Prep Now, Eat Later James Martin: Home Comforts

Sometimes there is 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.

Whether it was growing up in Yorkshire

or here where I live now in Hampshire,

great food has never been far away.

But of course great food doesn't always come easy

and although you might enjoy eating it, the time it takes

to prepare can get in the way of your social life.

We all know the scenario - people coming round for dinner

either for a posh dinner party or a light lunch.

You don't want to be spending too much time in the kitchen so

I'm going to show you my dishes

which are so easy to prepare now and eat later.

Preparing good food doesn't have to take over your life.

Think ahead and you'll be dishing out delicious

meals in seemingly no time at all.

A joint of meat can look after itself

if you do all the work in advance before chucking it in the oven.

One-pot wonders and simple side dishes will also buy you

plenty of time in the kitchen when the heat is on.

But if there's one thing that definitely encourages me

to get organised when I'm cooking, it's the simple fact that food

prepared in advance often seems to taste much better.

Now, when you're looking at dishes

that you can prep now and eat later,

you have to go a long way

to find one better than a chicken stew in my opinion

because it gets better even the second time round.

For me, the French bistro favourite chicken chasseur

is one of the tastiest reheatable dishes out there.

The simple combination of mushrooms, bacon,

wine and herbs makes one of the most flavoursome chicken dishes going.

I've already jointed a chicken into eight pieces ready for the pot.

I'm going to coat these in flour.

And what this flour is going to do is help brown it

but most of all, help thicken our stew.

You want a light dusting and that is a light dusting.

There is no more than that.

Grab some oil and then we start to seal this.

Now, it's important to seal it in batches

because you want it to colour nicely.

If I put all this chicken in, it's basically just go to stew

so put in four pieces first.

What you want to do is just leave it to get some nice colour.

SIZZLING

So with our bacon we just want to cut this into lardons.

Now, I'm using back bacon but you can use streaky.

This isn't sort of a fancy dish, it's a rustic French classic.

So you've got the bacon and now we just chop up the shallots.

If you've got small onions,

you can just actually just put whole onions in.

So once you've got the chicken nicely sealed like this,

we can then concentrate on what is left in this pan.

Now, these are all the juices from the chicken.

We need those in our stew. A good knob of butter.

And then start frying your bacon.

You want to get a little bit of colour on it,

start to crisp it up slightly.

So once you've got the bacon frying, now we put in our shallots.

And now we can throw in our mushrooms.

Now, I'm going to use little brown cap mushrooms.

Throw them in whole as well.

When you cut them up too small they sort of disintegrate.

An important ingredient in this,

and you must put it in at the beginning of the cooking process,

is tomato puree.

If you put it in at the end of cooking

you can really taste this sort of quite harsh puree..

And as you seal it around in the pan like this,

it actually starts to cook that flavour out

and the bitterness out of it as well.

And then deglaze it with some white wine.

A glass in here.

Now, we need to reduce this down for about 30 seconds.

And then we add really good quality stock

and for this use chicken stock, obviously.

You can get away by using beef stock as well.

And while that's coming to the boil, we can pop our chicken back in.

Now, what you don't want to do is add too much stock

because there is a lot of liquid that comes out of chicken.

And then one final ingredient before we leave it alone is fresh tarragon.

The perfect combination to go with chicken.

And for that really, you want to put half in now and half in later.

So just bring that to the boil.

We're just going to gently simmer that for about 30 to 40 minutes

which gives enough time to prep our potatoes for our mash.

It's not until you actually work in a commercial restaurant

where you actually begin to understand about preparing it now

and eating it later and mashed potato is one of those things.

It will actually keep in the fridge for a couple of days.

So it's a bit like Christmas lunch where

I used to watch my mum stressing with pans of stuff

boiling everywhere.

I don't think I've ever met anybody who doesn't like mash.

If you run some quality boiled spuds through a ricer, add a knob of butter

and maybe some cream,

you've made some of the tastiest side dishes going in no time at all.

And that mashed potato, that is delicious.

If I'm reheating a dish like this, I always hold some of the fresher

ingredients back so they retain some of their texture and flavour

when cooked. It couldn't be easier.

