Home Cooking in a Hurry James Martin: Home Comforts

Sometimes there is no place like home.

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

I love the slow pace of life in the country,

but sometimes it's fast, no-fuss food that we crave.

I've got two passions in my life - food and fast cars.

But fast food doesn't mean to say

that you have to reach for the microwave.

You can easily cook fantastic, healthy, nutritious food

very quickly.

In no time at all, you can make everything,

from delicious lunches that beat a sandwich any day...

It doesn't get any better than that. It's simple, it's quick.

It's my kind of food, really.

..to dinner party delights

you can assemble in minutes.

We'll be meeting the home cooks who have made thriving businesses

out of the award-winning recipes

they're producing from their own kitchens.

You practise charcuterie, you never perfect it.

But that is part of the joy of it.

Learning how gadgetry that brings quick, top-drawer cooking

into your kitchen isn't a new thing.

I'll be rustling up a speedy snack for local farmer and neighbour,

Jody Scheckter, using his home-made mozzarella.

Now home cooking in a hurry doesn't have to mean

that you reach for packet food.

You can create stuff that's really quick and simple.

Chicken is a perfect opportunity to use that as a base for this.

I'm going to cook my favourite quick chicken recipe.

Tender escalopes with a crunch coating of Parmesan, lemon,

nuts and thyme.

I'm going to use the chicken breast here.

First thing we're going to do is just bat these out

so they're nice and thin.

You can do that in between two pieces of greaseproof paper

or a bit of clingfilm, just with an old rolling pin.

Take the chicken breast, take the skin off, really, for these.

It's easier.

Bat these out.

You're not doing this to tenderise it,

we're doing this to speed up the cooking time.

Nice and carefully.

So we've got two nice, thin pieces of chicken breast.

For my crunchy coating, I'm using hazelnuts

and Parmesan in my breadcrumb mix.

But the joy of cooking at home

is that you can use whatever's left over in your cupboards.

You might have almonds to hand rather than hazelnuts,

or a chunk of Cheddar instead of Parmesan. It really is up to you.

I'm also grating in some lemon zest.

This is a dish that I cook quite a lot at home,

but everybody loves chicken and breadcrumbs, don't they?

When I was doing Strictly, I remember getting through

to the semifinal time, and you were becoming so thin and anaemic,

you were starving.

So when you went through on a Saturday night,

the driver used to take me home via a very famous chicken outlet.

I used to have a bucket.

There was nothing better than that chicken and breadcrumb mixture.

But, to be honest, this tastes a little bit different,

a bit nicer as well.

Just give it a quick blitz.

Don't want to be too fine.

That's enough.

Then I'm going to use these little panko crumbs.

These are little Japanese crumbs.

Normally you can make your own breadcrumbs, which is easy,

you just blitz the bread. But it's quite damp.

Because of that, you don't get them really nice and crisp

when you cook the chicken.

This, you can get from the supermarkets nowadays.

What they do is they dry it first of all, shave it,

and you end up with these really sharp crumb.

So when you pan-fry it or deep-fry it,

they really crisp up fantastically well.

Little bit of those in there as well.

Touch of fresh thyme.

This is where it doesn't have to be fresh thyme,

it could be a little bit of dried thyme, a bit of rosemary.

This is the key to this, really.

It's everything that you like, use that as the basis of the crumb.

Quick blitz.

That's it.

No more than that because you want all those jaggedy bits of bread.

So we're going to do what we call pane,

which is to flour, egg and breadcrumb.

Pane is a very simple method that is about making a crunchy coating

that doesn't fall off the chicken when you fry it.

All you need is a couple of beaten eggs,

some seasoned flour

and breadcrumbs.

First, dip the chicken into the flour and pat off any excess.

It's a good idea if you do the other chicken first,

otherwise you end up with more flour, egg and breadcrumb

on your fingers than you do on your chicken.

Then, into the egg. And finally into the breadcrumbs.

