are planning to try during their visit to Liverpool will not have the same effect. But both Hairy Bikers have been to the city before and already know what to expect.

Si's wife studied at the University of Liverpool and Dave used to visit as a child.

"I used to go to Liverpool for my holidays from Barrow. My parents took me there for a fortnight once," he says.

"I honestly thought that the ferry on the Mersey was a cruise.

I used to tell all my friends I'd been on a cruise and their parents would chuckle and I thought don't laugh at my holidays I had a great time."

"If any of the Scousers would like to buy us a pint, they know where we are," Si calls out, before Dave has the final word.

"And we're very happy to receive pies."

THE Hairy Bikers will be visiting Waterstones, on Bold Street, Liverpool, 1-2pm on Wednesday, April 25, to sign copies of their new recipe book, The Hairy Bikers Ride Again (pounds 20, Penguin).

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Asda was mobbed - we'd never seen orange icing before

A Hairy favourite

STUFFED PARATHAS (makes 6)

Ingredients:

4 potatoes

400g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1 egg

220ml milk

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely chopped

1 onion, chopped extra fine

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

2 green chillies, finely chopped

1/2 tsp turmeric 

1 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp ground coriander 

1 tsp garam masala

2 tbsps finely chopped coriander

4-5 tbsps ghee (or vegetable oil)

Method

1. First, peel the potatoes and cut them into small chunks. Then put them in a pan of cold water and bring to the boil. When the potatoes are cooked (after about 25 minutes), mash them and set aside.

2. In a mixing bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt together with the egg and milk to make a dough. Slap it around and beat the living daylights out of it for about 10 minutes. Cover with clingfilm and leave it to rest for 15 minutes.

3. In a frying pan, heat the oil and add the ginger, onion, garlic and chillies. Fry for a couple of minutes until soft. Add the turmeric, chilli powder, ground coriander and garam masala. Cook for another two minutes.

4. Mix the mashed potatoes into the onion spice mix. Taste and add salt to adjust the seasoning. Finally mix in the coriander. Divide the potato mixture into six, roll into balls and set aside.

5. Divide the dough into six balls. Flour the kitchen worktop and roll the dough balls into discs about 1 1/2 cm thick. Place a ball of the potato filling in the middle of each disc and bring the edges up around the filling so it looks like a giant dim sum dumpling. Twist the top to seal it. Turn the ball-shaped paratha over and, with a bit of flour sprinkled on the top to stop everything sticking together, roll very gently into a flat disc.

6. Coat a flat frying pan with ghee and heat until very hot. Place the parathas messy-side down and leave for a couple of minutes to cook. Brush a layer of ghee on the top side and then flip and cook for another couple of minutes until golden.

CAPTION(S):

The Hairy Bikers, Dave Myers and Si King, enjoy some of the raw ingredients they encountered on their trip Pictures: VIKRAM JAYANTI/BBC and SVEN ARNSTEIN/STAYSTILL/PHOTOSHOT; The Hairy Bikers Ride Again, published by Michael Joseph Ltd, price pounds 20