Do the main prep in advance, then on the day

add some skinned and deseeded diced tomatoes,

along with some roughly chopped parsley,

a handful of tarragon and simmer it for 20 minutes

and you're ready to go.

And then all you need to do now is serve it.

You've got all that amazing flavour of tomatoes, tarragon,

mushrooms and bacon, which is a real classic to go with this.

It's kind of the perfect dish for sort of prep now, eat later.

You've got to try that.

The simple but quality ingredients

used in retro dishes like chicken chasseur

means it tastes as good today as it did years ago.

Round where I live in Hampshire grow some amazing ingredients

that have been around so long they might also be considered retro.

Watercress has been part of the British diet

for hundreds of years but its distinct peppery flavour,

I'm glad to say, is making a bit of a resurgence.

It's the water conditions in this corner of Hampshire

that are perfect for growing this little aquatic herb.

And it's thanks to watercress farmers like Tom Amery

that this UK staple has become even more popular.

This area is known as the watercress capital of the UK.

It's been grown here now for over 120 years.

Watercress has become the new rocket, you could say.

Rocket became very popular and well-known

because of its strong flavour. Watercress also has that.

It's the mustard oils that are found within the watercress

when you're chewing it.

It is actually a natural defence for the insects that could come

and obviously live off the crop.

The nutritional content for watercress is quite incredible.

Gram for gram it contains more vitamin C than oranges,

more calcium than milk and iron in large quantities.

Down the ages, its claimed health-boosting properties

have been revered.

The Anglo-Saxons ate it to prevent baldness.

The Romans used it as an aphrodisiac

and the Egyptian Pharaohs fed it to their slaves to build them up.

Whatever the claims, one thing that hasn't changed much over

the years is watercress farming methods.

Then, as now, the key is year-round access to exceptionally good

natural spring water.

And Hampshire's chalky aquifers are perfect.

The idea about pushing watercress under the surface of the water

is a very traditional technique.

It is used to put the crop into a warmer area

because the water is constantly ten degrees

and that enables the watercress to survive during frost periods.

This crop was sown in June or July

and would have been harvested three to four times.

Before we harvest, normally about 24 hours before, we roll

the crop down, it creates an even surface to actually cut to

so we get a consistent length during harvest.

These fields in Hampshire have been really harvested

now for the last 120 years.

Traditionally, a lot of the watercress was harvested by hand

so they were bunching the watercress,

it would have gone off to the small packing centres all around the area.

And now what we're doing is we're harvesting with machinery.

We aim to cut anything up to six tonnes in a day.

The key is about speed.

We start at six in the morning and we really want to be done by about

8:30 so we can get it chilled, ready to go out to the store the same day.

From here this will go off

to the factory where it's washed in spring water.

That will remove anything that we don't need in there,

any yellow leaves, any insects that are left over

and that will be then packed into the bags

and then sent off to the store for tomorrow.

As he's only up the road,

Tom has very kindly brought some of his freshly-picked crop

for me to cook with.

Health benefits aside, for me it's always been the watercress'

unique flavour that we should be celebrating.

It's great to see you.

We've got this fantastic watercress that you've produced.

-Was this cut this morning then?

-It was. It's fresh today, yeah.

It's the best way to have watercress.

You've got to eat it fresh and keep it green, that's the key part.

Well, we better not hang about then.

Perhaps the simplest prep now, eat later dish

is the humble sandwich.

But there is certainly nothing humble

about my giant salmon and watercress pan bagna.

Pop one of these in your rucksack

and you've got the perfect picnic dish for up to a dozen of you.

First thing I'm going to do is get on

and put our salmon in the oven, really.

So, for this I'm going to use a whole side of salmon.

We're going to poach this with some lemon.

It's kind of weird inviting you here and just cooking you a sandwich

but this is a bit of a posh sandwich, you see.

It's not a small sandwich, I don't think.

No, it's a decent sized sandwich, Tom. A bit of salt like that.

Chuck in a few whole peppercorns then half-fill the tray with water

and place in a preheated oven at 200 degrees Celsius for about ten minutes.

So, tell me about this stuff. Why Hampshire particularly?

Well, Hampshire has been growing watercress now

for about 120 years now

and it was a period when it moved out of London around some

of the larger cities in the UK and they came down here for the water.

