Midweek Suppers 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.

Home for me is the Hampshire countryside.

Here and in Yorkshire growing up, I've been surrounded by great food.

And whilst living out here means I can escape the pressures

of a busy working kitchen,

finding the time to cook something for myself when I get home is,

for like many people, not easy.

So, I suppose the whole thing about midweek suppers

is you want something quick, something nutritious,

but above all else, something really tasty.

Things like chicken, sausages,

and I'm going to show you some of my favourites.

And I've got a stack of home cooked, mid-week meals up my sleeve that

are just the thing for anybody short of a bit of time and inspiration.

I'll share with you some great cheats to creating fabulous

meals in no time at all.

I'm going to cheat. Bought in mashed potato.

And I'll be finding out how our ancestors'

midweek suppers weren't always what they seemed.

And ready-made ingredients might save you

a bit of time in the kitchen, but if you want to make a midweek meal

to remember, some things you just can't skimp on.

You just know that it is going to taste great.

A little bit of creativity in your kitchen can transform mundane meals

into dishes as varied, exciting and tasty as any weekend treat.

But let's kick off with a meal I remember from when I was a kid.

Now this dish has to be the ultimate midweek supper.

It's a toad in the hole with my mum's gravy.

Surprisingly simple and incredibly cheap,

a toad in the hole with a rich onion gravy is something

I think should feature on everybody's culinary repertoire.

It really epitomises everything that my family are all about, really.

We were pig farmers so we had great pork.

My grandmother's recipe for her Yorkshire pudding,

and my mother's recipe for her gravy

and it is gravy, it's none of that fancy jus.

The first thing we're going to do is make the Yorkshire pudding

and get this tin in the oven.

I use dripping, or lard.

Lard may have fallen out of favour of late

but, for me, taste is king.

You simply can't beat it.

Do NOT use oil!

Hot oven.

The Yorkshire pudding batter itself,

we start off with a mixture of 8oz of plain flour.

I'm going to throw in the eggs,

eight eggs, 8oz of flour to a pint of milk.

This is where this dish is sort of perfect for a midweek supper

because you do need to leave this to rest in the fridge beforehand.

This is a Yorkshire pudding recipe straight from Yorkshire itself.

My granny used to prepare her batter a day in advance

and, believe me, it makes such a difference.

The longer it's in the fridge the better it is because of this next bit.

The minute you mix flour with eggs, or milk,

it does need chance to relax.

It's a little bit like making pancakes,

it toughens up the gluten in the flour

and that's why I always make this by hand.

Then I'm going to add a touch of mustard.

It's entirely up to you how much mustard you want to put in.

I'm just going to add a little bit of grain mustard, no more.

Mix this together.

Then the milk, always, always in my house

and in my mother's house,

and in my grandmother's house, it was full fat milk.

There is no such thing as semi-skimmed. It's full fat.

Southerners drink semi-skimmed.

Throw the milk in.

The whole lot, like that.

A good pinch of salt.

Then pop this in the fridge.

This is where you need to leave it for at least a few hours.

I like to leave it overnight, wherever possible,

but we end up with this mixture

which has just been left nicely.

Toad in the hole is a simple recipe

but there's nothing wrong with some attention to detail.

If there's one thing that nobody in my family would dare to skimp on

it was the sausages.

That's where my, really, love affair with food stems from, I suppose.

Watching my grandmother and my auntie battling it out in the kitchen.

It was like clash of the titans, really,

the two of them arguing in the kitchen

but they just used to produce the most amazing food.

I'm not cooking the sausages all the way through.

Browning them seals in the flavour

and ensures this midweek supper will look as good as it tastes.

Hopefully now our tin should be hot enough.

Straight out.

Pour off any little excess dripping than we need.

-Throw the sausages in.

-SIZZLING

That's the noise that you need.

Batter in.

The batter should make that fizzing noise as it hits the tray.

Then straight back into a hot oven that

takes about a good 30 to 40 minutes to cook all the way through.

Whatever you do, do not open this oven for at least half an hour

until they're ready.

Right now we can get on making my mum's onion gravy.

Sliced two onions and brown them off in your spare dripping.

There is a real art to making proper gravy.

It's all about layers of flavour.

My mum has a real knack of knowing just what to combine to make

the most of what's in her kitchen cupboard.

Remember, this is my mother's old recipe.

There's no fancy reduction sauces in here.

