No Drama Dinner Party James Martin: Home Comforts

The heart of my home is the kitchen.

And it's here that I love to cook delicious meals

for my nearest and dearest.

Cheers!

There's no better way to celebrate everything good in life...

than sharing some great food... with the people you love.

-These are the dishes that

-I

-cook when I want to bring people together.

These are MY home comforts.

When I'm at home, I love to get a few friends round for dinner,

but I know that cooking for a crowd

gives some people serious stage fright,

and those nerves can turn the whole experience into a bit of a drama.

But I'm going to banish those jitters

and show you some great dinner party dishes

that I guarantee will wow your guests.

'Today I'll be rustling up the kind of dessert that'll have calorie-counting guests

'running for cover.'

It's, like, the biggest doughnut in the world.

I'm putting on a stone, here, tasting this.

'Serving an amazingly simple dish

'that's bursting with unusual flavours.'

Most people would never have tasted it before.

This really is delicious.

'And showing my Strictly Come Dancing buddy Camilla Dallerup

'the quickest steps to a perfect roast...'

-It's chopped now.

-No, it's not, you've still got to chop a bit more.

Go on, the plasters are ready.

I'm getting the ball rolling with a dish that always goes down well at my dinner parties.

It's a giant pudding that's also big on flavour, and best of all,

you can make it in advance.

Now, the key for me to a no-drama dinner party

is to have everything prepared beforehand,

and that includes dessert.

And this is a really simple dessert.

It's just a massive doughnut.

Now, the idea of this being that you can just make one dessert,

and this is enough to feed about 10 or 12 people.

Now, first thing we're going to do is make the doughnut dough.

Put a kilo of plain flour with 100g of caster sugar in a mixer.

Then gently heat 100g of butter with 300ml of milk, full fat of course.

When the butter is just melting, it's time to add the yeast.

For this, I'm going to use just some fresh yeast.

Now, you can use dried, I much prefer this.

You can actually buy this from your supermarket.

If you go speak to the bakery, he often will sell you

a big block of this sort of stuff.

And for this one, we want about 18g.

Take the pan off the heat before adding the yeast,

then mix it in gently with a spoon.

It's really an important part of this process because

if you don't mix this in,

you just end up with lumps of yeast in the mix.

Now, ideally, what you want it is to be body temperature, really.

If it's too hot to your finger, it will kill the yeast.

When all the yeast has dissolved,

add the liquid to the dry ingredients in the mixer,

pour in another 300ml of milk, and then start it off on a medium speed.

Now, I first came across this recipe while working in America,

in the oldest doughnut shop in the States.

What I loved about it, it was still in the same family,

and we have this thing in sort of TV land, it's called a pack shot.

It's where, basically, you would get all the family outside the shop

so you just take one shot.

The director said, "Smile everybody," and everybody smiled

and there was one tooth between every single one of them...

Five generations of the same family!

..obviously from eating too many doughnuts.

And after about five minutes, this dough should be about there.

This is exactly the texture that we're looking for.

It's not bread dough. This is an enriched yeast dough,

and because of that, it should feel quite tacky.

And it's really important at this stage not to make it too dry.

So what you need to do now is just cover this over

and leave it somewhere warm for about an hour to prove.

And while it's doing that, I can get on with another part of my recipe -

fantastic homemade ice cream.

I start by warming 250ml of double cream

with the same amount of full-fat milk.

Now, you can flavour this ice cream with whatever you want

but I'm going to put in some malted milk powder, just a touch.

Just adds a really nice flavour to our ice cream.

Once this milk powder has dissolved and the mixture is just simmering,

combine 100g of caster sugar with six egg yolks

in a separate bowl.

Then add the warm cream mixture to the eggs and sugar,

whisking all the time.

Finally, pour the whole lot back into the pan.

Now, one thing you don't want to be doing is boiling this

otherwise you end up with scrambled eggs.

So just lift it on and off the heat as and when you want.

But the key to this is looking at the bubbles,

cos as the mixture starts to thicken up, the bubbles start to disappear,

as you get this custard-style texture.

That's now ready, we can take the entire mixture

and pop it in my container.

Now, at this stage, if I had an ice cream machine,

I'd use it to churn and freeze the mixture.

But I don't, so I'm putting it in the freezer to set.

And once that's done, I'm using this fancy bit of kit to churn it.

I do love my gadgets!

MACHINE WHIRRS

Then I'm putting the ice cream back into the freezer

for half an hour or so.

During all this time, the dough has doubled in size,

so the next step is to knead it for a couple of minutes.

Now, what you want to do is mould this into what looks like a big bun.

It's looking pretty good.

Then...you grab a little pair of scissors.

What we want to do is just cut the centre open...

..and open this up into the start of our big doughnut.

"And how are you going to deep-fry this monster?" I hear you ask.

Well, I'm not. I'm going to bake it instead.

But before that,

I'm smothering it in some of my favourite low-fat ingredients(!)

So, in the butter first...

..roll it again in the sugar, fold it over.

Once it's fully coated in my cinnamon-and-sugar mix,

the doughnut goes back into a large greased baking tray,

and then I stick a small greased tin in the hole in the middle.

And then it's left to prove for 45 minutes

before going into the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for half an hour.

Now, what you need to do is just leave this to cool down a little bit.

You just loosen the tin in the centre and just tip it out.

Fingers crossed.

Monster doughnut!

But I'm not finished yet.

I drizzle the whole thing with a glaze

made from 200g of icing sugar mixed with two tablespoons of bourbon.

Well, dinner parties aren't the place to count calories!

Look at that, a proper big doughnut,

and not forgetting you've got this amazing ice cream.

Of course you can buy ice cream to serve with the doughnut.

But, for me, nothing beats the flavour of this homemade version.

And all you do is just grab a chunk of it.

Look at that, it's like the biggest doughnut in the world.

I love this dessert.

Let's face it, we all want a no-fuss dinner party,

great food you can just dunk in the middle of the table

and let everybody dive in.

By midnight, all this is gone, I promise you.

Of course, any dish is only as good as the ingredients you put in it.

Luckily, the UK is peppered with dedicated producers

that are all dead set on bringing us the best British food.

In Cornwall, fifth-generation farmer Roger Olver

and his wife Tanya produce something very confidential.

But those in the know reckon it's the very best they've ever tasted.

And what they farm is...

Come on!

..top-secret ducks.

The birds waddled into their lives

after a conversation with a local chef.

He said, "Have you ever thought about doing duck?"

And we hadn't, so we found some duck in Devon,

we brought them back, reared them,

took them down to him, he cooked them off and said,

"That is stunning, that is absolutely stunning.

"I've got lots of other chefs who can't get good duck."

The birds they bought from Devon were a secret crossbreed

of at least four different types of duck,

to which they've added even more.

We like to keep the breed strong

by bringing in extra stock every once in a while.

I can't tell you what stock it is, what type of duck.

What makes their classified duck so special

is the proportion of fat to meat, and its taste.

To achieve this, they believe they have to do everything themselves.

We've got everything here. It makes it so unique.

I think there's only a few places in the country

that does the whole lot - hatch to dispatch.

Keeping everything in-house means

Tanya has to first collect the eggs from their laying ducks.

Here, I've got a lovely clutch of eggs and, as you can see,

they've got a lovely...the classic egg shape,

which will help them to hatch out.

They'll come out the top there, so it's all important

to get the right size and shape eggs.

So I'm really, really happy with these.

The eggs are then placed in an incubator,

where things remain very quiet for about four weeks.

OK.

-CHICKS CHEEP

-Hello!

Now, this is welcome to the world.

But there's always one running a little late.

He's got to dry off but he'll come along well, he's absolutely fine.

OK...

Hello.

From the hatchery, the ducklings are taken to

a series of brooder houses -

heated pens where they live for two weeks,

until they're big enough to roam outside in the paddocks.

They're like puppies. They expend all their energy,

then you'll see them all together, huddled up and gone to sleep.

-Morning.

-Roger and Tanya hatch 300 ducklings a week in peak season,

and they graze and mature on the farm for two months.

That's two weeks more than most mass-produced ducks.

In the big processing places,

they'll probably process about 3,000 a week,

so in comparison with everybody else, we are quite small.

That way, we can have all the individual care.

It's really hands-on, but I feel that really matters

and it matters with the end product.

That hands-on approach even extends to their own range of burgers,

which they sell at farmers' markets.

We eat a lot of duck.

It was my favourite meat before we started producing them,

so that's rather good.

These burgers we eat an awful lot of.

We use them if we have friends coming over for a dinner party,

and so many people have never sampled duck burger before.

As well as being a hit with amateur cooks,

the secret ducks have gone down a treat

with Michelin-starred chefs, like Chris Eden.

I believe in this duck completely

because the fat layer on the outside of it roasts up

and it renders down so it'll become beautiful and crisp.

And then when you cut into it, it's quite a bloody duck,

so it stays lovely and pink,

and the flavour is obviously unique as well.

Roger and Tanya's ducks may well be delicious,

but there are two birds back on the farm

which will never reach the dining-room table.

These are Romulus and Remus, they're the famous duck twins

and they were born in 2009.

And they're famous because they came out of one egg,

which is incredibly rare. I was told it wouldn't happen.

They're very dear to us

and after their natural day,

the Natural History Museum want them,

so I think they're going to go down in history.

These two certainly have a special place in Roger and Tanya's hearts.

But the truth is, the couple are quackers about them all.

Yeah, we eat, sleep, live, breathe ducks,

and they're just such beautiful creatures.

They've got so much character

and they just keep us sane, I think, and they make us really happy.

I'm more of a dog-lover myself, but I do enjoy cooking duck.

When I have people coming over,

I often rustle up my no-hassle duck breast with umeboshi sauce.

It's a fantastic combination of rich, succulent meat

and a spicy, sweet sauce, with a very unusual flavour.

Now, duck for a dinner party can be quite tricky

but I'm going to use the duck breast for this

and it's a great way to use it for a dinner party

because you can prepare this way in advance.

But the first thing we're going to turn our attention to

is the spice mix, cos I'm going to do this

sort of an Asian, sort of Japanese-y sort of spice.

I start the mix with curry powder, ground ginger and five-spice.

A teaspoon of each will do the trick,

but you'll need two teaspoons of the final ingredient, sancho pepper.

It's quite a lemony, fragrant mixture

of sort of different peppers and spices, it's wonderful.

You'll find sancho pepper in Asian supermarkets or online.

When the spice mix is ready, rub it on to the duck breasts.

And you'll need to seal the meat,

and getting this bit right is really important.

Don't put any salt, no pepper, nothing,

it's just got the spice mix on it,

and you take the duck breasts and you place them in a dry pan.

Now, I like to do this from a cold pan, really.

Make sure it's on low to start off with

and then gradually, you're heating up this pan,

and you'll see how much fat comes out of these duck breasts.

The duck will take three to four minutes,

so I can get on with the sauce.

For that, I'm using another interesting ingredient.

These are umeboshi plums, which translate to pickled plums.

You can get a paste form or you can get the whole form,

and you can see inside, you've got the seed in there,

so what you need to do is just take the seeds out of these.

Now, I've actually seen these being harvested,

generally around June time.

They're picked and they put them in big barrels

and put loads of salt on it, or use a mixture of salt and vinegar.

And what you end up with is these sort of pickled,

really strong-flavoured plums.

These Japanese salt plums, like the sancho pepper,

can be found in Asian supermarkets.

To make the sauce, put 200g of the plums in a blender

with a teaspoon of the spice mix and two tablespoons of honey.

Blitz the lot.

Then set it aside while you finish off the duck.

Now, the key to this is just to make sure you get a lovely colour on it

before you turn them over, and you can see that beautiful colour.

Now, at that point, we could take it off the heat,

so what we're going to do is grab some honey...

So just a good drizzle of honey over the top.

Of course, that combination of sweetness,

together with the sourness of the plums,

is going to work fantastically well.

Now, all they need is eight to ten minutes

in an oven heated to 200 degrees.

I'm going to serve this with a little bit of bok choy,

just steamed, very, very simply.

Too many people try and reinvent the wheel

and try and do something too fancy for dinner parties.

You've got to keep it nice and simple

so you can spend more time with your guests,

and this is the perfect dish for that.

To give the bok choy a bit of kick,

chop up half a red onion, and thinly slice a chilli to go with it.

And then ginger... Now, when you're buying ginger,

go for ginger with a smooth skin.

It means that it's full of moisture inside.

And for this, I'm just going to cut it nice and thin.

Little bit of garlic. We could just crush that.

And then we've got our bok choy.

Now, actually, I've tried growing this here

with varying degrees of success.

To be honest, the slugs like it,

so you've got to keep them away from it.

But it is a fantastic thing - it's produced in this country as well,

and it's just very, very simple to cook.

I pile this slug-free bok choy into the steamer,

top it off with the other ingredients

and cook for five minutes or so.

Now, our duck, after about halfway through the cooking,

it's a good idea to check it.

The honey can burn, so what you've got to do is take it out...

..and then just baste it.

There's no need to get the tissues out

but, as a chef, we don't get invited to dinner parties very often.

Mainly cos people are really scared about cooking for us!

One of the dinner parties that I got invited to about eight years ago,

I got asked for a recipe

and I gave them a recipe for a delicious little coq au vin,

and when I got there, it was a black-tie gig,

I got shown into the kitchen,

shown the fridge, shown the knife, shown the chopping board

and said, "We'll see you in two hours,"

and I cooked the entire meal for 30 people.

That was an ex-friend.

Right, we're there with the duck.

Once basted, give the duck another four to five minutes in the oven.

When it comes out, let it rest for around five to eight minutes,

then warm the plum sauce in the pan with the juices from the meat.

So, the bok choy's done, nicely steamed. Now we're ready to serve.

And there we have it.

It's sharp, it's sour,

it's everything you want to go with the duck.

I love doing this for a dinner party,

cos most people would never have even tasted it before.

It's good, that.

It's pretty hard to beat the flavour of crispy duck,

but serving it with this really unusual sauce makes it even tastier.

Home is the place where I like to relax,

so I never get into a flap about entertaining.

Tonight, I'm cooking for a couple of friends,

because my mate and former Strictly Come Dancing partner

Camilla Dallerup is home from LA.

-Hey!

-Hi.

-Hello!

-How are you?

-I'm good, thank you.

-The dog first, go on then.

Oh, wow...

Camilla's helping me out with making dinner,

but before we get busy in the kitchen,

we need a vital ingredient from the garden.

So we need... For this, we need some lavender.

-So, do you have this in LA, then?

-No, this is very British.

So, is it just a concrete jungle where you are now?

Yeah, a bit!

I'm right in the middle of the city centre of LA.

-That's the trendy bit, innit?

-Of course.

-They're all cool.

-You live on wheatgrass and all that sort of stuff.

-Yeah.

Wheatgrass is definitely off the menu tonight.

Instead, I'm cooking a succulent leg of lamb in hay.

-I know what you're like in the kitchen.

-What do you mean?

Well, you're better on the dance floor, aren't you, really?

Right, I've got you an apron.

-Oh, thank you, I've always wanted one like that.

-There you go.

So we're going to do roast lamb, roast potatoes, mint sauce.

But we're going to do roast lamb slightly differently...

-You've got hay.

-..in this stuff. Hay from a pet shop. What?

-Really?

-Yeah, well, I think you'll like it at the end of this.

-I think it's all right. So, we've got a leg of lamb here.

-Lovely.

Now, this is called the long leg.

There's a long leg and a short leg and a half leg,

like there's a rendez turn...

Yeah, go on. Whisk.

Whisk. And was it chas... What was that other one?

-Chasse turn?

-Chasse, that's the one.

Do you still remember your ballroom hold?

I try to forget! Anyway, moving over to the lamb.

No, cos I'm thinking, before we cook,

we should just check, just do... just show me.

Well, it was like that.

I got told off cos the hands weren't the same.

It's a little bit higher. I remember. That's it, head up.

-Oh, smile.

-You see. I'm smiling.

-You see, you still remember.

-OK.

It's just when I was doing that I was a different colour, orange mainly.

-Do you remember when you put me in the spray room?

-I remember.

I've never seen anything like it in my entire life.

Now, what we're going to do is, we're going to take our knife...

-You'll be quite good at this.

-Oh, dear. Everywhere?

Yeah. Randomly, not just...

-A bit more over there.

-Oh, mind your finger.

That's it, and then one more, that'll do.

Once the skin's been pierced a dozen or so times,

you need to push small pieces of lavender into the holes.

Make sure you use edible lavender for this job.

Now, what we're going to do is grab our hay.

So this is hay from a pet shop.

Don't go getting this out of your rabbit hutch.

And then, if you can just break this hay up, like that...

That's it, just break it up and just put it around.

-Think I can do this bit.

-OK. I'll just stay out the way(!)

With the hay in place, it's just a matter of sprinkling it

with a little bit of lavender, then plonking the leg of lamb on top.

But I wouldn't let it go anywhere near the oven

without a good coating of softened butter.

There's a new thing in LA - forget the wheatgrass,

this is the new thing.

I'd already forgotten the wheatgrass!

It's coffee made with butter and coconut oil.

And it's amazing.

-So it's coffee blended with butter?

-And coconut oil.

Do you not cook with coconut oil?

Not really, no. My granny used to put it on her face.

It's good for that, too.

I just put soap. All right?

-Right, salt over the top. Yeah, yeah.

-Black pepper.

I actually think I could cook this dish. So far, it looks pretty simple.

We haven't done anything yet, it's not even gone in the oven.

To be fair, anyone can roast a leg of lamb.

Just as long you cover it with foil, preheat the oven to 180 degrees,

and remember to take the meat out after two to three hours.

What we're going to do is roast potatoes.

Now, if you can fill me the pan half full with water.

-So, you actually boil them first, then?

-I always parboil them.

I don't, you see. Maybe that's why I go wrong.

Well, this is why you're here. I'm here to teach you, you see.

I spent 16 weeks having to listen to you tell me

what to do all the time. This is a little bit of payback.

Remember, in the rumba and the cha-cha,

I asked you to scrape your feet?

I do remember that. That was when I wore all black

and then Darren Gough came out with one sequin like that.

The following week, I looked like Liberace.

I wanted sequins everywhere, inside the jacket, outside the jacket.

You were loving it, you even had it on your tie.

I was on a different planet.

When the potatoes are peeled and chopped,

they're parboiled with a pinch of salt for two minutes.

Now, we can't have lamb without mint sauce, all right?

Do you know what? I prefer mint tea to mint sauce, actually.

I've got used to baked beans.

I've got used to a lot of the British ways,

but the two things I'm not used to yet is custard

-and this mint sauce thing.

-Well, just get with it.

'I suppose I can understand someone not liking mint sauce from a jar,

'which is why I use the fresh stuff.

'Make it like this, and it's a whole different ball game.'

Can you chop that up for me?

So when you're chopping it up, do it this way.

-You mean rustic size.

-Just... That can be just...

It's chopped now, isn't it?

No, it's not. You've still got to chop a bit more as well.

-Go on, the plasters are ready.

-Right.

-That's it.

-Is that it?

-Is this chopped?

-Little bit longer.

-No, little bit longer. I'll take over.

-Do you think?

Yeah, cos this is going to take quite a long time.

And with the mint FINALLY chopped,

the next job is to drain the potatoes.

And to make sure they come out nice and crispy,

give them a good shake to fluff them up.

Then grab yourself a tray, and this...

That's the bad stuff, right?

-This is dripping.

-It's right on the...

This is like layers! So, this is dripping.

I think that makes the best roast potatoes.

You just pour that in, all right,

and we take the whole lot and pop that in the oven.

See, I just use a bit of olive oil on mine.

The healthy...

So, we put the whole lot... You haven't tasted these yet.

Wait till you see. Put the whole lot in the oven.

This'll take about an hour, all right, so we're nearly there.

Now it's time to finish the simple mint sauce.

Heat up 75ml of malt vinegar with 25g of caster sugar

and a pinch of salt.

It's an easy job - convincing Camilla is a bit harder.

It's a stonking hangover cure, right, if you smell that.

Yeah. No, I can smell it from over here, thank you.

Look at that, all right?

-As soon as that...

-Your sinus is cleared!

As soon as that's dissolved, you take the mint, throw it in...

..and then you mix that together and that is mint sauce.

You've really picked out some really easy recipes today for me, right?

-I do appreciate that, you know, James.

-Thanks.

We can just leave the roast for a while,

giving us chance to relive our dancing days.

You see, there's bits and pieces that I remember from Strictly.

Was this the rendez turn?

-Do you remember the run, when we did the run?

-That was it.

That's it, let's run!

SHE LAUGHS

Let's go and lay the table.

Right, enough of all that!

The meat's had two hours in the oven,

and I've got a table of hungry guests.

-Wow.

-Right, who's for a piece of lamb?

-Chuck us your plates down. There you go.

-Lamb in hay.

For my friends and I, there's nothing to beat this meal,

but then you always get one picky guest.

Mmm, I quite like the mint sauce. I never thought I'd say that.

First step to a stress-free dinner party?

Don't invite a fussy eater!

Second, choose tasty recipes you can prepare well in advance.

And most important of all, don't try to reinvent the wheel.

You see, the key to making no-drama dinner parties like this

is simple, honest flavours, really good-quality lamb,

nice little bit of hay to add flavour,

and not forgetting that amazing mint sauce.

-Hey, you forgot to mention me.

-That's all right.

You can find all the recipes for the series at...

-And the lamb...

-You see.

I don't know why I sound surprised, I knew you could cook!

Yeah, thanks(!)