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.

'I'll be serving up a spicy and sweet duck dish

'that's literally bursting with flavour...'

Most people would never have even tasted it before.

This really is delicious.

'..showing my Strictly Come Dancing buddy Camilla Dallerup

'the quickest steps to the 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...

'..and 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.

But I'm kicking off with one of my favourite starters.

A carpaccio of tuna with watermelon.

Simple to make, a dream to taste.

What's not to love?

Now, I do loads of dinner parties at home and this is a dish

that I never, ever take off the menu.

It's got a unique taste, texture, flavour,

and you wouldn't believe it, looking at the minimum amount of ingredients.

I've got a little bit of watermelon,

some shallot, chives, a touch of bread -

this is sourdough, just thinly sliced and dried out -

and then some fresh tuna in the fridge.

You'll need 50g to 75g of fish per person, and the fresher the better.

Carpaccio is made from raw meat

so you'll also want get it nice and thin.

To do that, put it between two sheets of clingfilm

and flatten it gently with a rolling pin.

What you don't want to be doing is whack, whack,

which pulls the tendons out of the tuna, ruins the fish.

You just carefully bat it out.

What you're looking for is a flat piece of tuna

which is the same right throughout.

Now, for me, the idea of a dinner party is to create things

with a little bit of flare and imagination

but to keep things nice and simple

so you can spend most of the time with your dinner guests,

not working like a Trojan in the kitchen.

And this is the prime example of that dish.

So you've got a nice piece of tuna. You can see it's nice and thin.

And then, just using a bowl...

Now, you want a bowl the same sort of size as the plate, really,

that you're going to serve it on.

Place this over the top and then, using a really sharp knife,

you cut it all in one go.

You don't want to make little tiny cuts

because it's going to break up the clingfilm

and make it very difficult to take off.

And what you end up with is a lovely disc of tuna, like that.

There's no way these trimmings are going to waste.

They're chopped up to make a tasty little canape

that'll be hidden under the disc of tuna.

Now, I've got these garden chives that I produce in the garden,

which are lovely and firm.

And then just some finely diced shallot.

Now, it's really important that you get this nice and fine.

You don't want big chunks of onions.

The tuna gets a squeeze of lemon juice

and then it's mixed with the shallots and chives,

along with a touch of salt and pepper.

And this is what I love about this dish, is its simplicity,

great flavour and simply prepared,

and this is the essence of great cooking.

I top off my tuna and shallot canape with watermelon.

And for me, this is what really sets this dish apart.

First, take the skin off a slice of watermelon

and then pop it in a bag with a pinch of salt.

Now, what the salt will do is draw out some of the moisture

from the watermelon, like that.

That's all it is to start off with.

You need to prepare this a little bit in advance

cos this needs to sit in the fridge now for a couple of days.

I'll show you the difference, what it looks like,

once it's been in the fridge for about 48 hours.

You can see the liquid starts to come out of it

and you see how the colour changes.

It almost goes translucent. Look at that.

It almost looks like candied melon, really, it's really unusual.

Now the melon's had a couple of days in the fridge,

I can cut it into slices before frying it.

And there's only one ingredient for that job.

Now, you must get this butter to a lovely nut-brown colour,

then and only then do you put the melon in.

A lot of chefs will call this "mock foie gras".

There's a lot to be said about foie gras,

whether you like it or whether you don't,

but you can get the same flavour,

that buttery, lovely liver-y sort of flavour

that you get with foie gras, you can get with watermelon.

I've fooled many, many famous chefs with this.

Now, this is ready when the melon starts to change colour.

Lift it off the heat, a nice pinch of salt.

Put this cooked watermelon to one side,

then get on with assembling the dish.

The first job is to make the concealed canape.

Pile the tuna and shallot mixture

on to small slices of crisp sourdough toast,

and then top each one off with chunks of that amazing watermelon.

Then put that on the plate, and then you can grab your tuna.

Now, this, you can make in advance in the fridge

and then when you actually serve it,

you just take the clingfilm off one side

and then flip it over and pop that over the top, like that.

So you've got this nice disc which will leave dinner party guests

wondering what on earth's underneath it,

but also, how on earth you get it into a circle like that.

Then it's just a matter of taking off the top layer of clingfilm,

brushing the tuna with extra-virgin olive oil,

and using more of the chopped shallots and chives as a garnish.

Finally, just before you serve it, a touch of lemon.

If you put it on too early, it cures it.

And then just a touch of black pepper over the top.

This has got to be one of the best starters I've ever tasted.

The delicate flavour of the tuna is fantastic enough,

but the canapes topped off with that fried watermelon

takes the dish to a whole new level.

Believe me, you'll never find a better curtain-raiser

for your dinner party.

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 picked 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.

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.

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.

This dish is also easy to multiply up

if you have loads of friends coming round.

Mind you, if you're cooking for a really big crowd,

you need lots of skill and a very cool head.

Chefs aboard this famous ship had all that and more.

Night after night, they turned out amazing meals

for well over 1,000 passengers.

But on one fateful evening,

they served up their dishes for the final time.

Food historian Dr Annie Gray is discovering

more about that last supper.

On the night of 14th April 1912, the RMS Titanic,

the most luxurious liner of its day,

hit an iceberg and shortly thereafter sank.

The loss of 1,500 lives shook the whole world.

But the ship had sailed for four days before that fateful night,

with the passengers on board enjoying various meals.

And even that very evening, they'd all sat down to a stupendous feast.

Amazingly, some of the menus from that fateful night survived,

so we do have a fairly clear idea of what was cooked and what was eaten,

and I'm going to prepare a selection of dishes from those dinners.

The menu that I've got here is from the first-class dining saloon.

I'm going to cook filet mignons Lili,

and peaches in chartreuse jelly.

This dessert will take two to three hours to prepare,

so Annie starts it off mixing gelatine with water,

sugar and chartreuse,

a liquor made by French monks.

As with nearly all of these monastic products,

the recipe is a closely guarded secret

and no-one can know what's in it, but essentially it's a herb liquor.

Annie puts the mould into a bowl of ice

to help the jelly set more quickly.

She then pours in the jelly itself,

which she allows to set slightly before adding peaches.

The process is repeated until the mould is full,

and the whole jelly is left to completely set.

No time or expense was spared

when it came to indulging the ship's rich guests.

Catering on the Titanic was on a truly gigantic scale.

There were over 50 tonnes of meat, poultry and fish,

40 tonnes of potatoes and 27,000 bottles of beer and soda water.

Turning all those raw ingredients into show-stopping dishes

required careful preparation and real technical skill,

and that was definitely true of Annie's meat course.

Filet mignons Lili is a very expensive dish.

It comprises layers of potatoes with butter, artichoke bottoms boiled,

a fillet steak and a very, very rich sauce,

which is finished with Madeira and truffles.

Annie starts off the super-posh dish

by peeling and thinly slicing potatoes.

She then puts the slices in a ring with butter.

This is my kind of food!

And then it will just go in an oven for about 20 minutes.

Titanic carried a huge catering crew,

over 400 people preparing over 6,000 meals a day.

Many of those meals were labour intensive.

Annie's next task is to prepare the artichoke,

a job that was just as much of a workout then as it is now.

It's really good if you're feeling a bit frustrated with life.

And that needs to cook for probably 15 minutes or so.

It's not an exact science. I'll prod it and check.

The top-notch fillet steak has to be cut into medallions

before being fried in butter.

Standards were obviously high in the first-class kitchens,

but when disaster struck,

one cook went above and beyond the call of duty.

Most of the chefs went down with the ship

but there was one exception - Charles Joughin, the baker.

He's a bit of a hero - he spent most of the night baking

so that those people who went out on the lifeboats would have

hot rolls and various bread to keep them going throughout the night.

In between baking, he was drinking steadily.

As the ship went down, he put on his lifejacket and leapt

from the deck and he survived several hours in icy-cold water,

something which he attributed later

to the level of alcohol in his bloodstream.

Right, I think I'm ready to assemble my dish.

Annie stacks the potatoes, artichoke and fillet steak

before finishing off the dish with a rich sauce

infused with Madeira and truffles.