If you look at the water in London,

you wouldn't anticipate watercress

which needs fresh, clear water to grow.

I think once there was obviously that was there, but as London expanded...

-Not on the River Thames now.

-No, definitely not.

The main ingredient for this sandwich

will be this delicious watercress pesto.

It's really simple to make.

All you have to do is blend a few generous handfuls of watercress

with some garlic, toasted pine nuts, salt

and a generous glug of good olive oil.

Is there any part of the year where it actually,

you can't actually produce watercress?

We tend to harvest British watercress from April right

the way through to November, so it's a long season for British farming.

-Good for you, though.

-It's great. Love it.

Right, so we've just got to make a little pesto, really.

So what you do is just blitz this.

And you end up with an amazing colour.

Now, you do need plenty for this because I've got a decent-sized loaf

so don't be frightened to put in loads and loads of pesto.

-So how do you eat yours then?

-I have it most mornings for breakfast.

-For breakfast?

-Yeah, with toast, yeah, and Bovril.

That's my favourite.

A lot of people have it with a bit of salt and oil

because that bitterness,

some people just don't like the intense bitterness that they get

and my boys, they're nine and six,

they love it with salt and olive oil.

So we have it in our evening meals.

Because, I mean, people equate it to rocket, really,

but it has got a flavour all of its own.

It's not the same as rocket in my opinion.

No, it's not as intense.

Rocket can be that intense flavour

where watercress is a little bit more subtle.

We eat more watercress in the UK than anywhere else in the world.

That's unusual when you think you walk around the supermarket.

You see a little bit of it but not so much as you should do, in my opinion.

It's entirely up to you what goes into this sandwich but the

whole point of this, and this is why you need a decent sort of loaf,

this is why it's enough for me and you, I think here, Tom.

-I'm happy with that.

-JAMES LAUGHS

You need a decent sort of piece of bread but you need to hollow it out.

Now, the best way to do that, really,

is think about how you are going to fill it first of all.

Don't make the hole too big.

Once you remove the lid

start hollowing out the loaf for your filling.

The breadcrumbs won't go to waste.

I'm going to use them in a dish a bit later on.

I'm going to get this done this weekend.

-You're going to make this, are you?

-Yeah, definitely.

It is good. It's one of these things that you could literally make today,

set it in the fridge

and have it three or four days later as well.

Basically we're going to chargrill the courgettes.

Now the salmon is out, we just allow that to cool slightly.

And that is the key to this.

I'm using salmon because it goes great with watercress,

but you can use chicken, whatever you want really.

And then it's entirely up to you

how you layer this up.

I'm going to start my sandwich with a good dollop of watercress pesto,

followed with some thinly sliced raw red onions...

..flakes of the poached salmon

and then some of these sweet grilled Spanish red peppers.

I love these. I don't know if you've ever tried these before.

These are Spanish peppers. They're not hot, they're not spicy.

-They're sweet.

-They are wood roasted.

They are absolutely delicious and they come in jars.

But also the great thing about this, you can have this hot.

So if you're going to do it hot then I would put layers of cheese in.

Maybe some mozzarella, that kind of stuff in there as well.

We're just going to pop in even more of this.

Every time you do it, of course, a good amount of seasoning.

Black pepper and a bit of salt.

Off you go. And you've got some of this amazing sort of pesto.

And the good thing about the watercress is the pepperiness

from it as well which will give this a real kick.

So it's taken a whole side, has this.

So it's good enough for two to three people.

THEY LAUGH

We call this a canape up in Yorkshire, Tom. Don't know...

Once you get the top, each layer you press down, more of this pesto.

Don't be frightened to use plenty of this.

So pile it all up, just pop the lid on.

It's great, really, because you can make this in advance.

It'll last for a whole week and wrap it up in clingfilm,

leave it in the fridge and you can take slices of it

as and when you want it.

But the best part of this is this next bit.

This is the bit that makes it all worthwhile.

Slice it all the way through.

And when you open it out...

Just look at that.

You've got all the lovely layers in there.

And then the longer you keep it in the fridge, really,

the more easy it is to carve.

Right, we get to dive into this.

Don't know where you start with something like this but...

With the salmon and the peppers and the pesto...

Amazing. Perfect.

Mmm!

