Friday Night Suppers 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-ho! It is so good.

..the kind of no-nonsense grub that brings people together.

-Cheers, everyone.

-Cheers.

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

These are my home comforts.

My family would never pass on the chance of a good get-together.

So when I was growing up,

a Friday night supper was one of the highlights of my week.

# This Friday night... #

I still love having people around.

But I want to entertain without too much graft.

After a long week at work,

it can be hard to get motivated in the kitchen.

But I've got some simple dishes that will set your taste buds alight

ready for the weekend, with no hassle whatsoever.

So chuck your takeaway menus in the bin

because quick and easy Friday night suppers

don't have to be delivered to your door by a man in a crash helmet.

Coming up, I'll show you how to make showstopping Friday night suppers

in your own kitchen.

Just as it is, on the plate like this.

Done.

We travel to the Isle of Mull to share some freshly caught seafood.

And food historian Ivan Day spices up medieval fish Friday.

It blows the top of your head off.

But first, a simple supper dish you can cook in minutes.

This Middle Eastern cousin of the Italian pizza uses lamb mince,

yoghurt and a host of aromatic herbs and spices.

My Lebanese spiced lamb flatbread

is the perfect way to kick-start your weekend.

I suppose this is a combination of a flatbread and a pizza dough.

But it uses one of the best pizza dough recipes I've ever used.

And I've got this properly from Naples,

in one of the best pizzerias I've ever been to.

And they only sell with cheese or without cheese.

And luckily they're not watching this

because I'm going to serve it with lamb.

To get our topping under way, finely chop a shallot

and a clove of garlic and fry in veg oil.

The key to this is really the combination of spices with the lamb.

I'm using a tablespoon of ground spice mix called baharat.

This stuff has a real distinct flavour.

It's got things like cumin, coriander, cayenne.

It really is sort of the smell of the Middle East, I suppose.

I really love coriander and cumin,

so I'm adding another teaspoon of each.

So like all spices, really, put these in at the beginning.

Now we can add the mince.

And for that Middle Eastern touch, 75g of dried fruit.

I'm using sultanas, but dried apricots will do just as well.

Chuck in 300ml of chicken stock and then simmer for about 20 minutes.

While that's happening, I can make my pizza dough.

Now, this recipe comes from the home of pizza, Naples.

And it's a fantastic pizza dough, really, really simple,

but proper authentic Italian.

Place 400g of double-zero flour

and 100g of semolina flour into a bowl...

..with a teaspoon and a half of caster sugar

and half a teaspoon of salt.

I'm using a sachet of fast-action dried yeast.

Add 325ml of water to the yeast, stir and then add to the bowl

and mix together by hand.

This is about there now. You see the texture of this. It's quite unusual.

It's quite liquid, you see?

Bit of flour and then we can knead this.

Now, you want to knead it for a good five minutes, really.

Now, every time I make this dough it just reminds me

of the old boy that taught me how to do it. And he was fantastic.

He used to sit at the end of the bar just with a nice cold beer

and a cigarette in his mouth reading a copy of the Racing Post

until the order came on.

He would basically take one last drag of his cigarette...

with his tainted fingers, put it down on the ashtray,

walk over, make your pizza.

As soon as it were done, walk away, fag in the mouth again.

Then when the dough's about there... You can tell, really,

when you flip it upside down.

Now, if you press it and it starts to spring back,

that means the dough's ready.

If not, you've got to keep going.

Divide the dough into four equal parts,

then roll it into individual balls.

Just fold it over, flip it over.

And then in the palm of your hand, roll it up into a ball.

Place these on a tray and allow to rise for 24 hours.

Now back to the lamb topping.

Now, this lamb is nearly ready so I can season it.

Now, if you wanted to, you can pop this in the fridge

and let this go cold.

But I'm just going to tip it straight into a bowl to cool.

So the idea being you could do this on the Thursday,

pop it in the fridge with the dough and it's ready for the Friday.

For the garnish, grab a handful of coriander and mint leaves

and chop up a green chilli for the topping.

Flour your board, and you're ready for the risen dough.

