Luxury Leftovers 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.'

ALL: 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'm Yorkshire born and bred

'and even though Hampshire is now my home,

'some of my childhood habits have really stuck with me.

'One of those is that I can't bear to waste food.'

It's an amazing fact -

in this country, we throw away about 25% of all the food that we buy

and most of that is in packets that we never even open.

But open up the fridge, there are a whole selection

of great leftovers that are crying out to be used.

'So, today, I'll be showing you how to add a little bit of luxury

'to your leftovers.'

That is just fantastic.

'We'll be finding out how the Georgians went

'totally over the top with their surplus salad.'

Some people would think

this is too good to eat.

'Sampling a cheese from London that doesn't hang around long enough

'to be left over.'

What this is really good for is your cheese-on-toast moment.

'And I'll be using some ingenious tricks to give your leftovers

'a new lease of life.'

It's even better the second time round.

'For me, nothing beats a Sunday roast,

'but nine times out of ten, I've got tonnes of leftovers.

'So I want to show you how to create a great dish

'that is guaranteed to liven up cold meat.

'It's my Thai lamb salad with spicy dressing.'

The key to this entire dish is the dressing.

If you master that, you're almost sorted

because you can use it for so many different salads.

I'm going to do mine with lamb

but you can do it with chicken, fish,

it works with everything.

Start off by finely chopping a red chilli.

Now, leave the seeds in the chilli cos we want it quite fiery.

Then add it to the blender with four cloves of garlic

and roughly chopped ginger.

And then what I like to do is add some palm sugar.

Now, you can buy this stuff nowadays in the smooth paste form,

but you do need palm sugar.

It doesn't really work with normal sugar.

You can use the granulated version of the sugar instead of the paste.

Either way, you need about two to three tablespoons.

MACHINE WHIRRS

When you get to this stage, you can then add the soy sauce.

It's entirely up to you whether you want to use light

or dark soy with this.

But I've always got plenty of this...

..in my kitchen.

You need six tablespoons of soy sauce

followed by four tablespoons of fish sauce.

It's the combination of these ingredients that make this dressing.

It's kind of like the salt and the pepper -

you don't put any seasoning in here.

And once you get to that stage, that's really your dressing done.

To cook the lamb, you need to make sure your pan is really hot.

And be careful not to slice the meat too thinly

because it'll dry out as you fry it.

Keep the fat on it as well because this will crisp up in the pan.

Now, this idea I suppose I've had for all my life, really.

My mother used to fry off leftovers on the farm,

particularly pork because we were pig farmers.

You don't want to keep turning it over, so just put it in the pan

and leave it, basically.

Gives you enough time to make your salad.

I grow these fellas in the garden.

These are my cucumbers, so just slice these through.

'As well as the cucumber, I also throw in peas from my garden...'

When they're this fresh, you can actually just

leave them in the pods if you wanted.

'..along with sugar snaps, bean sprouts, spring onions

'and pea shoots.'

This is kind of like all my favourite ingredients

all in one salad.

So, coriander and mint,

they're the two main sort of bulk parts of this salad.

And don't be frightened to use the stalks...

..of the coriander too.

I can then take some of our dressing...

..over there as well.

Just a little bit of lime to finish it off.

And then just give this a quick mix together.

Just crisp the lamb really well on one side,

otherwise it gets tough and dry.

When it's done, take it off the heat

and add half the dressing to the pan.

And as it fries, it kind of reduces and goes lovely and sticky.

Look at that.

Looks better than the roast lamb I had yesterday.

And then we're nearly ready to serve it.

I always use these boards. These are what my granny left me.

Treasure them.

And then you've got this wonderful lamb

and you just pour this over the top.

There you have it - a simple, leftover salad

that is so packed full of flavour.

It really is delicious.

Now, the best part of this salad, for me, is the lamb

because you've got it crispy on the top and then still moist underneath.

It's even better the second time round.

You may think that roast lamb can't possibly be improved on.

But this dish is so tasty and so quick and easy to make,

you'll never settle for soggy sandwiches on a Sunday night again.

