and in disaster zones. can you tell me what's happening in here? yeah. i don't even know what's happening in here. i lost control of this kitchen many years ago. katty laughs hi, guys. don't be shy. hi, chefs. when somebody takes a bite of food... ..in a jose andres restaurant, what do you want them to experience? mm—hm. well, listen. um... ..restaurants are... ..without a doubt, just part of the ecosystem of... ..of cities, of the countryside. they are like oases

in the middle of... ..of the beauty of the mountains, or... but a restaurant is a place of comfort. i mean, the word has many origins, but one of them will be from "restore" or "restoration". you went to the restaurant to restore yourself. mm. sometimes physically, emotionally, spiritually. in the old days, the monks. and i believe, in a certain way, restaurants are that, still today. so when they come to my restaurant, i want to...i want to make sure people come to a place they feel like a home. but also you feel like you have a responsibility not only just to have food that is good and people will enjoy, but the ones that want to engage with you, it's a way to learn more about something. i always say that i don't open restaurants, i tell stories. every one of my restaurants, in a way, is a story. mm—hm.

and when they eat... ..i want them to have the best possible time, but sometimes, if they only are used to fill their physical needs, it's fine. but we are always going to be there with them if they want to make it into a bigger experience. when somebody comes to jaleo, my first restaurant, the spanish restaurant, and they are eating a croquette... ..they are not eating just a dish that is very iconic tapas in spain, but they are eating a dish that, during the post—civil war era where there was not a lot of food, is what every grandmother and mother or father will cook with the leftovers, to make sure they will be able to feed the family. you see, it's now an iconic tapas that is very tasty, and there are competitions about who makes the best one. but if you go deeper, that dish itself, the croquette, we can be talking about social—political situations in spain of civil war, of hunger, of low—income families, in a much deeper way. obviously, you don't

come to a restaurant, you don't want to be listening to the cook or the poor waiter having to explain every one of those. right. but this only... food can be something as simple as having a good time. but very often, sometimes, food is so much more. i've lived in dc now not quite as long as you, but almost, since the mid—�*90s, and you've changed the dc... now, everybody comes to dc for restaurants and you can't get into a restaurant for love or money, but it wasn't like that. when you opened jaleo 30 years ago, there wasn't much like that in dc, you changed the way people ate here. yes and no. i've been... obviously, i've been given too much credit for bringing spanish cooking to america. spanish cooking was already in america. did i help popularise it more? maybe. but it was already here. i've been given a lot of credit for making washington dc a power force.

well...i did my part. when i arrived, we had chefs likejean—louis palladin... mm—hm. ..chef of chefs, roberto donna, powerhouse of italian, nora pouillon, powerhouse of organic, before anybody was talking about organic and local, bob kinkead, the king of mid—atlantic cooking, jeff buben, the king of southern cooking. the list never ends. so when i came, i already... i feel i came to a city that was culinarily extraordinary. i mean, i'm forgetting gerard pangaud, yannick cam. oh, my god. mary richter, ann cashion. i can keep going, and i'm... but i have a feeling, like, for some reason washington was not seen as a great culinary city compared maybe to other cities like chicago and new york, but actually was super powerful. so i feel i came to a great place, because many of these chefs, me as the young chef i was, they kind of embraced me, they kind of helped me, they welcomed me.

do you still enjoy being in the kitchen? do you still enjoy the process? i do. but more in my home. than in the restaurant kitchen? right now, yeah. i like to be in the restaurant kitchen, but i like the tranquillity of my home. i mean, i've been cooking now, like many of us, but i've been already cooking... i'm on my way to a0 years cooking, let's put it this way. in the restaurants, i have people that cook better than me. why? because they do it every day. so why would i get in the middle? you know, ifeel like i'm in this moment that i went from being a player, active, to now being more the coach on the sidelines. mm—hm. i think i'm in the transition to that moment. i mean, obviously i'm english, and i see... and i've spent most of my life... you're english, with this accent? i would not have said you were english. oh, you thought i was from alabama? ha! you have an accent?

katty laughs no. do you have an accent? i don't understand, when people tell me "you have an accent", you know what i'm thinking inside me? like, "what do they think i think about them?" katty laughs like, 0k, my accent may be... but anyway, we all have an accent. do you get people saying to you, "i love your accent"? iget it... yeah. ..five times a day. obviously. by my daughters. they say, "daddy, please..." first time i go to school with them, "please, daddy, "don't speak english to us in front of our friends, ok? "speak spanish and we'll translate. " i'm like, "what?!" was hard. yeah. hard. this immigrant father? my god! my kids are the same. let's go and talk in your office. most, ithink, chefs would be happy, satisfied, with the incredible restaurant empire that you've built all around this country, all around the world. you weren't satisfied. it wasn't enough.

you then expanded into your relief work with world central kitchen, and helping in disaster zones. what was it that was pushing you to work there? what... ? there aren't many chefs, jose, who did that, who've done anything like what you've done. no, but it was not about not being satisfied. it was more about... ..seeing a problem. i'm watching it on tv and saying, "man, i... "can ijoin those men and women there... "..to help them bring relief to others?" and i think i'm a very impatient guy and i don't like to see the things on the sidelines. ilike to... ..i like to be in the game, in a way. and this is when...just... world central kitchen just happened from this kind of... ..personal need to not feel useless, or don't feel like i was not doing something when...

..you know, in my brain, i do believe if you want, anything can be achieved, but you cannot do it byjust talking or clapping, you have to do it with boots on the ground. it's the only way i know how to make things happen. and therefore, it's when i beganjust getting on a plane, when the 2010 haiti earthquake happened, that hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, and we saw the devastation in an already very poor country. mm. and i said, "let me go." not so much to help, but let me go to start learning. not watching, from the comfort of my home, the horrors i was seeing on tv, but being there on the ground, trying to see if my ideas, that a cook like me and others, we could bring quick, fast, food relief in a very effective way, if it could be possible. and slowly, as i began learning... ..it was possible. it doesn't require more than just the willingness

to make it happen. it's...it's all it takes. what gave you the confidence to do it? well, i've been always, i would say, a very confident guy. at least on the outside, not like inside, i'm not like, "what the heck is going on?" "how do i get out of this one?" but, you know, i think all my life i've been very lucky. my mum was always a person that...she was a nurse, and she always was like, "let's help everybody." i mean, everybody would be helping a family going through a hard time, helping a friend because they got injured. but my mum was this type of person. but if you think about it, we all know people that are like that. mm. so for me... ..the confidence was just to say anything we do... ..even if it's very little, it's more than absolutely nothing.

you've been to so many disaster zones now, guatemala, bahamas, haiti, all over the united states. when you go and you feed people and you set up kitchens... ..how do you feel when you leave? the number one success is doing as much as you can, and you get to know people and families. mm. the people that help us be more successful, that they are the ones making us successful, the locals. the families, sometimes you get close, because you show up every day... ..and you see that they are thankful that you are there with them... mm. ..and you see them getting slightly better every day... ..in the case that they didn't lose their home. but even if they lost their home, they appreciate that you are there next to them. and you develop bonds that become real in a very short period of time. and then leaving one of those emergencies is always hard.

but at the same time, we need to differentiate pure emergency from pure reconstruction and future development. butjust for me, i have sometimes... and i know this goes for every other member of world central kitchen or every other member in any organisation that works in emergencies, that sometimes at night you are thinking... ..maybe a year later, "what's happening with that family?" or, "what's happening with that town?" and sometimes that's kind of... ..it�*s a little weight. that's why, when i can, on my own, when i'm in the area, i try to go to some of those communities... ..just to walk around, just to try to see how they are doing today versus one or two or three years ago. for me, this has been always personally very important, because it's almost a way to put closure in my brain... ..that, you know,

we did what we could. we brought as much relief as we could. we gave a big push for that community to start reconstruction quicker and faster. but for me personally, it's been always very important to try to go back. i don't do it everywhere, because the world is a very big place and we go. but for me, when i've been back to the bahamas, or when i've been back to colombia or venezuela... ..even places that still the issues keep happening, but i try to go just to understand what is the actual situation versus... ..the day i put my boots on the ground for the first time. did something make you always want to help... ..do you think? well, listen, i'm notany different than everybody. we all do help. we all pick up a piece of paper and put it in the garbage. we all... yeah. this is a great way to help your city be cleaner. we all volunteer in our local church or synagogue or mosque.

right, but you do it on a big scale. you know, to do something big, you need to start somewhere, with one meal. folks like me, we feed the few, but we have the same talent and knowledge — if we bring it to emergencies — to feed the many. erm...we cannot all leave family and work and business and go to help somebody else. but many do. you don't need to go far away. you can do it in your own neighbourhood. you don't need to go to another continent. you can do it in your own country. and... and that's the people i'm always very inspired by, because our cities need to be run by our mayors, our states, by the governors, the country, by the presidents and congress, but should be not only the role of the politicians — even we should be asking a lot from them. but also citizenship has to do their part in running a city. we cannot be finger—pointing at

the problems to the politicians or to the other party if the things go wrong. we all need to be part of helping our society and our communities work. in emergencies, cannot be only to the government to provide relief. you're a very busy man. so we don't have very much time with you. but i wanted to show you some photographs. 0k. crew talk and laugh 0h! this is — if you could just turn like this! yeah. this... we have an emergency right now. du, du—du, duh. yeah. now, i'llshow you the right way up. well, this is a good moment, a good...a good celebration. obviously, 30 years of...of my first restaurant there, my partner, er... ..rob wilder, who is next to roberto alvarez, the two guys that hire me... yeah. ..and gave me the opportunity to be there. er... does it feel like a long time ago... it feels... when you opened jaleo? ..there you see people, they've been...we've been together — it's not they've been with me,

i've been with them... yeah. ..for. .. i mean, it's hundreds and hundreds of years in these four alone that we've been together. lovely. that's lovely. that's. .. and that's. .. when people say, "oh, jaleo is a great place." well... ..it�*s not a great place because i, the person. but it's an amazing place because we, the people. yeah. it's the story you told me earlier. oh, yeah, that's... do you recognise that? that's puerto rico, maria... yeah. ..very early on... ..in the days of september. category five cuts through puerto rico, four million americans in the caribbean. this is a restaurant called jose enrique. he's not in the photo... actually, he's in the photo right here. a good friend, one of my favourite restaurants, that who was going to say... when i landed, i texted — i didn't know if they were going to get the message because cell signal was down, electricity was down. but with all his crew and whatever he had in his fridge plus other restaurants or ingredients, they...we put them all together and we made sancocho, a traditional puerto rican stew with amazing ingredients.

and we began feeding right there — that day i think we did a couple of thousand meals. but this was the place and the beginning of what was a mission, that we went from one restaurant to more than 3a, 36 restaurants, from 1,000 meals to 150,000 meals, from ten friends and cooks and chefs that we gather the first day to thousands of volunteers that became part of our system. ten food trucks, er, at the end of the day, being in many cities all across the island. at the end of the day, what you see here was the beginning of one of the first biggest operations of world central kitchen in a true, dramatic, powerful way. even a few weeks ago, ijust was coming from houston because irma had a huge destruction also in houston. so houston was kind of the beginning of a season that proved to be very damaging... yeah. ..and where we knew more hurricanes were going to be coming. ithink... ok, i love this one.

well... this was early on in your days in washington. this was an important day. i think it's the first time i put in washington dc a jacket and a tie. this was a place that gave me a reason that i really belong to washington — beyond my restaurant and my friends and partners. this is dc central kitchen. the man on my left is robert egger. this is a man that was a bartender that had the crazy idea to say, "food waste is wrong. "there's a lot of food being wasted in hotels "and restaurants. "why if we pick it up and we bring it to kitchen...and we're "able to redo something with that and feed "the homeless population? " "what if we take those homeless we are feeding and the ones "that want to really try to make a change "in their life, we train them to be cooks?" the men and women you see in these photos are people that were homeless or ex—convicts that he brought into this kitchen, plus the food. we began making meals, feeding 10,000 people a day.

i was one more volunteer... ..cooking next to them, sometimes sharing what i knew, but very often learning more than i was able to teach. this gave me the sense that food can be an agent of change in our communities. this for, obviously, er... ..for me as an immigrant, was the moment that i realised, ok, i belong here because i'm part of the community that is welcoming me into the community. i may be helping them, volunteering, but all of them combined, they're helping me even more. that's nice. i have one more — and then i have to let you go. the very last one that we found. 0h. well, i was in the spanish navy, and this is, er... ..saluting the spanish flag. you're so young! i was very proud of that because... i was going to say — so young... ..changed my life. ..and so handsome. ..changed my life as a... ..as being on the spanish navy. erm...

i was cooking for the admiral, but i was able to be on a boat training with a midshipman... uh—huh. was a sailing boat. it's first time i've really left europe in a powerful way. i saw africa and i saw latin america and the caribbean. first time i came america, pensacola, new york, ellis island. erm. .. for me, the military service gave me this sense that we are all part of making our country better, our world better. . .. ..er, but show me also the meaning of working asa team. when i was sailing on that four—mast tall ship, i understood that 300 people, the winds may be against us, the currents may be moving us in the wrong direction, but that if 300 people work together as one... ..was no wind, or waves or currents, that could take us away from our destination. in this case, our destiny is used to provide a better

world to the people coming behind us. i have three daughters. i want them to live in the best possible place. and boy, now, we have a very hard time, and hard work ahead of us to bring peace around the world, to...to end wars, to end hunger, to end poverty. but at least i know is many people and organisations around the world that they are giving their best to try to achieve it. now we need to make sure, we don't do good, but that we start learning how to do a smart good. doing good we're not going to solve the problems. it's like throwing money at the problem. but we start all learning how to do a smart good, we have a chance in this century to solve those issues. when you see me with boots on the ground, the only thing i'm doing is learning. erm... so... ..we can come up with a true plan that has a chance to provide hope to the millions that right now they feel alone, they feel forgotten.

and you don't have to go to africa or other parts that are poor in the world. this sometimes happen in our own cities. erm... so... it's a lovely photo. yeah. i love that. now i'm a spanish—american. er... ..i'm very happy that the laws of both countries allow for a guy like me to have dual citizenship, because at the end it is immigrants like me, what we do, we create bridges. and in a way i feel i'm a bridge between... i feel that, too. ..the country i came from and the country i belong. yeah, i understand that feeling. and i believe immigrants like you and i, we can be building... ..the understanding that countries should never be at war. er...the countries, if anything, should be always working for... ..for unity and working together to solve the problems of the people.

at the end, i believe that this is what everybody wants. erm... i think we're translators from different worlds. yeah, we are translators. my god, iforgot about that photo. so young, so handsome! where did you get that photo? look at you! jose andres, thank you. thank you. thank you very much. thank you for having me. thanks for having me. hello. thursday was a pretty cloudy but very mild day. temperatures reached 14.1; celsius in a couple of spots. friday won't be quite as mild. a little bit cooler, a little bit fresher, but more in the way

of sunshine. and just for some of us, a few showers around, particularly across parts of scotland. but an overnight weatherfront has brought a lot of us some rain. that's just pushing its way eastwards. now through the early hours of friday it'lljust be lingering across parts of east anglia, the south—east of england as well. so early rain for some in the south and east that clears away. and then we're left with clear spells for all blustery showers coming in across the north—west for scotland over the higher ground. they could be falling as snow for a time. perhaps one or two showers for northern ireland and northern england, but they'll be few and far between. further south, you should stay dry all day. temperatures in the afternoon about 5—9 degrees. so for some of us, i think they're actually going to come down a little bit through the day. these are the wind gusts that we're expecting. it's going to be particularly windy up towards the northwest of scotland. western isles could see gales at times. into friday evening, more blustery showers in the north and the west, clearer and lighter winds to the south and east. and we could see some mist and fog patches forming through perhaps the midlands, east anglia, the southeast as well. temperatures getting down to two or three here in the towns and cities,

so a slight frost. further north, they've got more of a breeze, more cloud and patchy rain to keep those temperatures from falling too low. and then into the weekend, then it is back to the mild air, particularly by sunday. the winds coming in from the south where the front approaching from the west later on sunday. but for saturday, early morning mist and frost clearing away quite quickly. a bit of rain for parts of northern scotland where it will still be breezy and perhaps some patchy rain into northern ireland later in the day. but for central and southern scotland, much of england and wales are dry day. top temperatures around about nine or ten degrees. into the second half of the weekend, sunday probably going to be that a little bit warmer than saturday. again, quite a bit of sunshine around, a little bit of cloud drifting around here and there and more rain into northern ireland and western scotland later on in the day. but before it arrives, look at those temperatures, 12 or 13 degrees. so above average, certainly for this time of year. into next week, low pressure starts to try and move its way in from the atlantic. we've got higher pressure across the continent, but things could turn a little bit more unsettled,

particularly in the north for the middle part of the week onwards. but it's remaining mostly dry in the south. and certainly for all of us, it's looking mild. bye— bye.

smith live from washington, this is bbc news. the us state of alabama carries out its first execution by nitrogen gas, as convicted murdered kenneth smith is put to death. us presidentjoe biden is sending his cia chief for high—level talks on a potential hostage deal in gaza. hamas is still holding more than 100 people. plus, donald trump appears

in court briefly as part of his defence in a defamation case brought by writer e jean carroll. hello, i'm azadeh moshiri. welcome to the programme. officials in alabama have confirmed the execution of convicted murderer kenneth smith by nitrogen gas on thursday. it's the nation's first execution using this method. the news comes hours after the us supreme court ruled that the state of alabama could proceed with the execution by nitrogen gas. three of the nine justices dissented. justice sotomayor slammed alabama's decision, stating that it "has selected him as its guinea pig to test "a method of execution never attempted before." it's the state's second attempt to execute mr smith, who was convicted in 1989 of murdering a preacher�*s wife in a hired killing. here's the announcement by prison officials earlier.