You can see how soft this dough is. That's perfect.

And you almost don't need to roll it out.

Use your fingers to spread the dough into a flat disc

and top with your spicy lamb mince.

Dollop on some yoghurt and scatter with chopped chilli.

Then it's ready to cook.

I've fired up my pizza oven.

But a regular oven and a pizza stone preheated to 220 Celsius

will do just the job.

The key to cooking anything like this is to get the oven really hot.

That way you get the pizza stone extremely hot

and it cooks on the base, mainly.

It takes about 30 seconds, 45 seconds to cook all the way through.

But in a conventional oven it will take between five and ten minutes.

And then finally...you grab some mint and coriander.

Just sprinkle it over the top.

If you put this on before it goes in the oven, they burn.

For me, pizzas have to be the ultimate Friday night supper.

But this is extra special.

He likes it too.

This is a really simple dish to make

but the fresh and spicy Middle Eastern flavours it combines

will really blow you away.

It's a Friday night supper anyone would be proud of.

Back in the Middle Ages,

my lamb flatbread would have been a no-go area on a Friday night.

The Church banned people from eating meat of any kind.

Food historian Ivan Day is at the medieval Gainsborough Hall in Lincolnshire,

where he's exploring how fish became the staple of Friday night supper.

I'm going to cook a pike.

This fish was one of the most popular in the medieval period.

At one time it really was THE popular Friday night fish,

especially amongst the nobility.

I'm going to roast it in front of the fire.

But before it was roasted, the fish was gutted and stuffed.

Ivan is filling his pike with pickled herring

and spicing it up with some popular medieval flavours.

I've got a plate here of spices

that may not look terribly familiar to a modern cook

because they're ones that have gone out of favour.

This is long pepper, which is related to the black pepper

but it looks like a little catkin.

And it's got a wonderfully pungent, aromatic, almost perfume flavour.

This is cubeb pepper, or tailed pepper.

You can see each little peppercorn has got a little stalk or a tail.

And it's got a eucalyptus-type peppery odour.

It blows the top of your head off because it's really, really strong.

More familiar ingredients like mace,

anchovies and garlic were then added to the fish.

A few sprigs of pot marjoram were then added.

And then the whole thing was topped off with lots of forbidden butter.

If you remember, this is actually an animal product,

which was meant to be banned.

But the Church was rather loose about these things.

Now, a pike is definitely a fish.

But there were other items that appeared on the medieval Friday night table

which definitely weren't, although the Church ordained that they were -

things like beaver, otter, porpoise and even a type of goose.

I think they knew that they weren't really fish

but they were just sort of pushing the rules a little bit.

The next stage of this recipe was to sew the pike up using twine

and a heavy-duty needle.

Getting it through, it's as tough as old boots, the pike.

But very tender when it's cooked.

The next stage is a tricky manoeuvre

because I've got to get this very long spit

right through the pike's mouth,

which is a danger zone

because it's absolutely full of the most razor-sharp teeth.

And I've got to guide it through so it goes right through the centre

and then out through the middle of the tail.

Before it was sent off to the spit,

the pike was tied up with sticks of hazel.

This ensured it didn't fall apart when it was cooking.

I've got to make sure that there's plenty of fat on the outside of the pike.

They're rather dry fish.

They don't have a lot of fat like a salmon,

so I'm warming up the butter.

As the pike rotates, it will hopefully cover it with fat.

This is the worst job in the kitchen because you get very, very hot.

As a result, you were usually given a double allowance of beer

so that you didn't completely dehydrate.

Fish cooks very, very quickly, unlike meat.

So sometimes, if the fire is really fierce,

he can be cooked in maybe 25 minutes, half an hour.

There's a real art to this.

You've got to remember I'm just cooking a single pike here.

But in the past, I probably would have had about another seven or eight items on here,

with two people at either end.

I've got to get that fish off because he's going to disintegrate.

And it's very important

that he's served at the high table in one piece.

The pike was decorated with large amounts of flat-leaf parsley.

I want to eat it while it's still hot.

So what you did was you actually didn't have a fork.

