Home-Cooked Treats James Martin: Home Comforts

Sometimes, there's no place like home, and few things are more

comforting and delicious than real home cooking.

Living in this beautiful country with great produce

right on our doorstep, we really are spoilt for choice.

So in this series, I'm inviting you into my kitchen to share with

you some of my tasty home-cooked treats.

'The dishes I turn to,

'whether entertaining friends and family or just relaxing on my own.

'In our busy lives, the daily grind of getting a half decent meal

'onto the plate and onto the dinner table on time can feel like a chore.

'And that's why it's so important for home cooks

'to grab any opportunity to make dishes

'that are a delight to cook and an indulgence to eat.'

Today, I'm going to show you dishes that are a real treat,

dishes that I can't wait to come home and have a go at cooking.

'For me, a home-cooked treat is about dishes packed full of flavour

'and happy memories.'

My granny always used to make her own mint sauce,

and it's one of the things that I always remember.

'And by using a few luxurious ingredients,

'your dinner guests will feel truly spoilt.

'We've always had a fondness for a treat, so when you have time,

'indulge yourself in some guilt-free home-cooking pleasure.

'My first treat is an ingredient most of us

'would think is pretty decadent, but I'm turning it into something

'light, clean and pretty as a picture.

'My vanilla cured salmon with cool cucumber ketchup is a dish to

'impress.

'It will definitely make your guests feel indulged.'

So the first thing we're going to do is prepare our cure for it.

Now, it's very similar to sort of gravlax in the way that we

actually start the cure, and like smoked salmon as well.

But we're going to infuse it with vanilla.

Now, vanilla and fish go fantastically well together.

It goes particularly well with salmon, cod and scallops.

But the first thing we're going to do is blend it all together.

Now, this is a good way of actually using up leftover vanilla pods.

So if you scrape out the seeds, and you want to use the leftover

pods, then this is fantastic to actually do.

We're going to put some sugar in this.

And roughly, it's equal quantities of sugar and salt for your cure.

'Blend the sugar and the vanilla pod until thoroughly ground together.

'Pour it into a bowl, then add the same quantity of salt.'

Now, I like to use sea salt for this.

I find table salt is a bit harsh,

tastes too much of sodium for what I need.

But we just mix this together, and you've got, basically,

your simple cure, as easy as that.

And then we've got our lovely salmon.

Now, what you need to do with this is line your board with some

clingfilm first.

It's a good idea to use clingfilm because

whenever you're curing any fish, it actually draws out the moisture.

And if you don't wrap it in clingfilm,

you'll find it'll just go everywhere.

'Make sure your clingfilm is overlapping,

'then place half the cure mix down the middle.'

We take this beautiful bit of Scottish salmon.

Now, you could do Scottish salmon like this or trout.

And we just lay the fish

on top of the little bit of salt, first of all.

And then, take the remaining salt and just sprinkle this over

the top, and then wrap the fish in the clingfilm.

By using the clingfilm, really,

you'll actually hold the salt onto the fish as well.

'Pop the salmon onto a tray, then ideally,

'leave it in the fridge for 24 hours.'

Now, what you end up with, you see the liquid that's come out of this?

What you need to do is just open this up,

and the texture and the colour changes so much.

But also, the feel of it, really, becomes much firmer,

and you've got this beautiful piece of cured salmon.

'Wash off all the cure mix, as it's now done its job,

'then pat the fish dry with a clean cloth or kitchen paper.

'Rewrap the salmon

'and it can be stored safely in the fridge for up to a week.'

Now, with this, I'm going to serve a cucumber ketchup.

It sounds more complicated than it actually is.

Whereas a tomato ketchup, you've got to cook it, this one, you can

actually have it raw.

'Thickly cut off the skin of the two cucumbers.

'It's the outside I'm going to use to make the ketchup.

'But don't throw away the remaining cucumber centres

'cos I'm chargrilling them later.'

With the remaining part, we can just chop it up.