Make sure you've got plenty of that crumb on.

You can see it uses quite a lot of the crumb as well.

Make sure you make plenty of it.

You've got a pan on here. Get it nice and hot.

People are always shocked about the amount of butter

that I use on TV programmes.

You're going to be shocked even more,

because there's about half a block of butter going in here.

But the definition of pan-fried or sauteed

is to half immerse in oil or fat.

So that's what I'm doing.

It's also probably the reason why

I didn't get through to the final on Strictly, to be honest.

The good thing about having this much butter in it,

it actually tells you when the chicken is ready.

Sounds weird, but it really does.

If the butter starts to change colour, that's the time

when you turn it over.

So we just gradually cook this.

Only for about, sort of, I suppose, five minutes like that.

Don't be tempted to get this damn thing.

Everybody gets one of these and starts prodding it

and flipping it over and touching it.

Leave it.

There was a great guy who used to help out around the house

when I was a young nipper. He used to stand there and watch me cook.

He said, "Cooking's very simple, lad.

"You treat it like your wife."

I was only six.

He said, "You leave it alone. It'll be perfectly all right."

Same thing with this piece of chicken, you see? There.

Now we turn it over.

Mm!

See, in theory it's just a massive chicken nugget.

But everybody likes chicken nuggets.

The good thing about this - we keep the butter as the sauce, you see?

Just as a double whammy, we take this...

..put this over the top.

You've got lemon in there and you've got...

That's a fruit so it's part of your five a day.

What more do you want?

That's it. Just leave that to one side now.

Probably serve this with a little bit of lettuce.

Might be a bit OTT serving this with chips.

Then...

..we've got our...

..big nugget - crispy, delicious. but,

and it's a big but, this is the sauce.

Don't go reach for a vinaigrette.

This is the best bit.

The butter that you've got on there over the top.

Of course, to keep all you health-conscious lot

who are watching this happy,

wedge of lemon.

See?

It doesn't get any better than that.

It's simple, it's quick.

We can finish this off with a little bit of cheese, if you want,

over the top.

Parmesan, hazelnut and lemon crusted chicken.

It's my kind of food, really.

All of that flavour is mine in just 12 minutes.

It's not in a bucket.

But it's delicious, is that.

The best way to keep food quick and simple

is to use quality ingredients.

Even better if you don't have to go far to find them.

Here in Hampshire, I'm constantly amazed by the fresh, award-winning

meat, veg and fruit, all available within a stone's throw of my home.

The sedate Hampshire countryside

isn't the place for anyone in a hurry.

But just down the road from me

is an organic farmer with a need for speed.

MUSIC: "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac

Jody Scheckter was a Formula 1 World Champion in the '70s,

but these days he's better known for raising rare breeds of livestock

than raising hell on the racetrack.

I've always been a foodie.

I've always done a lot of exercise and been keen on health.

So I said, "OK, I'm going to produce the best-tasting,

"healthiest food for myself and my family."

But it's not just his family.

The public are also benefiting from his award-winning mozzarella,

made not from his cows...

MUSIC: "Buffalo Soldier" by Bob Marley & The Wailers

..but from his massive herd of water buffalo.

We have about 2,500 buffalo.

I like buffalo because they produce half the milk,

but the milk has got twice as much of nearly everything in.

So it's suited my theory of producing the best-tasting, healthiest food.

It started off in Italy. I remember bringing back mozzarella to my wife.

The first day she didn't like it at all.

It was from one of the best mozzarella places.

By the third day she liked it,

because she hadn't been used to eating very fresh mozzarella.

So that was the first lesson that you learned, but you learn all the time.

Then we started to make it,

and actually made it quite nicely at the beginning.

But then it's a refinement and a refinement and a refinement.

It's all these little things that you're trying.

I would say that the most important thing is what they eat.

We have 31 herbs, cloves and grasses in all our grasses. So I believe...

