Hearty and Wholesome 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-ho-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 live deep in the Hampshire countryside

and I really enjoy all the space and freedom here.

After a hectic day, I just love jumping into my car

and driving back to the peaceful surroundings of my own house.

Food is one of the best forms of comfort,

and coming home to the smell of a hearty

and wholesome meal in the oven warms me up before I've even tasted it.

Today, we discover how a new kind of wholesome cooking

took off in the 1930s.

These are plain vegetable dishes, but then you take them

and you make them extraordinary.

We set the stage for the revival of a hearty English mustard.

Think of William Shakespeare carrying

one of those around with him. An amazing thought.

And I'm in my kitchen making the wholesome food that I love best.

To me, that's a real winter warmer, it's proper hearty food.

When it comes to hearty and wholesome grub, you can't beat

the amazing flavour of a piece of lamb.

And I've come up with a recipe that turns all that richness

into a winter warmer.

It's my fantastically tasty lamb shank pie.

Now, you certainly don't get any more hearty

and wholesome than a pie,

but this is a special pie because I'm going to make it with something

that I've been cooking with for quite a long time, lamb shanks.

They're a fantastic cut of meat cos they produce so much flavour.

It's one of those things...

That part of the animal that does the most amount of work,

tastes the best, but it has to be the longest to cook.

So to get the ball rolling,

I seal my lamb shanks in a casserole dish with rapeseed oil.

Now you want to make sure these are really well browned at this

point because this is the only bit of food colouring that you're

going to get into your stew.

To get a brown stew, you have to brown the meat beforehand.

It's the perfect portion of meat really, but what you have to

do is treat it with respect and cook it for a long time.

It's no good cooking lamb shanks for half an hour, they're just...

It's going to be tough as boots.

When the shanks are sealed, leave them to one side,

then add two roughly chopped onions and four cloves of garlic to the

same pan, followed a few minutes later by two tablespoons of flour.

And really, this is where it can all go wrong, so you just use

enough flour to thicken the sauce.

So you've got to use just a small amount

otherwise it's going to end up like my sort of auntie's gravy,

thick!

You could line cavities, you could fill cavities with it.

So cook out the flour.

Touch of white wine, just a little bit...

..more.

Pour in 250ml of white wine followed by 750ml

of chicken stock, and then it's time for the veg.

These lamb shanks are going to take quite a while to cook,

a good two hours to gently simmer, so it's no good slicing the veg

and dicing the veg into pretty small pieces.

It's just going to dissolve, so everything you want is chunky.

'Chop three large carrots, 600 grams of spuds

'and four sticks of celery then add them to the pot.'

And then some herbs and I'm going to use some rosemary and thyme.

So just chunks of rosemary, of course that classic

combination with rosemary and lamb, and some fresh thyme.

'For added flavour, I throw in a couple of bay leaves.'

And then what I love with this

is beans and rather than...

..get some dried beans and soak them for 24 hours,

get them out of a can.

Just drain them off, now it's entirely up to you which

beans you use.

I've got some haricot beans here, but flageolet beans will do.

And then we can grab the lamb and pop that in.

So ideally, what you want to do is bring this to the boil

and gently simmer it for about two hours.

Now you can do this on the stove or you can do it in a low oven.

When the stew is cooked,

let it cool because you can't add the topping when it's hot.

And I've got one that's cold in the fridge.

Now it's important when it does go cold to make sure that the

lamb shanks are pointing upwards, and then let it set.

And you can of course coat this in potato, you can do whatever

you want on the top, but I find puff pastry the best to go with this.

Now, it's better off to trim this first before you put it over

the top, so measure it, it wants to be about an inch bigger than

the size of the pot, which is about there.

Looks pretty good.

And you want a rough circle,

or a hexagon, either way.

'Your pastry will need to be about half a centimetre thick

'and before you lay it on top of the stew

'you'll need to brush the dish with egg wash.'

So lift this over,

it sits on the top

like that.

And then as the bones poke through,

you can just poke them through like that.

You can then just crimp it around the edge.

Then brush the pastry with egg wash and sprinkle with salt before

putting it into a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 45 to 60 minutes.

And this is the reward for all that time that it spent ticking away,

simmering away nicely, this wonderful pie.

'This is a dish that drips with richness and warmth

'and I absolutely love it.

'It's packed with wholesome, tasty ingredients and because they simmer

'away for so long, all the amazing flavours come together perfectly.'