No need to peel this as well cos you want the actual colour,

the green colour, to come out into our ketchup.

There's no need to add much liquid to this as well

because there's so much water in cucumber.

All we need to do now is just blitz it.

'Once the cucumber is blitzed, add rice wine vinegar,

'a pinch of salt, then blitz again.

'At this stage, the ketchup is really runny,

'but I have an ingredient that will thicken the mix.'

This is Xanthan gum,

and you can actually buy this from supermarkets now. It's on the shelf.

People don't know what the hell to do with it cos you just walk

past it.

'Xanthan gum is made from a natural bacteria,

'and it's most often used to stabilise sauces and dressings.

'It will act like cornflour and thicken the ketchup.'

And after about sort of two or three teaspoons, just check it.

And what you end up with is a lovely ketchup.

The secret is not to add too much.

There's enough flavour to the Xanthan gum.

If you add too much, it becomes too thick and too heavy,

so we can just lift this out, and you can see the texture.

And you get a texture very similar to sort of tomato ketchup.

And that's it.

'Making the pickled ginger to go with the dish couldn't be simpler.

'Peel and finely slice some fresh ginger,

'then add it to a pan with some rice wine vinegar, sugar and salt.'

The key to this, really,

is sticking to those same three ingredients - the salt,

the sugar and the vinegar, but use the right vinegar, the right salt,

otherwise you'll never have the same sort of effect running throughout.

'Let the pickle simmer for a couple of minutes

'until the ginger wilts, then take it off the heat and let it cool.

'Now to the griddled cucumber.'

And what you do with this is you grab the inside of the cucumber

and chargrill it. It's a little bit fancy, I know.

It's a little bit poncey. But this is a treat.

If you chargrill it on the barbecue, it's wonderful.

It's brilliant to serve in drinks, but also,

fabulous with chicken and fish.

'While the cucumbers griddle, you can

'prepare the garnishes for the salmon.

'I like to use crisp and peppery radishes,

'watercress and mustard cress.'

It's nicely chargrilled.

And then, all you can do is plate it up, really. It's as easy as that.

'With a sharp knife, cut thin slices of the salmon on an angle,

'much like smoked salmon, and then arrange them

'on a plate along with the garnishes and the cucumber ketchup.'

It's a little bit cheffy.

But hey, it's my house!

Now, this dish looks spectacular and really is a special treat

when you've got guests coming round.

And it tastes so much better than the bought-in stuff,

I can't tell you.

And so simple to make.

'This dish is both humble and luxurious at the same time

'and a treat for the eyes and the taste buds.

'It's guaranteed to delight any dinner party guest.'

All you need is time and a pair of tweezers. Now you know.

'But time is one thing that's become scarce in modern life,

'and convenience has often become what's important to us.'

Take a humble loaf.

By the 1950s, mass-produced,

sliced bread accounted for 80% of what we bought in Britain.

But the times, they say, are a-changing!

And with the growth of Artisan bakeries, the percentage

of proper bread eaten by us Brits has well and truly risen.

But to make that genuine Artisan loaf,

it all starts with the most important ingredient - flour.

Just up the road from me in Dorset,

award-winning miller Michael Stoate is producing some of the best

traditional stone-ground flour to be found anywhere in the country.

The family's been milling for the last 180 years.

We started milling in 1832, and I'm the fifth generation of miller.

It's something I really enjoy doing and have a passion for.

We're producing nine different types of flour - wheat, rye and spelt.

It's nearly all organic, so it's all stone-ground in a traditional

way between horizontal millstones.

The history books go back to Domesday Book record, really.

There's been a mill here for at least 1,000 years. Who knows, maybe more.

It's a water-driven mill.

It's one of five on a mile section of the River Stour.

That's the only one still being used.

This is an overshot cast-iron water wheel.

It was built in about 1880.

So the age-old process of milling starts like it always has

- by choosing the grain.

Like anything, the better quality the raw material,

the better quality the end result.

And we can source most of that locally within a 30-mile

radius of the mill.

