Home Cooked Ready Meals 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.

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

These are my home comforts.

I am a child of the '70s, and the craze for ready meals

arrived in the UK about the same time as me.

And they went on to be quite popular too.

We eat more of them than any other country in Europe!

I grew up on a farm, so a ready-made meal for me

was something we picked from the veg patch.

But I think you can achieve a happy medium between convenience

and freshness, by cooking up your own home-made ready meals.

I'm convinced that fresh food cooked at home can be every bit

as tasty and just as convenient as a shop-bought ready meal.

I'll be cooking 1970s ready-meal classics

that are just as easy, and far tastier, if you make them yourself.

And making my own glamorous version of a ready-made cheesecake.

Coming up, we meet a farmer

who produces a must-have ingredient for ready meals.

That one will actually make your tongue bleed.

Leave that one alone then, OK.

And food historian Ivan Day shows us

the 18th-century equivalent of a TV dinner.

But first I'm going to start with a deceptively simple, spicy dish

anyone can knock up in a jiffy.

Now, Chinese food has to be the ultimate ready-made meal

but it's so easy to make your own at home

if you've got the right ingredients.

And this recipe for sweet and sour pork

comes from a great mate of mine, the legend, Mr Ken Hom.

This sweet and sour pork and pineapple stir-fry served

with rice omelette is a classic home-made Chinese recipe.

Lean pork, fresh pineapple and pre-cooked rice means

this dish can be cooked in five minutes and tastes amazing.

So, first of all, to prepare our pork.

I've got some pork loin here.

Now, the reason why this is particularly good,

it's got no fat on, but it takes very little time to cook.

It's important in all sort of Chinese food,

particularly when using a wok,

make sure that all the ingredients are prepared in advance.

I'm going to marinade my pork in a trio of classic Chinese flavours.

Add about two tablespoons of Shaoxing rice wine..

..a tablespoon of sesame oil,

and two tablespoons of light soy sauce.

A little cornflour will thicken the mixture

and help it stick to the meat.

Just going to have a quick wipe down.

Now, it is important when you're cooking food like this

that you'll need to make sure

all the ingredients are kind of the same size

so they all cook nice and evenly in the wok.

Cube up your pineapple and then finely dice

four cloves of garlic, and chop up some fresh spring onions.

And then, we need to fire up our wok.

The key to this is to get it nice and hot, of course.

So, you get that on there.

Always use normal oil, this is groundnut oil, sunflower oil,

or vegetable oil, something like that.

You would never, ever fry in sesame oil. It's got what they call

a low flash point which means that it burns very, very quickly.

Fry the garlic before adding the pork.

After three minutes, add the pineapple

and a couple of tablespoons of sugar for sweetness.

And then we can take our marinade, this is the marinade

that we've done with the cornflour.

Anything else, throw that in.

Very quickly, this starts to come together now.

Starts to thicken up. Always keep it moving.

And we'll finish this with our spring onions

and a splash of dark soy sauce.

And that's kind of it finished, we can turn this off,

leave that to one side.

Now, for my special fried rice.

The thing about rice is, that it can cause food poisoning,

so, one thing you have to do, really, is cool it down as quick

as possible and then make sure when you reheat it, get it really hot.

Rather than do, sort of, fried rice the normal way,

where you just pour the eggs onto the rice...

..I'm going to do something slightly different.

This Ken Hom-inspired rice omelette takes two eggs, lightly beaten,

with two tablespoons of sesame oil.

Now, this is great, you'll like this, so simple,

you just take some oil first of all, roll it around the pan,

and then take the eggs, into the pan,

same time, roll the omelette all the way round the edge, like that.

It's that quick!

Then just sprinkle your rice onto the omelette

and let it heat through.

It's just a great and a different way to serve egg fried rice.

Finally, I'll chop up some fresh coriander

and then add it to the pork.

Don't need anything more than that, it's a very quick dish,

very tasty dish.

And no need for any salt and pepper because you've got

plenty of seasoning with the rice wine vinegar and the soy.

And you can just put that on the side.

And there you have it, sweet and sour pork,

in my mind, quicker than any ready meal and far tastier.

It's fantastic. You can taste the ingredients in it.

You know that it's going to be good for you as well.

There's no butter, unfortunately, there's no cream,

nothing, you just, you know, you'll end up like Ken Hom,

living till you're 196, it's fantastic.

The popularity of flavoursome dishes like this shows that us Brits

have adventurous tastes when it comes to ready meals.

With Italian, Indian and Chinese dishes making up the bulk

of ready meals sold here in the UK, the popularity of garlic has soared!

It's one of my favourite ingredients,

but there's far more to garlic than the white bulbs

we just chuck into our weekly shop.

Mark Botwright runs South West Garlic Farm in Dorset.

He started out as a sheep farmer,

and then an unusual gift changed his life.

I've been growing garlic down here now for nearly 17 years.

Started, um... Blimey, back along when my wife Wendy bought me

three bulbs for a birthday present and they grew so well I decided

that I'd keep growing them, really, and very quickly we had hundreds

and then thousands and to where we are now, really, where we've got

ten acres, with about 900,000 bulbs growing, this year.

Mark grows a number of different types of garlic on his farm,

but today, he's picking the variety that his wife Wendy first gave him.

This is elephant garlic, that we're harvesting today.

They're absolutely amazing baked, they crisp up and caramelise,

they're not as strong as regular garlic,

they give you a nice, earthy garlic flavour.

They kind of retail out at about £2.50 each

but compared to a normal bulb of garlic, you're looking at

something that's about six to seven times the size of a normal bulb.

Once picked, the garlic goes into one of the farm's

many poly-tunnels for the next stage.

What we're doing now is laying the elephant garlic

out on the bench to start its drying process.

This takes between four and six weeks,

depending on the weather conditions.

Elephant garlic is one our top sellers.

It goes really, really well.

People like it because it's a bit different,

there's people that even eat it that don't actually like true garlic.

It just hasn't got that harshness,

the real garlic kick that you get.

Different types of garlic ripen

at slightly different times of the year.

So far, we've harvested four different varieties

over the past couple of weeks. This is called Violet Spring.

I'd say that's kind of like an everyday kind of garlic.

This is Iberian. It's got a lovely, lovely, mild, rounded flavour to it.

Really, really nice.

Excellent for eating raw

just on, like, put onto tomato salad or something like that.

This is a Turkish variety I picked up on my travels a few years ago.

Really quite a hot little garlic for the size of it.

He's doing a great job with his garlic bulbs, but Mark's also

got something going on in his garden shed that's strictly top secret.

He's discovered a winning formula to make the rare delicacy black garlic.

It's taken me over two years to work out the process.

Black garlic is fermented for 40 days under a controlled heat and humidity.

The amino acids and the waters and the sugars within the bulb

react with each other and turn the inside of the cloves jet black.

Well, first of all, it's just so soft.

A lot of the top chefs are making foams, purees,

and I'll show you how easy it is to make it into a paste.

It's got a flavour of a sweet balsamic vinegar,

smoked liquorish, smoked cardamom, it doesn't taste

anything like normal garlic at all and it's one of our top sellers.

It actually is our top seller.

Another speciality that chefs come to Mark for is scape,

something he only discovered a few years ago.

This is an elephant garlic plant.

At this time of year they produce a stalk, here,

which is called a scape.

We remove the scape to put energy back into the bulb of the plant,

to aid in its swelling and producing nice, big, strong garlics.

Up to two or three years ago that would have just been thrown

on the floor just as a by-product that wasn't even used at all.

And just chatting to a really good chef friend of mine,

he told me that you could eat them,

which was amazing and now we have another product.

Since Mark's discovered that scapes are edible, he's been

experimenting in the kitchen with different ways to use them.

You take the scape and literally split it up the middle.

All of this is totally edible, but you get the absolute beauty of it.

You can steam it, pan-fry it, anything you would do with asparagus,

it's really cool. And it looks amazing on the plate.

It's truly inspiring that this successful family business

grew from only three little garlic bulbs.

These are being bunched up into bundles of 250g

and they're going to be picked up by a courier company

and they're off to London and Bristol,

where they're going to be cooked by top chefs

and they'll be served tomorrow night, which will be fantastic.

It's great to see a farmer who's as passionate about his produce

as I am about cooking it.

So, I've invited Mark along today to cook him

a ready-meal classic using some of his home-grown crop.

This is a fantastic selection of garlic you've brought along here.

What are the main different ones we've got in here? I assume this is the elephant one?

Yep, that's the elephant garlic, yep,

that's the biggest you'll ever get growing in the UK.

Initially comes from Russia.

And what else have we got then, what's this one?

That's Morado, that's really, really hot.

That originally came from southern Spain.

What do you mean hot? I mean, spicy hot?

Spicy, but nearly in the realms of, like, a chilli.

That one will actually make your tongue bleed

-if you actually put it on your tongue.

-Leave that one alone then!

You can see, also, we leave the roots on.

The least damage you can actually do to the bulb,

the longer shelf life the bulb will actually have.

Also, keeping them on the windowsill in the daylight is really, really important.

If you put them in the fridge and try to store them like that,

it's putting them into their dormant state and they'll sprout straight away.

So, when you're storing these at home, windowsill.

Yep, kitchen windowsill.

Now, I thought I'd do a great dish with this, but hark back

to the 1970s because all the best things were invented in the 1970s.

Including this, the chicken Kiev.

Back in 1979, it was successfully launched as the UK's very first

chilled ready meal and it's still just as popular now.

The enticing combination of garlic butter and tender cooked chicken,

all encased in a crispy breadcrumb shell, is a timeless classic.

Should I use something like that?

I wouldn't, I'd go for an Iberian.

I'll use this one, then,

and we're just going to base the... Make this quite simply, really,

because first of all, we need to make the butter itself.

I'll start by dicing up a few cloves of garlic,

then chop up some parsley before adding a modest dose of butter.

Mix in well.

How do people grow garlic at home?

Because it's kind of a hit and miss affair, really.

I've tried it in my garden, it's some degree of success, some not.

It is.

So, people at home, you would take this.

-You could, but I wouldn't.

-You could do it with this.

You could, but I wouldn't recommend it. Basically what happens is,

if you were to take a garlic from Scotland or in Spain

and then grow it here, initially it would not like that climate change.

So, the first year, they probably would grow deformed,

like you just said, you get really bad results, you might get

a solo bulb or something that looks deformed and bursts out of its skin.

But if you then keep those cloves back, dry them

and replant them, then they kind of come zone friendly.

It's what I was like when I moved from Yorkshire to Hampshire, I was too hot.

It's what it was, you see. It's too hot down here.

Garlic butter freezes well

so don't be afraid to make more than you need.

When it's mixed, pop it into some clingfilm and bung it in the fridge.

I'm using a batch I prepared earlier.

Take two skinned supremes of chicken breast and make an incision.

Insert the hardened garlic butter into the pocket.

It's just got this, sort of a nice lump in the centre.

And now, for the Kiev coating.

Using a couple of beaten eggs, some plain flour

and breadcrumbs, we can get on with sealing our chicken.

Now, you said you started it with just three bulbs of garlic,

was that...is that true? You just had...

That is a fact, completely, yep.

So, from the three, each one has six of these, inside,

on an average kind of thing.

So, were up to 18 straight away for the next year

and then I kept doing it for five or six years, seven, eight years,

and it got a bit of a joke and everyone was going,

"You're mad, what are you doing?" and we had a big vegetable patch,

over a quarter of an acre and there was about

5,500-6,000 bulbs just of elephant garlic growing in there.

-And where were you selling this to, because...

-I wasn't.

I wasn't, I was doing it

-because it just looked really cool in the garden.

-Right.

To make sure the garlic butter doesn't leak out,

coat the chicken with flour and eggs twice before the breadcrumbs.

Cook these in a deep-fat fryer for about 8-10 minutes

at 150 degrees Centigrade.

This should make sure the chicken is cooked and golden brown.

While they're cooking, I'll just do

a simple little bean ragout, with garlic as well.

Quickly saute some runner beans, peas, spring onions,

some of Mark's garlic, broad beans and parsley, with a knob of butter.

You've got a wonderful little sauce to go with it.

I'm intrigued by Mark's scapes, so he's brought some along for me to try.

What do you reckon on the flavour of those?

-It's not garlicky, though, is it?

-No, not at all.

It's got asparagus sort of texture.

-Yeah, exactly.

-But really nice.

Eight minutes up, and our Kievs are fried to perfection.

I'm chucking Mark's scapes into the ragout to warm them through.

Both ex-farmers, you see, go on, stick it in there, on there,

and then you can dive in.

Yeah, I'm hoping to see a great big garlicky explosion

-out of the middle.

-Yeah, we got one, yes, you see.

Look at that. I should imagine it's going to be pretty good.

Any good?

Mm. I like the chicken with the bone on, that's really nice.

It's nice, just a nice little touch.

You just charge an extra fiver for that in a restaurant.

It's like all the best things were born in the '70s.

Hm, for sure. Not like you, though.

-I was born in the '70s.

-Were you?

-Yeah!

Cheeky beggar! The years might not have been kind to me,

but these home-made chicken Kievs taste every bit as good

as their pioneering cousins from the 1970s.

People have always needed grub that's tasty and convenient.

Food historian Ivan Day is exploring the story of an 18th-century dish

that would have made a great TV dinner

if there'd been anything to watch in those days.

If I was to hunt through all the ancient recipes to see

if I could find an ancient equivalent of a modern

home-cooked ready meal, I'm sure I would choose a remarkable pie

from a recipe from 1727,

and it's for something called a sweet lamb pie.

This multi-purpose pie contained meat, two veg,

and even the elements of a sweet dish.

So, it was, in fact, a complete family meal in a pastry package.

There are many ways of making these pies which are self-contained,

they're not baked in a pie dish, so they have to stand up.

I'm going to use this pastry, which is a remarkable material

because it's like modelling paste

but it's also incredibly good to eat.

It's made by rubbing some fat into some flour in the usual way

and then actually adding a lot of egg yolks

and it's the egg yolks that give it strength.

Once a circle was cut out for the base,

the serious work of building the pie case got under way.

It's so strong that I can flex it around very, very gently

to make the walls of the pie without it collapsing.

And then, I just stretch it

so that those two thin walls can be joined together.

To ensure there were no gaps or holes, a special gadget called

a pastry jagger was used.

But by pushing it in like that, it's actually joining

the wall to the base.

And finally, a spoon and water were used to iron out any imperfections.

What I've got to do with this next is to just put it

in a cold place and get the fillings prepared.

This is a pie from what we call the Baroque period and it's a time

when people liked real complexity in music and decorations in churches

and in architecture, and the food is very, very similar.

This is the sort of complicated pie that they loved back at this time.

Less certainly wasn't more in those days - more is more.

The first of many ingredients in this elaborate Sweet Lamb Pie

were, unsurprisingly, lamb and sugar.

The sugar in these pies acts as a flavour enhancer.

It's there but you hardly notice it, but it's lifting the flavour.

Adding grated nutmeg and ground mace and cloves

gave this dish a spicy kick.

The story goes that a lot of these ingredients first came to England

with returning crusaders who were often

living in the Middle East for years and got used to the local diet.

Sweet meatballs made with lamb mince, suet, sugar,

spices and currants were also added into the pie.

And finally,

so I can bind this all together, I've got the yolks of two eggs.

Once the lamb and the meatballs were added to the pie case,

they were topped with a layer of artichoke and sweet potatoes.

Unlike the orange ones we're used to seeing today,

these sweet spuds were white.

These were the very first potatoes that we had in Britain

in the 16th century

and it's amazing to know that sweet potatoes were actually eaten during

Shakespeare's lifetime and eaten mainly in puddings as a sweet dish.

A sprinkling of candied fruit and a knob of butter were

the final flourishes in this amazingly complicated pie.

The lid was put on,

and the pastry jagger was used again to seal up the whole pie case.

What I really want to do is to make it much more

like the highly decorated pies of this period

and they had special equipment to do that.

Carved wooden boards, called pie boards, were used as moulds.

With them, pastry chefs would create all kinds of amazing decorations.

The final crowning glory to my pie

is something which was known as a haystack.

That is my finished sweet lamb pie.

This 18th-century, home-cooked ready meal

took just an hour and a half in the oven.

So, it's not quite as handy as a microwave dinner.

But before it could be tasted, the lid was taken off,

so that the final flavouring could be added.

A sauce, which was usually like a wine custard, it was egg yolks

mixed up with wine, bit of sugar,

sometimes some lemon juice, is then poured into the pie.

What does a sweet lamb pie taste like?

Well, let's start with the top.

This is really like a sweet potato custard, it's the pudding, in a way.

And it's very good.

Let's see if I can find one of those little sweet meatballs.

Hm.

It is definitely sweet, but the acidity of the wine

and the lemon juice allay it, so it's perfectly delicious.

Then, finally, there's the lamb itself.

Hm, oh. It's cooked beautifully.

Isn't it a shame that most of us don't make pies like this any more?

Because this really, I think, is the perfect home-made ready meal.

Ivan's fancy pie gives us

a good example of how ready meals have changed over the years.

Thankfully, these days we have our mains

and pudding as separate dishes.

Ready-made desserts are a popular pudding short cut for those of us

who don't have too much time to spare.

But my strawberry and white chocolate cheesecake is

far tastier than anything from the chiller cabinet.

A delicious blend of strawberries, cream and white chocolate

that can be put together from scratch in less than half an hour.

Now, this dish is really simple, it comes from the home

of the ready-made meal, I suppose, the United States of America.

Their version of a cheesecake is baked, this one is actually set,

although this is almost instant because you don't really need to set it.

But what I'm going to do is I'm going to serve it with

a little bit of white chocolate

and we're going to create these little shards with it.

So grab yourself some white chocolate

because this is a great combination with strawberries.

First, I need to melt the white chocolate over a bain-marie.

In Yorkshire terms, a "pan of 'at watter", basically.

Whilst this is melting, get some clingfilm

and wrap it around a baking tray.

I'll pour the melted chocolate over this later.

Chocolate will only take about two or three minutes to melt,

which gives us enough time to create our lovely jelly to go with it.

Now, you can actually use your own bought-in jelly, it's entirely

up to you for this, but I'm going to make my own, purely due to the fact

that I've got some lovely fresh strawberries in the garden.

It's an incredibly quick and easy thing to do.

Just chop up some strawberries,

cover with 40ml of water, then add 25 grams of sugar.

Simmer this for 8-10 minutes.

While that's going, soak some leaf gelatine in cold water

and set aside.

This chocolate is now ready and we can pour this onto our tray.

What I'm going to do is spread this nice and evenly over the tray.

And also, you've got a little bit of chocolate left over.

And then stick this in the freezer to get it really cold.

Only wants about five or six minutes to get it nice and chilled.

Now, over to our jelly, which is nearly done.

So at this point, you can take your little sieve

and carefully pour this through.

So, you get this lovely clear liquid which tastes of strawberries.

Once the gelatine has softened,

dissolve it into the strawberry infusion.

And when it's cooled, I'm going to use it to make a fancy glaze.

A ready-made flan base cuts a few corners.

I'm going to use one of these fancy rings that I've got in my house

but you can use a biscuit tin,

cut the base out with a tin opener, you've got a round one.

Cut it into your desired shape

and for a rich, luxurious touch, drizzle on some raspberry liqueur.

So, now I can concentrate on my filling.

This is really quick and straightforward.

You need a decent bowl,

and then it's really a combination of three ingredients.

To fill a mould this size, I'm using 200g of cream cheese

and the same amount of full-fat creme fraiche.

Then add 300ml of double cream.

To this, I'm going to add the seeds from two vanilla pods,

before mixing it all together with 100g of caster sugar.

And then you need elbow grease because you need to whisk this

until the cream starts to thicken,

which should take about three or four minutes.

Now, so often with cheesecakes, they're set with something

like gelatine and you get this horrible, distinct taste,

but doing it this way it keeps it lovely and light,

but it happens quite quickly.

So, when you get to this stage you can see the mix is starting to thicken.

Keep going.

You don't want to go too much,

otherwise it's going to split the cream.

But that's about there.

And you take this filling and pop it in.

The best way to do this, really, is to press it in, first of all.

Once it's all smoothed over, top it with some fresh strawberries.

If you're going to do this, put plenty of stuff on there.

You don't want anybody fighting for the little bits that are left over.

Now, the best way to take rings off things like this and mousses

is to actually warm it up and you can do it two ways, either use

a hot cloth, where you get it warm round the edge, that way it just

loosens up the mixture, but the best way, I find, is to use a blowtorch.

Just warm up the edge on one side, same on the other side

and the same on this side.

Remember, give the metal a few seconds to cool before lifting it off.

And then, you've got your jelly,

just a little bit over the top, fill in any gaps.

And then, of course, we've got our white chocolate.

And you can take this out. Now, the best way to do that is just

basically use a knife.

Cut through the clingfilm...

..and then break it,

because what we're after is sort of shards of this.

Thing with white chocolate, you need to make sure it's really cold.

So, freezing it is a really good idea.

The best part of this is, of course, the tasting.

Sure enough, you've worked up an appetite, but it's payback time.

That's delicious.

The white chocolate and the fresh strawberries from the garden.

Life doesn't get any better, does it, really?

Knocked up in half an hour and made with strawberries

picked from my very own garden, this cheesecake is, to me,

more ready meal than anything you can buy in the shops.

When I was a kid, harvesting my grandad's home grown fruit and veg

was the fastest way to make a ready meal.

But it's a fact of life that these days, ready meals are something

that many people buy from shops

and not something that they can grow and pick themselves.

Fortunately, up in my home county of Yorkshire,

there's a team of people looking to inspire the next generation of kids

to produce their own ready meals.

So, spinach doesn't need a right lot of light, at all, to grow.

Oh, in the darkness it's coriander.

-Coriander's growing all right.

-Yeah.

-That's interesting, isn't it?

Pam Warhurst is one of the leading lights behind this unique

lottery-funded educational facility, teaching schoolchildren of all ages

ingenious ways of growing their own food.

Ready meals are not all about stuff in plastic and it's not

all about stuff that comes from the other side of the planet.

Ready meals are healthy food that you've grown locally

that you know yourself what's in it and you can be really pleased

that you're giving your kids a healthy option.

Oh, that's fantastic, you might have to hold that in your hand.

Teacher Aine Douglas is committed to getting kids to understand

the basic origins of what we eat.

Today, she's helping kids pick veg to put into a salad for later.

Right, so, when we get through here, if you spot something ripe,

how do we know if a tomato is ripe, Daniel?

Because you can see it's red.

With 35% of the salads we buy going to waste,

it's one ready meal that really pays to grow yourself.

For many years, this country and a lot of the western world

has been focused on finding labour-saving devices for everything,

you know, we're very luxurious and I think people have lost that

connection with food because it's so easy to buy convenience food.

And what I've seen as a teacher,

and as a mum, is a whole generation of children growing up not knowing

that cucumber doesn't have plastic on it naturally, for instance.

So, for Aine, educating children to appreciate that healthy,

tasty, ready meals are something that we can grow ourselves is

something we should all be doing.

And did you notice, look, these are all ready to eat already,

isn't that fantastic? So, we've just grown them,

all we did is walk down and pick them, and they're ready for eating.

But here, they're not just teaching the kids

the merits of growing their own food,

they also get to cook with it.

Fantastic. So, what we're going to do, we're going to make pizza today

because, at home, everybody has pizzas.

In the UK, the ready-made pizza market is worth

a staggering £375 million a year.

It's one of our most popular ready meals.

But here in Todmorden, the kids are taught how to make them from scratch.

Young children have grown up thinking that

if you want to do something quick, you take off a packet,

you put it on an oven dish or in a microwave

and what's important is to show that actually, it can be far, far,

far quicker and more enjoyable to make a ready meal from

something you're growing yourself or something that you've done yourself.

There couldn't be anything more ready than fresh salad,

fresh fruit and that sort of thing.

So very much, they're seeing it doesn't have to take

three quarters of an hour and a shopping trip

to put something onto the table.

So, that's a ready-made ready meal of a pizza and side salad,

all picked and cooked in no time at all.

-What's your very favourite bit, Ava?

-Picking them.

Picking was your favourite, was it?

And what's your favourite taste on your plate today?

-The tomato.

-The tomato, is it? What about you, Carol?

The salad.

The salad, ah... What about you, Daniel?

-Tomato.

-The tomatoes, how gorgeous!

Well, it's been fantastic, you have been top chefs and top pickers.

So, I think what I'm seeing now is a real delight that's springing

with the generation of young people,

aged four, who come here, and onwards, who are now seeing

it's very, very natural to go out and to grow something,

pick it, bring it in and actually use it on their own table.

It's great to know that this class at least won't lose sight

of the fact that not all ready meals come in packets.

Just like the school,

in my garden this summer, I've had a bumper crop of tomatoes.

Making a quality home-made tomato sauce out of them will give me

something I can freeze and use in all sorts of meals.

This, for me, has to be the ultimate ready meal.

It's a tomato and basil sauce, a classic Italian staple.

Italian dishes are one of the most popular ready made meals in the UK

and many are based around a quality tomato sauce.

I'm going to use my home-made tomato sauce three ways.

It'll make a tasty dressing

for a rustic bread and tomato panzanella salad.

It's perfect with pasta.

And it makes a brilliant accompanying sauce for

a fresh-grilled tuna steak.

But first, we need to make the sauce.

You need a decent amount of garlic, about four cloves, really, for this.

Just dice these up.

In a pan, heat up a decent amount of good-quality olive oil

before adding the garlic.

We're not frying it, we're just warming the garlic through to release its flavour.

Now, the whole point about this sort of tomato sauce is that

if you've got the advantage of fresh tomatoes at the bottom

of your garden, you can use them.

But I find the combination of tinned tomatoes

and fresh works just as good.

You can actually just make this with tinned tomatoes

but you've got to buy really good quality ones.

So you just bring this to the boil

and gently simmer it together with some basil leaves,

and the oil actually emulsifies into the tomatoes

which creates a lovely little sauce.

And the great thing about this dish is that once you've cooked

a big batch of it, you can store it in the fridge or it'll freeze

really well and you can use it throughout the rest of the week.

Now, for my first dish that we're going to create using

this sauce is a panzanella.

The basis for a panzanella salad is crusty bread.

Cut this up into chunks, then fry it off with the olive oil

to crisp it up.

And then we can make the dressing for this, which is great.

Take some of your tomato sauce

and blitz it with some red wine or sherry vinegar.

Don't be tempted to use malt vinegar, it won't taste the same.

And then, I'm going to serve it with these fabulous tomatoes that

I've got growing in the bottom of my garden,

which you just basically chop up.

We throw the tomatoes in, little bit of basil, as well.

Add the crispy bread along with a few anchovies for a salty kick.

And just have a quick taste before.

It's the vinegar, it's that red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar

that adds a real kick to it and you pour this over the top.

You can be quite generous with it.

The bread will soak up the juice.

Season with salt and pepper, and it's done.

And then we can grab our next dish.

This is great, it's just a real simple tuna steak.

Season the tuna steak with cracked black pepper

and some salt, then rub over a little oil.

When you use a griddle pan, always oil the food, not the pan.

Now, while this is cooking, I'm just going to spice up

our lovely little sauce to go with it.

Finely chop a chilli, seeds and all, and add it to our ready-made sauce.

Salt.

Little bit of black pepper.

And I have the same obsessions when I'm cooking a steak

to when I'm cooking tuna, I keep telling everybody,

it's already dead, you don't need to kill it again.

So, it wants to be just nice and pink,

medium rare in the centre, that way you'll get all this lovely flavour.

So, once it's sealed on one side, turn it,

and then you only need to turn it again.

So, flip it over and you get this wonderful charred mark.

So, cook it the same the other side.

Our sauce is almost done.

Lift this off.

Little drizzle with the old oil... over the top.

And then, of course, we've got our pasta

and for that, I've got my gadget out.

My gadget in my kitchen,

So, live with me for this one because this is my pasta machine.

This machine churns out tons of the stuff.

A bag of super-fine 00 flour gets us under way

and follow that with another whole bag of semolina flour.

I got this at a food show

and some Italian was very good at flogging me stuff

and I actually went for a new oven and came back with a pasta machine.

Chuck in a dozen eggs, yolks and all, and it's good to go.

Of course, you can always buy fresh pasta

if you don't have a gadget like this.

This forces the mixture through here

and then you can rotate this little spinning blade,

which cuts the pasta.

Mmm! And it's warm as well, look at that! It's warm.

Every time I use this, I just love it.

To be honest with you, you do need a lot of mates who like pasta

because this produces about three kilos of the stuff at any one time

but, to me, it's a thing of beauty.

I need to get out more, but you just get these small little shells,

like that, and let them naturally dry out,

only for about an hour, and you get this beautiful pasta.

How cool is that? I just think it's brilliant.

And when you've stopped admiring it,

you need to cook it in a pan of boiling salted water.

And then you throw in the pasta.

Now, fresh pasta like this takes 30 seconds, 45 seconds, to cook.

But you can use penne pasta at home.

The ideal pasta, really, when you're serving anything with tomatoes

is something that's got ridges in it,

because all that lovely sauce goes into all these lovely ridges.

Alternatively, phone me up and I'll send you some of this,

I've got plenty.

As soon as it's cooked, we'll drain it off.

Now, the key to any good pasta dish

is to finish off the cooking in the sauce.

For some reason us Brits just end up with a pile of dry pasta

and chuck the sauce on the top.

Good pinch of salt.

I personally would put a knob of butter in there, but...

the Italians watching this might get a little bit upset, but that's

how I'd finish it off. But you've got this wonderful fresh pasta.

You've got a great tomato sauce.

Because it's for TV...

..on there, nice little drizzle of olive oil

and there you have it.

Don't like that bit.

So, there you have it, three meals with one sauce, easy as that.

Whether it's an American, Chinese or Italian dish,

us Brits are big fans of the ready meal.

But these days, all those international flavours don't

have to come out of a packet.

With a little prep and a few choice ingredients,

I believe our favourite ready meals can act as inspiration for us

to start cooking these very same dishes at home.

So, in an age where convenience is king, why not take a little time

to cook your very own ready meal,

just the way you like it?

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