Winter Warmers 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 spoiled 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.

There's something quite beautiful about the winter

in the Hampshire countryside where I live.

At home, the cold days completely change my cooking

and it's the perfect opportunity for some of the most satisfying,

hearty and indulgent food I know.

You can't beat an open fire in the winter time

and in today's show I'm going to be showing you

some of my favourite winter warmers, food that warms up the soul,

things like braising, stews, steamed sponge puddings.

It's all about flavour.

I'll be raising a glass to a small-scale brewer

who's producing award-winning drinks from his own backyard.

And cooking a hearty winter warmer for two local farmers

that proves mutton doesn't have to be second best to lamb.

And I've got just the recipe for a chilly day like this.

You can't beat a jacket potato for a nice winter warming dish.

I love to cook mine with bacon, Taleggio cheese and leeks.

But to make it really special I'm going to tray-bake it

in my wood-fired oven.

First thing we're going to do is get our potatoes on,

and to do that you need some decent salt,

and I actually use sea salt for this rather than table salt.

Just put little piles in there.

As you actually cook the potatoes this dries out the skins

so they become nice and crisp.

Little bit of oil on the potatoes.

Like that. And then all you need to do is just prick them with a fork,

just over the top.

I've set the oven about 200 degrees centigrade.

I've got some already in here.

And these want to cook for about an hour, really.

And then we turn our attention to the sauce.

Dice one shallot and slice a clove of garlic,

then sweat them down in a frying pan.

Starting off with a little bit of butter, of course.

Next, chop up two leeks.

I like to use all of them, including the green part.

So we're going to throw in our leeks in here.

Pop them in the pan and pour over a generous amount of white wine.

And of course, just like the legend Mr Floyd...

..you've got to have a glass while you're cooking as well,

ain't you, really?

At this point the sauce gives me some great cooking options.

I could blend it into a soup, serve it as a side dish with some brioche,

or add sweet corn and use it as a sauce with roast chicken.

And then we need some liquid in here.

And that comes in the form of double cream.

Now, the key to this, I think, is not to overcook it.

I do find leeks, if they're overcooked,

they go horrible and grey.

And you lose the great flavour of leeks, I think,

so just be careful when you do it like this not to overcook it.

So a good amount of seasoning. Some salt.

And black pepper.

Slice the spuds into quarters

and lay them skin side down in a baking tray.

Just take the sauce

and just drizzle it over the top of the potatoes.

Now I need to crisp up some bacon in the pan.

It's the star of this dish so I want quality stuff.

And when you've got bacon this good, and this is dry-cured bacon,

you fry it in a dry pan,

and the fat's going to come out of the bacon, get it lovely and crisp.

This is Taleggio cheese and it's got a lovely creamy flavour

and it actually melts when it cooks. It really is delicious -

one that goes really well with bacon.

So, what we're going to do with this is just chop it up.

And you just break it up and put it in there.

'When the bacon's ready, chop it up and added to the tray.

'and don't waste the fat.'

And then what we do now is just pop it back

in the oven, but instead of using this I'm going to use a proper oven.

'Even at this cold time of year,

'there's chance to enjoy the outdoors.

'This is the kind of dish that you could cook in advance for

'when your friends come over and, in a normal oven, it

'takes ten minutes at 200 degrees centigrade to cook.'

HE CHUCKLES

It just... It is a simple dish but...

..it just tastes so good, with the baked potatoes especially,

cos you get a mixture of sort of different textures.

You get the fluffiness of the inside

and the crispness of the potato skins as well.

Good quality ingredients make all the difference to your food.

Across the border in Dorset, Tess and Steve Gould run a smallholding

that they've dedicated to rearing a very rare breed of sheep,

that is the source of an incredibly flavoursome and traditional meat.

Mutton is any sheep that's over two years old.

It's a completely different product from young lamb

so you'd cook it so the sweetness in the meat comes out.

It's a very fine-grained meat. It's part of our culinary heritage.

BLEATING

Mutton has got a fantastic background story to it that's actually

linked with our island's history.