So you had to spear your fish on the end of your knife

and eat it...like that.

This fish is perfectly cooked.

It's firm, it hasn't fallen apart, and it's just absolutely right.

The pike has fallen out of favour in the last 100 years.

I don't know why because if it's cooked properly like this,

it's really delicious.

So you couldn't have a better dish for a medieval Friday night supper

than a pike roasted in front of the fire.

Thankfully we're a little bit less limited

in terms of what we can eat on Fridays these days.

In fact, the choice of ingredients available in the UK is so varied

that a Friday night supper can transport your taste buds

to any country you fancy.

And for me, a Malaysian chilli beef rendang

is one of the ultimate curry dishes you can cook at home.

Slow-cooked beef marinaded in lots of aromatic herbs and spices

and then sweetened with palm sugar

and coconut milk is simply melt-in-the-mouth gorgeous.

I love it. It's a dish that I always cook at home.

It's worth the effort and worth the time that you put into it

because it's one of these things that gets better the longer you keep it in the fridge.

So the first thing you need to do is marinade the beef.

For the marinade I'm going to roughly chop two big shallots,

at least six cloves of garlic with four red chillies,

5cm of ginger and chuck in two lemongrass stalks.

And rendang is just a wonderful, wonderful flavour -

aromatic, just delicious.

It's everything that sort of that part of the world

really is all about when it comes to food.

It's that combination of all these wonderful ingredients

that our palate seems to love so much.

We've got the ginger, the garlic, the lemongrass. It's just fantastic.

Put them all in a blender along with three kaffir lime leaves.

And then we just need to blitz this.

You want to turn this into a paste.

And for that you'll need just a little bit of water.

When it's reasonably smooth, the marinade is ready to use.

I'm using some stewing beef here.

You want decent-sized chunks of beef

because of the length of time that this is going to cook.

Cover the beef in the marinade and stir it in.

This is one of the key parts to this process, really.

This is partly where

you impart all this wonderful flavour into the beef.

Wrap in clingfilm and put it in the fridge

for at least two, but preferably 12 hours.

And this imparts all the wonderful flavour into your beef.

Now take a bowl of warm water and soak two dried chillies

and fire up the hob.

And then just a touch of oil into our pan.

And I've got a selection of different spices here.

Crack a few cardamom pods, then add them to the hot oil.

I'm throwing in a couple of star anise.

You get this amazing flavour from star anise.

And break in two cinnamon sticks.

Don't use the powdered cinnamon for this, use the whole sticks.

It's a lesson that I got when I was over in Singapore.

Just throw it all in.

If it's bigger, it's easier to pick out afterwards.

If you try and sort of break it up too small,

it's going to be quite difficult to fish out.

A little bit of cumin, a little bit of coriander.

And then throw in the beef, which has been in the marinade.

Keep the pan still on the high heat, really.

You might need to stand back from this

cos there's a severe amount of chilli in here.

To tone it down, add a can of coconut milk

and 200ml of beef stock.

Thai fish sauce goes in to provide a salty lift.

A decent amount of the palm sugar in it.

It's got a distinct taste, a distinct flavour,

and one that has to be used for your rendang.

And tamarind pulp gives a dark colour

and sharpness that cuts through the richness of the meat and coconut.

And finally it's time for our soaked and softened chillies.

With just a touch of the chilli water.

Now, at this stage the mixture itself is actually really wet.

And the trick here is to put the lid on it, bring it to the boil

and gently simmer this for at least two hours.

It only gets better the longer it cooks.

About 20 minutes before you want to serve, take some jasmine rice

and cook it in salted boiling water for 12 minutes.

And while the rice is cooking - this is the crucial part of it, really -

take the lid off and reduce it down.

And you end up with an almost dry stew.

Now, as the mixture reduces, you get this lovely, sticky sort of curry

that you're so familiar with with rendang.

We're going to finish that off with some lime juice.

Just drain off the rice.

The whole thing about this dish is that it's not fancy at all.

The key to it is just tons and tons of flavour.

And you get that from marinading the meat,

but also cooking it for this amount of time.

Now, I know when this goes out on television,

you're going to cut to a shot of it all beautiful with the sunlight

with a sprig of coriander on the top,

but this is all you want.

You don't need anything else. Just as it is, on the plate like this.

Done.

Beef rendang is a great meal to prep in advance for a Friday night feast,

leaving you free to chill out.

But there are plenty of equally flavoursome dishes out there

that you can cook in seconds, like mussels.

On the Continent, they're enjoyed by the masses.

But us Brits have been slow to embrace the convenience

and simplicity of this underrated seafood.

Fortunately, up in Scotland on the Isle of Mull,

Cameron Maclean and Douglas Wilson are working hard

to get more of us to appreciate their award-winning rope-grown mussels.

About 25 years ago, we thought maybe when things are quiet with fishing

we could grow some mussels.

And it started there.

And then the mussels sort of took our lives over a bit.

Loch Spalve is perfect for farming shellfish.

Its sheltered salt waters provide everything a growing mussel could need.

And they've been voted best mussel producer in Scotland many times over,

with their succulent, sweet shellfish.

-CAMERON:

-What makes these mussels so special from this site

is the fact that there's more tide

and there's more food in the water for them.

So usually our best mussels come from this site

and it gives us the best yield per line as well.

So that's why we're heading there today

because these are the ones to grab first.

And finding their crop is simple too.

Their mussels grow on ropes in the waters of the loch.

-DOUGLAS:

-Rope-grown mussels are suspended.

They're not grown on the seabed, they're hung in clean water

so you don't get the grit

and sediment that you can get in dredged or bottom-grown mussels.

Some people say you should only eat shellfish when there's an R in the month.

Nowadays, with refrigeration and modern practices,

it's not quite as black and white as it used to be.

We can do 12 months' production in Scotland

and that's what our customers are asking for.

And the crew are happy to provide it.

Most of the muscle power is done by machines.

First the mussel-laden ropes are hauled in.

So, this is the start of harvesting here

where the mussels get their first clean and first rough grade.

This is a bag that we've taken ashore

with the harvest product in it

and they're dispatched on the ferry at lunchtime or early afternoon.

This is the most important bag in the boat, this one.

This is the one that pays the wages.

The mussels are taken ashore.

Then they're cleaned, sorted

and shipped off to some of the top restaurants and fish markets.

You do get a great feeling when you see the boat coming in

and there's a good few tons of mussels going to market.

And on a good year we can produce 500 tons.

It's all just grown out of the sea.

Rope-grown mussels are as natural as you get.

And they're delicious too.

With no pesticides and no additional feeding required,

they're the perfect crop

for this remote and beautiful part of Scotland.

They're sustainable. They don't have a large carbon footprint either.

You know, they're... It's definitely on the up.

When I started here we did 20 or 30 bags into restaurants a week.

Now we're probably doing close to 100 bags a week.

People are slowly eating more and more shellfish.

It's educating people that they are a good meal and good value

and easy to cook.

Enjoying mussels all the time is a perk of the job

for Douglas and his family.

And today his grandson Charlie is on hand

to cook up a new recipe he's eager to try out.

You've made a start, Charlie. Good for you.

Charlie's new recipe is going to be given a try-out.

-They're sweet-and-sour mussels. Is that right?

-Yep.

-Yep.

Onion, garlic, chilli and ginger are roughly chopped

to form the base of a delicious and simple sweet-and-sour sauce.

Charlie, I'm running out of space.

Could you get me the pan and I'll get rid of some of this onion?

Whilst the veg sweats off in a little oil,

it's time to get the mussels steaming.

Mussels will take three or four minutes to steam open.

It's very important with mussels that you actually steam them

with a lid on with some intense heat to get them opening successfully.

OK. Just have a check. I don't see any closed. That's just perfect.

Cider vinegar, sugar and mixed herbs are added to the softened veg.

A splash of lime juice finishes off the sauce perfectly.

Mmm. That's good.

Scrape the...

And the only thing left to do is to mix it through the shellfish.

And Charlie's sweet-and-sour mussels are ready for his family

and the hungry boat crew.

OK, Charlie. Let's go.

-Well, cheers, guys. It's not often you can do this.

-Cheers.

But what's the verdict on Charlie's seafood spectacular?

I prefer the sauce to some of the others

because it's quite refreshing.

-It has a zing.

-Yeah.

I think you've found a pretty good recipe there, Charlie.

I think we'll call this Charlie's recipe. Thank you.

-Cheers.

-Thank you.

Charlie's sweet-and-sour recipe is going to be a hard act to follow.

But mussels are a really versatile ingredient.

And this old dog has a few tricks up his sleeve.

I'm having a few people over for a party this evening

and I'm going to cook them one of my favourite dishes,

using this wonderful shellfish.

My lemongrass and ginger mussels

are served with plenty of thick, fresh crusty bread

to soak up all those delicious juices.

This is such a great Friday night supper,

mainly because it's full of flavour and so simple and quick to make.

Mussels cooked with coconut cream. Really, really easy.

Give them a quick wash. And we'll leave those to one side.

Now, I'm going to cook this in the style of moules marinieres,

that classic French dish

with the standard flavours of shallot and garlic

but with a few added different flavours, like coconut.

I'll start by finely chopping two banana shallots,

a couple of garlic cloves.

I'm using two stalks of lemongrass.

Chop off the woody base

and finely chop the stalk as it can be quite fibrous.

I like to add two red chillies

and finally a thumb-size chunk of fresh root ginger.

Now, the idea of cooking mussels like this is nothing new, really.

It's been around for quite a while

because mussels are one of these seafoods

that's available all around the world.

When I was in Spain you have them in these lovely little tapas bars

with garlic butter and all manner of different sort of stuff.

But it was actually in one of these tapas bars in Barcelona

I had a dish with coconut milk and mussels

and this is where the idea of this came from.

And it's very simple to cook

because once you've got that done, it's almost there.

And we want a good knob of butter

cos what you have to do with this

is throw all the ingredients in

and start sweating these down.

Now, it's important at this stage...

..to at least cook this for a couple of minutes

cos as soon as you add the mussels, the clock starts ticking.

And once they're nice and soft like this, that's ideally what you want,

just to break them down a little bit.

And then you can do this the classic marinieres style -

good-quality white wine.

And it's generally the white wine that you serve with them.

So don't skimp on it.

If you use the cheap stuff, it tastes sort of vinegary.

And then I'm going to use two different types of coconut.

160ml of coconut cream go in, followed by 330ml of coconut water.

If you don't have any of that, you can thin it with tap water instead.

And as soon as this comes to the boil, we can throw in the mussels.

And then this really means the clock is ticking.

So as soon as these go in

you're only about three or four minutes away from serving them.

This is the idea of this being such a good Friday night supper.

Everything's chopped, in the fridge, last minute, throw the mussels in,

done.

So the lid on. These need to cook now for about three or four minutes.

Gives us time to chargrill our bread,

some really good rustic bread.

Now, I've got some mates over tonight so I'm going to need plenty of bread.

A good drizzle of oil and get this charring.

No need to roux it with a bit of garlic.

Literally nice and rustic on the griddle.

And then finally just almost like a seasoning to the mussels, really,

is you need some fresh coriander and lime juice.

And what you need to do is just give it a quick stir,

particularly with a pot this big, just to get the mussels around

cos they're starting to open up at the bottom.

You want to make sure the ones at the top open up.

And they don't take very long at all, you see.

Once they're open like that, they're cooked.

And there you have it, really. It's done. It's quick. It's simple.

Full of flavour.

The perfect Friday night supper.

There you go, guys.

Not only is this quick to cook,

but you get succulent, flavourful mussels

in a wonderful fragrant soup,

all ready to be mopped up with chargrilled crusty bread.

And this is one of the great things about this recipe.

It's just a big pot of food to share.

Having folks over on a Friday evening for a bite to eat

is a great way to relax after a busy week at work.

And with a bit of preparation,

you can transform a few simple ingredients

into dishes your friends and family will come back for again and again.

You can find all the recipes from the series on: