Clever Cooking 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 we're out to impress, the temptation is to buy something

expensive for the table.

But I think low-cost, high-quality ingredients cooked with

imagination can deliver way more taste and flavour.

Now, as you know, I'm a Yorkshireman, and I'm pretty careful with my cash.

I like to cook food that looks and tastes a million dollars,

without feeling the need to go and get a mortgage

to buy some of the ingredients.

But to do that you need to know a few secrets,

and today I'm going to reveal them.

I'll be giving a money-saving fresh mackerel an a la carte makeover.

This is taking clever cooking to another level. This is proper grub.

My mate, racing driver

Jason Plato, is taking some volcanic sugar for a spin.

Oo, it is a bit bitey, isn't it?

This is 135 degrees centigrade now.

That is hot!

And I'm cooking a boozy,

bistro classic in honour of my clever cooking hero, Keith Floyd.

The ingredients that he used were very thrifty, very thought out,

and accessible to everybody.

That's where the man was a genius.

I'm starting off with an everyday ingredient I love, pork sausages.

By using clever tricks I'm going to deliver more bangers for your buck.

This is my pastry-encased pork

and hazelnut terrine with a caramelised chutney.

It's just a simple

little dish that has massive impact just using basic ingredients.

The first thing I'm going to do is measure out my flour.

Now there's two different types of flour for this, plain flour,

and strong flour, and what I'm creating is a hot water paste.

It's that classic pastry that you always get in a pork pie.

Melt 65g of butter with 75g of lard in a pan of hot water.

Pour this into a bowl containing the two types of flour

and then mix them into a dough

I've been to Melton Mowbray, the home of pork pies,

and people make it look a lot easier than it is.

They would basically just get this pastry on there,

get a little wooden, like a wooden block, really, with a handle

on it, bat it down in the middle and hand raise this around the edge.

But the pastry has absolutely got to be bang on for that to happen.

What we're going to do is,

we're going to hand raise it around in a tin. It's much easier.

Now, we want to divide this into two thirds, one third.

The one third for the top.

Two thirds for the edge. Just keep that to one side.

It's actually quite difficult to roll out, this,

so you almost start with a piece that kind of shape, really -

roughly the size of the mould - and you basically just pop the mixture in

and hand raise it.

And this is where the word a hand-raised pie comes from.

It's exactly what I'm doing.

Just push the pastry into the corners.

And lift the pastry around the mould.

It takes time, this, but it is actually quite crucial.

And when you've raised your pastry,

pop it into the fridge to cool for 10 minutes.

To posh-up the terrine filling I'm using top-notch

pork-and-apple sausages.

And I'll also add some extra flavours and textures.

What I need to do now is just take the skins of the sausages.

You can use whatever flavour you want, it's entirely up to you,

but they must be really good quality.

I say that because they want to be less fat, more meat.

You don't want all that fat to come out of the sausages

and leak into your pastry.

The sausages are already pre-seasoned, you can flavour these

with whatever you want.

I'm just going to add a touch of parsley, a few hazelnuts

and a bit of chopped shallot.

Finely chop the shallots and parsley

and crush the hazelnuts with whatever you have to hand.

Then mix these with the sausage meat

and stuff the mixture into the chilled pastry case.

Brush the edges with a little beaten egg

and you're ready to roll out the pie lid.

The pastry is so, so delicate.

You just want to very, very carefully just roll it out.

You can almost flatten it out with your hands, look.

Then we quickly roll.

Pick it up.

Roll back over. And then really just crimp this...

..onto the pastry below.

Just to secure it.

And then to decorate, do a few leaves, nothing fancy.

Then grab the remaining egg wash and go over the top.

Next, pop the terrine in the oven and bake for just over an hour.

In the meantime, here's a clever condiment, made from basic

ingredients, that will take this dish to another level.

What I love about chutneys is you can either do it the traditional

way, which takes a good two hours, three hours,

and then leave it sitting in a jar,

or you can do it this way, which is much quicker.

This one takes about 15 minutes to make.

So we've got some light brown sugar. You can use caster sugar if you want.

Normally, a traditional chutney,

you'd just throw everything in a pot with vinegar, sugar

and everything else, boil it for a good hour and a half, two hours.

This one, I'm going to caramelise the sugar first.

It just speeds up the cooking time.

When the sugar is caramelised, stir in the chopped onion,

some chopped tomatoes and dried apricots,

half a teaspoon of dried chilli flakes,

and a good glug of white wine vinegar.

Because you've caramelised the sugar, it will actually set to a solid lump.

But if you keep boiling it, keep it on the heat,

all that sugar will dissolve into everything else.

After about five minutes, with a good pinch of salt

and a bit of black pepper,

you end up with a delicious chutney.

When the terrine's cooked,

loosen the sides with a knife to help it out of the tin.

The you can serve it while it's still hot or when it's chilled.

Either is delicious.

Just don't forget a pot of that fruit chutney.

How good does that look?

And just remember, this is purely sausage meat.

It looks really impressive, doesn't it?

And then the best part of this is, of course, the tasting.

Now, when you make your own pastry it just tastes so much better.

Mmm!

You know, you get this in France a lot, these little terrines,

so often they can be quite complicated to make.

But making it just using sausage meat - but you HAVE made it -

you've made your own pastry as well, it makes it taste so much better.

And the combination of the chutney,

cuts through the flavour of the fattiness of the sausage

and the pork. It really works well.

And if that's not clever cooking, I don't know what is.

Wrapped in rich, crumbly pastry, with a sweet chutney on the side...

..this upscale sausage supper will delight your guests,

without damaging your bank balance.

Clever cooking relies on clever ingredients,

many of which are freely available.

Our oceans are full of them, and I'm not just talking about fish.

Around 8 million tonnes of seaweed are harvested every year globally,

with an estimated value of nearly £3.5 billion.

But while sushi has become more popular here in the UK,

we're still way behind other countries

when it comes to using seaweed as a clever

and super nutritious ingredient in our diet.

Friends Caroline and Tim, from Falmouth,

are on a mission to change this.

Seaweed's incredibly good for you.

It's an incredibly powerful superfood.

It's packed full of all the vitamins and minerals that our bodies need.

It's got ten times more calcium than milk.

It's packed full of zinc, iron, iodine, magnesium.

It's great to your skin. It's great for your hair. It's just good.

Caroline's a renewable-energy engineer.

And Tim's a conservationist.

And they're both passionate about conserving the Cornish coastline.

But because jobs like theirs are scarce in this part of the world,

they had to look for other ways to put their eco knowledge to good use.

I heard a Radio 4 programme about the seaweed

industry in Ireland and started looking around England

and there was nothing happening here.

So we went over to Ireland

and worked with an organic seaweed company over there.

Before we went out to Ireland, we really didn't know anything about

different species of seaweed - where they grow, how to harvest them -

so, basically, we got a super quick lesson in absolutely everything

and we brought that back home, and it worked here, as well.

Tim and Caroline have spent the last three years

building up their business.

They are now one of very few licensed seaweed producers in the UK,

harvesting, and processing their specialist food

in an eco-friendly way.

Seaweed is such a sustainable resource, it's one of the

fastest-growing species in the world.

And you've got a whole ocean you can grow it in, if you really like to.

At the moment I'm harvesting this one -

this one's called sea spaghetti.

And there's literally tonnes of it around us.

It's really good to eat raw.

I can show you.

You just eat it like that.

It's really nice and crunchy, almost like asparagus.

But it's really good to stir-fry, as well.

What we do is, we cut it with scissors.

So we don't cut the entire plant, we don't rip it off the rocks

at all, because that means it can't grow back. Basically,

what we're doing, we're giving the seaweed a haircut. That's it.

And there's definitely no shortage of seaweed here in the UK,

with wild stocks of 650 edible varieties growing on our coastline.

I'm surrounded by different seaweeds.

Here, for instance, Irish moss.

Very good as a vegan gelatine.

We've got gutweed, sea lettuce, green seaweed.

The very small ones here are excellent and really good.

It's called pepper dulse. Very strong flavour.

And then people may be more familiar with

the big kelps that grow a little bit deeper usually.

So there's no problem with the supply here in Britain, then,

but just how strong is the demand?

For the first two years of the business, it was really tough.

It was just an absolute nightmare.

Going to restaurants around Brighton and Bristol and London

and trying to sell the seaweed and everyone

was just kind of like, "Not interested. No way."

And now chefs and restaurants are coming to us,

we have a much better name for ourselves

and just the general public, really, seem to know an awful lot more now.

So the future is looking bright for the seaweed business.

Pity we can't say the same for the weather.

Shame it rains, but, you know, this is Cornwall.

It's only for a few hours and he knows

that there's a hot coffee at the end of it

and then it's done.

Back on shore, Tim and Caroline dry batches of their seaweed,

which can then be stored

like any other ingredient in the cupboard.

But they sell the majority of it fresh

for cooking in all manner of dishes.

From top-end restaurant meals to simple but clever homemade food.

We're going to cook a really basic stir-fry right now

just with some simple vegetables.

Just chuck it all in the pan with some oil,

wait for it to cook and then put the sea spaghetti in at the end.

I cook with seaweed pretty much every day.

I just get used to adding it to anything that I'm already cooking -

so you can add it to salads, eat it on its own,

mash it in with mashed potato.

And it's really delicious, actually.

There's more coming, but if you guys get started on that one...

Ha-ha! We've made some other seaweed dishes already.

A tomato and dulse-based salsa,

where it's just steamed tomato and steamed dulse

blitzed up with lime and chilli.

And then we've got a really simple salad again,

which is grated carrot, cucumber, zucchini

and a mix of three different seaweeds just thrown in there.

You guys have this one.

So, what do their friends make of this nutritious superfood?

Mm! It's dope!

-It's a little bit water chestnut.

-Savoury.

Sort of, like, nutty flavour.

It's nice to have something

that tastes of the sea when you're a vegetarian.

I haven't had something that tastes so fishy in years,

and it's, like, perfect.

Mm!

Good. If you'd asked me four years ago what I'd be doing,

the last thing I would have said would have been a seaweed harvester.

But it's pretty amazing doing this, so I'm glad I took the step

and, yeah, it's a good ride.

It's long days and hard work, but overall, it's fantastic.

-I wouldn't be doing anything else.

-Absolutely not.

-I'd just be making more money.

-THEY LAUGH

'Tim and Caroline collect their rich harvest from the sea.

'And the ocean provides the inspiration for my next recipe, too.

'It's my freshly caught mackerel,

'grilled with a seaweed butter

'and served alongside the freshest summer vegetable stew.'

Now, one of my favourite seaweeds to cook with is this stuff.

It's pepper dulse. It's an amazing product.

And I've actually caught some of this from the south coast of Wales,

but it's produced all around the UK. It's a fantastic ingredient.

So this is in its dry form, like that.

It's got a real distinct smell to it,

but even more of a smell once you reconstitute it, just in cold water.

Now, when you drain it off, you end up with this.

It looks like sort of flower petals in a ball, really.

But it works brilliantly with fish, chicken, but also beef.

And lamb, it works with anything, really.

I'm going to make this simple dish using a pepper dulse butter

to go with some grilled mackerel.

The reason for mackerel is that it's so inexpensive.

It's one of the cheapest fish in the sea, to be honest.

And I actually go fishing for this quite a lot.

And I think it's one of the most underrated

and underused fish that we have in the UK.

Because it's all over the place.

So first thing we're going to do is just soften butter

and the dulse together in a blender.

Now, using a knife, chop the dulse up.

And I don't know why we don't cook with it a lot more in the UK.

We should do because it's all over the place.

But I think it's one of those things,

once you try it, you realise how good it does taste.

'Blitz the seaweed and the softened butter in a food processor,

'along with the juice of half a lemon.

'Now for the fish.'

Now, you can tell this is fresh, like that,

because its head's not flopped to one side,

the eyes are bright and shiny.

You don't often get this in supermarkets this fresh.

If you've got a fishmonger nearby, get some fresh mackerel.

It really is one of the tastiest fish you'll ever taste.

Now, what we need to do is remove the bones out, but keep it whole.

The easiest way to do that is just to extend the slice down to its tail.

Now, open up the cavity. Now, you've got the ribcage in.

So a little bit of biology here.

You've got the ribcage either side.

All you do with the knife is flick the knife

down the side of the ribcage, like that.

Now, you can see the bones come apart. You see?

You do exactly the same down the other side.

Just loosen the ribcage out.

Now, take a pair of scissors

and just cut the top there, just behind the head.

And then just at the bottom of the tail, cut again.

Just snip through the bone.

And then what you need to do is just get your fingers in

and just pull it out.

And all the bones just come out in one piece.

'When you've removed the bones from the other mackerel, too,

'make two foil parcels for the fish to cook in.'

I was never very good at wrapping Christmas presents,

but that's at good as it's going to get.

And then you can open these out.

Almost look like kippers.

They're going to sit...on our tray.

And then all you've got to do

is grab some of this delicious dulse butter.

And it's going to sit inside this cavity

and cook just nicely, all in here.

'Place the fish under a preheated grill for around five minutes.

'Giving you time to cook this fantastic side dish.'

Now, I call it a stew, but it's just a mixture of veg.

Whether you call it a stew, medley, ragout, it's entirely up to you.

I'm going to use a selection of ingredients.

Just a touch of shallot, I've got some broad beans,

some fresh garden peas, a little bit of tarragon.

Now, tarragon's quite an unusual herb to put with fish,

but it works brilliantly well together.

And then just a touch of asparagus, of course.

'While the water comes to the boil,

'chop the shallots and pod the broad beans.'

Now, when you've got broad beans like this

that are produced about 20 yards down the bottom of the garden,

they just taste so good.

Now, we've got the shallot, that's going to take the longest to cook.

So that's going to go in first, then we've got the broad beans.

So you can see how much water I'm using.

As little water as possible, really.

'Simmer the shallots and broad beans for about two minutes,

'then add the peas and peapods.

'These are a particular favourite of mine.'

As a kid, we were quite fortunate

that we used to have a pea field around the back of the farm.

And it wasn't our farm,

so we used to go over there as kids and borrow some peas.

Take them, really.

Then you've got the asparagus. In we go with the tarragon.

And then we've got some of this amazing butter that we've made.

Now, when you boil water and butter together

in smaller quantities of water, you create a sauce.

You actually end up with a dish in its own right.

You've got all this lovely flavour from the dulse, as well.

Rapidly boil it for no more than a couple of minutes.

'Cook the vegetables until they're tender.

'And by then, your mackerel should be ready to serve.'

Oh-ho-ho! Yes!

I mean, how good does that look?

Now, to serve this, grab the tail...

..slide that out.

And then just season that up with a touch of black pepper maybe.

That just sits around it.

This is my kind of food.

Simple cooking using great quality ingredients,

that, let's face it, are so inexpensive.

This is taking clever cooking to another level.

When you've got mackerel this good, buy it.

Because it is absolutely

one of the best fish you'll ever get around the UK.

'This is a meal that celebrates the abundance of land and sea.

'The mouth-watering mackerel and the fresh summer veg stew

'are packed with rich and interesting flavours.

'Definitely a designer dish at a discount price.

'The British have always been canny when it comes to cooking.

'And, luckily, we still have dedicated local producers

'keeping us supplied with some of the tastiest

'and cheapest old-school grub.'

Michael Shore runs Golspie Mill,

a beautifully restored 19th-century watermill in northern Scotland.

He's on a mission to rescue an almost-forgotten traditional food

from the verge of extinction.

This versatile stuff used to feed

many a Scot first thing in the morning.

But it not porridge, it's peasemeal.

It's an unusual ingredient

and Michael's had an unusual journey to get here.

I learnt to be a sheepshearer in New Zealand.

Heaps of people in the community were shearers.

And I saw a lot of guys who were getting to travel by doing that,

so I travelled around the world,

maybe living in four different countries a year

and making pretty good money from it for a small-town boy.

His travels took him to bonnie Scotland, where he met and married

the even bonnier Becky.

Michael trained to become the miller at Golspie Mill,

and that's where he first heard about peasemeal.

Peasemeal is a very traditional Scottish food.

It's basically roasted yellow field peas and it's ground up really fine.

The meal from dried field peas was popular among the poor

of Scotland, who couldn't afford expensive meat.

Michael decided to revive this ancient ingredient and after

learning the method from a retired local miller, he was ready to start.

First, the dried peas are roasted to caramelise their natural sugars.

It's the only part of the process which requires any electricity.

Once the peas are pulled to the top of the mill,

the rest of the hard work is done by the water from the big burn.

The first mill at the top cleans, nips and splits the peas.

A second set of stones crushes them into a gritty texture.

These old-school mills - milling's very much an art really.

You've got to... Everything's done by...

You can kind of hear if something's running right or you can feel

if something's not quite right.

It's more like a living sort of entity that you have to work with.