But before any of the actual grinding begins,

the grain is cleaned, sieving out any of the dust or leftover chaff.

But once that's done, the milling goes into full swing.

Each set of stones here has a raw hopper above it

and the grain comes down, through the hopper, and feeds into the stones.

The millstones inside here, turning at about 120 revs per minute.

And the flour comes out through here to check the quality of it.

The stones we use here are French Burr millstones, so they're

renowned for being the best for producing a nice, soft quality flour.

It doesn't stop there.

The milled wholegrain needs sieving, and it's that process that

determines if the flour is white or brown.

This is the second flour sieve.

The flour, having passed through the millstones,

then goes upstairs and goes through a first sieve

and comes down and goes through this sieve, which is

finer and removes more of the brown, making the white flour.

This is our strong white flour, ready to go out to the baker's.

This is the most refined flour we produce.

It's had a lot of the brown sifted out of it,

so down to about a 70% extraction.

So it's still got a creamy colour to it,

so it's got a good flavour and good colour.

It's making a tasty loaf.

And it's real products, like Michael's flour,

made the time-honoured way, with passion and expertise,

that confirms the humble loaf is once again on the rise.

'Having the time to make home-made bread is almost a treat in itself.

'Michael's popped round from the mill with not a small bag of flour,

'so I think I should treat him with my next recipe.

'My spice-scented, butter-rich rolls with Bourbon

'and maple icing are an indulgence you just have to try.'

We're going to make a dough, and we're going to make it

with your very, very special flour that we've got.

And I'm going to use this sort of...

Well, the strong bread flour for this one.

So what's so special about this?

The strong white flour, all our flours are stone-ground,

so unlike roller-ground mills, mass-produced roller-ground mills,

-this is done in one pass.

-Yeah.

-The wheat goes through the millstones.

Everything gets ground together.

Even the wheat germ oils, they get mixed in with the mill.

It's quite interesting, that. When you think of a manufactured flour,

big manufactured flour, you actually make it like a recipe.

You combine all the ingredients and then mix in at the end.

And it separates every separate bit of the grain into its different

-fragments.

-Yeah.

And then, to manufacture the flour they want to market,

they put various bits back together again.

You get a massive difference in taste.

I've got 625 grams of this flour.

Now, you can see straightaway, really, with this flour,

it's not as white as sugar, even.

It's almost got that sort of grey, browney tint to it as well.

Nice and fine. In we go with the sugar.

Now, this is an enriched yeast dough,

so we're going to add a pinch of salt

with the sugar.

And then, what we need to do is just mix this together with the yeast.

Now, I'm going to use sort of dried yeast for this.

Add the warm water, about 450 mls of warm water for this.

So how long's the family actually owned the mill?

We've always been in the West Country.

-It started in 1832 in Watchet in Somerset.

-Right.

And then moved to Bristol, and then my father moved to the present

mill in 1947, so we've been there...

Now, is there going to be a sixth generation?

-Have we got kids in the background?

-No pressure on the kids!

Is that what they want to do or is that what they're going to

have to do?

Apparently, my grandfather was told he had to be a miller.

He wanted to be a farmer.

And so, he had to be a miller until he retired,

and then he became a farmer.

I don't think you can get away with that these days!

No, I don't think you can, actually.

'Once the dough is thoroughly mixed, pop it into a bowl,

'cover it with clingfilm and allow it to proof for 20 minutes or

'until it doubles in size.'

Now we're going to laminate it, which is layers of butter in this.

So we just basically take this mixture here, and this is

where it's kind of similar to making sort of puff pastry, really.

But as I said to you, this is a treat.

-So I hope Michael likes his butter!

-I certainly do.

-We've got a block each going in here!

-Excellent!

There's actually 500 grams of butter going in.

'Laminated bread is made by folding in layers of butter

'and dough together.

'In the oven, steam from the melted butter gets trapped

'and helps the dough rise.'

Check this out.