I'm going to use some of this.

Gravy granules.

Get that mixing. So 250mls.

Cold water, deglaze it with a little bit of red wine or white wine.

Off-the-shelf beef stock like this simply didn't exist

when I was a kid.

But it has a great flavour and now my mum uses it as much as I do.

There's one ingredient that really,

I'm not a great fan of this, particularly on toast,

but in this it really does work.

We just add a good tablespoon

and then, finally, we can turn the heat down

and add our gravy granules.

If there are chefs watching this,

this is home cooking. All right?

Now we just gently bring this to the boil.

Not too much otherwise it'll go lumpy.

Then what I think really finishes this off...

..is butter.

A knob of butter gives the gravy a lovely shine and, of course,

makes it taste fantastic.

It's pretty good that.

Now you can serve whatever veg you want with it, really, but...

Frozen peas...

..you can't beat them.

Boiling salted water...

No more than about 30 seconds to a minute,

otherwise they end up like dried little bullets.

The sauce is nearly there.

The Yorkshire pudding is looking pretty good.

The idea of this is really, after 30 minutes

just to open the oven door for only for about ten seconds

and then close it and cook it for a further ten minutes.

That way you will let steam evaporate out of the oven.

Too much steam will actually cause the pudding

to collapse in on itself.

We're going to drain these off.

Really with peas, frozen peas, you just want to show them

the heat, really.

Not allow them to cook too much otherwise they go dried and wrinkly.

A little bit of butter.

In the end just give it a nice glaze.

The sauce is ready.

So to my gran's fabulous toad in the hole.

This is, I think, how Yorkshire puddings should be.

It should be crispy on the outside but soft in the middle.

Purists would say it's got to be crispy all the way through

but I disagree with that.

I think it needs to be almost like cakey in the centre

and then we've got our lovely buttered peas.

Finally, we've got, of course, mum's proper gravy.

We've got to taste it, haven't we, really?

You can't beat it.

It really is the perfect midweek supper.

It's rich, it's comforting.

Kids will love it.

Adults will love it.

I just need to practise that gravy a bit more.

I think a simple, straightforward meal like toad in the hole

is perfect for those of us in a rush.

But having less time on your hands doesn't mean you should

skimp on the quality of your ingredients.

I'm constantly amazed by the fresh award-winning meat,

veg and fruit, all available only miles from my home.

With almost 700 miles of rivers, countless lakes

and exceptional water conditions,

there can be few places better than my home county of Hampshire

for farming my favourite freshwater fish - trout.

Just 20 minutes up the road from me, father and son team,

Anthony and Nick Gay have been rearing this underrated fish for years.

We've been farming here since 1978, about 35 years now.

On the farm we have about 300,000 fish at this time of year.

The average size of fish on the farm would be about 200g,

ready to hit table size, which is 450g.

One of the great things about rainbow trout is it's an oily fish

and therefore it contains a lot of what is known as Omega 3.

It's also very low in fat.

It's got a third less fat in it than salmon

and it's basically a very versatile ingredient

and very easy to cook with.

The key to raising great tasting fish is a constant flow

of superb mineral rich water.

The water percolates through the chalk

which acts as a fantastic filter, bubbles up out of springs.

As you can see, the clarity of the water is just fantastic.

The water flows through the ponds, it is all very well oxygenated.

It takes about 45 minutes to flow through these ponds here.

It circulates really quickly.

The fish absolutely love it

because their natural instinct is to swim against the flow.

This is actually a pretty natural way to grow fish.

But water quality isn't the only factor that dictates how good

the final product will be.

Feeding of the fish is the most important aspect on the farm.

We have always taken the approach to use top quality fish food

because we think that produces top quality fish.

The most important thing is to make sure you're feeding the right

amount of food to each pond, each day.

That is determined by a number of factors such as water temperature,

size of fish and time of year.

After months of careful monitoring and attention,

the fish are ready to be harvested.

You'd think it would be a slippery job

but here at Franklyns not one fish will slip through the net.

We net them up, bring the fish down to this corner here.

We then lift a dip net of fish up into the tub

and we'll sort them by hand.

We are checking the size of the fish as we grade.

Like with all customers, whether it be a stocking or table market,

everyone wants a certain size fish.

We'll check the size and then we'll also check

it's got all its fins

and just looks a nice fish, like there's nothing wrong with it.

No-one likes to see an ugly fish.