Certainly we felt that, in our meat, that's made a difference.

I think in the milk as well.

Buffalo milk makes for thicker and creamier cheese,

called buffalo de mozzarella.

Italians get through 30,000 tonnes of the stuff a year.

In Italy, they don't use cows much.

Maybe for pizzas and things like that, and cooking.

It's got to be buffalo mozzarella.

Unlike other cheeses that need time to mature,

producing mozzarella is, as befits its maker, fast and furious.

So it starts there in your quality of your milk.

Then it goes through the whole process -

trying to keep it very fresh, get it in that day. Start making it.

We'll get the milk from here from the dairy.

It'll be in there at eight o'clock in the morning.

It'll be shipped out at four o'clock in the afternoon.

That's how fresh it is.

Margarita is chief cheese maker here.

She knows that this is a specialist product

which requires close, loving attention.

Buffalo is a very different milk from any other milk.

It's very unpredictable. It changes from day to day.

I'm very closely connected to the farm, so I know exactly what

they're eating on the day, how they're doing it.

If they're in, if they're out,

if they've got a new cut of silage or an old cut of silage.

So the milk that comes in, we look at, we smell,

we taste and we analyse it.

The quality of a mozzarella is a direct relationship to that.

First the curd is separated from the whey.

When it reaches the correct pH level,

it's time for a pit stop to see if it's ready to be stretched.

With mozzarella, texture is everything.

It's a very hands-on cheese.

Once Margarita is happy with the texture,

it goes onto the machine

for stretching and melting at 85 degrees,

but that doesn't mean she can sit back and relax.

If you cook it too much, it will burn

and the outer, it will get really tough and stringy.

If it's perfect, you've got this beautiful ball

that is soft on the inside, with a little bit of a shiny layer.

If you open it, the milk oozes out. That's what we're looking for.

Beautiful, no?

Then we're on to the home straight.

The cheese goes into the mould, gets cooled in salt water,

and it's reached the finishing line.

But is it a winner?

So here's the cooled brined product.

If you see, it's got this beautiful lovely shiny skin.

Then when you tear it open...

..you've got that beautiful mozzarella texture.

It's full of fresh milk still.

This is a perfect, fresh, lovely mozzarella to be proud of, really.

Mm!

And they should be proud.

This is the genuine article - as fresh as any Italian could dream of.

In Italy, that's how they love to eat it. Right fresh there.

After three days,

then they'll start putting tomato and basil and oil and things like that.

But at the beginning, they just eat it.

They say it's got to run down your face if it's good mozzarella.

I'm a passionate motor sport fan. I've known Jody for years.

So fasten your seat belts as I show him

how to make a super-quick light lunch.

With his mozzarella in pole position.

It's all about the cheese, with one of my favourite go-to recipes.

Parma ham wrapped mozzarella with plum chutney.

I know I've got my work cut out cos I know you only like it

with olive oil, don't you?

Yeah, olive oil or a little bit of tomato and fresh basil.

I think that's the way.

The most wonderful way of eating mozzarella.

So what comparisons are there between Formula 1 and farming?

Is there any?

When you're young, you can race. When you're old, you can farm.

That's about it, is it, really?

Yeah, no. Everything takes dedication and passion.

If you're going to do it well, it takes those things,

whatever you're doing in life, I think.

Why buffalo and why Hampshire?

It's an unusual combination.

I went to see a farm that had buffalo on it.

Came, one thing led to an other.

Then, the obvious thing was buffalo mozzarella

because that's the most famous thing from buffalo milk.

Did our research. I had a lot of contacts in Italy.

Looked at the right machinery, I got the right consultants

and started to produce buffalo mozzarella.

Right, we're just going to go through my little chutney here.

-I know you like your mozzarella just as it is.

-I'm just... Can I?

Turn away at this point.

Literally I'm just going to do this with a lovely little simple chutney.

First of all, you almost caramelise the sugar in a pan.