Having the best leftovers to use up depends on

having good-quality ingredients to start with.

Luckily, Britain is packed with producers making top-notch stuff,

and they aren't all restricted to farmyards and fields.

Deep in the heart of Tottenham, North London,

ex-management consultant Philip Wilton is proving that

city living and gourmet food production can be very compatible.

Had a proper job. I think one day I woke up

and just decided this wasn't going to happen any more.

Didn't want to do it, couldn't bear it,

never wanted to see another spreadsheet as long as I lived.

Both me and my partner really love cheese.

My initial reaction was, "Well, we can't do it here.

"We're in London, we're in the city, we're in Tottenham of all places,

"nobody would do anything like that here."

But you know what, you can do everything else in London,

why can't you make cheese?

And of course, his home kitchen was the perfect place for Philip

to start experimenting.

Essentially, it's really easy.

Kettle of hot water...

Oops. ..and some milk.

Essentially now warming a bit of milk.

Basically, the first cheese we turned out was like baby sick.

The curd hadn't taken, it wasn't solid enough...

..and in the end, it turned into like a cream cheese,

a slightly firmer cream sort of curd cheese.

And that was the first cheese we ever made.

It was all right, tasted absolutely fine,

it just wasn't what we thought we were going to make.

But now, as an accomplished cheesemaker,

mistakes like this rarely happen.

And according to this, we've now got to about 30 degrees.

Next stage, we need to add the magic.

So what we're going to do now is add some rennet.

Couple of drops of that, a quick stir.

In about an hour's time, that will have set to the texture

and consistency of like a thick custard, and that's how I started.

But with about ten litres of milk needed to make one kilo of cheese,

it all started getting a bit too much.

There was bowls, colanders everywhere.

The kettle was constantly on the boil, and eventually it became

obvious this was not going to work here any more in a domestic setting.

So we kind of got ourselves a bit real

and we went and got ourselves a little production unit

on an industrial estate.

Rodolfo. Hi, how are you?

Fine, and you? How are you?

I'm doing well. How was the curd this morning? Did it...?

-Excellent.

-Was it good? Did it firm up?

Like a beautiful popcorn, but it's not popcorn.

It's not popcorn. You're lucky you haven't got any hair.

You don't have to wear a hat, do you?

I suppose I don't have to.

If you remember, back at home, we had a pot of milk,

and we were leaving that to set while we walked the dog.

This is what it would look like if we were still there.

It would have broken up and it would look like

sloppy scrambled egg, which is basically curds and whey.

Whether you're in the countryside or the city,

cheese is pretty much always made the same way.

And just like rural cheesemakers like to name their cheeses

after where they're from,

Philip is keen to remind people of his urban roots.

To start with, the Tottenham connection did me no favours at all

cos people just wouldn't believe that anything

other than fried chicken and riots could come out of Tottenham.

But now I think it works for us.

Favourite cheese at the moment is the Ally Pally,

which is named after Alexandra Palace farmers market.

First cheese we made for the first market we went to.

This one's particularly lovely at the moment

because it's got a slightly zesty, citrusy aftertaste.

My other favourite cheese at the moment is this one,

which is the St Bruce,

which is the one we wash in our local craft beer.

And the reason I love this is A - the shape is just a thing of beauty.

Look how round and beautiful that is.

In fact, that one's even prettier.

Look how round and beautiful that is.

What this is really good for is your cheese-on-toast moment.

And I really like that.

Just a splash of ketchup and an egg.

I had this idea that I wanted to be a cheeseboard seller for London

and I wanted people to have different cheeses

on their cheeseboard and that it could all be mine.

This cheese here is called The Howard.

It's the one we've been making earlier on.

But Ben, my customer, hasn't had this one yet, so I want to take him some.

-Ben!

-Philip, how are you?

PHILIP LAUGHS

-Let's have a taste of your new cheeses.

-Excellent.

Thank you, sir.

-And what's the name of this one?

-This is called the Barnsbury.

-OK.

-Which is just round the corner, isn't it?

-That would work lovely in a salad.

-It would work lovely in a salad.

With a slight...I think...I think the zesty afternote, I think.

