Slow Cooking James Martin: Home Comforts

If there's one thing I look forward to at the end of a busy day

it's the thought of getting back to my kitchen at home.

For me nothing beats cooking some simple, heart-warming, food.

Oh-oh-oh, it is so good!

The kind of no nonsense grub that brings people together.

Cheers, everyone.

The dishes I turn to

when I want to put a big smile on everyone's face.

These are my Home Comforts.

I grew up in Yorkshire, so I'll always be a country boy at heart.

I now live in Hampshire, and for me

there's nothing better than getting back there and slowing down.

And my favourite way to unwind is making tasty food at a relaxed pace.

Our busy lives make us think that every meal has to be quick,

but when I get home, I like to take my time in the kitchen.

So I'm going to do something that seems impossible

in this day and age - slow-cooking.

On today's show,

food historian Ivan Day stokes up a Georgian slow cooker.

We spend three days making the kind of marshmallows

that dreams are made of...

It is just like one big, puffy pillow of deliciousness.

And I'm having fun...

Mm, mm, mm!

..as I rediscover the joys of taking it easy in the kitchen.

This is proper home cooking. Slow-cooking at its best, really.

Slow-cooking doesn't have to be labour intensive.

There's nothing easier than throwing a few simple ingredients together

and sticking them in the oven while you put your feet up.

And my first recipe is a fantastic example of this approach.

It's salt crust baked celeriac with creme fraiche and chive dressing.

Now slow-cooking has to be one of my favourite forms of cooking,

but this particular way of slow-cooking - salt crust baking -

has to be one of the best, in my opinion,

particularly for veg like this.

This is celeriac, but the key to this is the crust.

The crust is basically a salty dough

which is wrapped around the celeriac.

So start by putting 500 grams of strong white flour in a mixer

with 200 grams of fine sea salt.

A good amount of salt.

That's the amount of salt that we need.

So basically we make a pastry, but you don't eat it,

it just imparts so much flavour into whatever you cook it with.

And then egg whites to bind it.

And what you're looking for really, is almost like a hot water crust,

which is what you make pork pies out of, really, and hand-raise them.

You get that similar sort of texture.

Add water until it forms a soft dough.

Now salt baking's nothing new.

It's done all around the world and I first came across this

while over in France, but we used to put things like rosemary and

tarragon and all manner of different sort of flavourings in there.

This pastry is ready now.

The texture of this is kind of exactly what we want.

You get this sort of pliable dough.

Before you get busy with the rolling pin,

cut a piece off the dough which you'll use later.

Then roll out the pastry until it's about a centimetre thick.

You don't have to worry about it too much, it can be thick.

Mainly, it doesn't want to be thin cos it doesn't want to split.

Because the idea behind this is it actually steams inside the pastry,

which is really the definition of the old pie really, particularly the

old pork pie because the actual pie crust was never meant to be eaten.

It was just used as a casing to hold everything inside.

So this is really sort of the ultimate pot, I suppose,

that you can cook your celeriac in.

Once your dough is large enough to wrap around the veg,

brush the edges with water.

Then it's time to introduce the star of the show -

celeriac.

It's a fantastic veg and what the French love to do with this

is create a dish called the celeriac remoulade, which is

a wonderful sort of coleslaw type salad.

So much flavour in this. This is brilliant for soups as well.

Normally it's got green shoots on it, cut these off.

You just dump the celeriac on there, kind of bring this up.

It's difficult to explain, really, but you're creating a bag.

Think of Play-Doh, when you were at school.

Make sure it's nice and sealed in

and then we'll pop that on our tray.

When the celeriac is encased in your dough,

use your small piece of pastry to make a tie on the top of the parcel.

Now what you need to do now is cook this about 180 degrees centigrade

and cook it for a good hour and a half,

so it nicely steams all the way through in the middle.

And what you end up with...is this.

It looks fantastic.

I'm going to serve this with a wonderful little dressing.

It's so simple to make.