By doing this, it speeds up the process of the cooking.

The fruity flavour perfectly complements the salt of the ham

and the creaminess of the cheese.

But Jody's going to take some convincing.

Into the sugar I'm putting 500g of chopped plums and a diced onion.

A dash of malt vinegar goes in with one star anise

and half a teaspoon of cinnamon.

Five minutes or so later, it'll be ready to go.

We've got a selection of different mozzarellas here

that have got the different ages.

This is opposite to conventional cheese,

which gets better the older it is, generally, this is the opposite.

The oldest here is four days old, two days old,

and I'm assuming this was made yesterday?

Yesterday.

You can see already it starts to break down a little bit.

It was quite interesting when I first brought it out.

People only liked the very old, cos they didn't understand.

In Italy, they like to take it right there

and they like the juices to fall out.

It's a very different taste, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I normally like it after about a day.

But even sometimes when it's really, really good,

that day is beautiful, beautiful.

So the middle one's the two days old. Then this one is the youngest.

Made yesterday, yeah.

The flavours. You haven't got that feta cheese rubberiness, but it's...

It's cleaner. It's much cleaner.

Yeah, fresher taste, I think.

So that's the chutney. That's done. We'll just leave that to one side.

It's really quick.

Get the pan on nice and hot for this one. Then we want some...

..little bit of Parma ham that I'm going to use for this one.

But your farm's quite unique.

Whenever I drive past it, there's always something going on.

You've got your own abattoir, you've got all manner of different things.

-Is it hops growing as well?

-Yeah, I've got hops.

I've got hops they haven't grown for 100 years.

But often, when you think of farms,

they're particularly good for one thing - ie a dairy farm.

What makes that farm so special,

in terms of the variety of stuff you can produce there.

Well, I think a mixed farm is more healthy.

That's the way nature was and that's the way the farms are.

What about the farm itself? Biodynamic.

It's literally only a stone's throw away from here.

It is one of the only farms in the UK that produces that at that level.

What does that mean, as opposed to organic sort of stuff?

I look at ourselves as a natural farm. We follow nature.

That really cures most of the problems

and gets all of the conservation things, I always say that's free.

I equate it...

When I was a young kid, we were brought up on a pig farm.

When you saw the plough in the field and you saw all the birds

following it, now you don't see it any more, do you, really?

They're killing the cycle of nature.

All of those things are what makes the soils and the foods good.

We look at everything from the soils through to the grasses, the animals.

I've got a lab studying the soil with a doctor of microbiology.

The interesting thing is

we're working with a lot of the top athletes now.

-They always used to do supplements.

-Right.

When I started working with some of the nutritionists,

they all wanted good, healthy, natural food,

which was really surprising to me.

They're going back to what we grew up for thousands and thousands of years.

But when you were in Formula 1, it wasn't supplements, was it?

It was a beer after work, wasn't it?

-No, no, no, no.

-Come on.

It was the James Hunt era and all that kind of stuff.

No, I went out with him a couple of times, but, no, no.

I didn't know what I was doing

because I didn't eat butter for ten years.

See, that's... I keep telling everybody, but...

Must eat butter. Butter's very healthy.

All of this other stuff that's so processed.

Right, so we're just going to char-grill

a little bit of bread with that.

Very quickly, you just take this. You need a hot pan.

We're going to pan-fry it.

Get this ham really crispy on the outside.

So you just seal it off like that. No salt and pepper, nothing.

I can see you're turning your nose up at this already.

Just very quickly panfry.

-Then some of these. You'll like these.

-What are they?

-Sesame seeds.

GRUMPILY: Mm, OK.

JAMES LAUGHS

-It's a good job I know you, isn't it, really?

-Yeah.

I'm lost a long time ago. I think I'm just going to eat this.

When we're behind a wheel, you can teach me.

When you're in my kitchen, I'm teaching you.

There you go, right.

Little bit of the char-grilled bread to go with it.

It's really quick, all right?

We just cook this so it doesn't melt the mozzarella at all.

Then, look, you've got the little bit of chutney.

-Come on, you can't say that doesn't look good.

-It looks lovely, my lad.

No, not yet! Not yet.

Then we just put that on here.

All right?

Then olive oil...

Just pour that over the top.

Happy with that?

-I'll tell you when I try it.

-Come on, it's not that bad?

You've got to try this.

OK.

There you go.

Knives and forks.

Tell me what you think.

-So I put a little bit of that on there?

-Yeah, I just made that bit.

That's supposed to go with it.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

It complements. It doesn't improve, it complements.

What?

What's wrong with it?

You try it.

It's delicious.

I suppose, from my point of view,

as you know, I don't like to put anything with that.

This becomes a completely different dish, doesn't it?

HE LAUGHS

Jody's a bit of a purist when it comes to his mozzarella,

but take my word for it -

if you want a flavoursome light lunch in a hurry,

they don't come any faster or tastier than this.

But there's nothing new about wanting to eat something delicious

when you don't really have time.

Many of us think quick cooking is a modern invention.

But as food historian Ivan Day knows,

speedy food has been around for centuries.

We lead such busy lives nowadays.

We're always eating on the hoof, eating fast food.

We can easily assume that our ancestors

didn't have these fast foods,

but, actually, they have been around for a very, very long time.

Open up any cookery book, this one is from about 250 years ago,

and you will find food which is made in a hurry.

This is a recipe for hasty pudding,

or pudding in haste, which was actually simply

a form of porridge, but it could be made in about 30 seconds.

Just to show you how fast our ancestors could make some dishes,

I'm going to make you a Victorian ice cream.

Not the sort of dish you would think would be made in a hurry,

but there's an extraordinary lady

back in the 19th century who was called Mrs Agnes Marshall.

She used to run cookery lessons in central London.

But the thing that she was the most famous for

was an extraordinary invention,

which she invented in 1885,

which was an ice cream freezer -

a sort of ice cream machine.

She claimed that a pint could be frozen in three minutes.

Wow, that is quite a claim, Mrs Marshall.

We know ice cream first appeared in England in the 1660s,

but it wasn't until Italian immigrants started

selling it on the streets in the 1850s that it became commonplace.

But it was when people started to make it at home

that culinary entrepreneur Mrs Marshall had a market.

What I've got here is the bottom half of Mrs Marshall's ice cream freezer.

The first thing I've got to do is to charge it,

which is the term she uses, with some ice.

Ice will not freeze ice cream.

They've known about this for at least 300 years.

So they discovered that if you add salt to ice,

it has the most dramatic refrigerant effect,

and will reduce the temperature of anything

that comes into contact with the mixture, down to about -12.

There was a way of making ice, which we've forgotten about,

where you made, for instance, a preserve

like some jam, or particularly a jelly from fruit.

This is my quince preserve.

If you add some of that, which has already got a lot of sugar in it,

to some cream and put it in a freezing pot,

it'll make an instant ice cream,

which will have a lovely quince flavour.

So let's see how Mrs Marshall's ice cream freezer really did perform.

There.

OK. Just a few fluid ounces. Then I'm going to turn that round.

Dubbed the Queen of Ices,

Mrs Marshall was the celebrity cook of her day.

She ran a cookery school, had a range of nifty kitchen gadgets

and wrote four recipe books.

Just begin to feel it stiffening up now.

Mrs Marshall has given us a nice little peep hole here

which we can look through to check on the state of the ice cream.

It is still a little bit liquid, Mrs Marshall,

so I think your three minutes was a little bit of an exaggeration.

But I think your heart was in the right place.

I mean, it is taking longer than three minutes,

but it certainly is freezing in less than eight minutes.

That's a lot quicker

than a lot of electrical ice cream machines, actually. Right.

The resistance is telling me that the ice cream is perfectly frozen.

There we are. Look at that.

My God.

The quince is wonderful and an unusual rich flavour. Very fruity.

Lovely acidic tone there.

But the thing that's impressive about this is just how light it is.

It's really, really fluffy.

Mm!

There's not an ice crystal in there. It's absolutely superb.

Well, who'd have thought it? Ice cream in minutes.

Well done, Mrs Marshall.

Well, I can't say I'm going to create something as quick

as Mrs Marshall's ice cream,

but what I am going to do is go to New York

for my inspiration for this one.

This is an icebox cake. I think it's fantastic.

The first time I saw it, I fell in love with it.

I've been doing it ever since. It's brilliant.

Ice box, meaning the refrigerator.

It's an amazing dessert.

Just a few minutes of speedy preparation gives you

something truly indulgent.

I can't get enough of it.

I've made my own biscuits, but this cake was designed

for New York housewives who bought good quality cookies ready made.

You could use ginger nuts or chocolate biccies

straight from the shops.

From here on in, it gets really indulgent.

This is an American dessert, so it's to excess, really.

Just a small amount...

..of double cream.

I say small amount,

but a whole litre of double cream is a lot, even by American standards.

Then I'm going to flavour that with some of this coffee essence

that my grandmother used to use.

I think it's great.

There you go.

Then we're just going to whisk this up.

I actually think it's quite important to half-whip

the cream first, before you add the main bulk of the flavour.

Now if you're going to do raspberries or strawberries

in this mixture, do the puree,

make a sauce out of it, add it at this point.

If you add it when the cream is too whipped,

it'll firm up the cream even more.

But my flavours are coffee and ginger,

so I'm adding the syrup from a whole jar of stemmed ginger.

Then keep mixing.

Whisk it again until it's firm but not stiff.

Now what you're after is a texture very similar to that.

Just ever so slightly whipped.

So it just holds itself.

Anything too firm is actually going to curdle

as you start to layer it up.

Anything not firm enough, you certainly won't end up with

a cake when it comes out of the fridge.

Then what you need to do is sort of layer it up.

This is where the fun part of this cake comes.

So get yourself... This is a nine-inch cake board.

You want a cake turntable for this.

It gives you a good excuse to buy one.

Start with a couple of dollops of cream smothered onto the cake board.

I'm aiming to get it as flat as possible.

Then layer on the biscuits, starting with one in the middle.

It actually keeps the cake level

as you layer this up.

Keep adding layers of cream and layers of biscuits,

alternating as you go

until they're all gone.

They do like to do things to excess in the States.

One of the fantastic places I went to visit

was one of the oldest bake shops in the States.

Certainly the oldest doughnut shop in the States.

It's been run by the same family for nearly 80-odd years.

We took a crew there, we were filming out there,

we did this amazing shot of all the family stood outside this bake shop.

There's about five generations of the same family,

and got them all to smile.

I swear there was one tooth between all of them.

It was hilarious.

If you want to be really fancy,

when you get to the top layer of cream,

spin the cake stand

and smooth it into a spiral pattern using a palette knife.

That's why I do it.

The cake needs to refrigerate for a couple of hours.

Those biscuits turn into a cake with the softness

and the moisture from the cream.

If you can resist temptation,

leaving it overnight will give perfect results, ready to eat

whenever you need that little bit of luxury in your busy day.

For the finishing touch,

I'm adding a few slices of stemmed ginger on top.

When you lift it out,

you end up with a great cake that's made out of biscuits.

So this is the real ethos of home cooking in a hurry,

isn't it, really?

Simple, not a lot of work...

but tastes fantastic.

These days, we're used to recipes like icebox cake

arriving from overseas.

Sometimes we almost expect that foreign food

automatically means better.

But there are small, home-grown food producers making ingredients

which are both international quality and instant eating bliss.

There are few things quicker to prepare for a meal

than a plate of delicious cold meats.