To me, that's a real winter warmer, it's proper hearty food.

But the best part of this dish, you almost don't need a knife

and fork, this is so tender it just falls off the bone.

You can almost eat it with a spoon.

There's no denying the British love of tasty lamb dishes.

By contrast, home cooks usually avoid venison,

despite its hearty flavour.

But deer farmers Jane Emerson

and Peter Stokan are on a mission to change all that.

Some people think that venison is strong and gamey

and when I'm standing there on my farmer's market stall,

I get really cross and sometimes I even shout at them,

"Stop saying that," but it doesn't have to be a strong gamey meat.

It can be a mild, tender, succulent meat.

Not only are we selling a product, but we're having to re-educate

the general public as to the benefits and values of venison.

Jane and Peter have 210 acres of land in a stunning

part of the Lake District.

They have been farming deer here since 1987.

Deer have been kept in parks for hundreds of years and then the...

It went out of fashion sort of managing the deer population

as cattle and sheep were domesticated,

so it's only relatively recently, sort of

in the last 30, 40 years that people have started farming deer again.

Come on, girlies.

We had a smallholding of ten acres and we introduced the deer

onto there, here we are today with a herd of 300 to 400 deer.

The first British deer farm was established 40 years ago.

Today, there are 300 with around 28,000 deer.

The breed that Jane and Peter keep are red deer,

our largest native species.

Genetically, all our animals are just the same as the wild deer

but they're... Obviously, over the years they've been

selectively bred so that the hinds are maybe a little bit bigger,

the temperament's better for a farming environment.

They have one or two little quirks, but once you understand those,

they're a very, very easy animal to handle.

Oh!

The flavour of meat generally is to do with its texture,

to do with the fat content and the age of the...of the animal

when it's slaughtered. So, in our situation, the animals are about

sort of 18, 24 months when they're slaughtered.

But if you're, obviously, if you were taking a wild deer out

of the population it could be ten, 12 years of age

and so the flavour of that could be quite different.

Come on! Come on!

There are some very, very good wild venison

and...and don't make any mistake, but it can be tough.

It's no picnic for red deer in the wild.

Most of them live in the Scottish Highlands and the harsh

conditions there affect the quality of the meat they produce.

With any animal, it's all about reducing stress,

whether it's nutritional or weather or just social,

is minimal and then they'll do OK.

We make sure they've always got good grass in front of them

from an early age.

The size of a deer's antlers depends on the quality of the food they

eat, so these boys are living proof that no-one's had to go hungry.

We find that the meat is much more consistent.

They've not gone through periods of nutritional stress and so you do

get a better quality meat that way than animals that may potentially

have sort of had a period of starvation upon the...the hills.

Jane and Peter oversee every stage of production.

They even have a butchery on the farm where all the meat is prepared.

And after all that work, they like to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

Most people like to eat their venison a little bit pink,

so we'll cut a decent thickness steak.

The steak is coated with olive oil,

and then it's placed on a griddle when it's piping hot.

When I'm cooking a steak, I don't tend to keep turning it over.

I just put it in, let it cook for four minutes the first side and

then turn it over and give it another three minutes on the second side.

And that way you're not sort of constantly changing

the position of the meat.

At the end of the cooking time, rest it

and that way, it doesn't end up tasting like boot leather.

-Here we are, dear. Would you like to try some of this?

-Yes.

Really good.

I didn't think you could cook as well as that.

SHE CHUCKLES

Venison might have a reputation for being tough and gamey,

but Jane and Peter are proving nothing

could be further from the truth.

Venison is just as wholesome and hearty as all the traditional meat.

You shouldn't be nervous of using it.

It's easy to cook and delicious to eat.

I really love venison, and believe me, if you've got a good

quality cut of it, you're halfway to a wholesome and hearty meal.

Jane and Peter have agreed to come over to my house with some of

their produce and I'm going to use it to rustle up

a very special lunch.

The question is, why venison? How did it all start?

We had a smallholding, there was a deer sale and we bought some deer.

-There was a deer sale...

-Yeah.

-..and you bought some...

-What were you doing before then, then?

-Cattle and sheep.

Cattle and sheep. Cos up where you are I suppose there's...

-You can't have any arable up that neck of the woods.

-No.

'Jane and Peter have brought along some fantastic venison fillets

'and I'm putting them right at the heart of an amazing dish.

'It's my venison, chicken liver and Armagnac terrine.