The dressing is made by whisking 100 grams of creme fraiche

in a bowl with two tablespoons of olive oil.

Then season with freshly ground black pepper,

before chopping your chives.

If you don't want to put chives with this,

things like spring onions are really good.

But you want something onion-y sort of flavoured,

so even raw red onion would work really well with this.

A little bit of chives saving a few leftover,

and you've got this simple dressing like that.

Almost looks like sort of mayonnaise.

When your dressing is done, it's time to tackle the pastry parcel.

There's no real glamorous way of getting into this sort of thing.

You just give it a whack all the way around,

just to break it first of all and then you can break off the pastry.

The whole point about it, when you remove this salt crust,

you get this amazing smell.

Once the celeriac has been freed from its pastry casing,

all you have to do is peel and slice it.

And you add plenty of this dressing over the top.

A few bits of chopped chive and then a nice decent amount of watercress.

But this is just a wonderful little salad

that would make a great starter, a great complement to a main course,

but salt baked celeriac.

The taste is off the scale.

This celeriac is just so tasty and versatile,

and slow-cooking it really brings out its delicate flavour.

It may take a while to bake in its salt crust,

but once you've tasted it, you'll be glad you took the time.

I believe that the best things in life are worth waiting for.

But it's not just the time

and effort that goes into cooking that makes a difference,

it's also the care that goes into choosing the right ingredients.

In this beautiful coastal spot in the New Forest,

Lisa and Simeon Morgan are patiently rearing a very unusual

breed of sheep, that only 30 years ago was almost extinct.

What we've got here is a pen of my Zwartbles sheep.

'Zwartbles' means black with a white blaze.

I saw them for the first time when I went down to Cornwall

with my husband on holiday and I fell in love with them.

They're obviously very striking to look at and I thought I'd really

like some of those, but Simeon kept saying, no, I couldn't have any.

He's an arable farmer, he's not really into animals.

So eventually, I wore him down and he let me have some and I had five.

The five sheep all gave birth,

and soon Lisa had more than she'd bargained for.

It was soon apparent that I needed to be able to do something

with the lambs, so I thought,

"Well I'm going to have to send them to slaughter," and they came back

and we were really proud of the meat that we'd produced.

Unlike most commercial sheep

that are ready for slaughter at six months old,

this breed are larger than average and take longer to mature.

They reach their perfect weight at around a year.

Because these are older, they get a really good marbling.

The legs are really big and meaty.

The whole animal is really good for both roasting joints,

but also slow-cooking as well and once people have tried it,

they come back for more and more.

The flavour and texture of the meat vary depending

on where the animal's grown up and what it's been given to eat.

The coastal pastures that Lisa's sheep are raised on are full

of herbs like wild clover, sea aster and lavender.

We've got some varieties of herbs

and grasses that really are favoured to this area of land by the sea.

The salt in the air here, it certainly we think it makes a...

Adds a little edge to the flavour.

The five sheep that Lisa started with have grown to a flock of 200.

What started as a hobby is now a successful business,

with her lamb being sold in a farm shop

and supplied to three of the best local restaurants.

-Hi, David.

-Hello, are you all right?

-Yes, thank you, how are you?

-Very well, thank you.

In fact, local chef David Wykes was

so impressed that he's added lamb to the menu in his fish restaurant.

The lamb fits into our sort of ethos of dishes very well,

because the quality is second to none,

so it wouldn't be on unless the quality was amazing.

People buy into the locality of the dish.

It'd probably be more local than a lot of the fish

that's caught in the Solent because

the farm is just less than a mile away.

And David has spent some time preparing a slow-cooked dish

to showcase Lisa's lamb.

-Look at that.

-That's amazing. Thank you.

It's a really interesting combination

because you've got the lamb which is obviously an earthy flavour,

but it's also got some really interesting flavours of the sea.

It's really exciting to think that my lamb

could be made into such an amazing dish.

I love to hear about quality food that's produced

so close to my home in Hampshire.