But until now, the art of charcuterie -

the curing of pork products like salami, sausages and chorizo -

has been mainly associated with Europe.

Now, former City high flyer Jackie Kennedy

is making a name for herself

by forging a career in this ancient form

of food craftsmanship from her home in Norfolk.

It's desperately creative and it's ever-changing.

You practise charcuterie, you never perfect it.

But that is part of, for me, part of the joy of it.

Artisan producers are about being passionate.

I think you have to be completely driven by normally just one thing.

My thing was I wanted to make charcuterie.

Her empire's headquarters are a converted outbuilding

next to her house.

Today, she's making her award-winning

garlic and black pepper salami.

OK, I think we're done. Can you take that away, Sarah?

What you put in to charcuterie

is most definitely what you get out of it.

If you start off with a free-range pork, you've got a natural,

fantastic, sweet flavour already.

So I've just added the herbs and spices.

That's basically garlic and black pepper.

Some of the peppercorns are ground, some of them are left whole.

Then I've added also the curing salt,

which is again salt and sodium nitrite.

Salt is fundamental to the curing process.

It prevents the growth of bacteria and dehydrates the sausage

to protect it from spoiling.

The nitrates not only kill bacteria but also improve the colour

and taste of the meat.

So again, although this looks like, in the bowl, quite a lot of fat,

this is only 15% fat that I'm actually adding into the mix.

I use the very best quality herbs and spices that are available to me.

So, for example, the paprika I use

is from the de la Vera region in Spain

which is well-renowned paprika country, if you like.

So that all adds into the overall fantastic flavour of it.

The Mediterranean climate is perfect for curing meat.

But here in England, in order to achieve consistently good results,

Jackie's had to invest in some pretty hi-tech equipment.

Her salamis will be air-dried in a controlled environment

at a perfect temperature for at least six weeks

to drive out as much moisture as possible.

Sarah's going to put them in the machine.

This is the first curing chamber that I bought,

which meant I could double my capacity.

Then I moved on and have recently had this one built,

so that I can put in around about three-quarters of a tonne at a time.

They actually lose around 35% of their original weight

during the curing time.

As she puts them in, she's making sure that they don't touch -

they don't cure properly if they touch -

and that plenty of air flow gets around them.

You can obviously buy a curing chamber,

but it certainly isn't a magic box that if you put it in

it's going to come out beautiful every time.

But Jackie seems to have got hers down to a tee,

and her range includes a wide selection

of salamis and cured meats,

from rosemary infused pancetta to pork loin and beef.

This is coppa. This is one of my favourite cuts.

Instead of Parma ham with the fat being on the outside,

the fat is running through the muscle, but it's not too much.

This is absolutely stunning.

It's just lightly spiced again with garlic and black pepper.

You eat it exactly like a Parma ham,

but I think it actually has more flavour.

Then I've just got a couple of salamis here.

This one is actually garlic and black pepper. This one is my hot chorizo.

Beautiful again as it is, cos it's got a quite punchy flavour.

Jackie's finding there's a very hungry market out there

for her home-made British charcuterie.

Thank you very much indeed. Shall I give you one of my cards?

We couldn't believe the quality and the taste

and that it comes from East Anglia, cos we live in Norfolk.

Lovely. It's a really super product.

Just had a little taster. Really nice.

So thought, "That's it. We'll go for it."

It's a natural product made with a traditional recipe

with really high quality East Anglian ingredients.

Thank you very much indeed. Enjoy.

One of the most famous charcuterie foods is pancetta,

and it's the key ingredient in my mouthwatering rapid penne carbonara.

Now, pasta has to be the ultimate food

for something quick and simple at home.

This is penne pasta, this is fresh pasta in a packet like this.

But if you want to know how penne is actually made,

you need one of these.

Now I love my gadgets in my house, and this is a pasta maker.

This is a kilo of "00" flour,

which is kind of like a pasta flour.

It's often called tipo flour.

We use some of this.

This is semolina flour, which is finer than traditional semolina,

but we need a kilo of this as well...

Into our mixture.

Then there's quite a lot of eggs going into this.

I know I like my butter, but this requires 12 eggs in here.

You just carefully add them in, making sure there's no shells.

Once the eggs are in, the fun begins.

Turn the machine on and it mixes the ingredients into smooth pastry.

It can make any type of pasta - tagliatelle, linguine or even

pasta shells, depending on the shape of the cutter you uses.

Of course, a good quality fresh pasta works well too,

but you can't beat a good kitchen gadget.

It's cool, isn't it?

Every kitchen should have one of these, it's fantastic.

So, to simply make our carbonara, what we need is just some water.

A trick I find with pasta is plenty of salted water.

No oil.

I don't know where that sort of idea of oil in pasta comes from,

but I don't add that.

But it does require plenty of salt in the water,

so season it really, really well.

So boiling water, what we're going to do is crisp up our bacon.

We've got some pancetta here.

If you're going to make this with conventional bacon,

my best advice is to use dry-cured bacon.

So when you put it in the pan, it doesn't go all sweaty

and scummy on the top as you often find in cheaper bacon.

That's because it's injected with water.

So, in theory, you are actually paying for water

and not the actual product itself.

You can get this diced now from supermarkets, already done,

which is really good.

I don't know where on Earth we're going in the UK.

I actually walked into a shop the other day

and found you could actually buy crispy bacon already done.

Throw in this pancetta.

We're going to get this nice and crispy,

so put a decent amount in as well.

Let's face it, who doesn't like bacon?

Vegetarians, probably, but...

Just fry this off. You want to get some colour in there.

The most important thing is we do get it crispy.

That looks pretty good.

The sauce is easy. First, I need three egg yolks.

Separate the eggs in the palm of your hand.

It's been around long before egg separators.

Next, add just a touch of double cream.

Did I say a touch?

100ml...ish.

Give that a quick mix.

Grate in around 50g of Parmesan. You want good quality cheese for this.

A decent amount for that creamy flavour.

It's going to go into our eggs and our egg yolks.

See, the bacon now is starting to crisp up.

Look.

Crispy bacon.

Delicious.

Then what we're going to do now is just cook some of this pasta.

Ideally you want this to dry out a little bit.

But we're going to cook some of this...

in the boiling water.

This pasta, this one particularly, will take about a couple of minutes.

You can see now... You've got a lovely bacon, nice and crisp.

That's going to go into our pot.

I don't know why I'm draining it off,

cos I'm going to throw the fat in as well, so just chuck it all in.

Give this a quick mix.

We then take some fresh parsley.

The secret with this is the egg yolks, really, in here.

If we get the pasta nice and hot

when we add it to the egg yolks and the cream,

it actually cooks the egg yolks.

This is really one of the fastest dishes that I know of.

It just takes the time that the pasta takes to cook, almost.

We're going to drain this off...

into the sink.

This is where you've got to be quick.

You want the pasta already hot now.

So while the pasta is still warm and steaming like that,

then we throw it in the sauce.

Mix this together.

What happens now, the egg yolks start to cook onto the pasta,

it glazes all that pasta as well.

Cos we've made it with the penne pasta, you've got the tubes,

so all the sauce, all the bits go inside those tubes as well.

Bit of black pepper.

Nice.

Then...a fancy plate.

The whole lot. The sauce is gone, you see?

It's all soaked into the pasta as well.

That sits on there.

Then, finally, just a grating of this Parmesan over the top.

There you have it.

Carbonara, cooked pretty quick.

That is so good.

Because I've got plenty,

this is the one dish I'm going to let the crew have.

Go on, off you go.

Cooking in a hurry doesn't mean

you have to compromise on good eating.

All it takes is a bit of imagination.

When time's tight or your day is just too hectic, what better reward

than great-tasting food like this that's on your plate in minutes?

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...