Amazing. Well done.

For a man who eats watercress every day of the week,

I take that as a compliment.

It's worth remembering that having fresh ingredients like this

available nearly all year round is only really a recent phenomenon.

But if you don't have time to prep ahead,

why not let one of Britain's award-winning food producers

do it for you.

My name is Thomas Maieli and I am an artisan food manufacturer.

Thomas' speciality is duck.

And in London he is gaining quite a reputation

for his high-quality French classics.

My products are known as Mr Duck so I am Mr Duck in London.

There is duck confit, the smoked duck breasts.

We do duck terrine as well.

We use all the part of the duck and that is very important.

The gizzard confit which is not an easy product to sell in England

but it's fantastic.

His goods are so highly regarded

that they are finding their way

into some of the capital's top stores.

-Thank you very much, Thomas.

-See you soon.

See you soon. Thanks for coming.

Thomas has won a lot of accolades in big competitions,

like The Great Taste Award top 50 products.

It's really, really good.

And surprisingly, this high-end operation

is all taking place in his home.

Well, extremely close to his home.

We are not in the Perigueux in France, we are in London, Acton.

And actually where we are there it's my garage.

His empire has been founded on a family favourite - duck confit.

This age-old dish of duck leg cured in salt

and then slowly cooked in its own fat,

is a delicious French classic.

We used to do a duck confit when I was young.

That was comfort food, you know.

Even my daughter she asks me, you know sometimes, "What do you want?"

I say I would like to have a confit.

It's something very easy to eat and it's very good.

I cannot live without it.

In England you like meat which is very soft and crispy outside

so for me it was a perfect thing to start with.

It's a very, very easy dish to prepare.

It's a long process because there is different stage to prepare it.

My grandmother and my mother used to cook a lot of that at home

and so I knew the process.

I used to help her prepare and put the salt on.

The recipe that I have used is a recipe that we do in the family,

that changed slightly to make a unique taste.

There is a lot of secret herbs!

It took me one year to get the right balance.

Thomas' duck is cured with his secret salt

for up to 36 hours in the fridge.

The meat is then cooked in duck fat until it is meltingly tender,

which can take up to ten hours.

This is definitely one dish that would take

a lot of commitment to cook at home.

Thankfully, Thomas is prepared

to go through all the effort so you don't have to.

What I do is what I love, my passion. It is me.

When I started, I did not know it was going to work.

I did try to put my passion out and to see if people are liking it.

With all the meticulous preparation that this dish demands done for you,

it's no surprise Thomas' business has been so successful.

The only thing you have to do at home is heat it up and voila!

You just have to put them out of the packet and put them

skin down because the pan is going to crisp the skin.

Now you can put them in the oven, ten minutes and it's ready.

And you can use it as different way as you want

so you can do crispy duck if you want to, you can do gratin

if you want to, you can put that in a pie

and it's going to be fantastic.

The best way is to cook it with some potatoes, onions

and some bacon, like pancetta, that you fry up, garlic and parsley.

Now, that is the traditional way to do it.

For some area in France it is home cooking for every day

so every day everybody does that.

It's very juicy and you have the crispiness

and after that you have all the spices I put in it.

And it is a delicious flavour inside.

I won't tell you the secret recipe for that.

There are a lot of people who would like to know.

HE CHUCKLES

For me, slow-cooking any meat always gets brilliant results.

And it's the perfect way of freeing yourself up

to get other dishes prepped with ease.

Back at my place, I've got a brilliant joint of meat that

I think really benefits from a bit of work before it goes in the oven.

Now, I was once taught a great saying by a fellow chef.

There is nothing better than the crispy skin from a mammal.

And this dish epitomises it, really.

It's a roast pork dish -

slow roast for five hours with Dauphinoise potatoes.

The perfect dish that you can make now and eat later.

So the first thing we do is get our pork.

Now, this is a serious sized piece of meat, this one.

This is a loin of pork with the belly attached.

This joint is something

you'd probably have to ask your butcher for.

Now really there's two of these on the animal.

This is the loin, you've got the spine running down the centre

and then this is the belly and it sits like that on the top.

But what you need to do now, because it's obviously a different size,

is you need to open this up and to make sure it's nice and flat.