Lastly, the finishing stone makes them even finer,

before being sieved to produce the smooth finished meal.

The most popular way of using peasemeal in Scotland was to make a

simple porridge-style breakfast dish called brose,

which Becky still makes today.

You just add pease to boiling water.

It's about a pint of water to about four ounces of peasemeal.

You just whisk it more or less until the lumps are out.

It's really, really simple. Pretty nutritious.

Sometimes butter, sometimes salt and pepper.

I've heard of people saying they had it for breakfast every day.

I've also heard people talking about it being supper time,

like before you go to bed.

It's pretty digestible because it's just really simple, you know,

peasemeal, water...

It may be a simple recipe, but it certainly inspires nostalgia.

We had one guy in Texas, who had been in Texas for 30 years,

but he was Glaswegian, and he'd found it online.

He said, "Please get me some. I haven't had this for 30 years.

"It was my favourite breakfast."

I think the peasemeal cost about £3 or something and he spent £98 having

it freighted and 24 hour delivery to Texas cos he was just like...

-SHE GASPS

-..so excited to find it.

Ex-pats are clearly impressed, as are the locals.

The peasemeal is attracting shoppers who fondly remember

the breakfast of their childhood.

Seeing the pease brose being mixed up in the morning,

being mixed with a fork and boiling water,

then some milk being put on top, and tasty sugar, absolutely delicious!

Set us up for the day and it really stuck to the ribs.

It's definitely what you need on a cold, damp morning,

and Becky's trying expand people's awareness of what you can

actually make with this simple but tasty ingredient.

You can use it for coating fish, you can use it to thicken soup,

vegetarian burgers...

We have contact with a vegan chef

who makes quite a few recipes with it.

One of her most recent ones is pumpkin pakora.

So we're getting a bit of that kind of development of new

ideas from kind of a new younger market, I guess.

It's nice to keep a traditional food alive and make it in a

traditional way, as well,

which keeps the art of milling still going.

-It seems a good thing to do.

-Do you want some soup?

And thanks to Michael and Becky,

a new generation is discovering this versatile and nutritious ingredient.

No-one was a bigger fan of rustic cooking than one of my food

heroes, the late, great, Keith Floyd.

Right, red, green and white, this dish is made of.

The fruits and the vegetables of the area.

No fruits in this, by the way,

but the pepper could be described as a fruit.

Clive, come down here and I'll show you what they are.

He knew how to turn inexpensive ingredients into something wonderful.

Well, most of the time!

-She says it's no good.

-Ca m'etonnerait.

-That's lovely.

Ah, bon? Goute-le. Mm. Je doute. Je vais... Les piments sont crus.

The peppers are raw.

-Il n'y a pas assez de sel.

-There's not enough salt.

-Il n'y a pas de poivre.

-Not enough pepper.

In brief, it's absolute rubbish. So... Madame, c'est a vous.

In his honour, I'm going to cook my version of a recipe which

transforms the humble chicken into a French bistro classic.

Now, you cannot pay homage to Mr Keith Floyd without doing

a dish with a glug of this stuff, red wine,

which was his favourite tipple, to be honest.

And the classic recipe that I'm going to do is a coq au vin.

Now, we've got a really good-quality chicken here,

but traditional coq au vin would be done with a capon or a rooster.

I'm butchering my chicken into leg, thigh, wing and breast portions.

Now, you can ask your butcher to do this,

or you can just buy it from the supermarket.

This is classically what we call cook for saute

and it's a technique that I was taught at college

and it was there that I first met the legend, Mr Keith Floyd.

He came up and did a dinner at our college

and didn't quite make it to the end of the dinner.

In fact, he didn't quite make it to the starter cos

he stood up on a lectern to introduce himself and promptly fell off.

After a bit too much vino. It was fantastic.

That was my first experience of a celebrity chef.

And I went, "I want to be him!"

What I'm going to do now is just sprinkle it with a little

bit of flour. This is where the recipe can go wrong.

You put too much flour in... There's probably only about...

just over a teaspoon, maybe, of flour? You don't want too much.

This is going to do two things. It's going to colour our chicken,

but it's also going to thicken up our liquid.

And if you put too much flour on, it goes very thick and very stodgy.

Heat some butter in a large casserole dish

and brown the chicken pieces in batches.

Remove them from the pan and then fry the chopped onions until it softens.

Return the chicken to the pan

and add some chopped smoked streaky bacon and fry for one more minute.

Now, you know that this is going to taste good.

Just look at that in that pan. Looks delicious.

This is where I loved his style of cooking.

It was no-nonsense approach and chefs can learn

so much about the way that he cooked and his knowledge was brilliant.

He never professed to be any sort of famous chef, but what he did

have was a passion for food and a knowledge for food like no other.

What I'm going to do now is we add some wine.

Now, this is where the recipe from region to region in France can

vary quite a lot and it's all to do with the wine that you put in.

Classically, it would be done with a Burgundy.

But you can use white wine, champagne...

It doesn't have to be just red wine, but if you are using it,

generally, it's this stuff - a good-quality Burgundy.

Cover over the chicken like that.

Now, also a touch of cognac. This is purely for me.

And Mr Floyd... who'll be looking down.

Now, into this boozy stew, add some crushed garlic,

a couple of bay leaves and four sprigs of thyme.

Bring it to the boil,

reduce the heat and let it gently simmer for one hour.

When you return, you'll have a pot of rich,

dark loveliness that just needs a few final ingredients -

a handful of pearl onions and some mushrooms fried in a touch of butter.

If you can't get pearl onions, just replace with small whole shallots.

One thing that Keith was very good at was making food accessible.

And because of that,

all the ingredients that he kind of used were accessible to everybody.

That's where the man was a genius.

So, season this up. Salt and pepper.

And we just allow this just to gently simmer, only for about five minutes.

Don't want to overcook those mushrooms and the onions in there.

To serve alongside this classic French stew,

what else but buttery, creamy mashed potato?

Oh, and a glass of red wine.

If there's ever a dish that is kind of chefs' food,

this would be pretty close to it.

That is a plate or a bowl of proper-tasting grub.

There's so much flavour in there. It goes to prove,

classic provincial French cooking is still some of the best in the world.

They have an unique ability to use simple frugal ingredients

and turn them into something spectacular.

Chicken, wine, spuds, done. What more do you want?

And a good glass of wine. Keith Floyd, cheers, buddy!

And here's to this French classic - chicken, bacon, wine - simple,

affordable ingredients,

coming together to create a great recipe, and like the great man

himself, a dish that will never fall out of fashion.

Keith Floyd could make straightforward food taste fabulous.

But back in Georgian times, there was

another famous chef who made them look fabulous.

Food historian Ivan Day is hoping to recreate

one of his masterpieces at Harewood House in Leeds.

In grand houses like this, there were often really ambitious

entertainments where the kitchen was under tremendous pressure to

produce really exciting and innovative dishes.

But it didn't mean that they had

to spend a fortune on expensive ingredients.

I'm going to make a dish that was served to the crowned

heads of Europe, but using a commonplace ingredient,

crayfish, which were plentiful in every stream and brook in England.

I'm going to construct them into a pyramid which I'm going to

build up on a very ornamental stand called a socle.

By making the spectacular socle,

you could give cheap food like crayfish the wow factor.

But you also needed a talented chef

with plenty of time on his hands to make one.

I'm using a design to make this from an Antonin Careme,

who was one of the most important chefs of the 19th century.

He cooked for Napoleon, the Tsar of Russia,

the Rothschild and the Prince Regent of England.

George IV loved his grub, but if he'd eaten all the socle,

he'd have ended up with some right royal indigestion.

It's basically made out of a cardboard skeleton

and then covered with a variety of options.

This is made out of starch paste. You can make it out of pastry.

You can even make them out of fat or wax,

and sometimes they were even made from ice.

The basic socle shape needed decoration

and no household substance was safe from Careme.

So, I'm going to make a paste for the ornaments on the socle.

And it's made out of common garden starch...

..which will be bound together

with a gum which used to be called gum-dragon.

Once the fire-breathing gum was combined with the starch,

a small amount of water was mixed in.

-HE BLOWS

-Dragon dust.

More like a spell than a recipe.

Careme's socle also called for wax made from whale fat.

If I pull a piece off,

you can see that you can do anything with it.

It stretches, it pulls, you can model with it, you can

print it in a mould, it is a really flexible material.

And you can also colour it.

Careme was strict about the colour of decorations,

and when red dye was needed, more creatures were sacrificed.

To get my red, I'm using some little insects called cochineal beetles.

If I give them a little bit of a crush,

even there you can see a slight redness.

But if I add to that a little tiny bit of alcohol, you can

see that they're giving off a red colour very rapidly.

Gum arabic, used nowadays in fizzy drinks and sweets,

was then added to the boozy beetles to make a pigment.

Then a small amount of the mixture was folded into the paste.

And hey presto, you get quite a rich pink and then red.

Using this wonderful board, which was actually carved

at the time of Careme, I'm going to make this swag here,

a beautiful assemblage of little flowers.

Look at that. Isn't that incredibly beautiful?

Perfect.

That's my socle finished.

I just wonder how many marks out of ten Careme would give me.

Probably about three, I reckon!

But Ivan's toughest test is building

the crayfish pyramid that goes on top.

Careme would have put a stale cone of bread inside to give

the structure some much-needed support.

To give his creation a final flourish, Ivan spears truffles

and crayfish on an ornamental skewer.

I'm then going to put that into the top of my pyramid,

and it gives it extra height and a fantastic finishing touch.

I think that is the most extreme prawn cocktail that I've ever seen.

Well, I don't know when I'd get the time to make it,

but I've got to admit that transforming a few humble crayfish

into something so extravagant takes clever cooking to new heights.

But where I can compete with Careme is making a dish look far more

expensive than it actually is.

With a few clever tricks, I can turn a shop-bought

flan into a spectacular, speedy strawberry gateau.

It's so easy, even my old friend,

British touring-car champion Jason Plato,

should be able to make one to impress his two young daughters.

-Now, then.

-Hey, how are you doing, matey?

-Good, how are you?

-Are you all right? Are you well?

-How are you doing?

-What are we doing?

-What are we cooking?

-Well, you're cooking, I'm not.

-What am I cooking?

-You're doing a lot of whisking.

-Whisking? I'm glad I can whisk!

JAMES LAUGHS

-Now, I know you've got two daughters.

-Yes, yes.

So, I thought I'd show you how to make a cake,

cos I know what you're like in the kitchen,

and, to be fair, you're a better driver than you are a chef.

Well, yes. I'm definitely not that good in the kitchen.

Now, if we got you to mix eggs and sugar together,

-that's pushing things a little too far, so...

-If you say so!

THEY LAUGH

-So, we're going to make a cake using this ready-made cake.

-OK.

But it looks really impressive. This is a sponge flan case, all right?

Take the flan case like that...

Careful with it! We've got a metal ring each, all right?

And then what we're going to do

is we're going to cut it through there...

Leaves this sponge. Right, now...

So, what got you racing in the first place, then?

My dad was in the motor trade.

He was a BMW dealer, and he took a racing car in as a bad debt.

It was for him, really, and I managed to get my hands on that.

On the Sundays when the garage was closed,

we used to have an in-and-out for the petrol pumps

and a chain on the in-and-out,

and we used to drive around the petrol pumps on a weekend.

And then we found a local track, we found a club.

We started competing, and, you know, within a year,

we'd won the club championships, the regionals,

and then went on to win the British, so as long as I can ever remember,

motor racing was... Even from the age of 12.

OK, let's see how fast he is in the kitchen.

Start by cutting the flan in half width-ways

so you end up with two thin layers.

That's it.

Rather than cut straight through,

turning as you cut it will make the layers nice and even.

-I'm quite happy with that.

-Split it off, and then we'll see.

-Hey, he's on it!

-Now what we're going to do is get our cream ready.

So, this is where...

-This is a touring car racing driver's diet now.

-Yeah!

That's called a Scottish salad, is it not?

Whip up a pint of double cream, and add a tablespoon of vanilla paste.

We're going to whip this up. Now, you want it partly whipped.

-Soft peaks.

-Soft peaks, that'll do.

So, we'll leave this to mix for a couple of minutes. All right.

Now, then what you're going to do is you're going to take the cake base

and then stick it inside the mould there.

This is the bottom bit here, leaving the top bit for later, all right?

Now trim 400g of large strawberries, and then cut them in half lengthways.

Now, the cream's whipped.

Like that, which is perfect. Go on, have a taste.

Oh, yeah, you can taste that vanilla, can't you?

Anyway, we take the strawberries and you put them on

the side of the mould like this.

So, the cut side goes all the way around the edge.

Make sure they go nice and even.

Cos this is the important bit, all right?

While you're catching up, we're going to take some liqueur.

See, now we're getting excited!

Now, the difference is I've measured this,

cos you've been round my house before and I know how much you drink!

So, we take a little bit of liqueur

and just drizzle it over the base of the sponge like that.

-You are the most successful touring car driver ever.

-Yeah, with 92 wins.

And still you've got the enthusiasm for racing.

You've still got the hunger for it.

You know, my game is all about passion and the desire to win.

You know, it gets me out of bed in the morning.

Add as much cream as necessary to fill the top of the strawberries.

Place the remaining flan case on the top and press down lightly.

Then sprinkle with icing sugar.

This is where you need to speak to your mechanic,

-cos he'll have one of these.

-Yeah.

Blowtorch, all right?

So, what you need to do is get your skewer, heat it up...

How come your area's a lot clearer than mine?

This is what happens, isn't it?

Well, I've seen...what happens in your house!

THEY LAUGH

I've seen you cook. It's just like this at home!

It's just carnage everywhere, look.

Right, you get a metal skewer

and then this is a little homage to you, look.

-Are you liking this?

-I am, yes.

Chequered flag, but mine is on a slanty angle.

This decoration is simply for Jason's benefit,

but you could do it at home with a metal skewer heated over a gas ring.

Otherwise, simply decorate with fresh berries.

Then a few blackberries.

Over the top. You can cut these in half if you wish.

Heat up the metal ring. It just loosens the cream. Very quickly.

You don't want to hold this blowtorch any longer than that. Onto the cake.

And then if you watch... You lift this off...

-Oh, see, that's pretty as a picture, isn't it?

-All right?

You don't want it on too long. You just loosen...

You can use a hot cloth for this.

You don't have to use the blowtorch, but...

Oh, you little fighter.

-Look at that, that's...

-Eh?

-Make more mess. Look at that!

-THEY LAUGH

-Are you happy with that?

-I am, yeah.

Right, now we're going to finish this off.

For a final wow factor, caramel sponge sugar is the way to go.

Simply place caster sugar in a clean frying pan

and let it caramelise over a medium heat.

But also let it cool slightly before you work with it.

This is boiling hot sugar, so do this away from the kids.

What you do is you pull the sugar in between your fingers like that.

-So, grab each bit of sugar as it goes.

-Wow, look at that.

-Like this.

And you pull each strand of sugar.

-And by now, there's a blister forming on my finger.

-Yeah!

-How cool's that?

-And we lift that up.

-Wow. Impressive.

And you put that on your cake.

So, the idea is to put this on and a few more.

Oh, yeah, it is a bit... Oh, it's a bit bitey, isn't it?

THEY LAUGH

-That is hot!

-Keep going.

And there's a few other shapes you can do, as well.

Look at that. It is cool stuff, isn't it? It's like a suspension strut.

It is, yeah!

You might have a career after this racing sort of stuff. You know that?

Plato's Patisserie.

It's quite fun, actually, isn't it?

See, this cooking thing's not that poncey, is it?

I think my work here is complete.

THEY LAUGH Look at that! Eh?

-I'm chuffed with that.

-Are you happy with that?

-I am, yeah.

And if Jason can do it, so can you.

With a few decorating flourishes,

this simple cake is quickly dressed to impress.

Whoever eats a slice will think you're a baking god.

Should you tell them how easy it is? I'll leave that up to you.

Do I get to take that home for Soph and the girls?

-Yeah, of course you do.

-Right.

-You can claim that one as well if you want.

-No, they'll know that's not me.

THEY LAUGH

MUSIC: Born To Be Wild by Supertramp

Well, I think us baking boys deserve a bit of downtime.

And this is one track where I think I can beat a British racing champion.

# Head out on the highway... #

I'm concentrating more on this than I did on my cake.

THEY LAUGH Four laps down!

# Whatever comes our way... #

OK, maybe I should stick to the kitchen.

Well, with a little clever cooking,

I've shown how you can eat well without paying over the odds.

Whether it's upscaling humble ingredients

or pimping up a simple cake,

this is gourmet food on an everyday budget.

You can find all the recipes from the series on bbc.co.uk/food.

-How many laps have we done?

-Two more laps to go!

Oh, he's gone, he's gone! That was bang out of order!

You are such a cheating git!

THEY LAUGH

Ye-e-es!