Maybe sorrel or a soft-boiled egg, something like that.

-Lovely.

-Lovely.

-Hmm.

Let's try it with a biscuit.

I really like the blue. It works really well with the biscuits

and, as ever, the story - made in Tottenham, down the road,

artisan cheesemaker, always works for us.

Brilliant. Well, I'm glad you enjoy the cheese.

Now, I absolutely love cheese.

In fact, I like it so much that I always buy too much of it.

So I've asked Philip to come over to my house in Hampshire

to sample a dish of mine that adds a bit of luxury

to odds and ends of leftover cheese.

What type of cheeses have you got here?

Well, basically, I make cheeses to my own recipe.

I don't copy. There's plenty of people making cheddars out there.

So what we do is we take old traditional recipes

-and we mess around with them.

-OK.

So, for instance, that one there we make a bit like an Emmenthal,

then we give it a wash in beer.

-This is the local beer that you...

-Our local beer.

And I have hard cheeses,

we have a white-blue and a soft sort of creamier one

with a bloom on.

I'm using a selection of Philip's cheeses

for my crispy cheese nuggets with grape chutney and pecan salad.

But you can just as easily use leftovers from your cheeseboard.

And the first thing to do is to make the chutney.

It's all about imparting flavour into this, so...

And I always start off with brown sugar.

You caramelise that in the pan

and this is the light brown sugar in there

and then I've got my onions.

So they can go in as well, these have just been roughly chopped.

Then we can throw in the sultanas.

Now, this is a great chutney which is fantastic, of course, with cheese

but we throw in the sultanas.

They can go in. And then you need some vinegar in all chutney.

I'm going to use this sherry vinegar,

which is, really, in my mind, the king of all vinegars this stuff.

-Have a smell of that, that is just...

-Can I drink it?

You can... Well, it's good enough to drink, to be honest, but...

-It is fantastic.

-Smells like the stuff I drink normally.

-Is it?

-THEY LAUGH

It's a... It is fantastic. This sherry vinegar is just...

it's a totally different sort of flavour to using...

normally you'd use white wine vinegar or malt vinegar,

something like that.

It's certainly an interesting place to start cheesemaking, isn't it?

Well, I've lived in Tottenham now, what...30 years.

Cos I suppose you could use that for your advantage, really, as well.

-The name and everything.

-A lot of people sneered.

First of all, they sort of... "Tottenham?"

Inner-city grime, deprivation, but we stuck by our guns

cos, you know, we're not actually ashamed of where we come from.

And it's actually working for us now cos people go, "Where?"

The next ingredients in the chutney are two tomatoes roughly chopped

and 300g of red grapes.

Seedless grapes, which I'm quite fortunate to grow around here.

Don't know whether grapes grow in Tottenham yet, do they?

-Uh, they do in Enfield.

-Do they?

Yeah, there's a vineyard in Enfield.

-Really?!

-Yeah.

So you're halfway there to a French banquet then, aren't you, really?

You've got the cheese, you've got the wine.

Got the wine, what else do we need?

-I don't know.

-Can-Can dancers.

-Yeah, possibly, yeah.

When the grapes have gone in, leave the chutney to cook

for 12-15 minutes till it's thickened.

It's quite unusual that, you know, one person would normally stick to

one particular type of cheese.

You've sort of diversified again.

One of the things that was important to me

when I started this game off is to be a foodmaker.

And part of that is...is to be a little bit creative.

It's like you, you know.

I'm guessing that you don't want to do the same thing

-day in day out.

-Yeah.

We make it up. So, every so often, go in and we just make up a cheese.

Yeah. If you're not fortunate to have fantastic cheese like this,

you can use leftover bits as well.

But the whole idea of this, we're going to deep-fry it.

Before you cook it, you need to chop your cheese into chunky wedges

and then heat veg oil in a heavy-based saucepan.

So where do you sell your food then?

Is there farmers markets around there?

Where did you end up starting to sell it?

There's a lot of farmers markets

and we started at our first farmers market at Alexandra Palace,

which is in North London.