That history dates back to the 1760s and an important royal connection.

George III used to come to Weymouth for his holidays,

bathe in the lovely sea that was there

and also requested Portland mutton to eat when he was here.

The King's Yeomanry apparently recognised it as being a superior

product and they would go out of their way to get Portland mutton.

After the Second World War, mutton fell out of favour

when food production had to be increased to feed the nation

and traditional breeds like the Portland were replaced with

quick-to-mature commercial sheep for lamb production.

But, in 2004, the meat was championed by his Royal Highness

the Prince of Wales and the mutton Renaissance campaign was founded.

Its aims are to support traditional British sheep farmers to get

this delicious meat back onto our plates and, for Tess

and Steve, there's only one breed that makes the grade.

Where commercial sheep are grazers, I suppose,

like lawn mowers, maybe, we could say,

the Portlands are just a bit picky,

they'll have a bit here and there and a bit here.

They are a primitive breed.

They were a valuable asset with their milk and wool and therefore

they were killed later in life and that's why, traditionally,

Portland sheep, it's always a mutton because it's slow-growing.

People recognised it years ago as a delicacy.

Tess and Steve supply their local inn with meat that's been hung

and allowed to mature for at least two weeks to intensify its flavours.

-Special delivery. Hello, Jamie.

-How are you doing? Are you OK?

Yes, I generally am.

Traditionally, mutton is cooked slowly but local chef

Jamie Jones has a new dish he wants Tess and Steve to try, which

involves an unusual cut of mutton cooked in a very different way.

There's a lot of scaremongering goes on with

mutton that it can't be quick-cooked. It can.

It lends itself really well to many different types of cookery.

Jamie is preparing a cut known as a cannon of mutton,

which comes from the loin area of the sheep -

number two on the diagram.

As the name suggests, a cannon cut is thick at one end

and thin at the other.

The beautiful thing about this dish, there is

no fat or sinew on the actual piece of mutton itself

so, because of that, it has a better contact with the pan

so we're searing the juices in really quickly.

I'm going to do it two minutes on one side, two minutes on the other,

two minutes in the oven and out and rest for four minutes.

That's how quick we're going to be cooking this dish.

Jamie's dish features a cream potato mash with spring onions,

cider and mead sauce and the meat is brushed with mustard

and dipped in a herb crust and placed on a parsnip puree.

-So, go on.

-Yeah, so, what's there?

-Have a try. Tuck in.

-Absolutely.

What's this?

This is little parsnips and then you've got on there your mutton

and it's with the... Look how tender that is.

-It's lovely and rare.

-Yeah.

-Are you proud of your dish?

Well...

you've done it justice there.

That's absolutely gorgeous. Well done.

Thank you, Jamie.

Well, Jamie's certainly impressed them

but Tess and Steve have been spoiled as I'm going to cook for them

again using some of their great produce.

Jamie's quick-cook mutton recipe looked delicious

but I'm going to try something a little slower.

So, what's your favourite dish, then, to use mutton?

Our favourite dish, I suppose, would be...

We like Irish stew, don't we?

-Or even...

-Chops.

-Mutton chops are lovely.

Or even just shepherd's pie with minced shoulder of mutton,

you know, even that is lovely.

'Sometimes the classics are the best

'so I'm going for a winter mutton hotpot.

'Few things are better to warm the cockles

'than this slow-cooked and rich stew.'

Instead of using sort of the neck,

which I think the neck of mutton is fantastic, it takes a long time to

cook, I thought I'd use a bit of the leg but I can't help but use this.

This is the suet and it's all around the kidney and this is where

your suet comes from for your suet puddings and all that kind of stuff.

But there is so much flavour in here.

Rather than sort of get rid of it,

what we're going to do is chop it up and render this down to

produce this wonderful fat to be able to fry our lamb in.

-I mean, you must use this quite a lot, don't you?

-Mm!

I have made suet pastry before with it.

'I'm being careful not to overheat the suet.

'It needs to render down slowly to release all of its flavour.