So, I've invited Lisa and Simeon over for lunch at my house,

and I'll be showing them my favourite way to slow-cook lamb.

So, how did lamb end up on your farm? Cos you're an arable farmer.

Yeah, I'm an arable farmer, but Lisa always wanted sheep,

so for her 40th birthday, sheep is what she got.

Slightly different.

-Yeah.

-Slightly different, yeah.

Didn't want jewellery or anything else like that?

No, no, no. I've always admired these sheep and he wouldn't...

He kept saying no. Then he really surprised me.

I had no idea they were coming and they were really

bought as lawn mowers to start with and as a hobby for me.

But it has obviously grown into something much more than that.

I've got an exotic twist on slow-cooked lamb,

with a dish that will give your spice rack a real workout.

It's my Indian spiced lamb shoulder with Bombay potatoes.

Normally with curries you dice it all up but this,

I'm just going to throw the whole lot in, so it's long slow-cooking,

about four hours it takes.

Before you cook the lamb, you need to make the mix of no fewer

than nine spices to flavour the curry.

Start by adding cloves, fenugreek seeds, chilli flakes,

and a cinnamon stick to the grinder.

We're going to toast off two of them,

just to get the oils going out the spices.

Put the cumin and coriander seeds into a dry pan and let them

toast for about two minutes.

Then add the toasted spices, fennel seeds,

and black peppercorns into the grinder before blitzing the lot.

And once it's powdered, throw in the turmeric.

And then it's time to turn your attention to the lamb itself.

Straightaway, I can tell this is sort of an older lamb, really,

-because of the colour, fundamentally.

-Mm-hmm.

Does that sort of... I mean, once people taste it, it's fine,

but people looking at this would think, "Well, you know,

"that is not the colour of lamb that it should be."

Yeah, we have to educate people a little bit about the change

of the colour and the fact that it is taken on longer

in the process, but it certainly has more flavour, we believe.

The next step is to add this generous lamb joint to

a large casserole dish and sear it.

This is almost at the stage of sort of hogget,

-isn't it really, this one.

-Yes, yes, yes.

This particular breed of sheep, they're very slow growing

and their breed characteristic is very lean meat.

They're an extensive breed, so then we take them to very nearly

hogget, to nearly to a year old, if not just over, to get that

extra flavour and they... If you take them too early,

they don't finish. You don't get any fat coverage at all

cos they stay so lean.

Next, you'll need to make the curry sauce that the lamb will cook in.

Start by adding a finely chopped onion

and chopped green chilli to the pan you've seared the lamb in.

Follow on with garlic and ginger, then the spice mix.

So out of all the cuts of meat you get from the lamb,

and you get such a variety, it's like pigs really,

you can use the entire carcass, what's your favourite?

I think probably the shoulder is one that I do the slow-cooking

quite often and I really enjoy mutton leg steaks as well.

-Mutton leg steaks?

-Yeah.

-You can cook those on the barbecue

-really nicely as well, can't you?

-Yes, just, they're so easy to cook.

You know, everyone thinks mutton needs to be cooked

for hours and hours. I actually prefer mutton leg steaks

-to beef steak now.

-But it's still got this perception,

hasn't it, mutton, really? I don't know what it is,

-cos it's packed full of flavour, but...

-Yeah, definitely.

When the onion and spices have cooked for two minutes or so,

add the torn curry leaves and crushed cardamom pods.

And then I'm going to use this. It's quite an unusual thing to put in

with this. Generally, I would use this with duck. This is tamarind.

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

It is fantastic sort of stuff when you put it in curries,

particularly at the beginning.

I've had this sort of stuff on my travels.

It goes particularly well if you're going to add coconut to that.

But what I'm going to do is add some tomatoes

and use tinned tomatoes as a base together with some stock.

Throw them in as well.

I'm also adding a litre of lamb stock to the pot,

but you can use beef stock instead.

And then what you do is grab the lamb.

