Quick and Easy James Martin: Home Comforts

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

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

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

Oh, oh, oh, it is so good.

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

Cheers, everyone.

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

These are my home comforts.

Growing up, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by great food,

but life is lived at a slower pace when you're a kid.

These days, the time I spend at home is very precious, and a great chance

to make the simple home-cooked food that I like to eat.

These days, we all lead busy lives and not many of us have

the time to create gourmet meals at home.

With great store cupboard ingredients like this,

it's so simple to create quick

and easy meals without compromising on flavour and taste.

So I'll be sharing some of my favourite fast recipes with you.

Making convenient comfort food.

Quick and tasty takeaway favourites.

Oh-ho! Nobody's having any of this.

And devilish desserts, all knocked up in minutes.

It's classic home cooking in a flash,

using the best British ingredients.

Breathing new life into forgotten fruits.

People are really scared of the gooseberry,

but, really, it's a hidden gem.

We meet an award-winning home cook who wants to spice up

your life with her fast food short cuts.

And food historian Ivan Day

dusts off the Georgian answer to the microwave.

I'm really keen to see whether it is actually edible.

But first up, I'm going to start with a simple

and speedy two-course meal, all made in less than 25 minutes.

Pork tenderloin with prunes and Armagnac,

and a pudding of Bramley marzipan slice.

A winning combination in anyone's book.

It actually sounds like there's a lot going on here

but it's pretty simple to do a two-course meal in half an hour

and I'm going to start with pudding.

I'm doing it this way around to make things quick and easy.

Once the pudding is baking in the oven, I'll have plenty of time

to prepare the main.

So the first thing we do is take our Bramley apples.

Now these are really the king of all apples, in my mind.

Chop them up into decent sort of sized pieces.

Too small, they'll go into a puree,

too large, they'll take too long to cook.

Pop the chopped apples into a pan.

Then add 75g of caster sugar, a knob of butter

and a splash of water.

Going to cook these for about sort of 10 to 15 minutes.

Now you don't have to make your own apple sauce, you can buy it.

The apple sauce that you serve with pork would be great for this,

cos you've got a decent amount of sugar with the marzipan, but what

you do need to do, once it's cooked, is cool it. And I've got some here.

Because this is actually really quick and simple

when you get to this stage.

When you're cooking at home, there's no shame in using short cuts.

Roll out a sheet of shop-bought all-butter puff pastry.

Then butter up a baking tray.

Again, no poncey gadgets, use your fingers.

Thinly slice a half block of quality marzipan then add to the pastry,

to create a sweet base for the apple sauce.

You just spread this apple mixture over the top.

Don't put too much on, but keep within that frame.

So I need egg wash now.

Separate the yolks of two eggs and paint it around the edges.

Take the other bit of pastry, fold it over, to like a book.

Press it down lightly and then take a sharp knife

and then about 45 degree angles, you cut the pastry through.

Now make sure when you're cutting you cut it through the folded side.

Then you lift this pastry up, pop it straight over the top

and when it rises and puffs up you get this really distinct

sort of effect to the tartlet.

But press this down because you've egg washed it round the edge as well

and then egg wash the top.

Now all we need to do now is just sprinkle this

with some Demerara sugar.

The Demerara will give it a lovely texture

but also colour when it cooks.

And I've set the oven quite high for this,

it's about 200C, 400 Fahrenheit,

and this wants to cook for about 25 to 30 minutes, because the main

thing is you've got to make sure that the base of the pastry cooks.

So straight in the oven.

Now, while that's cooking, I'm going to show you how to do a main course

which is really quick.

It's pork with prunes and Armagnac.

Cut the pork into half-inch medallions, cover with clingfilm

and give it a good wallop with anything flat and heavy.

My weapon of choice is a pan.

Done, finished.

Lift this off, then you've got these flattened-out pieces of pork fillet.

The reason for that is we're going to cook them quite quickly.

I'm going to pan fry it, of course, in a little bit of butter.

Now pork fillet doesn't contain any fat, or very little fat.

So the way you cook it, is actually really important.

One thing you don't want to be doing is overcooking it.

So we just get a little bit of colour on this.

Now I'm going to cheat and I'm going to use some of this,

because I love this stuff.

This is bought-in mashed potato.

But what I'm going to do is make it a little bit better, double cream.

Just a touch, and of course, little knob of butter in there as well.

And we're just going to warm this up at the same time as our pork cooks.

When the medallions have coloured nicely - it should

take two minutes on each side - take them out and let them rest.

Now while we've got that ready, we're going to take our shallot

and just chop it small. Now this is for our sauce.

The sauce for this is really quick.

It uses some prunes and some good quality Armagnac.

Now I think this is good quality,

because Ainsley Harriot bought me this bottle for my 40th birthday.

So if this, when I flambe it, goes up in flames about eight foot high,

it's the cheap stuff. And I will find out, Ainsley.

Yeah, Ainsley, that's the cheap stuff!

To the Armagnac, add 200ml of chicken stock

and about the same of double cream.

Bring to the boil and, voila, a classic decadent French sauce!

Our mashed potato's not far off and now before we add our pork

back into here we can then get our prunes.

I'm just going to take the stones out for this one

and don't chop them up,

because otherwise they're going to sort of break up.

And we bring the sauce together. Now we can add our pork back in

and when you've got all the pork in, turn up the heat.

Now all we need to do now is just season this sauce

with a bit of salt,

just a touch of ground black pepper,

just to finish it off and then we've got the cheat's mashed potato.

Hide the packet and nobody'll ever know.

This sauce just tastes...

Wah.

May be cheap Armagnac, but it's good stuff still.

And then of course we've got this, 25, 30 minutes to cook

and just look at that, how impressive does that look?

Because you've used the all-butter puff pastry, it's lovely and light.

This sweet apple and marzipan slice goes perfectly with ice cream

or custard, but today I fancy some clotted cream.

And a decent dollop of it as well.

It's quick,

it's simple,

but, by heck, it's delicious.

So there you go!

Knowing some crafty short cuts can buy you enough time to knock up

a main and a pudding from scratch in less than 30 minutes!

Choose the right time-saving ingredients,

and they'll do the work for you.

In the UK, we're lucky to have some great produce

right on our doorsteps.

When I was growing up in Yorkshire,

gooseberries were a very popular ingredient in Britain.

We used them in pies, wines, puddings and jams.

But somewhere along the way, they fell out of fashion.

Now, only a few miles from where I grew up, one man is trying to put

the humble gooseberry back on the map.

Award-winning farmer Karl Aveson.

I'm so passionate about the gooseberry

I feel that it's such an underrated fruit.

I think people are really scared of the gooseberry, they think

that the bush is spiky, very hard to pick,

and then when they do pick it, it is sour

but, really, it's sort of a hidden gem, really.

Karl runs a pick-your-own farm, with eight acres of soft fruit,

including 60 of his beloved gooseberry bushes.

I'm the fourth-generation farmer of the Aveson family.

My great-grandad bought the farm 100 years ago.

We've had a series of different types of farming through

the years - arable, beef farming -

and since I left college, I diversified into the pick-your-own.

There are many different types of gooseberry,

but Karl's growing a particularly hardy breed called Invicta.

It produces shedloads of fruit, but almost the same

amount of thorns, which can put some people off.

So one way to avoid the spikes and one way to pick them

is to lift them up.

There you find the gooseberries hanging vertically down,

so they're quite easy to see and they're quite easy to pick off.

Gooseberries are one of the earliest fruits to ripen in Britain.

The season runs from late May to the end of July

and deciding when to pick them

depends what you want to do with them.

Early on, they are hard and bitter, but great for cooking.

You can see that the skins are very firm and they're a nice colour.

I'll give it a taste.

That is far too tart but perfect for the baker -

he would love that, the firmness and the flavour is absolutely spot on.

Boiled up with some sugar, they make fantastic crumbles and pies

and one of my all-time favourite puddings, gooseberry fool.

Later in the season, they're softer and sweeter.

These gooseberries here are just turning pink now.

Give them another couple of weeks

and these will be perfect to just eat from the bush.

Karl is so passionate about promoting the gooseberry

that he's even started up a kids' farm club where children can

see how they grow, and give the riper ones a try.

What do they look like, anyway, what would you say?

-Grapes.

-Hairy grapes.

-They look like a grape.

-They do, yeah.

They do look like they have spikes on.

-The spikes are there to protect the gooseberries.

-Oh.

-Mm, nice.

-You like it?

-Yeah.

It's really sweet to see

when they do taste the gooseberry for the first time and it's not

so unpleasant and when they pick it, they don't prick their fingers.

It's sour-sweet but it's nice.

That's great, we've got another gooseberry follower now.

While Karl is promoting this British classic in the field,

daughter Chloe is fighting its cause in the farm cafe.

I've always been around gooseberries

since I was probably about one year old.

When Dad started up the pick-your-own farm.

It's something that needs to be, to be shown to everyone that they

can be really tasty and a lot of people are a bit put off by them.

Today, she's serving up their latest creation,

a modern twist on a traditional Bakewell tart.

So it's gooseberry and elderflower that's been boiled down with sugar.

This gets spooned into pre-baked sweet pastry cases,

topped with an almond sponge and sprinkled with flaked almonds.

It's just to get everyone a bit more interested

and so that's what we're trying to do at the moment,

is try to get recipes together so that we can, we can show people

that, you know they, they can be tasty and enjoyable.

Chloe and her dad are doing everything possible

to get gooseberries back into the hearts and minds

of the British public.

It's a crusade that seems to be working.

A tart like this would beat the Bakewell tart that everybody

-seems to know.

-Wow.

I'm trying to think what it's like but it's not like anything -

it's just like gooseberry.

Very nice.

Reminds me of when I was a child in the '60s.

When I was with my grandparents and they lived on a smallholding

and we used to go out picking fruit -

gooseberries being one of the fruits - and making pies.

And that's beautiful and it just brings back

all those lovely memories.

It's so nice to see people try the gooseberry

and it makes it all worthwhile growing the fruit.

The sales of gooseberries have gone up in the shop and in the cafe,

so therefore our work is fulfilled, really.

It's great to see the gooseberry getting a new lease of life,

and to meet a family who are as passionate about them as I am.

So I've invited Karl and Chloe into my kitchen to experience

how quick and easy gooseberries can be, if you give them a chance!

Funnily enough, when I actually first came down here,

the first thing I built was the garden, the bottom of the garden,

before I built my house, I built the garden.

And the garden was, to me, the important bit

-because my granddad used to have an allotment.

-Yeah.

And I... First thing I planted was apple trees,

-gooseberries and tomatoes, they were the first thing.

-Yeah.

Gooseberries have been OK, not the greatest crop,

-I think it's the heat, more than anything else.

-Yeah.

-They need a bit of cold with it as well.

-They do like cold, yeah.

Yeah, don't get really get that down here with the south-facing garden,

-all that stuff.

-You get more flavour with cold as well.

Guys, I was thinking what dish I could do with the gooseberry,

particularly your gooseberries, and we've got a pile of them here

and I thought, mackerel as a great combination,

mackerel and gooseberries.

This is a dish that I invented in the restaurant and it's one

of those that I cook at home a lot, particularly with gooseberries from

the garden, because it's so quick and easy and it tastes fantastic.

I think my dressed-to-impress mackerel en croute with

a super-quick gooseberry chutney is a gourmet classic.

A surprising flavour combination, that just works.

What I'm first of all going to do is take the bone out of the mackerel

but keep it whole.

and to do that you quickly just go underneath the gills like this.

Now, it's much better if you get your fishmonger to do it for you,

remove the head, because not everybody likes looking at it

staring at you on the dish as well. So remove this.

And then you start at one end and work your way through.

So you've got this ribcage that you can see and this is the reason

why I don't think mackerel's so popular, because of the bones.

So you start underneath the little ribcage like that.

You cut along the backbone and then you do the other side.

Then get your finger underneath

and just pull.

-Do you think you can do this in the cafe?

-No.

-THEY LAUGH

-Might need to order these in, then!

So when did the restaurant start? Because I know that you started

with all manner of different stuff on the farm.

We started the farm shop and cafe about seven...

-We're in our seventh year now.

-Right.

So previous to that, we did pick-your-own for 20 years.

Right. Is that profitable, or is that... Don't people nick it?

-There's...

-Yeah.

There's that eat one...

I've had quite a few incidents with people pinching

and making a bit of a pig of their selves.

But the majority of people are good.

But why, why gooseberries for your farm, is it the soil?

What is it about it?

Well, initially when we first started we needed a big enough variety

of fruit so that once the strawberries finish,

there's always something else to go on

and, gooseberries, I know it's a very old-fashioned fruit,

but there's always that clientele that like baking themselves.

The younger generation, it's an acquired taste, really, I think.

Definitely. They're so good to work with other things, they bring out

the flavours in everything else and they're really good.

We're going to put them with some salmon,

so we're going to make a little salmon mousse.

So easy, just a squeeze of lemon,

this just tightens up the flesh, good pinch of salt.

Bit of black pepper.

Into your blender.

Switch this on.

So then we throw in some double cream.

It's roughly equal quantities.

-That is your salmon mousse done.

-It's so quick.

Yeah, and if you'd make it with smoked salmon exactly the same way.

-Yeah.

-You can serve it straight away.

Grab the deboned fillets

and fill with a tablespoon of the salmon mousse.

Add a sprig of tarragon and roll out a sheet of shop-brought puff pastry

then cut it into two smaller rectangles.

And what you're trying to get is like a, like a pasty.

I'm then just going to get a little bit of egg wash.

Now the great thing about this is

because we've got the salmon in there,

which is delicious with tarragon,

but also with the mackerel - they kind of work together

but you can mix and match the different flavours.

If you didn't want to do this and you wanted to be really posh,

you can use scallops.

Chloe, this is where you get to work.

All those hours in the kitchen

are going to pay off for this one, you see.

Take a little cutter, and then you make little indentations.

-It's fish scales.

-Very pretty.

Well, I could get him to do it, but you know, you know -

-a farmer and all that sort of stuff.

-More finesse.

-Is that all right?

-Thank you.

-I'll leave that with you.

The great thing about this is this is a brilliant dinner party dish

because you can prepare this in advance, together with

the chutney, and this will keep in the fridge overnight.

The chutney will keep overnight and you can warm both of them up

and cook the mackerel as and when you need it.

You're doing a not bad job there.

Missed one there, you see, it was all going too well till that bit.

See, until you said I was doing all right.

Yeah, you've just messed it up now.

The pastry will ensure the mackerel

and salmon mousse filling stays moist as it cooks.

Cover the tails in buttered tinfoil to stop them from burning.

And then we pop them in a hot oven - 200C, 400 Fahrenheit.

For about 12 to 15 minutes to cook.

So while they're cooking, we're going to do our chutney.

Going to throw in some sugar first and what we're going to do is

caramelise this in the pan.

And this is a crucial part where you get the caramel flavour first,

which... Because this gets to about 130C,

it speeds up the cooking time, really, really fast.

While the sugar caramelises in the pan, chop a shallot,

and a thumb-sized piece of ginger.

Chuck it all in, along with a handful of sultanas.

Now for a good glug of one of my favourite chutney ingredients -

cider vinegar.

It's fantastic, this stuff. You get a really good flavour.

So cider vinegar in and I suppose we ought to

throw in some of these gooseberries, couple of handfuls with this.

They go in the pan and then a good pinch of salt.

I think with a gooseberry as well, with freezing it, you can sort of

bring it out of the freezer and it's still got that structure, hasn't it?

Well, it'll speed up the cooking time as well,

-because these have been frozen I take it, as well, these ones?

-Yes.

Yeah, these have been frozen but you know, either/or,

it's going to take probably no more than about eight minutes to cook.

Just enough time for the mackerel to cook through

and that puff pastry to do its thing.

It's a Yorkshire portion because I knew you were coming, you see.

And then you've got your chutney.

You see the colour, you get that from that caramelised sugar.

Yeah, that looks good.

So you jar that, I reckon you'll get about four quid a jar.

Yeah, I reckon we could, yeah.

Yeah, I know where your mind's thinking - I know that.

Five with your name on it.

-Oh, here we go, ha-ha.

-Fantastic.

-I just think it looks great, tastes great.

-Yeah.

-Can we dive in?

-Tell me what you think.

-Right.

It's like the best fish pasty, if there is such a thing.

Hm, that is lovely.

The chutney is beautiful.

-That is gorgeous.

-Gooseberries taste fantastic in it.

Well, they would, they're from Yorkshire, aren't they?

Absolutely, yeah.

You can really taste the, the sharpness of the gooseberries

but then with that, all that sugar in there that's just...

With the oiliness of the fish,

-that's why it works well with mackerel, you see.

-Mm.

Yeah, it just goes so well together.

-Good - I'm glad you enjoyed it.

-Mm, very good.

-Thanks for coming.

-Delicious.

Thanks for inviting us.

Thanks for bringing your gooseberries.

So there you have it,

a simple, speedy way to get the best from the wonderful gooseberry.

Paired perfectly with the marvellous mackerel

in a dish that is sure to impress.

For many of us,

quick and easy food simply involves a trip down to the takeaway.

But for those of us who enjoy creating quality food ourselves,

a number of small-scale producers up and down the country

have developed some ingeniously tasty products,

to help cut a few corners in the kitchen when time is tight.

Inspired by the exotic flavours of her childhood,

Ascot-based Shemin MacGregor has created a range of authentic curry pastes

helping cooks knock up their favourite flavoursome curry at home, in no time at all.

I grew up in Uganda, in the city of Kampala.

My family originally came from Gujarat in India,

but, in 1971, because of the Idi Amin regime, we came to the UK.

As a young girl, I used to watch my mum

and my aunts cooking in the kitchen.

I learned how to use herbs and spices

because I could see how they used them, what proportions

they used them in and how they made the dishes different.

When we left Uganda and came here, she was all the time with me.

In the kitchen, in the shop, because she was very fond of food.

She was quite tubby as well, you know!

THEY LAUGH

Her mum might not be doing the cooking any more,

but making food is still very much a family affair.

Shemin's son Jamie often lends a helping hand.

I grew up with this curry paste -

eating all the food that it can cook.

When I went to university, I really missed the fact that

I didn't have this nice cooking around.

So, my mum would always give me some of the paste to take with me.

So when my children went to university and I was sitting around

twiddling my thumbs, I thought, well, right, this is the time.

Let's do it.

And the business was born.

Six months later, it wasn't just Jamie who was

appreciating his mother's recipes.

Here in my home kitchen, we make about 600 or 700 pots every ten days.

So it's quite a production process.

They're so popular that Shemin has expanded her range

and now produces four different pastes.

So today, I'm making my medium curry paste.

So we're going to start off with some ginger.

I remember when I was watching my mum cook, you know

how they used to peel the garlic and ginger

and it was lovely to watch.

And now I do that for my curry pastes which I really

love doing, you know, because it reminds me of when I was a child.

So we put the salt in the garlic and ginger before we crush it,

because it draws the liquid out of the garlic and the ginger,

so it makes it easier to pound and makes a better paste.

And of course, just the way my mum used to do it.

So I do the same thing.

Well, the pestle and mortar's quite special, actually,

because we came from Uganda as refugees.

Of course, we didn't get everything here but one of the things

we did get was our pestle and mortar, which we still have today.

So it's really special and it's done a lot of cooking.

After we've done that, we add some sunflower oil to it,

that gives us a really good base now to put in our spices.

Making curry is easy in some ways but difficult in another,

if you get the spices all wrong, the flavours all wrong,

your curry's going to taste awful.

First, I'm going to start with cumin.

So next I put in ground coriander.

The secret of making a good curry is having the balance of spices.

Next, we're going to add colour to my curry paste

and we'll do that using turmeric.

Last, I use chilli and that also adds a beautiful colour as well.

So now that we've put in all the spices, I start mixing

the spices up and this creates the beautiful paste that we use.

We add the coriander, mix it all up,

and this is Shemin's curry paste.

Made at home in small batches with fresh ingredients,

Shemin's curry paste has developed quite a following.

And it's easy to understand why.

Pre-prepared spicy fragrant curry pastes have the ability

to transform time-consuming Indian recipes into delicious dishes

that can be knocked up in no time at all.

I myself find it so quick and easy to use

when I have a dinner party, or when I have people over.

So, yes, I use it a lot for that.

A curry paste can be used in a variety of ways.

Combined with yoghurt it makes a marinade for lamb tikka.

Mixed in with onion and tomato,

the paste adds flavour to a five-minute sauce for Bombay aloo.

Or just coat it onto some veg before roasting

and you've got three delicious dishes, in a flash.

And when you've got the whole family to feed,

time-saving ingredients are worth their weight in gold.

-Have some, Angie.

-So this is, they're shallots. Yeah?

They're shallots. Banana shallots.

When I made my curry paste, I knew my mum would use it

because, of course, she's my mum, we made it together,

but what was really amazing for me was her friends,

who really cook beautiful food themselves,

now use my curry paste because they also love it.

And it's quick and easy for them and that, for me, was fantastic.

-Well done.

-Cheers.

-Well done. Lovely dinner.

-MAN: Cheers, Shemin.

Mum, I can't reach you.

After seeing that lovely spread,

I'm keen to whip up a classic Indian dish using Shemin's paste.

For me, there's nothing quicker

and tastier than a chicken curry with basmati rice.

When you understand about Indian cookery, you really

understand that they use an awful lot of onions.

So we're going to take a whole onion here, and chop it up.

Get this on first of all. So a hot pan,

little bit of oil first of all, and we need to colour the onions

really, really well to start off with.

Now while they're colouring nicely, we're going to get our rice on,

because this entire dish takes as long for the rice to cook

as for the curry to cook as well.

And I'm going to use some basmati rice,

this is the absorption method of basmati rice.

200g of rice, straight into our pan, now we use 400ml of water.

Get the pan nice and hot, bring it up to the boil,

together with a good knob of butter.

For the perfect takeaway-style rice at home, make a cartouche.

Which is basically just a grease-proof paper lid.

Fold it over, fold it over again,

it's like when you were at school, innit, you'd do that row of men,

and get it wrong and it'd just be a row of badgers or whatever it was.

But literally you cut that like that

so you've got a nice round circle and then what we want is

a little hole in the middle to allow the steam to come up.

You've got a cartouche, easy as that.

Stick it on the top, and the result - beautiful fluffy rice every time.

So the chicken.

I've got four chicken breasts here,

cut these up into decent sort of pieces.

Particularly for curry, you don't want them to dry up.

So, don't cut them too small.

But you want it to cook quick while the rice is cooking,

so when the rice boils like that we just turn it down,

we're just going to allow it to gently simmer.

We've got our onions there,

nice amount of colour on the onions which is just what we want.

And now time to add Shemin's paste, but any fresh paste will do.

Just whip off the lid, and tip it in.

If this recipe included the time it would take

to make an ingredient like this from scratch,

I'd be here for another hour.

Almost dry fry it.

Then we can throw in the chicken.

There's no need to colour this chicken.

It's not like a classic stew or anything, you just want to basically

just make sure you get plenty of flavour in there with that paste.

And now, to create the all-important curry sauce.

Add half a can of chopped tomatoes

to the onion, chicken and paste,

along with 200ml of coconut milk.

Bring to the boil and then leave to simmer for ten minutes.

Top the curry, you can just top it with a little bit of chopped herbs

if you want, but I'm going to put the herbs inside.

But one thing that I love on top of curries,

particularly like this, is coconut.

Desiccated coconut.

I just can't eat enough of the stuff.

I don't know why, to be honest,

it's not really an ingredient that I was brought up on as a kid.

So we're just going to toast this off dry.

Almost dry fry it so it goes lovely and nutty brown.

The smells from this are fantastic.

So we take some fresh coriander,

fresh mint,

and this is one of the benefits by using a curry paste like this,

really you can mix and match the different flavours in,

it's not a sauce that is ready made that you throw in

that you can't really do much with.

This, you use as a base and you can experiment with different things.

If you want more tomatoes, great, but it's entirely up to you.

But we're going to throw in the mint,

and the coriander.

And a quick tip - if you put too much curry paste in...

We'll have a taste, which I probably have put too much curry paste in.

To bring down the heat...

COUGHS

And that's got a little bit in, a little bit of lime,

good decent amount like that.

Try not to use lemon as well, lime I find much better with curries.

That's fantastic. Little bit of salt and then, just to finish curry...

Now I know we're going to get people phoning in, but I love

my butter and the best curry in the world has to be buttered chicken.

I mean, it's got tomatoes in there, so it's part of your five a day.

Look at that.

And then all we need to do is serve this.

Lovely rice,

and then we've got our wonderful curry.

Cooked really quick, the same time the rice has taken to cook

and then finally we get some of this toasted coconut

and there you have it.

Especially where I live,

because really whenever you order a curry,

a take out, takes about 40 minutes.

I've just made that in about 15.

Oh, ho, ho!

Nobody's having any of this,

this is proper.

A curry to beat any takeaway in 15 minutes.

Now that's magic!

Modern technology makes rustling up meals in a hurry easier

than it's ever been.

But handy cooking gadgets have been around for centuries.

Food historian Ivan Day explores the colourful story of a time-saver

from the Georgian kitchen.

What I've got in front of me is a replica

of a long-lost piece of culinary equipment

which is called a conjurer.

And the particular piece of magic that this conjurer performed

was to cook a meal just using a few sheets of paper as fuel.

I'm going to try an experiment to see just how quickly

and easily this conjurer performs.

A cookery writer called Eliza Acton wrote a very detailed description

of how to use the conjurer in a book published in 1845.

It's called Modern Cookery, but to us, it's rather ancient cookery.

And she gives a wonderful illustration of a conjurer.

She goes on to say that this really was a meal for people

who were on the move, who had busy lives and really just needed

to cook something incredibly quickly and easily.

So I'm going to have a go at this.

So I'll put a bit of butter in there.

This recipe couldn't be simpler.

It's just a matter of layering butter, onions and veal in the pot.

So it's very, very thinly cut,

so it should cook pretty quickly but we'll find out.

Hopefully the butter will melt first

and will melt across the bottom of the pan.

And Eliza Acton tells us to season it properly,

so I'm going to use a little bit of thyme.

Not much, just a few little bits of flower and leaf stripped off

and I'll grate also some nutmeg in.

I'll need to put a little bit of salt in there.

And some freshly ground pepper.

Lid on.

This conjurer has a very tight-fitting lid

which will trap the heat inside.

If Eliza Acton is right, we should be able to cook this meat

in just a few minutes.

No-one knows for sure when the conjurer was invented.

But Ivan's recipe from the 19th century isn't the first time

it crops up in print.

An 18th-century cookbook claims that the conjurer even appeared on stage.

The book says that a panto artist called John Rich used it

to magically cook a mutton stew in a matter of minutes.

Let's see if Ivan can pull off a similar trick with his veal recipe.

And I've got plenty of fuel here,

I've got five sheets of paper.

I think they'll probably burn for about a minute each, if we're lucky.

Just get that burning a little bit.

I'll pop it underneath the little hatch into the conjurer.

The air gets drawn in through these side vents.

So, hopefully, it will keep burning.

There's a little bit of smoke

and I can already hear the butter sizzling away

and I think my meat is cooking pretty well already.

if you like it rare, it's probably done already

and we're only a couple of minutes into this.

What surprises me is how long it actually takes to burn

a sheet of heavy paper.

The paper in the 18th and 19th century,

when these things were used, was actually much heavier.

The butter's all melted...

Yeah, it's cooking very well already

and that's just two sheets of paper.

For me, this is incredibly exciting.

I've used full roasting ranges in Tudor houses.

I've roasted whole oxen in front of the spit which took 27 hours,

and this is the first time I've ever cooked myself lunch

using sheets of paper.

So I'm really keen to see whether it is actually edible.

It's now been cooking for ten minutes with just six sheets of paper.

Look at that.

That is amazing, isn't it?

It smells really good as well.

Gosh, it is cooked.

Mm!

It's absolutely amazing.

Perfectly cooked,

it's really tender and actually,

really, really tasty - absolutely delicious.

Quick and easy.

At the end of a busy day,

who has time to make a show-stopping pudding?

Well, I've come up with a solution.

Cheat!

Now, this cake is definitely not one for the health-conscious, because it

contains tonnes of mascarpone cheese, double cream,

everything that tastes fantastic -

all covered and encased in fabulous fresh meringue.

It's creamy, it's sweet, and it only takes 15 minutes.

Meet my instant coffee meringue gateau!

It's kind of like an interpretation of a dish that

I used to make at a very fancy hotel.

We used to have these sort of mushroom hunts,

where the guests would go out

and pick their own mushrooms in the New Forest,

come back and we'd cook with them.

Of course, when it comes to pastry at the end, dessert,

what on earth do you do, you can't just put mushrooms on the plate,

so I thought of this sort of gateau, this cake.

The first thing we're going to do is create our filling for this

and the filling is just done with mascarpone cheese.

Now you can use full-fat cream cheese,

but mascarpone cheese is a good base for it.

Now to add the flavour to our filling.

Split and scrape out one Bourbon vanilla pod,

then add 175ml of double cream and whisk until firm.

And now it's time to really cheat.

You need two pre-made sponge flans with the edges cut off.

If you haven't got one of these rings, you can use a biscuit tin,

cut the base out with a tin opener,

you've got a ring exactly the same size.

And then very carefully,

and you need to do this carefully, slice this in half

and to do that, hold the knife flat, your hand flat...

and cut round.

Don't try and cut all the way through in one go,

otherwise it'll be a bit wonky.

The secret of this is you've got the same layer of sponge to filling.

And then you can really get our cake stand ready

and you build everything into a ring, then take this sponge,

place it in the base. And then I've got some coffee.

Now I have to say I'm not a great fan of coffee in its hot form,

but in desserts, it's great.

It's layers of coffee - you could put a little bit of rum in here,

a bit of brandy, if you wish.

Little bit of the filling on and then using a palette knife,

we can spread this in the middle.

Now, it's important when you're doing this to make sure you're

building it up nice and evenly.

So, don't add too much coffee in straightaway, otherwise it

starts to break down that sponge.

You take another bit, and layer it up again.

So...

Press it down nicely.

And again with this coffee.

And layer it up again.

so you're building this up nice and evenly.

And so often when you're trying to do cakes at home, it requires

so much time to make,

but this is so quick and easy.

And then we can take our last piece of sponge and place that on the top.

Now I'd only put a little bit of coffee on this bit, purely

the fact if we put too much on, the meringue is just going to fall off.

So just be careful with this last layer.

Now to remove the ring from this, you could use a warm cloth -

place it round the edge - which does fine.

But I'm going to use a blowtorch. It's much easier and much quicker.

All you're doing is just heating up the edge of the ring,

and by doing so it just softens the cream enough

so then we can lift off the ring

and you end up with an almost finished cake.

Now I say "almost finished",

because we're going to turn this into something really special

and that's by using meringue. And for that,

I need six egg whites.

When making meringue,

it's really important that your mixing bowl is clean and dry.

Whisk the egg whites until you get peaks

and then add 150g of both caster and icing sugar.

And the great thing about adding icing sugar to this, together with

this coffee essence, you end up with this lovely silky rich meringue.

And that's the icing sugar that does it, it's a great tip.

I learnt from a great restaurant in London, I've never forgotten it.

You can pipe this on if you want, but, for me,

the whole point about this is the speed of which you make it.

So you just pop it on.

So let it fall over the sides first, then round the edge.

Now the great thing about this, this is so quick and easy to do at home.

So you don't want to be too fancy with it.

Try not to make things too perfect.

And by blowtorching the top,

and around the edge, you can turn this into sort of a baked Alaska.

So you can stop there, it looks pretty impressive as it is,

and you know it's going to taste great,

because you've got all those layers in.

But I'm not going to stop there. I love these things.

Marshmallows, fantastic.

And another thing I love... Mmm!

..is meringue.

You can buy these from the supermarket now.

We then take some icing sugar and cocoa powder, and we dust the tops.

And then using these marshmallows,

which we can just chop up into pieces,

and you can pop just ten of these any old way

and these are the stalks for the mushrooms,

and then you have the tops.

Now, to help stick these on

you've got a little bit of this meringue left, you can pop these on.

So you're starting to build up

the kind of idea with the mushrooms.

To top it off, grate on some dark chocolate and it's ready to serve.

The ultimate quick and easy gateau, with layers of sponge

and creamy coffee-infused filling.

I would normally eat this myself but, you know,

we're on TV - we've got to watch our weight,

so I'll leave these lot to dive in. Go on, guys.

Good. Amazing.

Quick and easy doesn't have to mean compromising on good eating.

All it takes is a bit of imagination

and knowing the short cuts to get the most from your ingredients.

So when time is tight or you've had a hectic day, what better reward

than great-tasting food on your plate in minutes?

You can find all the recipes from the series on:

Subtitles by Red Bee Media