Episode 4 The Good Cook

Love food? Love cooking?

This series will show you how anyone can make fantastic food at home...

..and also introduce you to some new and exciting ingredients.

I love cooking, it's my life, my passion.

I'm Simon Hopkinson and ever since I was a child, food has meant the world to me.

I opened my first restaurant at the age of 20 and have been in and out of kitchens ever since.

But now I am better known for writing cook books.

For me, nothing beats cooking at home.

It's my real inspiration and I want to share my love of it with you.

That is just how it should be.

Tonight I'm going to show you five recipes a good cook

would be proud of, meals that you can make in your own kitchen.

Lovely homemade dishes that will impress your family and friends.

Follow my lead and you'll be able to cook some exceptionally good food.

I just love it.

In my hometown of Bury, this market has always been inspirational to me

and as a small boy it played a big part in my love of food.

Morning.

-Hiya, all right?

-Fine, thanks.

One thing in particular is memorable - Lancashire cheese.

All at once creamy, salty, crumbly. Wonderful.

Mmm! That's what I remember.

-Thank you very much.

-Cheers.

-Thanks for all your help.

I'm Lancashire born and bred, and Lancashire cheese remains one of my best beloved cheeses.

My mum used to put it in a pie with onions and that remains one of my fondest memories.

And I still make it today.

Cheese and onion is a fantastic marriage.

My brother and I loved Mum's pie almost more than anything else.

As a boy coming home from school, the amazing smell from the kitchen meant only one thing.

It's cheese and onion pie. You could actually smell it

coming up the garden path.

And Mum, actually, she wouldn't have thought twice about me talking about it like this, because it was just...

everyday - I think it was her mother's recipe, originally.

And it is a Lancashire recipe. Roughly slice three onions.

No need to be too precise.

You could, if you wanted, do these in a food processor.

Add butter

and gently cook the onions.

Plenty of pepper.

Plenty of grinding.

It is essential to cook them slowly, so it draws out their sweetness,

making them soft and fondant.

A good pie needs good pastry.

We are going to need 60g of butter

and 60g of lard.

Tumble in some flour and switch on.

Add three tablespoons of ice cold water to bind the mix.

Lightly knead and roll out the pastry.

This is quite a nice trick.

It flops into place, useful when you have very, very short pastry.

To keep the onions nice and moist, add half a cup of water.

Now Lancashire cheese. Grate coarsely for the right texture.

For me it is the only cheese for this pie.

It is irresistible to keep nibbling little bits, I tell you.

So time to assemble.

Layer of onions first. Cheese.

Dare I put more pepper? I think I dare.

There's no herbs, there's no bay leaf, there's no nutmeg maybe.

It is just cheese and onions.

Pepper. And more cheese.

Run some milk around the edge here.

You could use egg, but Mum never did.

It saves on an egg. Invert it over.

And then just push down...

into that recess I've just made.

Squish it together a bit. Holes in the middle to allow steam to escape.

Cut. Careful not to drop it, of course.

I just want to push down to get the excess air out of there, through those holes.

Use the knife on the side if you want to do this - not essential.

I've never been one for making little flowers.

But I do quite like this lattice effect.

Into the oven.

Bake in the oven for 40 to 50 minutes.

Ooh!

It brings back very good memories.

This is best eaten warm or at room temperature, not cold.

But it's not good piping hot,

so we need to leave it to sit there for about 15 minutes.

Or maybe 20. It is a difficult time this, waiting,

but we'll get through it.

Just pop it down, and this I use just to get the sides off.

That is a picture, I must say, even though I say it myself.

Here we go!

Ooh!

Cheese that's sort of curdled, and the onions are moist.

Anyway....

..thanks Mum.

it's a yummo scrummo pie, I tell you!

This such a lovely pie to make,

and very nice indeed for a Sunday supper.

I never throw away bread, or at least I try not to.

There is always something that can be made.

Bread crumbs, croutons,

but today I am going to make

a wonderful Tuscan salad called Panzanella.

Panzanella is the name for this Tuscan bread salad.

Not fancy, a few basic ingredients, but the end result is a revelation.

Start by breaking the bread into small pieces.

The sort of thing we should make more often.

It's very satisfying, it's very thrifty.

If my mother was still alive,

she would have loved this salad, she liked making things out of nothing.

Whenever I've made this for friends,

there's never any left, just never any left.

It has such a nice moreish quality about it.

Right, I think we're about there.

So I'm just going to season that right at the beginning.

And some pepper.

There will be more seasoning to come,

but at the moment I'm just, as it were, dressing this bread.

Red wine vinegar and olive oil soaks into the bread,

both sharpening the taste and softening the texture.

Really good. Just rocking up. And I love vinegar.

I used to drink it as a child, straight from the bottle.

Cover some tomatoes with boiling water.

This is just to help remove the skins.

Which is happening very quickly already.

We can slip those out.

I find peeling things quite therapeutic anyway,

it's in the nature of me to take that time and trouble

to get things as nice as I can, I guess.

There we are. That's about right. Another little mix.

And a lot more olive oil.

This is a very oily salad this, it needs to be.

And when you've got the smell of tomatoes

and then you start to peel a cucumber...

..that's already tasting good, just by the smell.

A little bit of onion.

Garlic. Very important.

In it goes.

Again, a little touch of vinegar.

Trickle, trickle, trickle.

Get that garlic well mingled in there.

In this recipe I'm sing sourdough bread, because its taste and texture

are perfect for this rustic Italian salad.

Sourdough loaves are becoming more and more popular in the UK

and the loaf has a history.

This simple technique is thousands of years old.

Most bread is made by adding yeast to the dough

to make it ferment and rise.

However sourdough has no added yeast.

It begins as a liquid mixture of flour and water

that is left in an open bowl for as long as a week to sour.

The mixture, the sourdough starter,

absorbs natural yeasts and bacteria from the air,

allowing it to grow and ferment more slowly.

This sourdough starter is then added to flour and salt to make a dough.

Those natural yeasts and bacteria

give the bread its unique sour taste.

Kneading bread dough always helps it to rise.

After an hour in a hot oven,

the dough emerges with a lovely golden crust,

smelling so wonderful you want to eat it straightaway.

Ironically, for the perfect Panzanella

the staler the bread the better.

Pass that around a little bit.

Essential to this salad - basil.

Just rip it up. No other herb will do.

Don't stint.

Now, of course the smell is getting intoxicating.

It's not a formal thing, but yet it's lovely to, you know,

all sitting around a table in the summer eating this.

That look very nice really, doesn't it?

And that final taste from the bowl.

It tastes summery. It has all right ingredients.

You know, the thing I forgot to say, how cheap?!

I mean old bread, some tomatoes, a bit of cucumber, some basil,

perhaps you grow your own basil.

It's not difficult to see that is an inexpensive gorgeous plate of food.

I really could eat that forever, to be honest.

But there's one thing missing.

A little glass of wine.

A nice fruity red for actually a nice fruity dish. Chin chin!

Panzanella makes a perfect summer lunch eaten out of doors,

together with a glass of something very nice.

Most good supermarkets stock all kinds of shellfish -

from oysters and clams, to prawns and lobsters

and lovely mussels too.

Ready-cleaned fresh mussels are pretty easy to find these days.

Now, they are simple to cook, but they take a little care.

Steamed with white wine, some shallots,

parsley, the traditional way.

But they are very good in this intensely savoury spinach sauce.

There can be nothing nicer than eating huge bowls of mussels

cooked by someone else in a restaurant,

but they are so easy to cook at home,

especially with this punchy green sauce.

You need at least a kilo of mussels to feed two people.

So these mussels need de-bearding.

Mussels these days are much cleaner than they used to be.

And not so many barnacles on, but they do always have these beards.

And it just needs tweaking out.

It's what hold the mussel to the rock.

Any that remain shut and just won't open - chuck them out.

Give the mussels a thorough wash to rid them of any grit.

While the mussels soak, begin the sauce.

Starting with the spinach.

So that is just going to be blanched in there.

That is fine, just like that.

Chop some celery and shallots.

Fry the two together.

It is worth weighing out the parsley here.

You'll be surprised how much you need.

It's ten grams, you really do need ten grams.

You might be saying, "Who ever weighs parsley?" Well, I do!

I love this sauce for its punchy taste.

And tarragon is essential for its aniseed flavour.

Use a couple of really bushy sprigs.

Let's put the mussels in the pot.

Pop the mussels in with the onions and celery.

To emphasize the tarragon, add some pastis.

This French aniseed aperitif is commonly available.

And you will like that.

It is good to burn off the excess alcohol.

Let's add the sherry now.

About 200 mills.

There are very few things nicer

than the smell of mussels coming up to the boil.

Some of the best mussels I have ever tasted

come from our own British waters, especially in Cornwall.

I only buy mussels when there is an R in the month.

Even so every year 150 tons are produced from this farm alone.

Rope-grown mussels are exposed to more nutrients,

meaning they grow faster and bigger

compared to seaside mussels that you see clinging to rocks.

Also these farmed mussels are mostly all of a uniform size.

Are we nearly there? I think we are.

So straight into here.

The mussels are ready when the shell pops open

revealing the orange morsel inside.

And a quick shake.

Keep that precious liquid while I shell the mussels.

Because of the copious amounts of sauce here,

it's easier to eat the mussels off the half shell

which makes for less messy eating.

If you're making a lot of these for supper with friends,

then get everybody to help.

There we are. All done. Didn't take long.

A liquidiser really helps to make a smooth and silky sauce.

Pour in the mussel broth, the spinach, parsley and tarragon.

And a little Tabasco.

Once you have a vibrant green sauce,

pour over the mussels and gently re-heat.

Gorgeous sauce.

Soft and sweet and tender is how mussels should be.

The green and orange look particularly pleasing, I think.

Quite an abundant dish. Incredibly tasty.

I mean really tasty, a savoury dish

that I think actually will knock your socks off.

It was originally named Rockefeller

for the richness of its topping for an oyster,

but made here with mussels the idea remains every bit as delicious.

A skill of the good cook

is knowing how to turn a humble ingredient into something superb.

It's not all about prime cuts.

Something I learnt from Mum, and I see it as a challenge.

There's nowt wrong with a bargain.

I love cooking forgotten cuts of meat.

And this breast of lamb in particular

is one that cooks to a melting tenderness.

These will feed six people for around about a pound a head.

And what could be nicer than that?

This under-rated cut of lamb is at its best

when you cook it slowly and it really is worth the time spent.

Begin with some seasoning.

Use fine salt for this, as sea salt has a tendency to fall off.

There is something about white pepper and onion

and it is quite a northern thing, and in Lancashire where I come from,

white pepper, we all grew up with white pepper, ready-ground.

People didn't have pepper mills anyway, it was all ground pepper.

I don't think Dad bought his first pepper mill until I was about six.

I don't know why he bought it, because he didn't like pepper much anyway.

Add a small amount of oil to a heavy lidded pot.

Make sure it is nice and hot, so that the meat browns straight away.

My mother used to cook a breast of lamb,

she used to cook hers on the bone in a piece,

braised in the bottom of the Aga when I was a boy.

Now take some onions.

Astonishingly you will need the same weight of onions as lamb.

When the lamb is brown, remove it and discard the excess fat.

But we do need to leave those nice browny bits on the bottom.

Make a bed of onions on which to rest the lamb.

Then pop in a bay leaf and cover with the rest of the onions.

In restaurant kitchens, for a dish like this

we often use something called a cartouche -

which is actually is nothing more than a sheet of greaseproof paper.

Fold it in four.

What this does is it helps keep in the steam from the onions and from the meat.

It hits this before it hits a dry, hot lid,

so almost embalming it if you like.

It is quite a useful little notion,

it's not just some cheffy fad thing. It works. It works.

Of course you have to be geometry.

There we are. That's about oval.

What is extraordinary is that this dish has no added liquid -

the juices generated simply come from the onions and meat.

There we are. Lid on.

Cook in the middle of the oven on a low heat,

gas mark 2 or about 150 degrees.

Pop it in.

And we'll look at that in an hour or so.

The key word here is slow, slow, slow.

Or the three key words are slow, slow, slow.

Three hours is a long time, but slow is so good here.

Oh!

Oh luscious I call this dish, luscious!

Rest the lamb.

Remove the bay leaf and drain the onions.

Back into the pot.

Flop flop! And you will see here

that on the surface there is a layer of fat.

This fat will naturally settle on the surface

so we are going to remove it with some kitchen paper.

Just press it down. Very useful stuff for this.

Getting rid of fat. It just soaks into the paper.

And I am going to pop this back into the onions.

Now, to intensify the lamby onion juices,

re-heat and allow them to reduce by half.

The ingredient I need now is big bunch of parsley.

That fantastic smell.

I love it! I love it!

With the juices now reduced, add pepper,

red wine vinegar for acidity

and some anchovy essence or several finely chopped anchovies.

Now tip in all that lovely chopped parsley.

It is a long time coming this dish, but I tell you it's worth it.

There we are.

This is great!

This is great!

So you see that nice sauce moating its way around the lamb.

Melts in your mouth. That is what it's meant to do.

It is a dish that seems to just get on with itself

and give you much pleasure when you eat it.

This incredibly delicious, really cheap supper will happily feed six.

Some restaurant desserts have a timeless quality about them

and my orange caramel custard is truly one of those.

It's worth finding really good oranges

for their intense flavour in this sweet little dish.

It takes a little time and effort, but the result here is so good.

Begin by removing the orange zest.

I take the zest off here just with a potato peeler.

Just take the peeler and hit it.

If you make this gap narrower,

it stands to reason that it's not going to go deeper into the pith

which is absolutely what you don't want.

If you leave the pith intact, it will make it bitter

and spoil the end result.

Put the zest into a small food processor,

together with some caster sugar.

Mmm! Fantastic smell.

It actually almost reminds me of an orange ice lolly. In a way.

Put the orange and sugar mixture into a pan Add half a litre of milk.

Warm together.

Make sure you heat it slowly,

keeping just below a simmer, while carefully stirring.

Then leave to infuse for a least an hour.

Next up is the caramel sauce that gives this dish its name.

Now, I'm going to weight the granulated sugar for the caramel,

which we need 120 grams.

And I'm just going to add a little cold water to this,

just to dissolve it and help get it going.

Bring the water and sugar to a simmer.

It's staring to smell quite toasty now.

A sort of toasty, nutty, sugary...

Keep the heat low and cook slowly

until the sugar turns into a sticky rich caramel.

Once caramel gets to a certain stage,

don't answer the phone, don't answer the front door, nothing.

It's a watched pot never boils, but a watched caramel never burns.

So keep an eye out.

Do watch out - molten caramel is very hot, so take care.

Then pour into tin custard moulds, or porcelain ramekins.

If you can get the caramel to come up around the edge of the dish,

but obviously use a cloth like this.

You just get a more golden finish to the caramel.

It is still molten, so you can do this. Lovely.

So leave those to cool and erm... get the eggs.

This is a rich caramel custard,

so I'm using three whole eggs and an additional four yolks.

Add the orange infused milk and whisk again.

I'm just going to remove any froth from the surface.

The less air bubbles we have, the better.

The custard mixture must be smooth.

To be on the safe side,

strain the mixture before pouring into the mould.

Carefully does it. Right to the top. As high as you dare.

Lovely.

Place them in a deep oven tray and fill with hot water.

Cooking the custards in a water bath

protects them from the hot dry heat of the oven -

an essential protection for all baked custards.

I wouldn't want to use neat boiling water, as it were,

to shock these little delicate custards.

Then place in the oven at gas mark 2 or 150 degrees.

Carefully does it.

And the last thing we need is a little sheet of kitchen foil.

It is just to help a skin from forming.

And they're going to be in there for about 35/45 minutes.

After 40 minutes, give the custards a little nudge

to check they've set to a nice wobble.

Then remove from the oven.

Carefully does it.

Take out of the tin immediately to prevent overcooking.

Now leave the custards to cool before covering.

Put in the fridge for a couple of hours at least.

When it comes to serving,

this is how you turn the custard out of its mould.

A little knife we need.

Just to run around the edge.

It's the moment of truth this.

And just put your fingers, just slightly removing it from the sides.

And let's do it this way.

Sometimes you need just a nudge to get an air pocket.

Then it should just flop out.

He says! There you are.

Move it a bit into the middle. It's a great looker, I tell you.

I mean that's pretty nice.

I love it really cold, that's the other thing.

Great texture. If you had that without the caramel,

you would say, "Oh no, that's not sweet enough."

This does all the work. This lovely sauce.

And that gorgeous orange flavour.

I could eat this pudding forever.

These sunny puddings are so worth making.

A particular favourite with children,

but to be honest, loved by all.

Next time I'll be showing you five more super recipes.

All of them special, all of them easily made

in the comfort of your own kitchen.

Restaurant quality, but made by you.

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