That's one of the great things with this,

you just basically cook the entire lot in the pot.

Cover this over, stick the lid on it,

and what you want to do is cook this slowly for four hours.

Now, I don't need to leave you to wait for four hours cos I've

got one in there. But I'll leave that to one side.

You can cook it on the stove, so you could just basically bring

it to the boil, leave it gently simmering for about four hours.

You can eat this with rice

but I prefer to serve it with spicy Bombay potatoes.

Start by boiling cubed potatoes

and finely chop a clove of garlic and an onion.

Now I believe you've got a farm shop as well

-that you've got hand in hand with this.

-I have.

It's slightly unusual. It's a pop-up farm shop.

We only open two days a month at the moment which fits.

-Two days a month?

-Yeah.

-Well, you've got to be quick then,

-haven't you, really?

-You have got to be quick.

Ground coriander, cumin, mustard seeds,

turmeric and chilli powder go into the pan with the onion and garlic.

It's a lot more intensive than arable farming.

At least with arable farming you can sort of chill out on an evening

and relax. But I mean, you must have found it sort of changed your life

-really, I suppose.

-Yeah. It does have intense periods of work.

Obviously, lambing time is full-on.

But at the same time it's very rewarding,

so you know, if you'd asked me ten years ago would I be a sheep

and arable farmer, I probably would have said, "No, don't be so silly."

Once tinned tomatoes have gone in, add the cooked potatoes

and simmer for another three to five minutes.

The lamb is almost done.

All I'm going to do now is add just two little herbs to go with it

and mint obviously is the one that you want to do with lamb,

but I'm going to put some coriander in there as well.

So throw a little bit in there,

a little bit in here,

and you can see, as the lamb cooks, it just falls apart in the pot

and then you can take your chunks of bone out, like that.

There's no fanciness with this, no poncing around.

Before you've even tasted this dish, you know

you're in for a treat because all those spices.

It makes it smell absolutely amazing.

It's one of those things that you just put it in the pot

and forget about it.

Because it's a curry, it just gets better and better and better

the more you leave it.

Try that. Tell me what you think.

Oh, it's really good.

All in all it adds up to a slow-cooked meal

that's bursting with flavour.

See, I thought in this job I'd seen everything and tasted a lot, but

it's amazing that 15 miles down the road, you get lamb as good as this.

I've never tasted lamb as good as that.

Cooked very well. Very good lamb, cooked very well.

Yeah, but your shop needs to be open more than two days a month.

-Yeah, well, that's coming...

-Good.

-..when he buys me some more sheep.

-THEY LAUGH

-I'll be first in the queue.

Slow-cooking is an excuse for us to take our foot off the gas a bit.

It's just a matter of throwing a few ingredients together,

leaving them to simmer, and chilling out until dinner's ready.

Food historian Ivan Day has trawled through old recipe books,

to find an 18th-century take on this more relaxed approach

to food preparation.

One of the most ancient forms of slow-cooking is braising,

which I think most people today would understand as a very slow form

of cooking in a very, very tightly sealed casserole or saucepan.

In the past, it was done in a very different way,

and one of the aims was to cook as slowly as you could,

but with the smallest amount of fuel.

I'm going to use a recipe from the 18th century,

from a truly remarkable book,

which has the slightly worrying title of The Whole Duty Of A Woman.

Only about half the book is cookery.

The other half is to tell women how to behave themselves.

The recipe I'm going to use is called fowl a la braise.

Fowl is simply a chicken.

But let me show you what the 'a la braise' bit means.

Before the chicken was braised,

the Georgian cook would practice the ancient art of larding.

This is a larding pin

and under here I have some little matchstick strips of bacon fat

and I'm going to very carefully put one of these into the larding pin.

So what I do is put the pin through and then hopefully

if I hold on to this end, it should pop out the other side.

Larding is a very old technique.

The earliest records we have are in medieval cookery books.

Its original purpose was to add succulence to dry meats

like hare, venison, other game birds, which are lacking in fat.