This is what puts people off about making croissants, you see,

and stuff like Danish pastries

because this is the amount of butter that you put in, you know.

This is not for sort of the health-conscious, Michael,

you know I mean?

But what you do with this is you put this over...

..until you end up with, basically, the layers of butter inside.

Now, you've got to make a little bit of noise in here.

If anybody's upset you, now you can get your anger back on them!

But you're just batting this out.

It's important to use cold butter as well.

So you can see, as you're rolling that out, the pieces of butter

that are trapped in-between that dough get a little bit bigger.

And then what you do is you can create what we call buck turns.

So you basically fold the dough over.

Fold it over into the middle, so it looks like a buck.

And fold it over again.

'Repeat this process another two times

'and then rest the dough in the fridge for an hour.'

And basically, I'm going to fill this with a mixture.

And just when you thought there wasn't enough butter and fat

and everything else going in here, full fat cream cheese with

a little bit of vanilla and then ground cinnamon.

'Roll the dough into a rectangle, and then evenly spread your filling.

'Then simply roll it into a Swiss roll and cut it into thick slices.'

And then you take one in the centre.

Six will be enough.

Around the edge. And then we need to leave this to prove.

And this is the one that's been proving.

Again, leave it for about sort of 30, 40 minutes.

It's one of those things that if you're at home all day,

then this is the ideal dish to sort of make.

A little bit of egg wash...

..over the top. Just brush it.

And you can see you've got this sort of Catherine Wheel effect to it.

Now, what we need to do is set the oven quite high.

This one's set about 400 degrees Fahrenheit, 200 degrees Centigrade.

And I've got one that's nicely cooked there.

This'll take about sort of 45 minutes in here.

'While the rolls are still warm, I like to make a sticky glaze

'using icing sugar, a bit of Bourbon and maple syrup.'

If you just pipe this over the top.

The key to this, Michael, is you just basically just dive in!

And because we've got that cream cheese in there,

you've got this lovely sort of filling in amongst it as well.

There you have it. Dive in. Tell us what you think.

You're going to need a full day at work to get rid of this,

the calories in it!

-That's fantastic. Very good.

-That is good, isn't it?

-Very rich.

It is pretty rich.

'But who cares when it tastes this good?

'These butter-rich rolls are the perfect treat

'when you have the luxury of a little time.

'Just make sure you grab one for yourself before the rest

'of the family does.'

But like anything, all good things come to thee who waits.

And if you wait long enough, you can have something like this as well.

It's delicious.

Well, patience might be a virtue,

apart from when it comes to sinful British puds.

And in his kitchen, food historian Gerard Baker is

delving into the origins of a perennial British classic.

What a splendid thing the trifle is! A true home-cooked treat.

We've got layers of jelly and sponge, fruit, wonderful custard,

whipped cream and glace cherries and hundreds and thousands on top.

There's so much going on in there,

how did all those different elements get into the modern trifle?

Trifles are an important dish in our foodie evolution.

And Gerard's making a recipe dating back to 1750 by legendary

cookbook writer Hannah Glasse.

Layer by layer, he's going

to explore how the trifle took older ideas from British food history

and brought them all together in one iconic super-dessert.

Like the modern trifle,

the early trifles did have an element of sponge in there.

Now, the practice of eating sponge fingers dipped in sweet wine

dates from about 1600, when the first proper sponge cakes were

brought from Spain and Italy into the English kitchen.

In a modern trifle, we have, usually, a raspberry or a strawberry,

probably a packet jelly, to be honest.

But historically, a fruit jelly, like a jam kind of jelly,

would have been used. I'm using plum jelly today.

Some people still use some jam with their sponge,

perhaps even in the form of a Swiss roll.

Now, jelly was eaten in the Medieval dining room.

It would have been set in small glasses flavoured with spice

and perhaps fruit juices to be eaten at the end of the meal

alongside things like the sponge biscuits dipped in sweet wine.

So the elements of trifle were existing alongside one another as far

back as 1600.

Now, I've made a lovely big jug of proper egg

custard for my traditional trifle.

This is a lovely, thick mixture of egg yolks, double cream

and a little bit of vanilla essence.

Spice would have been used quite widely in early custards,

and some of the earliest recipes for trifle really are just

custard set into a shallow dish. The sponge and the jelly came much later.

The earliest custards weren't eaten as much as drank

in the way that we drink eggnog sometimes at Christmas today.

Now, the final, major layer of my trifle is going to be a syllabub.

It's essentially a sweetened, flavoured cream,

but it had been around for centuries before it was

incorporated into our 18th-century trifle.

The Elizabethan court loved to drink cream whipped with sweetened

wine, white wine, and spice.

By the middle of the 18th century,

sugar was much cheaper than it had been historically

because an awful lot was brought in from the West Indies.

So I can put the layer of syllabub on top of the custard to build up

the proper trifle.

Now, we love to decorate a trifle, don't we?

Glace cherries, hundreds and thousands,

maybe even a bit of Angelica.

The 18th-century trifle was even more elaborate, even more fanciful.

If you can't go completely mad with a trifle, when can you?

The first declaration I'm going to put on my historic trifle is

a hedgehog.

Now, that might seem slightly odd but, in fact,

some of the early trifle recipes were a tipsy cake,

a cake soaked in alcohol, covered with custard and cream

and flaked almonds to give the impression of a giant hedgehog.

So, that's my trifle nearly finished but, of course,

a classic trifle is not a trifle without hundreds and thousands.

But what we think of hundreds

and thousands today actually came from these - sugar-coated seeds

called comfits, which were very popular from the Medieval time.

And they're just flavoured seeds covered with sugar and colours.

So there we have it. An 18th-century home-cooked comfort.

The really clever thing about Hannah Glasse was that she amalgamated all

these lovely elements of our dessert history into one fantastic dish.

An awful lot of history in an awful lot of pudding.

Eating trifle featured quite a bit in my 1970s childhood.

Yes, that is me!

But one dish featured more than most in the '70s and appeared

at the start of every dinner party - the classic prawn cocktail.

It was introduced to this country by the doyenne of British post-war

cookery, Fanny Cradock.

Six ounces of chopped prawns,

to which I then add a generous dollop of real mayonnaise.

With a swish of a chiffon ballgown,

Fanny brought gastronomy to the home cook.

This is called une assiette de fruits de mer - fruits of the sea,

seafoods which make a most lovely presentation dish on a buffet

when you're going a bit grand.

Much like Fanny, the kitsch prawn cocktail fell out of fashion,

but made at home with care, this '70s starter is a classic.

And I'm upping the treat factor, using luxurious tiger prawns

and langoustines, all enveloped in a home-made rich Marie Rose sauce.

What I'm going to use is a combination of langoustines

and these tiger prawns. Now, you can actually buy them whole, like this.

These have obviously been frozen.

But you can actually buy them just with the tails.

Either way, you can cook them exactly the same.

And what we're going to do with these is steam them.

Now, steaming is a much more delicate way of cooking prawns,

particularly langoustines, cos when you overcook them,

they go very, very flaky in the centre.

So to keep them nice and firm, we steam them,

only for about sort of one minute, one and a half minutes.

That's all they're going to take.

So firstly, to make our mayonnaise, you start off with that

traditionally, really, with some mustard and egg yolks.

Just a little bit in there.

And then, what we need to add is just some plain oil.

Now, one thing you don't want to be doing

when you're making mayonnaise is adding olive oil.

Olive oil's got far too much flavour - brilliant for dressings

and things like that -

but within mayonnaise, you just want a mild, delicate flavour.

So just a standard veg oil would be great for this.

'To begin with, add just a few drops of oil at a time,

'making sure they combine before adding the next few drops.

'Once it begins to thicken, you can

'pour the rest of the oil in a steady stream.'

Now, really, the misconception with mayonnaise,

the more oil you add, the thinner it gets. It's actually the opposite.

The more oil you add, the thicker it gets.

So you've got your classic mayonnaise there, lovely and thick.

And then, the water's boiled, ready for our prawns and langoustines.

Now, because the prawns are going to take slightly longer to cook,

I'm going to pop these in first.

Pop the lid on and cook these for about a minute and a half.

'To finish off the Marie Rose sauce, add some Worcester sauce, a few

'drops of Tabasco, a touch of brandy and finally, some tomato ketchup.'

And really,

the amount of ketchup to mayonnaise should be about one third

ketchup, two thirds mayonnaise cos you still want to keep that

mayonnaise sort of flavour.

We've mixed this together.

And there we have, you know, that simple,

classic-looking sauce that we all know and love.

Great colour, fantastic flavour cos we've made it ourself.

We can just season this up with some salt, little bit of black pepper.

What I think it needs is just a squeeze of lemon.

Now, I remember dishes such as this when I was a young kid,

when I used to go with the family, with my sister,

and we used to go to those steakhouses back in the '70s

and I used to have chicken in a basket. That kind of stuff.

And steak that was always well-done, even though

you asked for it sort of medium.

Dishes like sort of prawn cocktail have been around for so long,

they should be back on our menu, I think, cos when you realise

how simple it is to make, I think you'll do it more often.

Look! There's your little prawns done. Almost cooked now.

At the same time, now, we can add our langoustines cos

these are only going to take about a minute.

'Once the tiger prawns and langoustines are cooked, take

'them out and allow them to cool for around 10 minutes before peeling.'

And then, just to finish this off...

Now, I was going to go very traditional

and use a butterhead lettuce, really.

But a little lettuce like this will do or a nice little

sort of crispy cos, really.

Something like that would be really nice.

What we're going to do is basically just rip this up.

Like that. And then, just lightly dress it.

This is a combination of honey, vinegar, herbs, bits and pieces.

But just ever so slight amount of dressing. Not too much.

Give this a quick mix together.

And then I had to sort of hark back to the 1970s, really,

when it comes to presenting this.

Especially for a dinner party, I think this looks sort of kitsch.

Good old Martini glass! And then you can pile the lettuce on there.

Often, when you're doing sort of dinner parties

and you want a treat, choose something that's simple,

and you don't really get any more simple than a prawn cocktail.

But done properly, with really nice prawns.

Just a bit of that on the top.

'To finish this dish in true '70s style, I like to garnish it

'with a slice of lemon, some cress and a pinch of cayenne.'

You can't have prawn cocktail without bread and butter.

'This sumptuous treat couldn't be further from the pink

'goo in a glass many of us might remember.

'It's posh enough to serve any dinner party.

'Or for pure indulgence, just make it for yourself.

'Now, that would be a treat and a half!'

It is a great combination, that.

And it goes to prove, some of the best things come out of the '70s.

I was born in 1972.

So many of my home-cooked treats are retro classics -

dishes like Bearnaise sauce, eggs royale...

..omelette Arnold Bennett and raspberry pavlova.

'They've all got one ingredient in common...

'..eggs.

'Just down the road from me at Heathlands Farm,

'Ivor Williams and his partner, Pam, produce a whole range

'of the very best eggs from a selection of 40 rare

'and traditional breed chickens.'

We started this about 17/18 years ago.

It all started off as a bit of a hobby.

We've got traditional breeds, some of them quite rare,

on the endangered list.

These here that we're looking at now, these are just the hybrids we keep

that the general public have just started buying from us

to keep in the bottom of their garden because they want their own eggs.

They want to know where the eggs are coming from

and they enjoy keeping the birds.

Keeping the birds happy, there's no mystery to it.

We let our birds go free range,

keep them in fresh water and food

and that is what makes them happy.

The eggs that our chickens lay,

we tend to find that they're a lot better than your shop bought ones.

They're a lot fresher, the taste of the egg

will come from what you feed the hen

and what the hen can pick up off the ground.

You'll find the birds, they will tend to lay in the same place

and if they are free range,

sometimes you do have to have a look around because they will go

and make their nests in the corner somewhere under a bush

and they up end sitting on them

and the fox will come along and have her away, if he can.

Customers do come to us because they want a specific colour in an egg.

We produce the Cream Legbar which gives us that lovely green egg.

Then you've got your Welsummer

which borders on nearly a chocolate egg.

'Of course chickens aren't the only birds that produce tasty eggs.

'Ivor and Pam also keep ducks which lay eggs

'with a very different flavour.'

In this run here there is just a few of the 400/500 ducks we've got.

We've built them up to this amount

because there's a growing demand for the duck eggs.

In there you'll see two different breeds.

The brown ones are the Khaki Campbells,

the white ones are the Cherry Valleys.

Your duck egg is a richer, more tastier egg.

For baking, I mean,

I would use duck egg over chicken egg, especially on my cakes

because I get a better quality cake at end of the day.

Can I have a dozen eggs, please?

We sell a lot of our eggs from the gate, the chicken eggs especially.

The surplus that we have go off to a wholesaler who distributes them

to a lot of local places around here.

Namely cafes, restaurants,

hotels, pubs, anyone that cooks with them.

'One of those restaurants is run by chef, Jason Hornbuckle.

'The farm's eggs are just the sort of ingredient he looks for.'

We get the eggs in every week.

They come in delivered fresh, they're beautiful, very rich,

the yolks are beautiful, the whites very fresh.

I love using the eggs for baking or just on their own.

The product is absolutely fantastic.

'It's the duck eggs that Jason likes to showcase in his cooking

'and his crispy duck egg with celery and hazelnut salad

'is a real treat.'

They're a lot richer.

The yolks are a lot, lot richer but the richness works really

well in cooking so long as you pair it well.

Boil the eggs for six minutes, put them into ice

and then we're going to take the shell off.

Stunning. Look at that.

Beautiful and soft.

Then we're going to make a little bit of salad with hazelnuts,

watercress and rocket.

Then we will coat the eggs in a little mixture of celery salt,

coriander seeds and breadcrumbs and then deep fry it.

This is a great dish, it's great way to eat it

and, for me, I could eat it all day long.

'For a boy who grew up on a farm, I can really appreciate having

'such great, fresh produce right on my doorstep.

'On the farm, one meal was a treat above all others...

'..a roast.

'But not just any roast, it's my weeping roast lamb

with boulangere potatoes and my gran's mint sauce.'

I'm going to do this a weeping-style lamb.

It's a fantastic way of cooking lamb, when you're doing potatoes like this.

What you do for this is make incisions all over the lamb.

This is good old Welsh lamb which is from about 100 miles

in that direction.

Fantastic, there are so many different types of lamb in the UK.

Salt marsh lamb, all manner of different joints,

as well to choose from.

It really is special when it's in season.

I'm going to make incisions all over the surface like that

and then grab some garlic.

Just take the garlic...

You want decent slivers of garlic

and then you grab a nice little bit of rosemary

and just stick...

..the garlic in the centre.

It is actually a classic way of roasting a joint of lamb like this.

But the garlic infuses throughout, that's why you want to

stick it inside that cavity, get it right down deep.

As it cooks it basically infuses and almost dissolves to nothing really.

Get plenty of rosemary in there.

I remember when I used to work in London

we used to stud this with anchovies, as well,

to add additional flavour but really it's not everybody's

cup of tea, particularly if I did this with my mother around for dinner.

She wouldn't be too impressed

getting an anchovy fillet mixed with her favourite cut of meat.

A little drizzle of oil will just help in the cooking process,

first of all, and a good sprinkling of salt over the top.

We're just going to leave that to one side because the actual potato

dish takes the same amount of time as it takes to cook the lamb.

I'm going to do a real classic for this, it's boulangere potatoes,

that famous potato dish that originates from France.

'Potatoes boulangere literally translates as baker's potatoes.

'When the French bakers had finished baking, local people would

'bring this dish to be cooked in the residual heat of their bread ovens.'

I was going to say there has to be an invention to do potatoes quicker

but for the women watching this,

you've got one, it's called your husband!

'Once your husband has peeled the potatoes, cut them

'and some onions into thin slices.'

All we do is just layer this up so every time you slice it,

stick a layer of onions in,

a layer of potatoes.

The thing is with this don't be poncey, it's not a poncey dish.

It's supposed to be like this, it is supposed to be rustic,

that's what it is. It's all the flavour all in one dish.

Every time you do it,

a bit of salt, a bit of black pepper...

And then you build up another layer.

'Continue to build up the potato and onion layers

'and if chopping onions makes you weepy, I might have a solution.'

And what I got sent to me, are these.

Onion glasses.

The whole point of this is a sharp knife.

If you have a sharp knife, you don't cry.

And you don't look a total idiot!

'Once you've finished your layers,

'pour chicken stock half way up the dish

'and top it with, what else, but a little butter.'

Now I've set the oven to about 400 degrees Fahrenheit,

that's 200 degrees Centigrade so quite a hot oven

because we're going to cook the potatoes in the bottom shelf.

This is where the lamb comes in.

What you need to do is get a cooling rack,

turn it the other way up,

because it's easier to take out of the oven,

and take the lamb...

..and place that on the cooling rack.

There's no real oven tray for this.

What's going to happen is the juices from the lamb will drip down

while it cooks onto your potatoes.

That's why you need to put this right over the top of the potatoes,

otherwise you're going to set the fire alarms off in your house.

You sit that meat on there,

close the oven door and leave it for about 1.5 hours.

While that's cooking, I can give Fudge his favourite treat,

a nice walk in the country.

To serve with the lamb, I'm making a rich, red wine gravy.

So you just put a little bit in.

A bottle!

And then you use some good quality stock,

chicken stock or really with lamb, beef stock is really good.

We just pour that in.

This is real key to this.

You bring it to the boil and reduce it down by about three quarters.

'While the red wine gravy reduces,

'I can get on chopping the mint for my mint sauce.'

My granny always used to make her own mint sauce

and it's one of the things that I always remember for Sunday lunch,

my granny would be allowed to make the mint sauce.

Well, not allowed, she had to make the mint sauce

because nobody was as good at making it as my gran.

'With the mint chopped, add some vinegar to the pan

'and, like Gran, I'm not using anything fancy.'

Exactly the same malt vinegar as you put on your fish and chips.

Fish and chip night was a Tuesday night in my granny's house.

Next add a pinch of caster sugar and salt

and, once it's dissolved, take it off the heat.

Now all you have to do is throw in your chopped mint and mix.

'By now the lamb should be done and so should the potatoes.

'While they rest, turn your attention back

'to the red wine gravy.'

Now I'm just going to finish off this sauce.

The sauce has been reducing down nicely.

A quick taste of this.

That's really nice but one thing it does need is a little bit of butter.

This is called Monteux beurre, it's to finish a sauce.

This makes the difference between a sauce that you cook at home

and one that you'll find when you go and eat out.

You can still create it at home by adding this little bit of butter.

The secret is the texture needs to be right

and you get that by reducing the stock.

What you end up is this lovely, rich sauce.

Which you can see there almost looks see-through, really.

That's fantastic. So often you don't need to season it at all.

All that's left to do is assemble this onto the plate.

And then give it a try.

Life just does not get any better.

Well, it does.

I could have Heidi Klum here.

But as I don't have supermodel Heidi,

I'll have to make do with this lot.

Guys, you've got to try this.

Taste that. Taste that.

A night at home doesn't have to mean boring home cooking.

And we can all treat ourselves to something a bit special

without too much effort.

After all, don't we deserve it?

If you'd like to know more about how to cook any of the recipes

featured on today's show, you can get all of them on our website.