'I start by seasoning the venison

'and sealing it in a hot pan with some oil.'

So, how do you eat yours then cos I hear you're a bit of a chef?

SHE LAUGHS No.

Well, you know... Pan-frying the old steak

and that sort of stuff, you know?

-As time goes by, rarer and rarer.

-Rarer and rarer.

-Yeah, yeah.

It's one of those things really, you... People are always a bit

sceptical about it, overcook it and this is where the problem lies.

-When you do overcook venison...

-It goes dry.

..cos it's beautiful and tender,

but there's very little fat on it as well so the combination

-of those two things.

-So, you need to undercook it.

'When the venison is sealed take it off the heat and leave it to rest.

'Next, you'll need 350 grams of chicken livers,

'which are sealed in the same hot pan.'

What's life like living up in that neck of the woods,

-the Lake District? It's farming cos...

-It's wet.

..but it can't be the easiest thing because the secondary effect really

with wet farmland, of course, you get things...

Problems with the animals' feet and bits and pieces, don't you?

Well, great fortunate for...for us, deer don't have feet problems

unlike sheep. We don't have to clip them, we don't have to dip them,

we don't have... They're very healthy animals.

I know they can jump a fair way, those fences are pretty high.

-They also wriggle under.

-Yeah.

-That's where they go.

-They're very lazy.

-They go under.

-Oh, they go underneath, do they?

Yeah, if they have the opportunity, then he'll go underneath

rather than over the top.

'Once sealed, the livers are flambeed in Armagnac.'

Why farming then in particular?

Erm, it was basically a form of relaxation from business.

-Relaxation(!)

-It isn't any more.

I was a farmer's kid, it's not really relaxing, is it?

It wasn't when we when we started.

So, what kind of business were you in then before?

-We were in forestry and landscaping.

-Right.

But then we bought the farm and...

-You've got to do something with it.

-You've got to do something with it

and we bought the deer and it just grew from there.

Then puree the chicken by blitzing 300 grams of skinless breast

meat and then adding 200ml of double cream.

And we end up with this lovely sort of smooth mousse, really.

Well, the French call it a 'farce,'

-up in the Lake District you call it a pate, is that right?

-Yeah.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. The difference is 20 quid.

HE CHUCKLES

And then we season it afterwards. It's quite an important thing,

obviously, seasoning, but afterwards

because the salt can toughen up the meat,

particularly when you're blending it.

And then I'm going to throw in two other things

-which I love with venison, venison and hazelnuts...

-OK.

Big fan, all right?

Add 50 grams of toasted hazelnuts

and the same quantity of dried cranberries.

Then line a loaf tin with dry cured, streaky bacon.

And the reason for dry cured is that you don't want

the moisture to come out of the bacon, otherwise it's just going to

add too much liquid to our terrine.

But just basically line this,

so you've got enough bacon to fold it over.

That's all you're doing.

A third of the chicken mousse goes in first,

followed by the venison fillets

and another layer of the mousse.

And what do you do with the leftover bits of meat, then?

If it's big enough chunks, then we use it for casseroling

and then after that it's sausage, burgers, venison mince is good.

So, are you one of the only venison farms up that neck of the woods

-then? You must be, I suppose.

-Yeah.

-We are, yes.

Yeah, your...next nearest one would be down in Yorkshire.

-Down in, down in my neck of the woods?

-Yeah, Barnsley.

Well, I'm putting a herb that I love with chicken, but it

goes particularly well with venison. This is some tarragon and then

we've got the cold, sealed, flambeed chicken livers,

which go on there as well. It's important to do this early,

so they're nice and cold when you layer this up.

And then finally, the final layer...

..of our chicken.

Finish off the terrine by flattening down the top layer of the mousse

and folding the bacon over it.

So, predominantly, where would the most amount of venison come from?

-Would that still be UK-based or...?

-No, regrettably no.

-It would be...

-New Zealand.

-New Zealand.

-New Zealand?

-Yeah.

-That's ridiculous, isn't it?!

-I know, I know, but...

-Absolutely!

..that's where the biggest amount of venison is produced is in

-New Zealand still.

-I never knew that.

-Yeah.

So once you've got this terrine nice and lined and full,

you want it sort of domed over the top cos as it cooks,

it puffs up and then once it's in the fridge

it presses back down again. So make sure it's got a domed top on it.

Place the lid on, into a tray.