And that cheese there is actually called The Ally Pally

cos it was our first ever go at cheesemaking.

This was the first one?

That was the first one and, of course, I got it right first time.

Is it... And has the recipe changed?

-PHILIP LAUGHS

-Oh, you're lying?

I'm lying a lot. I'm lying a lot.

Tell us about this one, then, the first one that you made

cos, you know, it's quite an unusual flavour.

It's an unusual flavour.

We don't add anything to it, just a bit of salt, a bit of the culture.

It's got a mild flavour but a fantastic aftertaste

-with this as well.

-Yeah, it isn't...

Part of it is I don't really like strong cheeses

that smack you in the mouth,

sometimes you just want to enjoy the cheese...

-I have to agree with you.

-..without that.

-It's not one of those.

-No,

-it's a more of a subtle taste.

-This is delicious, isn't it?

Thank you.

To prep your chunks of cheese for the deep fat fryer,

roll them in flour and beaten egg

before giving them a final coating of breadcrumbs.

Tell us about the dairy, then. Where on earth do you get the milk?

Cos the quantity that you've got to use is far more than what you

started off with just going to the supermarket and stuff

-getting your bits and pieces.

-Well, the first quantity

was like 50 litres, which is just a slosh, isn't it really, now?

Cos the key to good quality cheesemaking is...

is regular sources of really good-quality milk.

Yeah. It comes from a single farmer, so he...

It's the same cows.

-We went and saw them, they looked delicious.

-Right.

Cos, you know, what would I know about a cow frankly?

They're outdoor cows. It was a really good source of milk,

the milk was good quality, and we've kind of grown from 50 litres a day

to sort of 3, 4, 500 litres a day.

We're still very small. We're not your big million-litre producers.

And always with cow's milk?

You wouldn't want to diversify with bits and pieces?

Oh, it's hard to get a reliable source.

We've been experimenting a bit with buffalo.

-Yeah. We've got 4,000 buffalo.

-Have you?

Just over the back of the hill there. Yeah.

Shall we take the Rolls up there later and have a look?

-JAMES LAUGHS

-Go and have a look, yeah.

-Yeah.

Fry the pieces of cheese in batches for up to a minute

until they're golden brown on the outside and soft inside.

Once they're seasoned well,

I like to serve this dish with a simple salad

that has one really tasty addition.

These are basically candied pecan nuts which have basically

just been cooked in sugar syrup.

So you just put sugar and water,

bring it to the boil, put these in it and then drain them off.

-Thank you.

-Taste them as they are, they're great.

But when you deep-fry them, these taste amazing.

Mmm, they're really nice, aren't they?

They don't take very long at all but, when you deep-fry them,

they crisp up really nicely. And because you've got the sugar

in there as well, they go lovely and sticky.

I love all the amazing textures and flavours in this dish.

Not only do you have the sweetness of the pecans

and the crunchy creaminess of the cheese,

you also get an incredible fruity richness from the chutney.

Now, you normally have yours just on a cheeseboard. Hopefully...

..this is just another way of doing it,

but I think it's simple.

Tell me what you think.

-Yeah, it's lovely, isn't it?

-But flour, egg and breadcrumbs,

so simple and a great way to use up any bits that are left over.

-That's really nice.

-Happy with that?

-Can you do the rest?

All right, then.

Many of us have got bits and pieces of cheese

hanging around in the fridge,

and this has got to be one of the best ways of using them up.

Not only does this dish really deliver on flavour,

it also looks absolutely fantastic.

Rustling up new meals from leftovers is nothing new.

Cooks have always recycled food to create new dishes.

Food historian Ivan Day is in Cumbria, at the childhood home

of the romantic poet William Wordsworth, where he's discovering

how the Georgians transformed their leftovers.

Creative use of leftovers has always been an important element

in English cookery.

At the time of William Wordsworth, this was even more important

because most kitchens were ruled by the saying "waste not, want not."

I'm going to make two luxury dishes using leftovers.

One is a sumptuous salad,

the other is a wonderful cheesecake.

The first thing I'm going to make is a salmagundi.