We've got to make sure that they're all in pristine condition.

This is why this form of hand grading is very good

because we get to check each fish individually.

Most of the ones that we're chucking back now are because they're too small.

When the Gay family get together

there's normally only one thing on their menu.

You've guessed it - trout.

Wow!

We like to think we produce some of the best trout in the country.

It's pretty good.

'And when you eat, sleep and breathe trout, you don't

'need reminding that fish like these make a versatile and tasty meal

'that we should all eat more often.'

That's really hot!

LAUGHTER

'For a midweek meal, fish like these are perfect

'and can be so easy to prepare.

'And to be ready for a visit from Nick

'and Anthony, I'm firing up my wood-fired oven so I can roast

'one of their gorgeous trout

'and serve it with a classic salsa verde.

'Nick and Anthony have brought me

'the perfect prime specimen ready to throw straight in the oven.

'All I need to do is dress it and that's where the salsa comes in.

'I'm going to make it with a selection of green herbs,

'anchovies, mustard and onion.'

And to get this on, I'm going to then chop up my onion

and really dice this up quite small, first of all.

You can do this in the pestle and mortar

but I'm going to speed things up and use a little blender here.

So why fish for you?

Is it something that you've always been into, farming...

How did you end up with a farm like that?

My father started the farm back in 1978 and about 20 years ago

he had a terrible accident and never recovered

and I had to get involved in the farm.

-Cos you were working in London at the time.

-That's right.

Knew nothing about trout farming, nothing.

-I knew the front and the tail.

-Right.

-So it was a steep learning curve for you?

-Oh, very.

We were very lucky, we had some super people working on the farm

that helped me and then Nick joined.

Now it's quite interesting that I saw you...

You're hand-grading them as well.

No-one wants to have an ugly fish on their plate, so we think...

Unless it's a monkfish or something like that, yeah?

So how long would it take to produce a fish like that in terms of time?

-We buy them in at 30g.

-Right.

For a fish that size,

that's probably been on the farm just over a year or so.

'For a big fish like this, we're going to need a lot of salsa.'

Now I'm just going to show you what I've got here.

We've got some shallots, we've got a bit of mustard, we've got

some anchovy, and those three ingredients are really

the key to this and then lots and lots of herbs,

and I like to use mint, I like to use dill,

tarragon is a fantastic flavour with trout as well.

We've got some basil, parsley and, of course, watercress.

'There's no real set recipe for something like this salsa verde.

'It's simple - mix and match the herbs to suit your taste.

'Add a pinch of salt and pepper.

'A bit of olive oil helps blend it all together.

'And, for me, a splash of lemon juice and a few capers

'really complements the mix of flavours at play here.'

And then you end up with this lovely little paste really which

ends up as a nice little sauce that we can use to go into our fish.

We've got some precooked new potatoes here and then what

we do is just make a few indentations

in the top with a knife like that.

And then takes some of this...

..salsa verde, some of this salsa just in the cavity there,

not too much, because I'm going to use predominantly

most of it as a nice little sauce to go with it and then

we're going to take our fish over to our tray.

Good amount of lemon as well.

You just put plenty of oil on the top, a good amount of salt

and then some black pepper.

Finally, what we do is just take the remaining stalks really from

these, stuff them in the cavity like that.

'And that's all there is to it.

'With the fish stuffed and the oven now up to temperature,

'all that remains to do is throw it in.'

There you go, guys.

I like my gadgets, this is mine - pizza oven. It is fantastic.

The key to it is, though, preheating it.

'After a day at work, you don't want

'to hang around waiting for meals to cook.

'Preheat your oven at home to 210 degrees

'and even a fish this big will be done in 20 minutes tops.'

The thing about it is, it's like blokes and barbecues.

When you start it, you just can't go wandering off.

-You've got to keep an eye on it.

-You've got stay here, you know.

It's all that fire, bloke sort of thing.

This really is a great way of cooking fish.

You could have one of these on the farm, you see.

But it is, cos it keeps you warm in the winter.

When it's at full heat, it reaches about 500 degrees centigrade,

it will cook pizza in about 20, 30 seconds.

'Ideal for midweek suppers, fish really doesn't take long to cook.

'In an oven this hot, 15 minutes is more than enough,

'even for a trout this big.'

-There you go. It's done.

-Looks fantastic.

-That is looking stunning.

-It looks pretty good, that, doesn't it?

-Stunning.

-Cooks really quick.

And then, really, I suppose, the whole thing about this is

you just dollop a bit of that with it, really, and dive in.

You'd better lead the way.

You lead the way, it's your fish -

all I've done is just put it in the oven.

That sauce is perfect with trout, I think.

It's whether you cook it in the oven, whether you poach it -

I think that sauce is the perfect accompaniment with it.

-It tastes fantastic.

-It's coming off the bone so well as well.

-Have you ever tried that before?

-No. I'm trying it some more, though.

You're trying it some more,

but it is one of those classics that works

-so well with this, but mix and match the herbs.

-OK.

That's tarragon, that's one of the key things to it, and mint -

both of which are probably two herbs you would never normally put

with trout, but in combination with everything else, this works.

If we brought some more trout round,

you could give us another lesson as well, couldn't you?

Well, we've now got sunshine as well. Look at that.

'Cooking food on an open fire is a technique that's barely

'changed over thousands of years.

'But look back into our not too distant past

'and you'll see the recipes for many of our dependable midweek

'family favourites have evolved from some pretty surprising origins.

'Up in his Cumbrian home, food historian Ivan Day is cooking

'one familiar midweek supper with a bit of a twist.'

When I was a child, my favourite midweek supper dish

was rice pudding and it's been around for ever.

We had rice pudding in the Middle Ages and like a lot of English food,

we make it from something we can't grow here.

We bought rice in from Italy from the 13th century onwards

and it features a lot in English cookery books.

What I'm going to do,

I'm doing to make a rice pudding with a real difference.

I'm cooking it in guts, I'm cooking it in sausage skin.

It's a sort of Tudor joke and when it's finished on the table,

people will not know whether it's a savoury dish or a sweet dish.

The person who invented this dish, or at least published

a recipe for it, was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.

He was a man called Gervase Markham

and I've got a really lovely copy of his cookery book here.

It's called The English Hous-wife,

was published a year before Shakespeare died in 1615

and his rice pudding recipe is the one that I'm going to use.

To get us under way,

Markham's recipe instructs us to soak the rice in milk

overnight before boiling it in cream and then leaving it to cool.

So, I'm going to start off with some rich cream.

We're told to put six egg yolks in, suet, sugar.

Puddings have been around in Britain for a very long time.

The earlier ones were made like this,

or even sometimes in stomachs, if you think about haggis, which is,

as Robert Burns said, the chief of the pudding race.

It wasn't until possibly the 16th century that we started

cooking them in cloths and then eventually in basins like we do now.

So these are the very earliest sorts of pudding.

We're now going to put in some currants, dates,

and all these ingredients are very pricey,

so this is the sort of food that you'd have on the table

of someone who's got some money in the bank,

a rich merchant or even a courtier, so this isn't everyday food.

So this is mace, which is the outer husk of the nutmeg,

and I've got black pepper and a few cloves.

The rice pudding that we eat now, we've inherited it really,

and it's the 18th-century version, the Georgian version of the dish,

with just nutmeg.

If you go back to the Middle Ages, English food

was as spicy as Indian food.

The most important ingredient, other than the rice,

in this recipe is this stuff which is actually a hog's gut.

This is actually the intestine of a pig, which is

what a sausage skin is.

I'm going to use this thing which is called a sausage forcer,

it's a kind of syringe.

We've got enough there for a couple of puddings.

Then you simply slide the clean pig gut into the nozzle

of your pudding forcer and - hey, presto! - rice pudding sausages.

Cut that off - make sure you've got enough

to tie your pudding with.

There we go.

So...two rice puddings.

Now they've got to be cooked twice.

The first stage is to boil them.

A few minutes simmering in boiling water plumps up the sausage.

Next, they're dried out for 24 hours before they're

ready for the next age.

So this is a batch of the puddings I made yesterday and these are perfect

now for actually cooking either in an oven or in front of the grill.

However you choose to cook your sausage,

once they've been browned off, the illusion is complete.

This is one midweek supper that will keep us all guessing.

The thing is I've made these and I know what's in them.

I've smelt them and they smell like sausages, but I'm fooled by it still.

I still think that when I put this on my plate that it's actually

going to be a savoury sausage and not a sweet rice pudding.

It cuts like a sausage, it looks like a sausage, even inside.

Mmm!

It's actually really nice. It's incredibly comforting.

A rice pudding with the addition of the currants,

the spices and the dates would be a really good idea.

Mmm!

It's actually a good joke and a very tasty one too.

These days, many inventive chefs are perhaps taking a leaf

out of Markham's book and embracing these historically blurred

boundaries between sweet and savoury.

However, just as Ivan's midweek supper might not have been exactly

what it seems, like any chef, I have a few tricks up my sleeve.

Even my delicious pork chops with potato croquettes

have a time-saving twist.

Now you can see there's a definition of fat to meat.

It's really important when you're purchasing pork that you want

a good size decent amount of fat.

That keeps the meat nice and moist while we grill it.

Most importantly, you get a really good flavour at the end of it.

All I'm going to do now is serve it classically with some apple as well

and just basically pop that under the grill and serve it

with some almond croquettes and a nice little green salad.

Taking some normal eating apples -

you don't need to use Bramleys for this

cos we're not going to stew them down.

All you do is throw the apples in the pan.

Now I actually cook it in the pan under the grill rather

than on the griddle tray, cos, again,

it's all to do with that fat.

You want the fat to come out and sit into the pan

and continue cooking the other side.

Meanwhile, you want the fat on the top to be nice and crisp

and you don't really get that on a griddle tray.

A pinch of salt, just on the fat side, on the top there.

This will help it get nice and crisp, nothing else -

you don't have too put anything else with it, no oil, nothing.

This sits under a hot grill, but put the tray down quite low

because we want it to cook just gently for about 10 minutes to allow

the meat to be cooked underneath, but, most importantly,

to get the fat crisp on top as well.

While that's cooking away, I'm going to serve this with some quick

and easy potato croquettes and a green salad,

but, first, here's my personal take

on a delicious French salad dressing.

An egg yolk in there.

If you're unsure about raw egg yolks in salad dressings,

then just take it out, really. It's entirely up to you.

It just binds the rest of the ingredients together.

To the egg, I like to add a teaspoon of Dijon mustard

and, for sweetness, a teaspoon of clear honey.

And for an appley tang, a splash of cider vinegar.

Next 150ml of veg oil.

And it starts to thicken up and this is where you get that

fantastic idea of that classic sort of French dressing,

that wonderful thick...that lightly coats your salad leaves.

I like my dressing to have a crunch, so finely chop a shallot,

a clove of garlic, then add some mint,

chopped basil, parsley and thyme.

And of course a pinch of salt and a few twists of black pepper.

This one...

That is fantastic.

It's a great salad dressing and I'm going to serve that with just

some nicely dressed salad leaves but also with this.

We've got our pork chops a-cooking in our oven...

I'm going to cheat.

Now, over in France they wouldn't like the sound of this,

but potato croquettes, really simple -

use ready-made mashed potato,

you can buy this out of a packet nowadays.

And we can just add a little bit of flavouring

with some chopped parsley.

Now, instead of the croquettes being flour, egg and breadcrumbs,

I'm just going to use almonds for this,

just to change the flavour slightly, but if you wanted to,

you could just leave it plain and just do flour, egg and breadcrumbs.

So, some salt and pepper.

Now, of course, if it's the weekend,

you would make your own mashed potato,

baking potatoes, which are fine.

But as time's precious during the midweek,

this is a great alternative.

And then we can get the rest of our ingredients ready,

which is flour, egg, and then I want some almonds.

You can just use flaked almonds for this, no need to toast them.

Just crush them up ever so slightly,

otherwise they won't stick to our croquettes that well,

and then, to make your croquettes, all you do, really,

is mould them up into little balls.

Try and get them equal size.

Then we put them in flour, first.

Dust off the excess flour...

then in the egg.

Now, what's great with this,

if you want to serve it with pork as well,

you could put blue cheese in the centre of it,

so when you cut through,

you end up with this sort of soft centre as well.

Make sure they're really well-coated in the egg,

that's the key to this bit.

Cos you want to make sure that all the almonds stick to this, so...

..reshape them when they come out.

When you've made your croquettes, pop them in to a deep-fat fryer

at 180 degrees Centigrade for 2-3 minutes until golden.

So, while they're frying,

we can just dress a few little salad leaves.

These little gem lettuces are incredibly crunchy.

If you want to crisp up this little gem lettuce even more,

ice cold water.

I like to add a little sweetness, so pop in some delicious salad mache.

This is lovely stuff. Just looks fantastic as well, when you see it.

It's wonderful stuff.

Take these out.

Season it up with a pinch of salt.

And then we can just dress our salad leaves.

Little mix.

And then, what happens is, while this pork cooks -

and we haven't turned this over at all, you don't need to.

If you cook it on a pan like this,

you'll get all the apples caramelising,

but also the heat of this will actually cook

the underside of it as well, so just leave it to cook like that.

That way, the fat stays lovely and crisp on top.

And a few of these potato croquettes,

and then, of course, we've got our lovely dressed green salad.

This is the great thing - it cooks the pork all the way through

if you do it on a tray like that. You can't beat it, really.

And also - I see this so often when you do dinner parties at home,

and it kind of gets me really annoyed,

but I daren't say anything to the guests,

but they trim off all the fat.

That's the best bit on a pig.

And if you look at these croquettes -

look, people will think, if you make these,

you've been sweating in the kitchen for hours.

And they're so easy to do, taste so good.

But my best advice is, just hide the packet.

I think that's the ultimate quick midweek supper.

When I like to cook at home, I don't mind cutting a few corners.

With that mash, I made a delicious accompaniment,

with the minimum of fuss.

But sometimes I think shop-bought just won't do.

Take puff pastry.

For me, the frozen packets just can't compare with the real thing.

And the great thing about puff pastry

is you can prepare it well in advance.

So, this is rough puff pastry,

the ingredients of which actually don't change

between rough puff and normal puff pastry.

It's how we actually incorporate the butter in to the mixture.

So, I'm going to use 250g of good quality plain flour.

In the bowl.

A good pinch of salt.

It's really important to use cold butter.

Cut 250g into large cubes.

Now, not too small,

otherwise you're going to end up with sort of shortcrust pastry.

Add these to the flour.

Then you'll need some ice cold water,

otherwise you'll melt the butter.

About 125ml should do the trick.

Add half to the bowl and mix together,

adding more water as needed.

Now, this is the difference between conventional puff pastry

and rough puff pastry.

My granny used to have a bowl like this

and used to rub butter and flour together

while watching Coronation Street for about half an hour.

That was great to do shortbread,

but not particularly good to do puff pastry.

We need to bring this together much quicker.

Now it's really, at this stage, it's unlike any other type of pastry,

because you've got big massive great lumps of butter in there.

But it's how we actually laminate this together which causes the puff

of puff pastry.

Just add a little bit of flour to your board.

Now, it's important, also, when you're making pastry,

not to add too much flour, because it toughens up the pastry.

Roll this into a rectangle shape, about the size of a magazine.

Try and get it as square as possible, really.

Now, you can see the big chunks of butter that we've got in here -

as the butter melts, it's trapped between those layers,

it creates steam and causes our pastry to rise up.

Now, what we need to do now is create those layers.

And this is how to do it - we create what we call a book turn.

So, fold it over...

into what looks like a book, and then fold it over again.

And then you repeat that process three times.

Now, like I said, it's taken probably - I don't know,

five, ten minutes to make, it's really simple,

and if you've got time over the weekend,

this is the perfect sort of accompaniment

for your midweek suppers, and one that really is so simple to make.

And when you taste it,

it tastes miles better than that shop-bought stuff.

So, what you do is just wrap it up,

and then you can either freeze it as it is or pop it in the fridge,

because that, wrapped like that,

would last for about five, six, seven days in the fridge.

I've got the perfect dish for that a little later on.

Believe me, when you bake with home-made pastry,

you can really taste the difference.

And I'm not the only fan of making my own pastry at home.

Slovakian-born Gita Brett from London

has taken some of her favourite midweek pastry dishes

and turned them into a thriving business.

Her delicious pastry parcels,

packed full of unusual sweet and savoury flavours

are going down a storm,

proving that food cooked with love at home really has the edge

when it comes to taste.

I think that people here do look for a new product,

something unusual that they've never had.

They want a new taste.

Hello, how are you?

The response was very positive, and people like the product.

I usually sell out.

People really appreciate it,

and they come back and tell you how delicious it was.

It's really good. Try a bite.

No, like, they definitely taste like they're made...

with love, I don't know.

I prefer this to any of the restaurants around the area,

I definitely look forward to it every week.

-So, yeah.

-They don't taste like a mass production or something,

and it tastes like the ingredients are really good ones.