With her meat dish plated up,

Annie just has to hold her nerve to turn out the boozy jelly.

Phew. Well, there we have it, my first-class dinner is ready.

What can I say? It's steak, potatoes and gravy. It's really good.

It's very refreshing, very sort of palate cleansing.

It's a sobering thought that this would have been the last dinner

for an awful lot of people on board Titanic that night,

and it wouldn't even be remembered

if it hadn't all ended quite so dramatically.

Creating high-class food may require a huge amount of technical skill,

but that doesn't mean you have be a genius

to turn out fantastic dishes in your own kitchen.

One of my favourite puddings is this bourbon-glazed monster doughnut.

It packs a huge punch in the flavour department,

and you can make it well 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.

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

Of course dessert doesn't have to be supersized to be tasty

or comforting.

Here in Britain, we spend more than £3 billion a year

on sweetshop goodies of all shapes and sizes.

Londoners Melanie Goldsmith and Emile Bernard

have hit on a new way to satisfy our sugar cravings.

They created sweets that put a tipsy twist on your average pick and mix.

Melanie fell in love with sweets at a very young age.

From the point at which I could chew,

I was pretty much obsessed with sweets.

I've never stopped having that craving.

When I was at uni, I thought rather than get a part-time job in a bar,

I'd get a job in a local sweet shop

so I sold everything from Kendal Mint Cake to strawberry bonbons.

I of course got to dip in myself.

While at uni, Mel met Emile, whose passion for cooking was in his blood.

I'd come from a really big foodie family, I'm one of eight kids

and all five of the boys are chefs, so just cooking, cooking, cooking.

I was always interested about how and why things happen with food.

Their combined passion for flavours and all things sweet

led them to set up a business with a unique product,

an alcoholic fruit pastille.

The idea came about by accident

whilst they were running a series of student dating nights.

The whole concept of it was adults acting like kids,

"adult play" we called it.

I approached Emile to do an adult candy bar

so that people had something they could have at the event

and then take home with them.

Soon the sweets became a bigger hit than the dating nights,

and it was clear which business had a brighter future.

We got a market stall

and we managed to sell £3,000-worth of sweets in three weeks.

And then we get this e-mail asking for 20,000 sweets,

so we knew we were onto something.

A couple of years on,

and the friends are still producing cocktail confectionary,

and they love experimenting with different flavours.

What we're going to eat today

is actually testing our new vodka recipe

which is for a Canadian campfire.

It's a vodka-based pastille with maple and smoke essence.

To start with, we have glucose and we have our sugar

and that is a boiling process to one pan. We get to a certain temperature

and in our other pan we just have our vodka and peach essence mixture.

And it being powdered gelatine, it's nice and easy.

You don't need to soak it like a lot of the leaf gelatine out there.

Just pop it in there and let it absorb.

And we're going to add our secret ingredients,

so in here we have our maple essence and a little something special

in there, so that is where all the flavour really happens.

We really need to make sure that

this doesn't go up above 40 degrees centigrade,

just so the alcohol doesn't burn off

and those delicate flavours don't get ruined.

When the flavouring reaches the right temperature

and the sugar syrup has thickened,

the two are combined a little at a time.

All those bubbles just dramatically reduces the temperature.

When it gets to this stage,

you can start adding in a bit more at a time.

We just have to be patient when we're pouring the alcohol mix in

because we want each sweet as boozy as possible.

It was about six months of just trial and error,

making sure it works, to get the recipe right,

and making the template what we have now,

so interchangeable with so many different cocktails

that it will almost work every single time now.

And there we have a beautifully coated sweet, as you can see.

Aren't you gorgeous?

But will their new vodka flavours be a hit with their friends?

Can I try one?

Hmm, really soft.

Hmm. Nice.

-You want another one? Cos five and you can't drive.

-Five?!

We aim to develop a range of products

but for now we're keeping with the pastilles,

and the future holds some secrets.

It's an interesting idea,

but I'm not sure I'd be up for too many boozy sweets

after a dinner party.

Tonight, I'm hoping for a quiet-ish evening with 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.

-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(!)