As it cooks, the fat melts and it self-bastes.

When the chicken had been larded, a braising pan was lined with

butter, bacon and thin strips of veal.

By putting this meat in the bottom, it will brown with

the heat of the charcoal, and create its own very nice dark gravy.

Then it's very simply a case of popping

the fowl into the middle of the braising pan.

Everything was braised.

A whole ham could be braised, a turkey,

and some of the braising pans are absolutely enormous.

The recipe suggested adding herbs like basil,

thyme and bay leaf, along with a piece of bacon for added flavour.

Onions and a small amount of garlic were then

sprinkled on top of the chicken before stock was poured in.

So it's time to put the lid on now.

It only goes on one way.

It's got to be really snugly on.

Once the pot came to the boil, a glass of wine was poured in.

The lid was put back and then the fun really started.

Fire shovel, hot charcoal.

Let me show you how it works.

So we've got fire underneath and fire on top.

It's going to get super-heated, the pressure's going to build up,

cos the lid is so tightly sealed, but it's going to cook very,

very slowly, so it's going to be succulent,

juicy, and full of flavour.

It'll sit there maybe for about two hours

until the fowl is perfectly cooked.

While the chicken cooks, Ivan can put his feet up with a good read.

But I'm not sure his book of Georgian recipes

and etiquette would top the bestseller list these days.

The title of this book is The Whole Duty Of A Woman.

This book was written in a very different world to ours.

Compared to attitudes to women that we have now,

the Georgians had a very different approach.

So, listen to this -

"An old maid is now thought such a curse as no poetic fury can exceed."

So if you're out there and you're a young woman in the Georgian period,

for goodness' sake, find yourself a husband, otherwise you're doomed.

Of course, it was the whole duty of a woman of any

household in Britain at this time to make sure that her

husband's food was not only well dressed, but beautifully presented.

The all-important decoration consisted of cooked turnip,

a sprinkling of parsley, and an eye-catching Georgian delicacy.

These mysterious things were really popular.

They're pickled barberries, which is a British native fruit that

was grown in just about every garden in the 18th century.

They were so popular because of their very bright scarlet colour.

The recipe gives us various options for sauces.

I'm going for one which they call a ham coulis.

Let's see what this chicken a la braise is like.

It's about the best chicken I've ever eaten, actually. Truly.

It's a pity that braising of this kind has vanished

cos the end result is superb.

There's nothing in this world that beats a British steamed pudding.

But you can't hurry perfection.

They taste good because they're cooked slowly.

My gran's puds were the best I've ever had and I base

my blueberry steamed pudding with vanilla custard on her recipe.

Now if you ask me, all the best puddings in the world are always

the ones that are slow-cooked and one in particular,

which is definitely my favourite, has to be sponge pudding.

Now the benefit of this one is I've got some fresh fruit

from the garden, so you can use blueberries, raspberries,

strawberries, it's entirely up to you.

First add 175 grams of softened butter to a bowl with

the same quantity of both self-raising flour and sugar.

The important thing is I'm going to use this light brown sugar,

which I kind of... Every time I taste it...

I call it Granny's sugar

cos it's the only sugar that she used to use.

She used to use it all the time for biscuits.

It's got kind of a unique flavour and taste.

Next into the mix is a pinch of salt,

a teaspoon of baking powder and three eggs.

Then whisk it all together until it's light and fluffy.

So really it's like a standard bun mixture, I suppose.

You've got the texture very similar to that.

It's pretty good to me. Now for our bowl.

Exactly the same bowl as what my granny used to use.

You need to butter it really well

and this is why I blame her for my butter fetish, I think.

Because you get a little bit of butter.

That is a properly buttered dish.

Then we're going to use some golden syrup.

You can use black treacle for this

but golden syrup really does work a treat, particularly with fruit.

You'll want to add 150 grams of golden syrup to the bowl.