This is actually the most important part of the cooking process really.

You need to sort of half fill this with water.

'This is absolutely crucial

'because if you don't do it the bacon can burn.'

A 'bain-marie', as the French call it, or as us guys up North,

a tray of 'at watta', is that right?

HE LAUGHS

Stick it in the oven. Now this needs to cook about 170, 350 Fahrenheit.

It needs to cook for about an hour and a half.

Once cooked, I'll let the terrine cool

before popping it into the fridge to chill.

This has got to be one of the richest dishes I cook at home.

It's hard to beat the robust meaty flavours of venison and chicken

livers, but when they're combined with that creamy mousse along with a

boozy kick from the Armagnac, you've got yourself a proper hearty lunch.

There you go. I feel quite nervous putting this

in front of you guys, you know?

-But you get to dive into that.

-That's great.

-Tell me what you think.

-Well.

-Go on, I'll let you go first.

-Will you indeed?

-Yeah.

This is very, very nice.

-Yeah.

-Any good?

-Yeah.

-That's great.

-It's definitely your venison?

-Yep.

-Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

Well, I wanted to do this cos it's sort of hearty, wholesome,

-proper family farming grub.

-Yep.

Or as my mother would say, "It's a bit poncey, but it tastes nice."

-SHE LAUGHS

-It's something.

Ideas of which foods are wholesome

and hearty have changed over the years.

Food historian Dr Annie Gray is stepping back 80 years to

an era when lighter dishes were becoming more fashionable.

In the 1930s, most people were living on pretty plain stuff.

The very poor ate very badly indeed,

but the vast majority of middling sorts, the kind of people

that would live in a house like this,

they tended to live on things like meat pie and three types of veg.

Quite heavy and quite stodgy.

But times were changing.

We discovered vitamins, we'd discovered calories!

And so in the wake of the Great War, there was a great move to

throw out the old ideas of Edwardian excess and bring in new,

healthy, wholesome foods.

I'm talking salads,

and salads were the kind of thing that you really do see start

to appear in middle-class homes more and more in the 1920s and '30s.

The salads I'm going to cook are the kind of salads that would

have graced a beautiful, rich person's table.

But there's no reason that a woman in a house like this couldn't

have taught herself what to do and thought to herself as she did

it, "I've got a little bit of glamour in my life too!"

I'm cooking salads from this book.

The book's by a man called Henri-Paul Pellaprat.

He was one of the early teachers

at the Cordon Bleu Cookery School in Paris.

He also published books, among them this, which was published

first in French and was an immediate best-seller.

You can see that some of these salads are brilliant.

These are simple plain vegetable dishes but then you take them,

and you make them extraordinary.

Annie's wholesome and hearty dish

from the newly health-conscious 1930s is a salad marguerite.

Marguerite means 'daisy' in French.

The base layers are potatoes, asparagus, cauliflower

and green beans, all of which need to be cooked and they all need to

be cooked separately because they all have different cooking times.

So this is a fairly involved salad.

All of these vegetables were really good for you

and there was quite a craze in the 1920s and '30s to give up

carbohydrates, to eat very healthily, to in fact, diet.

Ideals about what the female figure should look like were changing.

If you were a good mid-to-late Victorian,

then you aspired to be a true Englishwoman,

to have the kind of figure that the young Queen Victoria had

when she came to the throne, which is to say quite voluptuous.

Everything changed however in the wake of the Great War.

The ideal became a little bit more boyish.

If you wanted a straight up and down figure, if you wanted to look

glamorous and posh and aristocratic, there's no way you could

continue to eat as you would have done in the Edwardian period.

There was also a bit of a fitness craze among women in the 1930s.

The Women's League of Health and Beauty was set up to encourage

ladies to take up exercise.

And the League staged public demonstrations of their routines.

I've cooked my vegetables and now I need to let them cool, but these

vegetables alone don't look exotic enough to be an aspirational salad.

The quintessential ingredient is mayonnaise.

The mayonnaise was made by mixing egg yolk and mustard

and slowly pouring in oil.

I'm going to add a little bit of lemon juice just to help

the oil emulsify.

It must be said that

whenever I make mayonnaise I am reminded that its constituent parts

are basically an egg yolk, very good for you, and a bucket of oil.

So I need to add some seasonings and I need to add some vinegar.

It just makes the whole thing go white.

I can't just throw everything in.

We'll start with the green beans,

then the cauliflower.

Asparagus,

potatoes.

Everything needs to be in layers so green, white, green, white.

So, a nice healthy hearty wholesome salad, not Cordon Bleu cookery.

The decoration, that's where it's all at!

Lots of people today think that the salad wouldn't be complete

without a bit of mayonnaise, but they mean a teaspoon on the side

of the plate. This is not a teaspoon on the side of the plate.

The recipe now suggests that in order to make your salad

look like a salad marguerite, a daisy salad,

you use hard boiled eggs to decorate the top with daisies.

This is the middle of my daisy, and these are going to be my petals.

It is quite a mad salad,

but it's not the maddest salad that Henri-Paul Pellaprat recommended.

He also included things like the 'salade du berger',

the hour of the shepherd.

It is a similar principle to this one in that it is layers

and layers of different fruit and vegetables. Again covered

with fine mayonnaise and then made to look like a clock face.

It might not really be hearty and wholesome exactly with that

quantity of mayonnaise on, but your guests are going to talk about it.

You are literally going to be the talk of the street.

Introducing hearty wholesomeness to your cooking doesn't have to

mean rustling up endless stews and steamed puddings.

Just as Annie did with her salads,

you can also add a homely touch to lighter dishes.

And one of my favourite recipes injects a bit of hearty

fruitiness into a traditional dessert.

It's my greengage meringues with cream.

Now one of the things that I grow quite successfully at home

are plums, but these are a type of plum, they're greengages.

Now not all gages are green, some are actually plum coloured.

I'm going to be using these to create a wonderful, little dessert.

First off, I pit and quarter 750 grams of the greengages.

I remember using these first of all in France

and all I had to do was make these little tartlets

on the pastry section.

And all the French head chef used to do was just shout at me.

'Tart Martin,' that was all I was called, for six weeks.

I was only 14.

I'm making a compote with the greengages by cooking them

with two tablespoons of water and 120 grams of caster sugar.

Now, like a normal compote really you just bring this to the boil

and the idea is do this with the lid off because as it reduces

the water evaporates and you want it just to thicken slightly, almost go

to a nice little syrup. So just cook this for about 15 to 20 minutes.

Once the fruit is softened and syrupy, remove from the heat

and cool down completely.

Now, I've already got some cold

and you want it cold for this meringue and as it goes cold

it thickens up even more.

And you get these slightly tart greengages.

To make the meringue, whisk five egg whites

until they form soft peaks before adding the sugar.

I'm using caster sugar and icing sugar

and I think this is really important in terms of this meringue.

It makes it lovely and silky,

but also quite soft and sticky in the centre.

First, add 150 grams of the caster sugar into the egg whites.

Mix to soft peaks and then follow on with 150 grams of icing

sugar before mixing again.

And then start it off slowly, for obvious reasons,

otherwise you'll need to redecorate your kitchen,

until it's mixed together and then fire it up.

And this breaks every rule of making a meringue.

You're beating it once the sugar goes in and it creates this lovely,

soft silky meringue then you end up with this.

The texture is fantastic.

'Carefully fold a good handful of the greengage compote

'into the meringue.'

Now this recipe works fantastically well with soft fruit, things

like raspberries, strawberries.

And then before I put them on the tray, a quick tip.

Stick the paper down first,

otherwise if you've got a fan oven,

your meringue shells, when you turn round in about an hour's time,

will look like the National Lottery balls flying around the oven.

Then you can if you want,

and this is what I used to do in France,

is shape them

to which the French call a 'quenelle,'

but in my house, it's a dollop!

When you're finished with dolloping, stick the meringues

into an oven that's preheated at 100 degrees for two hours.

Now I've got some that are cooled, over here.

And you end up with these lovely sticky-style meringues.

And you can see when you tip them up, the greengages are lovely

and gooey and chewy in the centre

and this is what makes this recipe, I think, so good.

Now to fill this I'm just going to use a bit of whipped cream

flavoured with vanilla.

Double cream, of course.

Throw that in.

Now, so often this would be done classically with creme Chantilly,

which is whipped cream, icing sugar and vanilla essence,

but if you've got vanilla pods you get a much better flavour, I think.

Whip 300ml of cream with the seeds of one vanilla pod.

Now you almost want the texture of the cream like the texture

of the meringue, soft.

You don't want it too firm.

You just want it to hold ever so slightly,

so it's a good idea just to take this off and finish it by hand.

'This is such a simple dish.

'The syrupy greengages add a touch of fruity warmth to the meringues.

'It's crunchy and creamy, sweet and tart.

'The dessert that has it all.'

Let's face it, who doesn't like meringue

and cream in the first place,

but then you kind of dive into this.

And it gets better because it gets chewier and chewier.

I just think it tastes delicious.

Whether it's a pork pie or a joint of roast beef,

one condiment has always been guaranteed to complement

wholesome and hearty flavours - strong English mustard.

There's evidence that mustard was widely produced in the market

town of Tewkesbury as far back as the Tudor period,

but it's taken award-winning home producers Robin Ritchie

and Samantha Ramsey to revive this once-famous, local artisan industry.

Tewkesbury has a tradition going back

to about the 17th century of making Tewkesbury mustard.

Obviously it was a condiment of its time,

being mentioned in Shakespeare.

Falstaff is given the words describing Poins as having

"a wit as thick as Tewkesbury mustard."

But reviving Tewkesbury's famous medieval mustard would take

a bit of research.

Talking to local historians and local people,

I soon found the idea of the mustard,

the genuine Tewkesbury mustard, being a mustard ball.

Yes, you heard it right. Medieval mustard wasn't sold in jars,

but it was rolled into handy, pocket-sized balls.

It was the difficulty of transporting them

around the country that made them turn them into balls.

And then they would put them in their pocket,

go off to the pub and mustard balls

were used as a condiment much the same as we use mustard out of a jar.

You can just do shavings onto your meat or you can reconstitute it,

adding whatever you're drinking to turn it into a paste.

With the research done, Robin needed somebody with passion

and drive to take the mustard balls to the next level,

and that's where business partner Samantha came in.

The key to making any a great mustard is obviously mustard flour.

We'll be making it how it was made in medieval times.

Robin had found evidence that back in the 1500s there were plenty of

apple orchards around Tewkesbury, so cider seemed a natural ingredient.

I use cider as the basis which added sweetness,

and a little bit of appleyness,

which was wonderful.

We have stuck with that ever since.

But back then, apple trees were not the only thing that could be

found growing everywhere.

For that hit of heat common in so many English mustards,

Robin and Sam turn to horseradish

but they don't grate it, they

concentrated it into a fiery essence that needs to be used sparingly.

It is pretty mean stuff, add a tiny drop and it will react

massively, or add another few drops to that and it will be explosive.

Just fold all the liquid into the flour

and knead it through your fingers.

It's basically the same as making a cake.

Give it a good old mix together

and you will eventually come to a nice, hard dough,

which you'll be able to separate and make into individual balls.

But making authentic medieval mustard isn't without its drawbacks.

This is when you first start to notice the chemicals actually

starting to react. The mustard flour is now reacting

to the horseradish that you've added,

which is now starting to make my eyes water.

But if you look now...

that's more of the sort of dough that you'd like.

This is it, this is where the pain comes in.

It is a painful operation.

I do pity the women that would have had this job, definitely.

And there we have it, that is

the consistency that it should be at. That is the finished ball.

All that remains now is to individually roll

the dough into convenient pocked-sized balls.

Think of William Shakespeare carrying one of those around with him.

-It's an amazing thought, isn't it?

-Mm.

There's no denying Tewkesbury mustard's rich history,

and with Robin and Samantha on board the future is looking bright too.

We don't really like to call it a condiment.

We like to call it more of an ingredient

because there is so much you can put it in, either stick it in a broth

or a casserole or a stew.

Or to simply make your own salad dressings. Take a tiny piece

of the ball with a bit of olive oil and a tiny bit of vinegar,

whisk it up, and you've got yourself a fantastic salad dressing.

But the big question is,

does the latest batch of this age-old recipe cut the mustard?

That is just perfect for me.

I don't like it too hot.

It's nice, actually.

I love wholesome and hearty home-cooked food

because it's packed with rich, warm, comforting flavours.

And if there's one dish that ticks all three of those boxes,

it's my beer marinated rack of pork with chard gratin.

I'm going to marinate the meat first of all.

Now it's actually quite a modern technique really

and one that is used in a lot of restaurants because it really

imparts so much flavour in, and it's so easy to replicate at home.

The base of the marinade is a brine made by heating 100ml

of cold water with two tablespoons of sea salt

and the same amount of dark brown sugar.

And all I'm going to do really is just dissolve the sugar

and the salt in the warm water.

Now you can use this brine for so many different meats.

Not only does it work well with pork,

but it's fantastic with chicken.

'Once the sugar and salt have dissolved,

'add another 400ml of cold water.'

Now I don't want this brine hot.

That's the reason why I'm popping a little bit of cold water in there.

The brine is transformed into a marinade by adding one

teaspoon of black peppercorns, four cloves of crushed garlic,

a couple of bay leaves and two tablespoons of yellow mustard seeds.

Now a few herbs, you can put whatever you want in there, really.

A little bit of thyme, some parsley, just pop the whole lot in.

Finish the marinade off with 500ml of good quality beer.

Don't use lager for this, you want really a rich ale

because it's the molasses with the sugar and the beer

that really imparts so much flavour into this dish.

And then for the pork, I've got a nice rib of pork.

Now there's no fat on the top, so this is not going to be

a roast joint with crackling.

But fans of crackling needn't worry

because this tasty marinade more than makes up for the lack of it.

You'll need to leave the pork in the marinade for 24 hours,

make sure you turn the meat every now and then.

And I've got one here.

What you need to do... We'll open up the bag

and really lose the marinade and then just pat it dry on the outside.

Now you can see, with the marinade, when it sits in there,

it changes colour slightly, but most importantly,

it changes texture. It adds so much moisture.

To ensure all the amazing flavours of the marinade stay within

the pork, you need to seal it.

So a hot pan on the stove and then get a little bit of butter in.

Make sure you seal the meat on all sides before putting it onto

a baking tray and sticking it into an oven

preheated at 200 degrees centigrade for 15 minutes.

Now to serve with the pork I'm going to do a nice little gratin,

and a gratin using this,

chard. I love this sort of stuff.

So many times people have tried this and it's very bitter.

That's cos mainly, I think, they don't cook it properly,

or certainly don't cook it enough.

I've grown my own over the years in my garden

and you get a whole array of wonderful colours when it

comes into season. Pinks to reds to purples, it's a wonderful veg.

Next, chop two large spuds into small chunks,

then throw the potatoes, chard and sliced onion into a pan.

All the veg is baked in a white sauce.

To make it, melt 50 grams of butter into a pan

before adding the same amount of flour.

Keep it on the heat and mix it together.

You can see the paste that you get out of this is just nice.

And then you can add the milk.

You'll need 400ml of full fat milk,

which you should add gradually.

And also a good tip to stop your white sauce from going lumpy,

get rid of this at this stage and use a whisk.

Keep it on the heat, and keep mixing.

Now you've got yourself a simple little white sauce

but I'm going to slacken this down a little bit

with some chicken stock.

Whisk in 200ml of the stock,

followed by 50 grams of gruyere cheese.

Then pour the sauce over the veg

and top it with more cheese.

Now I love cooking this dish here in my kitchen

because it's one of these dishes that can be prepared in advance.

You can make this the day before.

'Your next job is making the crust.

'The key ingredient is brioche, a rich, buttery bread from France.

'Start by blitzing 100 grams of it in a food processer.'

Now brioche produces an amazing crumb, a buttery,

delicious crumb.

It's better than bread, in my opinion, for a crust.

'To give the crust a real kick,

'I throw in one teaspoon of English mustard powder and one tablespoon

'of brown and yellow mustard seeds

'that I've soaked in water overnight.'

And then just to bind it, a little knob of butter.

'When the mixture has reached the consistency of pastry,

'and the pork has had 15 minutes in the oven

'it's time to add the crust.'

And the key to this is not add the crust too early

otherwise it's going to burn.

Then take the entire lot with the gratin,

and put them back in the oven.

'Reduce the heat to 180 degrees and cook the pork for 45 minutes

'but give the gratin an hour.

'This is the kind of food I love.

'The creamy gratin is delicious enough on its own, but serve it with

'meat this succulent and you've hit on a hearty and wholesome winner.'

# Let me wrap you in my warm and tender love... #

This crust is delicious, and that combined with the simplicity

of the veg, I just think this is one of my all-time favourite dishes.

I could eat the lot!

I love trying out new and exciting flavours and I've had

plenty of fancy meals over the years,

but there are times when all I want is hearty and wholesome grub

that I've cooked in my own kitchen.

Not only is this food easy to prepare, it's also bursting

with the kind of comforting flavours

that are guaranteed to warm you right through.

You can find all the recipes from the series on...