Business might be booming, but six months down the line,

she still makes everything at home.

When it come to maintaining quality, Gita's a woman after my own heart.

The secret to great strudel - it's a very, very good puff pastry,

and the best puff pastry is handmade.

See? I told you so.

I grew up on a farm, and cooking was always a large part of my family.

Me and my sister would always be in the kitchen helping Mum,

whether to roll the dough or, um...

lick the bowls!

And it was always a very happy environment,

and as kids we always used to like to be there,

and my mum really enjoyed cooking.

She made everything from scratch.

I would say that love of cooking comes... It's connected to my mother.

And since then, I just continued.

Something I just felt very natural doing.

I think, as a part of the cooking,

50% of the cooking is using the best quality ingredients that you have,

and then, of course, the technique and how you make it.

And one of her most popular ones would make a perfect midweek supper.

We have spinach, and we have some feta and ricotta,

white yoghurt, some pine nuts, dill and nutmeg.

Bit of onion.

In Eastern Europe, we would fill the strudels with anything,

with roasted vegetable, or you would have it with cabbage and sausages.

I sort of modernised them and made them a little bit lighter.

This is just one of around 90 strudels Gita bakes every week,

and with the demand growing,

it looks like she's found the perfect gap in the market

for her home-made sweet and savoury parcels.

I think it's nice to keep the family tradition.

What is interesting to see is the fact that you bring a dish

from another country and another culture,

introduce it somewhere else, and people actually like it

and compliment it.

So, that way I can keep the tradition going.

It's good to know that home cooks like Gita can back me

up on the value of taking the time to make your own pastry.

Speaking of which,

it's now time to put the rough puff I prepared earlier to good use.

A blackberry and apple millefeuille is a bit decadent for midweek,

but make the effort and you'll win any popularity contest going.

And this is SO simple to make if you've got your own puff pastry.

Now cooled and rested,

our rough puff can be rolled out into even sheets.

About 2-3mm thick.

I'm going to cut this into three equal oblongs.

And those three oblongs are going to create our layers

of our millefeuille.

Instead of using egg wash,

I'm going to use this.

Icing sugar.

A thick dusting of icing sugar gives the pastry a rich,

caramel glaze when cooked.

Stick the pastry into the oven for 15 minutes at about 220 degrees.

Now for the apple and blackberry filling.

Going to grab a little bit of butter.

And those people who are health conscious...

you've probably not seen the amount of butter

that's gone in the puff pastry anyway.

You're certainly not about to see

the amount of cream I'm going to put in it as well.

But you do need the butter to fire it off, to start with.

So, throw in the butter.

And then, in with the apples.

I love Bramley apples.

Their sharpness combines brilliantly

with the sweetness of the filling and the richness of the cream.

When I used to speak to my grandmother about apples,

and when we used to produce our own in the orchard that we had,

most apples, including the eating apples, used to be that sharp,

and it's only as our palate has changed over the years

do we like them much sweeter,

but when you taste apples like that, they really do taste fantastic.

After that, cook for a minute or two, add a splash of water

and get it back on the heat.

Add vanilla and blackberries and stew for a further 5-6 minutes.

Now, you want to stew this down

so, really, the lumps are starting to just collapse a little bit.

Not too much, cos it's good to have a bit of texture there.

And we can allow this to go cold.

Now, just to speed this up a bit, you can

of course pop it in the fridge.

Now, whip up some cream.

By the time you've done that, the pastry should have cooked perfectly.

What we need to do is leave that to cool for about 10-15 minutes,

and then assemble it.

Now, I know this isn't super fast,

but what it is is a dish that's full of flavour,

and it's really worth the wait.

And puff pastry this good

means that I've actually got twice as much as I need.

And we just top it off with the remaining bit of pastry.

When you combine cream, fruit and puff pastry,

you just know that it's going to taste great.

It's not the healthiest dish in the world(!)

Who gives a damn?

Tastes great.

Now, I thought, with this,

I'd let the crew decide how good it really is,

cos they're used to eating cold sausage rolls on shoots like this,

so - dive in, people.

Start one end and work your way through.

Just taken me hours to do that!

LAUGHTER

Midweek suppers should be anything but boring and routine.

For me, whatever day of the week it is,

home cooking has never been a chore.

With a minimum of effort,

predictable weekday meals are easily transformed

into a host exciting, varied and flavoursome dishes we can all enjoy.

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...