My granny used to use bucket-loads of this stuff

cos she used to make the most amazing parkin,

which is kind of like a cake that us Yorkshire folk

have around Bonfire Night.

It's kind of like sticky toffee pudding

made with oats and golden syrup.

So, put the blueberries in and then we can top it...

..with this lovely sponge.

Of course, you have to seal the top of the pudding bowl,

and to do that you lay a piece of grease-proof

paper on a sheet of tinfoil that's the same size.

Even though it's grease-proof, you still take some butter over the top.

Then you make a crease in the centre of both sheets,

so that there's a slight overlap.

And the idea behind this is there's just a little bit of give in this.

You don't want it too tight, otherwise it compresses it

and it makes the sponge too tough.

And this is the bit, the only bit that my gran would let me do

when I was younger, so I've had a bit of practice.

Hold the foil cover in place by tying

a piece of string around the top of the pudding bowl.

To steam the pudding, I half fill a large saucepan with cold water.

Then use my gran's old trick of putting

a cloth into the bottom of the pan with an upturned plate on top of it.

And if you do this, it just allows the sponge to come

away from the water, but mainly away from the base of the pan.

But another trick she had,

she was full of them,

is then take another sheet of tinfoil

and just fold this up into sort of a long piece

and the idea being you just place this in the bottom

like this, and then when you pop your pudding in,

it's much easier to take it out afterwards.

How cool is that?

Then all you need to do is cover it, bring it to the boil,

and simmer for two hours, making sure you top up the water as needed.

Now I'm going to serve this with a custard.

Now, even though we're in Yorkshire, back then, some 20 years ago,

my granny still used to make custard properly.

The recipe stays exactly the same.

Full fat double cream, full fat milk.

There's no skimping with this recipe.

You need to use 250 mls of both cream and milk.

Basically you heat this up with some vanilla.

Now, I'm being quite fancy with this stuff.

This is Bourbon vanilla, it comes from Madagascar. Soft vanilla pods.

This stuff is quite expensive, but if you buy the big fat pods,

the Bourbon vanilla, you get much more value for your money.

Remove the seeds from the vanilla pod and add both to the milk

and the cream.

Then leave it on a medium heat until it comes to the boil.

And then we're going to combine that with a mixture of sugar and eggs

and the amount of eggs is actually quite important

because that's how much the custard sets.

So for this I'm going to use about six eggs, really,

and I just want the yolks.

And it's much easier to separate them like this.

There's no need for fancy kitchen gadgets.

There's definitely no need for this palaver...

all this shell to shell business.

When you've separated the eggs,

whisk in the yolks with 110 grams of caster sugar, and then

when the milk and cream mixture is boiled, add it and keep stirring.

And then we pour this back into the pan.

Now this is the crucial bit.

You want to warm this enough to thicken.

You certainly don't want to boil it.

If you boil it, you end up with scrambled eggs.

Keep your eye on it.

It starts to thicken up

and as it starts to coat the back of the spoon, it's just about ready.

All we can do is literally just pour this back into the bowl

and you can see the texture's totally changed.

All you need to do now is let the custard cool

and leave the sponge steaming.

That gives me precious time to catch up on the gardening.

And after that, I'm more than ready for a bowl of delicious pudding.

Oh-oh-oh! Look at that!

Mm-mm-mm!

This is proper home cooking, slow-cooking at its best, really.

This is a pud that's full of comforting flavours I love -

soft, squidgy sponge, delicious fruit and sticky golden syrup,

all topped off with a creamy home-made custard.

You see, I love watching cookery programmes because

when you're supposed to be tasting this,

you're supposed to be saying how delicious it is.

I don't need to.

Because we're always on the go these days,

many of us can't prepare time-consuming dishes.

Fortunately, there are a growing band of home-based UK producers

putting in the hours, so that we don't have to.

In Leeds, Philippa Quayle grafts so we can enjoy

the pleasures of her award-winning handcrafted marshmallows.