It's going to look stunning but it's just made

with a bit of leftover chicken and a few hard-boiled eggs.

But before the chicken and egg were added,

large quantities of shredded lettuce were piled onto the plate.

This recipe had been around for many centuries before Wordsworth.

The name is Italian, 'salmagundi',

it's a nonsense name.

It means something like 'bubble and squeak.'

In a big house like this

with a huge roasting range, they often used to cook a lot of meat

and it wouldn't all be eaten on the same day.

Some of it would be saved, cos cold meats were really popular.

There were always lots of leftovers.

Chopped egg yolk, lemon and store cupboard staples like anchovies

and capers were then added to the salad.

And cucumber was used to introduce a fresh note to the dish.

Flowers were really important in garnishing all sorts of dishes

and particularly salads, so lots of edible flowers were used.

I'm using pot marigolds, calendulas at the moment.

A popular and very charming embellishment to a salmagundi

was a little sprig of vegetation.

One of the most popular was this, which is myrtle,

which is a sweet-smelling aromatic plant.

In the spring, they'd sometimes decorate the little tree

with flowers, whereas in the autumn they might put little fruits on it,

and in the winter, they might cover it with whipped egg white

to make it look like snow.

To give the salad even more flamboyance, the outside

of the platter was decorated with grapes and edible flowers.

That is a pretty spectacular way

to use up a little bit of leftover chicken

and some hard-boiled eggs.

You've got to give it to the Georgians -

little stroll through the garden, bit of chicken breast

and Bob's your uncle,

you've got the most luxurious savoury dish for a Georgian supper.

The second recipe is for a wonderful cheesecake,

and it's nothing like the modern cheesecake we enjoy today,

which is actually an American dish.

This is the original English cheesecake,

and it's a wonderful solution for using up excess milk.

There was frequently a lot of milk in villages and towns

in Georgian times because there was no refrigeration,

you either had to drink all the milk

or you had to do something else with it.

And one of the common things to do with it was to make curds.

You added to the warm milk straight from the cow, a substance

called rennet, which actually was obtained from the stomachs

of slaughtered calves.

Curds were used for making lots of dishes,

a popular one were curd fritters.

They were also used for making little loaves

which were called curd loaves and finally, probably the most popular,

was the cheesecake

which has survived in Yorkshire and is known as curd tart.

To make the cheesecake filling, sugar and ground almonds

were added to the curd.

This recipe comes out of a remarkable surviving

manuscript cookery book

that was written by a lady who was called Bridget Atkinson.

She was a very close friend of the Wordsworth family,

and this book is probably the most encyclopaedic insight into the

food that was cooked in this region during the time of the late poets.

Judging by this recipe, those poets would have enjoyed some

pretty rich food.

The cheesecake filling also contained crumbled sponge cake,

butter, currants and eggs.

And the final ingredient was sherry infused with saffron,

which gave the dish a really luxurious feel.

This alcoholic solution of saffron was called a tincture.

It adds a wonderful colour to the curd mixture.

Saffron was the most expensive spice of all because each flower produced

three tiny little strands of it,

they all had to be harvested by hand,

and it takes very many flowers to produce just a very small quantity.

Once the rich cheesecake filling was mixed, it was simply poured

into a prepared pastry case.

Very last stage is to just get it into the oven.

Some people would think

this is too good to eat

but I don't subscribe to that.

It's not only a very attractive, luxury leftover dish,

it's extremely good to eat.

Let me try the saffron cheesecake.

In the recipe, the author of this describes this as the very best

cheesecake in all England,

and she's absolutely right, it's superb.

Just like the Georgians, I get a real kick out of

taking unappealing-looking leftovers

and turning them into something truly amazing.

One of my favourite clever leftover dishes is sausage radicchio

and lemon gnocchi.

The best thing about this is,

it includes an ingredient that most people completely overlook.

This is a lovely recipe using leftover baked potatoes.

I just love this dish, I cook it all the time at home.

I just think it's simple, the flavours you get from it

are superb, and it's one of these things that you've got

almost everything in your kitchen and in your store cupboard.

Gnocchi are little Italian dumplings that are usually made with

semolina, flour or potatoes.

The dough used for gnocchi must be really smooth.

So to transform my humble jacket spuds into creamy mash,

I put them through a potato ricer.

You want to scoop out all the potato.

You could, of course, deep-fry the skins as well,

and you've got a great little starter.

Now, you want to make sure the potatoes are dry,

that's the secret with gnocchi. Too often, you try to make it with

boiled potatoes, there's too much liquid in there,

but, by using the baked ones, you're really guaranteed for success

almost straightaway.

And you've got this lovely, fluffy potato which is just

perfect for our gnocchi.

Once the potatoes are through the ricer, season them well

and add one egg yolk and 00 flour,

which is the same flour used to make pasta.

Just a touch of flour.

Now, it's difficult to know how much you add really, but...

..for this, handful and a half, something like that.

Now, the flour is an important part of it. Like the egg yolk,

it's going to bind it all together

so, when we cook it, it doesn't fall apart.

If you keep adding it little by little,

you'll know when you get the texture right...

because it just starts to come together nicely on your hands,

which looks a bit like that, almost resembles pasta or sweet pastry,

that's what you're looking for.

When the dough is ready, split into four

and roll each piece into long sausage shapes on a floured surface,

then cut them into 2cm chunks.

And the great thing is with gnocchi

it really is a classic leftover dish anyway.

There's so many different flavours that you can put into it.

So you can add things like parsley, you can add basil,

loads of herbs in here.

You could put Parmesan cheese, lemon, whatever you want, really.

And if you want to make a big batch of it,

you can actually freeze this once it's cooked.

So all you do - plenty of salted boiling water.

Like pasta, do not put oil in it.

I don't understand where that comes from.

Throw the gnocchi in.

And the idea being,

if you do it in batches, it's much easier to control

rather than throwing everything in,

otherwise, the tendency is you end up with a gooey mess in the pan.

I can see these are floating to the top now.

Just to stop it from cooking...

..we take it out and put it in ice-cold water.

But you've got your simple gnocchi which is now ready for our dish.

So, our dish is done quite quickly, really.

The entire thing, from start to finish now, is about five minutes.

Get started by chopping shallots

and garlic before taking the skin off four good-quality pork

sausages and browning off the meat in a frying pan with butter.

At the same time,

we've got our pan at the back.

We can put a little knob of butter in and fry off our breadcrumbs.

Now this is the crucial part of it.

I remember doing something very similar to this

not in Italy but in France...

..to go with their famous dish called a cassoulet...

..where they would fry off the breadcrumbs in duck fat.

But you get this wonderful flavour that goes particularly well

with this.

When the sausage meat is golden brown, throw in the shallots,

garlic and a teaspoon of chilli flakes.

Then, in the fridge, I've always got some stock handy.

This is a little bit of chicken stock, a great way to use up

leftover roast chicken if you want to boil it in a pan with the bones.

Any bits of leftover, it gives you a great stock.

Brilliant as well. You can freeze this in ice cube trays

and just pop them out when you need it,

so you don't have to have them in the fridge.

Add 300ml of chicken stock

and leave the sauce until it's reduced by half.

Meanwhile, you can prep the most unusual ingredient in this dish -

radicchio.

Now, I love this.

It's quite a bitter leaf, it's fantastic, I grow it in the garden.

It looks a bit like a red cabbage

but it's actually a member of the chicory family.

The leaves are bitter and spicy

but the flavour really mellows when it's grilled.

This is brilliant on the barbecue.

Even if you just did this with chicken on the barbecue,

just random sausages on the barbecue,

this takes it to a whole different level.

And now we can just almost finish this dish off now.

I can throw in some double cream.

And this is where we start to get a nice little sauce with it as well.

And then we've got the gnocchi.

Just take a little bit of this out as well.

We're going to warm it back up with those sausages.

To add even more flavour to the sauce

I throw in some chopped flat-leaf parsley, capers and lemon zest.

And we just mix this together now cos it's nearly there.

I'm going to add some Parmesan cheese just at the end...

..almost like a little risotto, just a little bit.