To do that, you've got to be quite careful

but really in one cut at a time slice it through the loin.

Straight through there.

Do the same this side and open it out.

You're not cutting all the way through.

We're just cutting it nice and flat so you're trying to make sure that this loin is the same

thickness of the belly so it cooks evenly and then that's it, really.

Now I'm going to make the stuffing for this

which is pretty straightforward.

We're going to do a sage and onion stuffing but with chestnuts.

First, I am roughly chopping two onions before sticking them

into the blender.

Then melt some butter in a pan and add your blitzed onions.

It's a big joint so I'm going to use about 400g of chestnuts.

Chop these into small pieces.

Next finely slice one large bunch of sage leaves.

Add these ingredients into a mixing bowl.

Now those breadcrumbs from the sandwich earlier won't go to waste.

Add about 300g to help bulk things out a bit.

And, of course, season with salt and pepper.

That is delicious. And then we can attempt to stuff this.

You basically just place the stuffing in and evenly place it over

the top of the pork.

Take your time doing that and press this down.

So some seasoning, and then when you roll it up,

pick the end which has got the loin in

because the loin is actually the tender end

but it's also the end that hasn't got so much fat in

so you need the inside of the pork to keep it nice and moist.

And then you need to tie this up.

Take a long piece of string, make a little loop in it.

And then place the piece of string underneath.

Pick about an inch away from the end otherwise it's going

to slip off and then pop the string through the knot,

pull it through.

Keep the tension on it and then loop this underneath...

..and pull it tight again.

This really comes with practice.

The more you do, the better at it you get.

And at the end just double knot it, really.

Then we're pretty much done.

Simply stick it onto a baking tray and smother on a bit of butter.

Good sprinkle of salt will actually help crisp up the crackling as well.

All this preparation really does pay off.

A slow roast at 150 degrees C for five hours will cook the meat

and give us some crispy crackling.

Now about 90 minutes towards the end of the cooking time

then you can make your potato dish.

Now, this is, to me,

one of the best potato dishes that has ever been created.

This one is a Dauphinoise potatoes -

that classic mixture of cream, milk, garlic

and butter really is spectacular.

We start by rubbing garlic into the oven dish.

That is all we need to flavour the Dauphinoise.

Then grease the dish with butter.

And then we can turn our attention to the spuds.

And all this is, is basically you need one of these little mandolins.

Use these purely for speed, really.

Alternatively you got to slice this very, very thinly.

It takes longer with a knife but it's much safer.

There you go. Two kilos of potatoes done in no time at all.

And best of all, all my fingers are all intact.

So you take a layer of these potatoes, just a fine layer of these.

And then you use a combination of a little bit of salt over the top,

a bit of black pepper, a little bit of grated nutmeg.

You only want a small amount. This stuff is pretty strong.

But we build up layers and layers.

But the key to this dish, I think, is these next two ingredients.

Just a little bit of cream and some full fat milk.

Pour the milk in.

Roughly about equal quantities.

Now, you want this to sort of cover the potatoes as well.

Cover this over...

..and cook this in the same temperature

and same oven as the pork.

About an hour before you need both of these dishes, though,

whack the oven temperature up to about 400 degrees,

200 degrees centigrade, 400 Fahrenheit

for another hour. Gives me a chance to have a beer.

So really this is one of those dishes that you kind of dump

in the middle of the table and everybody helps themselves.

You've got your Dauphinoise potatoes

and then I suppose the spectacle of the entire thing is this.

What you want to do is just carefully lift it off the tray.

For any crackling fans out there, this is what you want to hear.

CRACKLING CRACKLES

Now, so often on cookery shows you get a load of chefs and cooks

sat there telling you how wonderful it is but...

..it really is.

It's the perfect dish you can make in advance.

Just stick it in the oven and forget about it.

The longer it's in the oven the better it gets.

This is the perfect dish.

It tastes fantastic. Don't forget, this is what it's all about.

My favourite word...

CRACKLING CRUNCHES

..crackling.

It's fantastic, that.

A bit of sensible preparation definitely makes things

easier for you when the guests arrive.

But for me the real gain is actually in the delicious food itself.

And if you can enjoy the cooking experience as much as everybody

else enjoys the food then everyone is a winner.

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 at our website...