I first started making marshmallows after watching it on the TV

one evening and people were making marshmallows by hand

and they weren't... They were making them with different flavours

and different sizes and I thought, "Wow."

I just stared at this programme thinking, "I love marshmallows

"and I have never been able to taste anything like this before."

So that greedy little part of me thought, "I want to eat those."

And then the experimental creative side of me said,

"Right, well, I'm going to have to make them, then."

So, voila, my little business was born.

And her little business has quickly expanded

and now supplies a range of ten flavours to shops all over the UK.

The main ingredients Philippa uses for her marshmallow are sugar,

water, glucose and gelatine.

And this is one cooking process that can't be rushed.

I wasn't really aware of how long it was going to take me.

From boiling the sugar to having my finished product in its packet

and ready to go is actually three days, which is amazing.

So, that's one day for making up the mixture, another day allowing

the marshmallows to set and another day to allow the pieces to dry out!

Philippa can't afford to make any mistakes.

I like to be really precise cos I know there's

so much chemistry involved in marshmallow making.

If you just change one of the ingredients or the weight

of one of the ingredients, strange things can happen.

So, I've found my recipe and I stick to it.

So, I'm just going to put the heat on, full blast.

The mixture then needs heating to exactly 160 degrees

to allow the mallow to have the perfect texture.

I can look into the sugar and it's starting to bubble and boil.

It's mesmerising. It's the way sometimes you look at clouds

or sometimes you stare into a fire and, you know, you kind of

just drift away for a second or two.

And often in that second or two is

when an idea can start developing, so it's quite a creative experience.

And when you're making things from the comfort of your own home,

there's always room for a bit of experimentation.

Today, Philippa is making a new mango and passion fruit recipe that

she's going to try out on the public a little later on.

Philippa adds gelatine to the mango puree

to ensure that the marshmallows have plenty of bounce.

In it goes. It smells amazing.

Mm, and that's really lovely mango-y sugar syrup that will whip up

into a marshmallow fluff.

To whisk in her bubbles, Philippa has invested in some equipment

she houses in the family garage.

But this industrial kit doesn't mean her artisan produce has lost

that personal touch.

I'm measuring out passion fruit here.

It's a freeze-dried fruit powder and it's really zingy.

It gives a lovely flavour.

In fact, if you were to eat the freeze-dried fruit powder

straight off, it's like sherbet.

This is just a passion fruit paste that I'm making now.

I'm rippling this through and it gives it quite a nice texture on

top and it just means that when you cut them, they're not all the same.

They all look a bit different, each piece, which is

nice because the ones that are mass-produced in the factories,

they all look exactly the same.

These ones have got their own little personality,

which I think is quite nice.

So, that's the marshmallows made now and they'll be puffy

and squashy and delicious by tomorrow.

By the morning of day two, the marshmallow has set

and is ready for the next stage.

It is just like one big, puffy pillow of deliciousness.

Philippa chops it up into generous bite-sized chunks.

It's like as if you were to cut through a cloud,

that's what it would sound like.

They're lovely and light and fluffy now and if you actually

picked one up and gave it a little squeeze, it's nice and bouncy.

But before they are ready to eat, Philippa's marshmallow

cubes must be left to dry out for another 24 hours.

Only then will these mango and passion fruit marshmallows be

good enough to road test at a nearby cafe.

Let's hope all this waiting has been worthwhile.

I'm going to start offering them around. Let's see what people think.

Anybody want to try a new flavour?

Oh, yeah. Mm.

-Yeah?

-That is gorgeous.

-Fruity?

-Loads of passion fruit.

-Yeah, yeah.

-Really good.

Mm. That is really, really nice.

Just seeing people's reactions when they eat them is awesome.

And the fact that I now supply so many shops and delis

and farm shops around the UK is just amazing,

and from watching TV and giving it a go and creating my own business,

I just never would have dreamed this would happen.

Waiting can be very rewarding, and for me,

nothing beats a peaceful day spent fishing.

It forces me to slow right down and take it easy.