And it's just about there, we can then plate this up.

What lifts the whole thing to the standard of a restaurant meal

is a final sprinkling of toasted breadcrumbs.

When you taste the gnocchi, I don't think you'd imagine

for one second they were made from cold jacket potatoes.

It just goes to show that, with a bit of imagination, the most

uninspiring leftovers can be turned into fantastically luxurious meals.

And you know when food looks good, it's going to taste good.

And for me, it's one of those dishes that...

..I find just gets better the more I try it and the more I make it.

Hmm.

That is just fantastic.

And that's what home cooking should be all about.

That is seriously good.

Some of our traditional leftover recipes have become so popular

they've evolved into dishes in their own right.

So it's hardly surprising that our growing band of British

small-scale home producers have taken it upon themselves

to transform these delicious dishes into something really special.

Hampshire-based husband-and-wife team Rupert Smith

and Marita Lietz have taken the classic British dish

of bubble and squeak and turned it into a luxury leftover.

I've been a chef now for 20 years, um...

And various places in pubs and cafes,

you'll see the bubble and squeak with a poached egg

and hollandaise sauce and bacon.

It's always popular wherever it's sold.

So I thought, let's put some different flavours in

and make it a whole concept and see if people still go for it.

Cheers.

We've both given up our jobs

and started up this really exciting venture, which is going really well.

Rupert and Marita hope that the classic combination

of refried cabbage and mashed potato will be a winner.

I look at it as the English version of pasta, that's the way

I look at bubble and squeak, you can put absolutely anything with it.

Although the essential ingredients of bubble and squeak are still

basically comprised of what you might have left over

from a Sunday lunch,

for Rupert's luxury version, fresh ingredients are essential.

Our bubble and squeak is definitely not made out of leftovers.

I source the finest ingredients,

I'm really careful about what I put in the bubble and squeak.

I really want to make the best bubble and squeak I can,

and it is definitely luxurious and absolute quality.

So we've got the cabbages, the leeks and potatoes.

And the leeks gets sauteed,

and they give a nice acidity and a different texture as well.

I use two types of cabbage.

I use savoy cabbage, primo cabbage sometimes, spring greens, there's

lots of different types throughout the season that come through.

And although Rupert makes his bubble and squeak

out of fresh ingredients, he's cleverly incorporated

a few touches to keep this leftover recipe

close to its Sunday roast roots.

So I use roast potatoes and mashed potatoes. The roast potatoes

I put in because they caramelise in the oven a bit

and it just gets all crispy on the outside, fluffy in the middle

and you mix that with the mashed potato in my bubble and squeak

and I just think...yeah, it makes a delicious combination.

But it's not just texture.

Rupert's also got a few more cheffy techniques that elevate this dish

from simple leftover, to luxury leftover.

OK, so out comes the cabbage now it's cooked, slightly al dente,

which is a little crunchy.

And that goes into iced water,

stops it cooking instantly and it keeps it nice and bright green.

I don't put any butter or milk in the mashed potato,

I don't think it needs it.

I wanted to keep the whole concept

gluten and dairy free for the basic bubble and squeak.

So the mash goes in.

So in go the leeks, in go the cabbage

and then we add the roast potato, and this is what gives it the texture.

And then we give it a good mix.

And that's the beauty of leftover dishes like this.

Once the mixture is combined,

pressed into a potato cake and fried,

it's pretty much ready to go.

And that is my bubble and squeak!

Bubble and squeak is tasty enough on its own, but Rupert's luxury

version shows how versatile this traditional British dish can be.

So we've taken bubble and squeak and just added a little bit of...

Mashed potato and...

Our base recipe is potato, cabbage and leek

and then we have fun with it.

I like to think I've redefined bubble and squeak.

I've put a sort of a little twist on it,

putting the different flavours through it and different toppings.

It could be some lovely smoked ham hock with some golden beetroot

and ginger jam.

I have done wild garlic and goat's cheese, I've done pea and mint,

so the flavours are unlimited.

So, has introducing modern flavours to a leftover staple

proved to be as popular as the original?

-Bon appetit.

-It's a new take on an old classic, it's nice.

-I like it, it's different.

-Yeah.

-It's a good bit of fast food.

-Really good.

When you're hunting around for leftovers to cook up

into something special, don't just look in your fridge.

The contents of your fruit bowl can also be a great source

of ingredients, even when the fruit is past its best.

My banana and maple syrup cake is a fantastic way to give bananas

a luxurious make over.

When you're thinking of leftovers to do with fruit,

it's actually quite difficult to think of recipes.

But this one that I turn to quite a lot in my kitchen.

It's leftover bananas.

These are fantastic to produce a cake because

when they go brown like this, they soften up,

which is perfect for this cake.

So the first thing I'm going to do is just basically blitz them.

For this recipe, I use four ripe bananas.

And then, just to help it on its way,

just a little bit of maple syrup.

This is one of my favourite ingredients in my kitchen.

I've never been to Canada where most of,

if not all of this, is produced,

but I've always wanted to go see it being made.

It's just fantastic, such a natural ingredient.

But like many great ingredients, this is graded,

so you must make sure that you get the best you can afford.

I like my cakes to have a bit of bite to them,

so whenever I can, I add some nuts.

The great accompaniment, of course, with maple syrup is pecan nuts.

This is where you can mix and match this recipe.

If you didn't want to use these or hadn't got them,

walnuts would work really well.

Roughly chop them, not too fine,

cos I quite like a bit of texture with this.

The base of the cake mix is 200g of softened butter

and 150g of caster sugar,

which has to be whisked together until it's pale and fluffy.

Normally you would do this in an electric machine

but this is my granny's old mixing bowl.

So I'm going to do this by hand like she used to make.

Apart from she used to use a wooden spoon

and watch an entire episode of Coronation Street.

What you're doing is just making sure it's nice and smooth, really,

and that's why it's important to make sure you've got

the butter lovely and soft, not melted but nice and soft,

and it will actually go white quite quickly.

Once the butter and sugar is creamed,

you need to add four eggs one by one.

Make sure you beat in each egg well

as this will stop the cake mixture from splitting.

It's important with this, I always think, to do this by hand.

So often, cakes are made in a machine,

which is fine if you really understand the mixture.

But as soon as you add eggs, flour to the machine,

you'll actually start to toughen up the cake.

Now we can add our baking powder.

The next step is to mix in the banana and maple syrup puree,

along with roughly chopped pecans

and 400g of good-quality plain flour.

And if you use a spatula for this bit, this will actually stop

the cake from toughening up too much.

You've got this lovely light mixture,

which is what we're looking for.

You can see that.

It feels light when you're making it,

which means that your cake is going to be light

when it comes out of the oven.

So we're going to throw this mixture in.

I've pre-lined this tin.

And then what I do, really, instead of spreading it all out,

I just roll it around and then just take it

about six inches off the bench and just drop it.

Then all you need to do is sprinkle the top

with more chopped pecans,

pop the cake in an oven that's preheated

to 170 degrees centigrade for about 45 minutes.

Middle shelf, not too high.

That leaves you plenty of time to make the glaze.

And for that, it's really simple.

We're just going to use some double cream and, again,

some of this delicious maple syrup.

And all we do is pour the double cream into the bowl,

equal quantities of cream to maple syrup.

Bring it to the boil, reduce it down by a half, let it cool,

and this is going to be perfect to top our cake.

When the cake has cooled, it's simply a matter of drizzling

the lovely rich glaze over the top.

Give that about ten minutes and it'll be ready to eat.

It's amazing how a few luxury ingredients can lift leftover

bananas to a new level of yumminess.

This cake couldn't be easier to rustle up at home,

and it's guaranteed to be a hit with anyone

who's lucky enough to get a slice.

Really good.

CHATTER AND LAUGHTER

Binning leftovers means you miss out on the chance to turn them

into something amazing.

So next time you're tempted to clear out the fridge,

take a second look at what you've got in there.

Chances are that adding a few simple ingredients will transform even your

dreariest-looking leftovers into a tasty dish with real wow factor.

You can find all the recipes from the series on: