AN award-winning chef paid homage to her roots in Brecon by returning there for the season finale of her new BBC show about barbecue food.

Sam Evans, 43, who is originally from Cradoc Close, and co-host Shauna Guinn presented the first programme in the four-episode series Sam and Shauna’s Big Cookout at the start of April. In the programme the two women, who are also the owners of the Hang Fire Smokehouse barbecue restaurant in Barry, travel to different communities around Wales.

Sam and Shauna, who is from Belfast, then host big “cook-outs” for hundreds of people – showing them how to create imaginative dishes after taking them to meet producers and farmers to see where the ingredients come from.

The chefs said that the premise was to celebrate the communities they meet in the series through their two main passions – food and music.

The series finale was broadcast on BBC One Wales on Monday, April 30. The episode, which was filmed in September last year, took place with the Brecon Mountain Rescue Team,

Former Brecon High School pupil Sam said she felt particularly emotional about returning to Brecon to film the last programme in the series.

She said: “It’s been great for me especially as it’s been a while since I was last on home turf, and it meant I could return to the green, green grass of home – it actually makes me a little bit home sick to think about.”

Sam met Shauna while working in London, however they both quit their jobs five years ago to pursue their passion for food – specifically barbecue food. Sam said: “We’ve always been keen cooks, we both lived in London for eight years and we left to set up a business together and we knew that we were both passionate about food and music and that our business should be somewhere in the middle. We both loved the outdoors and outdoor cooking and so we thought we would get good at American style BBQ, so we went on an epic road trip around America.”

Shauna added: “The real journey began when we bought our first smoker and brought it back to Cardiff. We won the street food category at the Cardiff food and farming awards in 2015 and later opened the Hangfire Smokehouse in Barry. It is traditionally a male dominated profession, but we really enjoy it and it comes with really good food and music, and meeting awesome communities who do amazing things.”

Originally Shauna was due to attend a fake call-out with Brecon Mountain Rescue on the show so she could get an idea of what is involved in a rescue. However, on the day the team were called out to a real emergency halfway up Pen-y-Fan after a man had fallen badly on his ankle.

The cook, who was able to tag along on the rescue, learned that the charity rescue team was entirely made of volunteers without government funding. She said it was a surprise to learn that it takes 16 volunteers to respond to one call-out.

Shauna said: “Originally I wasn’t sure why – it seems like an excessive amount but while we were with them you could see exactly why. The guy had fallen over on his ankle, and at first they thought it was broken but then it turned out it was a limb-threatening situation and he had to be winched off the mountain using a helicopter or you know, the air ambulance.”

On the show viewers learn that it takes four people to mark out an area where the air ambulance can land, eight people to lift the casualty so they can be winched off the mountain, and medical staff like doctors – all who do it for free.

Shauna said: “There were then also medical staff there like doctors who were doing things like injecting painkillers into both his arms to help with the pain, and this guy was was in absolute agony.

“It’s the fact its voluntary, they do it for free so essentially they’re doing a full-time job for free on the side of doing their normal full-time jobs.”

Brecon Mountain Rescue, as well as dealing with call-outs, has to raise £40,000 every year to stay open which doesn’t include the supplies, equipment or using the air ambulance.

Sam and Shauna said that the fundraising aspect seemed like doing yet another full-time job on top of their paid work and rescue volunteering.

Shauna also said she felt the team should be rebranded on account of how much they do as they help the police and emergency services search for people in bad weather and they conduct river searches.