'Meanwhile, Tess has brought me in a real treat - mutton dressed as ham.'

It's a leg of mutton that's been boned and rolled and then dry cured.

So, I've never tried this before.

It's got kind of a pastrami texture in a lot of ways.

It does almost... Yeah, like pastrami. Like you were saying.

It's a great flavour when you try it.

It's got quite a strong flavour, hasn't it?

You wouldn't think it was lamb.

-It's nice with something sharp like watercress.

-It does want something.

That would be great with a pickle or a chutney or something like that.

I'm going to put you guys to work, if you don't mind.

-How are you with peeling?

-I like peeling.

-You like peeling?

We'll get him to do it, then, shall we? Me and you'll just have a chat.

So, peel me the spuds if you can do.

Meanwhile, I'm going to chop up this.

So which is your favourite cut, then, that you use?

I mean, the shoulder is lovely.

Cooking that really slowly, it's lovely in a kind of tagine

or something like that, some Moroccan spices perhaps.

Tagine? That's a bit fancy, isn't it?

Here's me going all traditional. You come in here with your tagines.

I mean, I used to make some Portland pies, actually.

It was minced shoulder and you can have it with maybe some capers

but one thing I used to do was finely dice some gherkins, actually.

But if you imagine the bit of sharpness.

You live all right, don't you?

With your tagines and your gherkins and all this sort of stuff!

I've got my work cut out here. I'd better up my game here.

'But I shouldn't have to try too hard with meat this good.

'Dust the large chunks of mutton with flour and get it sizzling.

'And, in my mutton hotpot, I'm keeping it simple

'with sliced onions followed by a few bay leaves...

'..a healthy splash of Worcester sauce...

'..and some beef stock.'

You can't really get mutton stock yet. It's a long way off yet.

You can't even get lamb stock to be honest.

There's a market for us there, look.

'To really make the most of

'Tess and Steve's wonderful mutton, I'm adding the kidneys.

'Not everyone uses them for their hotpot but, for me,

'you just need them for that fuller, rich, traditional flavour.'

What we're going to do is just bring this to the boil,

a decent amount of seasoning, a bit of salt

and a good grinding of black pepper...

..in there.

My temptation for this, really, is to cut potatoes too thin.

You want decent-sized chunks in here

cos all these pieces will actually soak in that liquid as well.

We just randomly put these spuds over the top.

A few knobs of butter over the top...

..then all we do, quite simply, is put the lid on...

..get the oven about sort of 350, 400, something like that,

take the whole lot...

..and this wants a couple of hours in the oven.

'This mutton needs to be cooked slowly

'at a low temperature to get the best out of it.'

I'm used to cooking lamb and maybe hogget but mutton, really,

I don't really cook that much, really.

It's completely different to lamb,

where lamb has perhaps not got quite as much taste

because it's so fast-growing, this has got some body to it.

'Two hours should have done the trick.'

I thought, with this, because you've got such a fantastic

breed of mutton, I thought with this we'd just do some heritage carrots.

Nice, coloured heritage carrots, really.

It doesn't want anything else

cos you've got the potatoes with it as well.

So you've got a few carrots and, of course, with this,

you've got to do a little bit of butter, haven't you, really?

Being a farmer, a little bit more than normal, you know.

-Keep you warm in the winter, you see.

-Work it off tomorrow.

Yeah, exactly. Work it off tomorrow!

'After hours of cooking,

'that mutton should be melt-in-the-mouth tender

'and that's one of the joys of these old-school slow-cooked dishes -

'you just leave them alone and they get tastier and tastier.

'Home-cooked food doesn't get better than this.'

Well, I said at the top of this I've got my work cut out

so I'm a bit nervous now, you see.

Well, dive in. Tell us what you think.

Huge amounts of flavour in your mouth.

I can see you're enjoying that.

THEY LAUGH

Never mind the tagine, put this back on the menu.

-You've passed the test.

-Have I passed the test?

It's one of the dishes that, you know,

I used to have as a kid and I think, tasting it like this,

it's good enough to put on any restaurant menu, isn't it, really?

-When you have mutton that good.

-Good. Pleased you like it.

I'm pleased you like it, too. I was slightly nervous at the top of this.

THEY LAUGH

Well, that's my take on a traditional hotpot -

a meal that's delighted people for centuries.

It's a good, honest dish

and it's not just me.

There are small-scale food producers all over the country,

making winter warming produce with a passion.

Like cider maker Kevin Minchew from Gloucestershire, who has

turned his own back garden into an award-winning brewery.

Nothing's guaranteed to lift your spirits more in the dark

winter months than a traditional pint of cider

and it doesn't come any better than Kevin's.

The sorts of ciders we produce are sought out by connoisseurs.

'We want to put cider where it should be on the top tables.'

What we do in the West Country

and what we have are a vast range of apples bred specifically

for the cider maker that have been bequeathed to us by our ancestors.

The West Country varieties produce a cider which could be called drier,

with more stringency and more bitter.

Cider has been produced here by my father

and other farmers around here for many years.

I've been making cider commercially since 1993

and in those days there were a few,

maybe a few dozen cider makers within the Three Counties area.

In the last 20 years, that interest has grown enormously.

Before I started making cider as a commercial enterprise,

we used to go to the local cider house, which only sold cider,

and you'd meet all sorts of interesting characters there.

Cider speaks a lot of languages. It brings people together.

It's fascinating.

Everybody makes their own favourite cider made with their own

favourite varieties.

And this is with great ceremony you go around

and try each other's ciders or perries and see what's happened over

the winter period when it's been slowly fermenting in the darkness.

Some of these varieties have got wonderfully evocative names

like Slack Ma Girdle or Strawberry Norman or Cherry Norman.

There are perhaps a couple of maybe 1,000 varieties of cider apple

that any producer can have their pick of and make a cider that will

suit any palate, I'm sure.

The fruit is dead ripe

so we're going to express as much juice as you possibly can.

It's a rural pursuit and practice

and it feels like I was born to do it, oftentimes.

Our ciders are produced in a natural way.

We don't add any yeast or chemicals at any stage

but we have the ability to control all the processes, from the fruit

varieties used in it right the way down to when we decide to open it

and either sell it as a draught or as a bottled product.

After pulping and pressing,

the juice is poured into barrels to ferment.

Through the winter, the cool temperatures slow

the process down and preserve the delicate flavours.

But fermentation picks up through the spring and the summer

and, just one year later, the brew is ready to taste.

This is cyder with a Y. This is like the first pressing of olive oil.

It's pressed once and then the pulp is taken away

and put into compost or animal feed or whatever.

But other people will take the pulp from the press,

they'll put it into a tub where they'll rehydrate it,

it'll be stirred up again so that the water is absorbed by the pulp

and then it'll be repressed and you'll end up with cider with an I,

or small cider, and that will consequently be of a much

lower alcoholic content because most of the sugars

go off in the first pressing of the juice, which is what we have here.

As a table-top producer, Kevin only makes up to 500 gallons

of apple cider a year, all with his strictly traditional approach.

But with his 2011 brewed, bottled and labelled, he's off to

the nearest pub to give the locals a taste of his latest vintage.

I wouldn't choose any other cider.

It's great to have a local cider in...

..in my local pub.

This is absolutely delicious.

It's really, really good.

It's got a really crisp, clean taste to it and, yeah,

it's really refreshing.

'We're making ciders from the same varieties of fruit,

'on the same types of equipment, at the same time of the year

'and I like to think that somebody coming back from antiquity would be

'familiar with the type and style of ciders we are producing here.

'We're very proud of that.'

Cheers.

Delicious.

For me, the best winter recipes bring back memories of years

gone by in their flavours.

It's not about minding your calories or flashy cooking techniques.

It's all about aromas and tastes that make you glad to

be at home and I've got just the thing for that.

One of my favourite winter warmer puds has to be

a steamed sponge pudding

but it's a dish, really, of two halves to me.

It's a dish that, when I was a youngster

and I had it at school, it left me mentally scarred, to be honest.

This sort of horrible pudding with thick custard, yellow custard.

But this is a little bit more advanced than that.

If my indulgent clementine and chocolate sponge pudding with orange

liqueur sauce doesn't warm you up on a cold winter's day, nothing will.

It's a dish that my grandmother, taught me how to cook.

But this is taking it a little bit further,

but one thing she did like was a little bit of orange liqueur

and I'm going to put that into this cake as well.

But we're going to take these sort of clementines

and basically just thinly slice them.

Now, whenever I cook with these,

I think of winter, I think of Christmas.

These always are in bowls around my house.

It's one of those foods that you just sort of, every time you

walk into a room, you just grab another one.

They're addictive, really.

Now, I'm going to basically line my mould here with some butter.

We just basically pop these around the edge.

'And, this being one of my hearty puddings,

'don't skimp on the butter in the sponge mix.'

175g.

The same of sugar as well. And this is one of the easiest

recipes, really, when it comes to desserts, that you'll remember

because it's more or less all the same quantities.

Then we throw in three medium eggs.

'In goes 125g of self-raising flour and then,

'to make it really chocolaty, I need top quality cocoa powder.'

The thing about good cocoa powder is you'll use less of it

because it's a much better flavour. Throw that in...

..and then I'm just going to help this along its way.

A little bit of baking powder. together with a pinch of salt.

Now, even though you're still doing a dessert,

a little bit of salt in there will help it.

'Using a mixer is the best way to get air into the sponge.

'I want it to be nice and light.

'This definitely isn't school canteen stodge.'

It's almost done. It's as easy as that.

Pop this in the centre.

You don't want any of those clementines to fall down.

'I'm going to steam the sponge on the hob for up to two hours.

'This dish needs to take its time.'

You could, if you want to, speed this up

and actually microwave it but, if you do it this way,

something about the time that it takes to cook improves the flavour.

Like anything, really - stews or anything.

Desserts are the same thing.

Although it tastes pretty good as it is, really.

And then what we're going to do now is cover this up.

To help it actually as it expands, what you need to do is just

put a little fold and then fold it over again.

Now this, as it rises up, that fold will open up and actually

cause the mixture still to keep rising, which is what we want.

The classic accompaniment with sponge pudding would be custard.

I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to create a little sauce just using a little bit of sugar.

And you just want a little bit of colour on this.

'Adding a splash of Granny's favourite orange liqueur

'is going to give it a warming boozy tang.'

You can use any kind of liqueur, really.

Rum, brandy, orange liqueur, anything like that.

It even works with sort of a coconut liqueur, works fantastic.

Get a nice bit of colour on there. In we go with the orange juice.

So, I'm going to put a touch of vanilla in there.

Just a little bit of vanilla pod.

I'm going to grab one of these clementines that we've got left

as well cos we're going to use the juice out of this.

And then, if you see, the mixture and the sauce

is actually quite thin now.

But if we just grab some butter,

it actually starts to thicken up.

It's lovely, that.

It's not too strong with the alcohol

but it's not too sweet to go with the pudding.

Looking pretty good.

And then, of course, you've got this sauce.

It kind of looks like a Christmas pudding, doesn't it, really?

It's one of the real delights, I think,

of cooking when you tip it out and you end up with that

lovely, rich sponge, and you only get that through time.

'The aromas alone from this pudding are worth the wait.

'With all of its great flavours, it's a winter warmer to remember.'

I think some creme fraiche with this is just the best because you

need something to cut through all that chocolate and everything else.

It really works.

Whether you do this one or a steamed sponge pudding, either way,

it's the taste of that sponge that develops over

an hour and a half, two hours' worth of cooking which makes it

worthwhile and worth the wait.

'Cooking in winter has so much to offer.

'When else can you bring together all the most luxuriant

'and tasty ingredients into a single dish?

'It might be cold and grey outside

'but in your kitchen, you can create recipes that make you smile

'and I think that's what good food is all about.'

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.