Most people see fish as an ingredient that's cooked in a flash.

But one of my favourite recipes takes a much slower approach

and the results are delicious.

It's my home-smoked trout with feta salad.

Now for me, curing is one of the best forms of slow-cooking.

It is actually a form of cooking because the sugar

and the salt actually seeps into the meat and preserves it.

For this recipe, you'll need two large trout fillets.

Now, whenever you're smoking anything,

particularly the way that I'm going to do it like this

which is cold smoking, you must cure it first.

The cure for the fish is made from 200 grams of sea salt

and 100 grams of sugar.

Generally using caster sugar and I've seen a lot of people use black

treacle in this as well, which makes the fish go really dark in colour.

The next step is to lay out two large pieces of clingfilm

on to your work surface.

Then, using a quarter of the curing mixture, make a line in the centre.

And then taking a fillet, lay that skin side down

and then just gently sprinkle this over the top.

Now what's going to happen with this, once it goes in the fridge,

it actually draws out the moisture of the fish.

Once it's wrapped up in the clingfilm,

it'll need to stay in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours.

When it comes out, the first thing you need to do

is wash off the excess salt and sugar.

I can feel already the texture starts to change

and it almost resembles that sort of smoked salmon that you get.

Slightly firmer. It's not as if it's cooked, otherwise it'd be soft.

It's just firmer to the touch, particularly the skin.

What I'm going to do is smoke it using a DIY smoker.

Now you can make it with one of these.

These old bins, a few bricks, a candle

and a little bit of imagination.

Yep, you'll need a little bit of imagination

and a little bit of outdoor space.

Don't try doing this indoors.

Start by putting candles or tea lights on to the ground,

then surround them with bricks.

Now you'll need this particularly if it's windy.

I never thought in my wildest dreams, when I started cooking

when I was eight years old, I would be doing this.

My mum told me never to play with matches.

So, I always use a blowtorch.

Light the candles, before putting the bin over the flames.

Now you need ones with holes in the bottom, all right?

It's really quite important cos you want air flow in here as well,

so stick them on the bricks. And then, in the bottom,

just going to use a little bit of tinfoil.

What the tinfoil will do is actually prevent the wood

from going through the holes, hitting the flame and creating fire.

The key to getting a great smoked flavour is using oak chippings,

which you can buy online.

All you do now is just sprinkle these on the base

and then what I do is grab a little bit of water, just a touch,

and just sprinkle the water in the bottom.

It's all it needs to help it on its way because what you want to

do with this is just smoulder it first of all.

If it's too dry, it kind of can catch fire.

And then finally just stick a barbecue grill

on the top of the bin and place the fish fillets on top.

And then, lid on...

..with a cloth over the top because, as it smokes up,

you want to keep all that sort of smoke in there really, as well.

Wander off for an hour and a half and, fingers crossed,

we should have smoked trout.

This is fingers crossed. We have the finished article. Look at that!

It's a beautiful, lovely piece of smoked trout.

Smells fantastic.

The best way to serve this is to make a simple salad of beetroot,

feta and the sliced fish and shallots.

And then, of course, some peppery, lovely watercress.

The whole thing is finished off with a drizzle of herby French dressing.

Just any garden herbs that you want, you just sprinkle that over the top.

Although this dish takes a bit of time,

for me, that's all part of the fun.

And I guarantee that putting the effort in will pay off

when you taste it for the very first time.

What I love about this dish is you've got the pepperiness

of the watercress, the sharpness of the onion,

but then you've got this delicious, different texture...

..of the home-smoked trout.

I'm quite pleased with this. Just one word of advice -

if you've got guests coming round for dinner,

hide the bin.

It's so easy these days to rely on food that's done in a flash

and eaten just as quickly.

But every now and then, it's worth taking a more relaxed approach.

There are so many ingredients that taste amazing

when they're slow-cooked.

And you don't need lots of cheffy tricks to get great results.

All you do need is a little time.

You can find all the recipes from the series on: