My business is me, so I do have to be involved in everything. It's just quite nice to be away from that and let me be me. I've been escaping Jamie Oliver Inc and traveling around Italy trying to uncover the secrets of authentic Italian cookery. I've struggled with fast food Sicilian style. Maybe it's a bit like the kids in school when you offer them something new and they don't want to risk it not being nice. I've tried to cook with a fisherman in his restaurant. I'll tell you now, not many English cooks would have the follow-through to do this. Now I'm heading north to the mountains of Le Marche to a family of hunters. Okay, I'll be living off the land. No seriously, I don't know if I can kill a lamb. Killing my own meat... not all things in life are pretty, are they? It's not all about Teletubbies. And learning from the mamas how to perfect the most traditional meat source of all.
Come on, kid. I've been really missing Jools and the girls, so I'll fly back home for a quick visit. Oh, what is it? What is it? Oh, wow, look at your first handbag. It's a karate outfit on you? You look like Karate Kid with a bit of a dodgy Dr. Racket outfit. Oh, you look wonderful. I love you. You're so pretty. You look great, girls. Poppy, Daisy, do you know Daddy's going away and you're going to come and see me soon, aren't you? Yeah, you look really good. Can you say 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'? No, wish she wouldn't say it that way. Do you love Mary Poppins? Yeah, don't take her to that show without me. No, I won't. I'll do it in the week. Come home. Bye-bye. Back on the road again. I'm off to stay with an Italian family with two daughters just like mine. Their farmhouse is high in the hills of Le Marche, which I'd never really heard of before, but it's right next door to Tuscany. I'm really excited because this region is really wild, completely undiscovered, and really original. I'm quite interested in getting to grips with hunting wild food, sustainable living, living off the land – something that in England has disappeared. The farm is run by Massimo, a hunter, and his mate Antonio, a local baker. Piero, Massimo, Jamie. Nice to meet Antonio.
Wow, it's fantastic. Like everyone around here, they live off the land. See what a place. Jesus, yeah. Massimo's kids, E and Anita, remind me of my girls. They live in the kitchen where there's always a little bit of cooking going on. Bambina, three and two? Bambina, four and five? Oh, yours? Yeah, look at Nino doing the tagliatelle. I just love it. Like a lot of Italian houses I've been to, it's the nonna, granny, who rules the kitchen. I make pasta so often, but when I'm around Italians I get nervous. The family is having a little bit of a party tonight and they've asked me to go and get the meat with them. And you can catch the train? I don't know if I can do it, man. No, want to cut the throat? No, seriously, I don't know if I can kill a lamb. I've never done that before. I mean, not with a knife, anyway. They've got about 30 lambs, most of which will be sold and sent to the slaughterhouse, but if Massimo wants meat for his family, he'll kill it himself. And today he thinks I should do it.
I don't know what to do. This your first time? See, close the eyes. Okay. [Applause] Okay, okay. That is horrific, but I'm not sure what's more horrific – a nation full of ravenous idiots that couldn't give a crap about the lives of thousands of animals that get treated like s**t, or an animal that has the most fantastic life, gets treated well, as he said. Natural bits of meat don't come out of a plastic factory. You know, it's the animals. All of a sudden it's starting to look a little bit more like what I'm used to. It's looking more like a piece of meat, not like an animal. It's a beautiful creature, but it's tasty, and we're at the top of the food chain. I just think if that offends you, you shouldn't eat them.
Having killed the lamb myself, I've asked if I can cook it. All the other meat I'm going to cook very simply, just a bit of salt and pepper, bit of rosemary. The leg I want to debone. Now you could get your butcher to do this really easily. You can see I've just put my knife around this bone and just scrape the meat off. If you get your butcher to do this for you, the nice thing is all you've got to do is make a stuffing, and then you get a leg of lamb that cooks and tastes fantastic, but when you come to slice it, it's really easy. I'm going to be stuffing my lamb like I'd had it once before in Tuscany, just over the hills, with rosemary, pancetta, pine nuts, breadcrumbs, and olives. Beautiful. It might not be quite how they normally do it. Hopefully they'll just think it's delicious. Thanks very much. So I'm just going to tie up this little baby. To do that today was pretty emotional and pretty hardcore, but to be honest, as a chef that's cooked 2,000 sheep, I think it's only fair that you kill one, otherwise you're just a fake. I'm roasting the lamb in the wood oven and I'm making a vignarola, an incredible mind-blowing vegetable stew from Rome. Oh, um, viganarola. Okay, onions, olio, carciofi, artichokes, uh, peas, broad beans, mint, wild spinach from the garden, and stock. I'm making a lid out of pancetta to give the vegetable stew an incredible ham hock flavor and also allow it to steam. Of course, granny oversees every part of her kitchen with an eagle eye.
I cook basically because I love it. I cook basically because it's the only thing I'm good at. I cook basically because I love the feeling of making other people really happy by watching their faces when they eat. And if I do a job which does happen because I'm only human, I could quite easily cry, but I have to try not to. Okay, arrosto. I'm hoping that the others will be a bit more open-minded. Jeez, look how tender that is. Anonimo, beautiful.
What's really funny is, you know, you take something like vignarola, which is an incredible dish. I've never met anyone that just hasn't fallen in love with it. And you take that from Rome and you put it in Le Marche, and not one of them had seen it ever before, and they felt it was really peculiar. You know, Italians, from what I can gather, and I'm con – you know, that's why I'm here, to learn from them – is, I'm not sure whether it's regional. I think it's almost even more than that. You know, Italians like it like in their village, but also I think secretly they just want it like their mom's. Today I'm up at 5 a.m. There's a food festival in town tonight, and the boys think I should cook. As my land wasn't authentic enough for him, I want to try their version of an Italian classic, ragù sauce. The thing is, here they don't make it with lamb or beef; they make it with wild boar. Which means I've got to find one. Very excited and a little scared. A wild boar. These are primitive pigs; they'll take your leg off. Until today, the biggest animals I've ever shot are rabbits. My wife doesn't like to eat rabbit, no, but she does realize she's been eating it for the last 5 years and she thinks it's chicken. Jesus, it's a machine gun. What is this from? Just a little bit more involvement going down the local supermarket. Fine, as long as I hit it.
So the thing is, when you've got 20 people watching you as well, you know what people are like. If I miss, I'm going to hear 'Right, Jamie is your dog?' My dog, okay, I got to hold it and shoot it. Your name is Asso? Asso, okay. It's not long before the dog sniffs the boar's scent and leads us right to the footprints. Look, look, okay. Jamie is good. See? It's big, very big. A big one. Okay, big one. Okay. Okay, there he is, there he is. Okay, yeah. Damn, I've missed. Okay, okay. But someone else takes a shot. Bravo, must have been a good shot, man. That's going to feed loads of people, that one. Okay, big old boar. That boar is enough to feed like 100 people, you know, if not more. Actually, maybe more. You know, if it's made into pasta sauce, it's a lot of meat there. Pretty earthy, ain't it? So that needs to be washed, now gutted and skinned. It's amazing, the whole family's here as we skin the boar. The reason the food in Italy is so good is because from an early age, when they're babies, they grow up knowing where food comes from, what it eats, how it's killed, how it's cooked, how it's cut up, the respect it gets is normal. And that's why they're all bloody experts and that's why they're really hard to please. You know, that's a paddling pool. She's not in tears, she's not freaking out. I'd like to go fishing with Poppy, you know, at some point in life. I'd like to shoot a rabbit and skin it and cook it and have it for dinner. For all the moms and dads that think that is really unfair and unhealthy, absolute bull. Not all things in life are pretty, are they? It's not all about Teletubbies, is it? Okay, see.
There's a food festival in the square tonight, and I'm going to be cooking my wild boar ragù for the whole town. It will be served with tagliatelle. But what I didn't know is that there's a competition to make the pasta, and the boys have entered me into it against all the local mamas and the grandmothers. Grand really? And then me. Yeah, what's the idea of the competition? To roll the biggest piece of pasta? I think you want to kill me, they want to kill me. We're rolling very serious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The festival starts in 4 hours, so I'm whizzing up to ask Nonna for her best ragù recipe. First, put the oil, then the onions, then the celery, then the carrots, then the wild boar. Everyone listening tonight in the square, sort of big cook, famous cook, I don't know. Big cook, good cook. Jamie, the pressure's on. Give me a hand, big boy. This ragù better be good because it's got to feed the whole town. So first I'm making the base for the sauce with smoky bacon, garlic, onions, celery, just as Nonna said. Everyone's got such a different take on this dish. Fresh tomatoes are not good? Pepe said don't use pepper, use chili. I'm just confused. Now she's saying you should... oh, for crying out loud, that's all I need. Okay, okay. So she said forget the fresh tomatoes, forget the red wine, we're going to go white wine and passata, which is a kind of jarred tomatoes. I had a plan, it was going to be delicious, but I ain't going to start arguing with Nonna's best in the middle of the town in front of the town's best cook. Got some white wine and I've got passata. This nonna says that you have to use white wine because the boar's so rich, but I disagree. I think red wine with beef, venison, or wild boar is much better. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's fantastical.
Look at these lovely ladies. The one in black said she was going to kick my ass, she did. Oh, good luck. Yeah, look what you got me into. The aim of the competition is to roll the biggest sheet of pasta with no holes or tears in 5 minutes. This is really nerve-wracking. Come on, let's go. [Applause] Jesus Christ, man, I can make faster. [Music] Oh no, torn. It's just been fixing holes. Yeah, look at the size of that big boy. One of one of one, mine's definitely the biggest. Compliment, no, M was bigger? I won that race, my length was bigger. Why? The winner is B woman because the pasta is very small. There is a mafia. It's a fix. I might have lost to the mama mafia on a dodgy technicality, but what really matters to me most of all is if the locals like my wild boar ragù. It's very soft, you know, it's delicious. They seem to like it. But the one I've got to impress is Nonna. I don't know where she is. Oh, oh, they're all tucking in, they're all half pissed, they're all having a great time. This village is fantastic. They're so lovely and friendly, and I feel really at home here. You know, imagine if you got a hobby, right? You join a club so you can meet up with various other people that like your hobby, so you can all talk hobby. When I come to Italy, it's like being in a big club, the food club. You have fun over food, you get pissed, you have good food, a massive sense of family. Half of life is getting a balance, isn't it? Between work and family. I only seen my kids at the weekend, really. God, this sauce is nice. This sauce is the stuff. Time for the big test. Nonna, that's it, girl. Get your mouth on that. There, that means she likes it. Yay!
Every mama does a version of the classic ragù sauce, and after 12 years of cooking Italian, I finally mastered mine. I still haven't worked out why every Italian I've met seems to be a food expert. And I can't help but wonder if it's their schools that have something to do with it. Now I'm off to Puglia, one of the poorest regions in Italy. I'll be seeing how their kids eat at school. If I'd have seen this last year, mate, I would have been in tears. I'll be living with a family. She's only finished work half an hour ago, the kids are around the table, and they're going to eat proper food for lunch. And I'll be cooking for a family bash. They can be stubborn, stubborn people sometimes. For all the moms and dads that think that is really unfair and unhealthy, absolute bull. Not all things in life are pretty, are they? It's not all about Teletubbies, is it? Every Italian I've met seems to be a food expert, even the kids. I came to Italy to sort of have a breath of fresh air after school dinners, because it took such a lot out of me, and I wanted to sort of fill myself up. But inside me, I can't help but wonder what the kids eat at school. Here in England, I was shocked by the crap that we fed our kids. I wouldn't feed that to my dog. I would feed it to my dog, but I mean, I wouldn't feed it to my mate, certainly not my kids. So now I'm heading off to one of the poorest regions in Italy. I'll be seeing how their kids eat at school. Car, if I'd have seen this last year, mate, I would have been in tears. I'll be living with a family. She's only finished work half an hour ago, the kids are around the table, and they're going to eat proper food for lunch. And I'll be trying to cook them a feast that matches up to their school dinners. They can be stubborn, stubborn people sometimes.
Ah, look. I started the engine up and this pissing – it's not brake fluid. My van won't go into reverse. I got a terrible oil leak. If that ain't bad enough, I'm in the bl**dy news again. You know, the papers today are just like, 'How long will Jamie's marriage last?' When you're out from 7 in the morning till 1 at night and you're never there, bastards. You know what? Bastards. God bless us, son. Apparently our marriage is in tatters. I try and ignore it. The only time I get upset is if Jools gets upset. Okay, well, let's have you then. Altamura in Puglia is over 200 miles away, so I've done what I can to get the motor going, and as long as I don't have to go into reverse, I should be all right. If I get stuck on a little bit of train track and there's a train coming and I can't reverse, I just have to get out and run. Really, Puglia is famous for being Italy's vegetable garden and bread basket, it's also one of the poorest regions as well. City of bread. Sit, we do? Can you imagine going to Birmingham and saying 'City of Curry'? They're so proud of food they name a bl**dy city after it. I'm going to be living with Bee, a baker, and his kids who go to a local school. Bee, Bee works with his cousins and uncles. We've all come out to help. Okay, piano piano. Bee and his wife Tina live in a flat above the bakery with their two kids. What's your name? My name is Alessia. What a beautiful English accent you have. Alessia is seven, and their little boy called Pasquale, he's four. This is the first bath I've seen in 6 weeks. The kids go to a regular state-run primary school, and Bee's got permission to take me along to the kitchen, which starts up at 10 in the morning. Look at this kitchen, it seems so calm and quiet. Get out of my kitchen until you get changed. Frank is a little bit like Nonna, she's telling me that latex gloves are law. Jesus man, I feel like a gynaecologist. Bee, what a lovely kitchen. It smells fantastic in here. The kids here get no choice, it's a set three-course menu, and the pasta looks delicious. Oh man, if my kids were eating this at school every day, I'd be so pleased. Mozzarella, parmesan. If I'd have seen this last year, mate, I would have been in tears. And that's not even enough for the Italians. Pasta and olive oil here have to be organic, and that's law. Oh, so interesting. Absolutely no frying at all, you're not allowed to fry anything in schools. No burgers, McDonald's? No, no burgers, no burgers allowed in Italian schools. That's for McDonald's. If she's going to do some sort of formed meat product, she's going to get a piece of meat in herself and she's going to put it through the machine and make pet meatballs and burgers and stuff like that. And even more gob-smacking, the local McDonald's here closed down after just 3 months of trading because the kids weren't interested. Fusilli with a tomato sauce with broccoli, carrots, seasonal fruit. Fruit every single day. Fruit every day? Tough. Eat fruit every day, learn to like it, it's tough. The spend on the ingredients is just over 90 cents. So if you think about Greenwich for me was 37 pence, right, when I was cooking there, so it's almost three times as much money spent on ingredients. It's made me think that the money that was promised to us, that 280 million to be spent on all the children in the country, we need twice as much. This is just a tiny little town in southern Italy which is so much poorer than in England or in Northern Italy, and this is normal. This is exceptional. This is normal. This kitchen spells out standards, simplicity, quality of ingredients, sticking to one choice and doing it well, as opposed to four or five or six choices bad. This, as simple as this looks, is non-comparable to anything that I've seen in England. I've brought the Italian dinner ladies some samples of what I saw in some of the British schools. Take a look. She said it's like dog food. Vomiting, vomiting, vomiting. This is amazing. The teachers serve the food and eat with the kids. They have a salad or an antipasti, then a pasta or main course, followed by fruit and dessert. Amen. While Bee's son and his friends eat their lovely pasta, I just couldn't help myself but find out what veg they know. Back in England, most of the 15-year-olds that I met couldn't even recognize a leek. This is unbelievable. These kids are three and four. That's incredible. Nonna just says a lot really, doesn't it? From that age, they're sitting down every day, they're treating food like part of learning Italian or writing or maths. Food is equally as important, and rightfully so. When your kid comes to school here, they're being set up for life. I mean, that's surely what school's all about. That's why all people for me in Italy are bl**dy experts.
I'm using my kitchen trailer so I can surprise Bee's family for dinner tonight, and the least I can do is cook some food that matches up to their school dinners. In Puglia, I'm making a classic salad using up some of their leftover bread from the bakery. Just rip up nice little leaves of basil. I've got the bread, I've got the tomatoes, I've got the onions, I've got the celery, I've got the garlic. The anchovies are around the side, ready to go. Just going to mix it up. Okay, by pan. What is it? It's a powerful. Here we go with the opinions. My salad's not local enough. Water, salt, tomatoes, onions, fantastical. Ah, broad beans. Mmm, it was good. If they don't like that, I will cut my own bollocks off. And there's the knife. I've said it on the record. Bee's family's really close, so close they all live next to each other above the bakery. My sister, Jamie. Oh, fantastic, wild asparagus. That's what I love. I mean, everyone always says, 'Oh, we haven't got any time in England, we haven't got any time.' And like, she's only finished work half an hour ago, she's knocked up a wild asparagus frittata, salmon, roe. The kids around the table. Who said they haven't got time? Do you know what I mean? Okay, Jamie, your cousin. Lovely. [Applause] No, no bambino. No. See, learn quickly. See, when we have the babies, so what do you think of the panzanella? It's very good, yeah, good. But for us, it's too rich of ingredients. Too rich of ingredients. See, see, see. No matter what you do in life, it's never quite as good as Mama's. You know, Mama's always the best. I really want to crack this whole local thing, and I've got to keep my end up. It's Bee's wife Tina's birthday in a couple of days, and I've offered to cook for the party of 35. Take care. I'm not going to start doing tweaks or twists or versions of other regions' cooking because that's not working. On the whole, they're not digging it. I'm going to have to go and learn quick tomorrow and the next day to pick up what's good around and do a sympathetic and intelligent version of what is traditional in this area. If looks could kill, Bee sent me for a lesson in local pasta. This is like Mama central. Excuse me, or pasta? See, see up here, this way or this way? Jesus Christ, I can't believe this. Every woman in the street is making and selling their own pasta on their doorstep. Jesus, how do you do that, man? She's got no flour or nothing. Oh, okay. [Music] Pasta here. Teach me. Okay, I'm sorry. No. This is really competitive for me because, look, I'm good at pasta, right? But this six-year-old is making mincemeat out of me, total mincemeat. Talking about how we're going to cook it. Sunday stew? Oh, you speak English? Yeah, cool, man. Given all the kids seem to be experts, I want to know what these boys think I should cook with this pasta. I'm cooking for 40 Italians, and on the pasta course, I've got to do orecchiette, obviously. So can you give me any advice? The simplest thing is the best. So just with tomato sauce, oh with good cheese on. Good cheese. I can do orecchiette with tomato sauce. Is there anything else that they do that maybe changes the repetition? Maybe rotolo? Fantastic. So they never do fish? She said that the only way to cook this kind of pasta is as she told you. And I know for a fact that 20 miles down the road, they'll say something completely different. This regional thing is a real issue. Even if the ingredients are almost exactly the same, we want it our way, we want it our tradition. And I can see why it helps to retain the traditions, but it sort of pisses you off at the same time. Just try it, try it. It's bloody good. But my mom doesn't do it like that. I don't care about your mom. Try it. I'll tell you what about Italians, and I mean this in the nicest way, because I wish I could have been born Italian and I'd love to live here, but they can be stubborn. They can be stubborn, stubborn people sometimes. In England, we should be damn ashamed of ourselves in quite a few things to do with food, but I tell you what's really cool about English people, they're reasonably open-minded. You know, they'll have a go, a bit of Moroccan, a bit of Thai, a bit of Chinese. And I really like that and appreciate that about the British people. But there ain't no way I'm having a table of screaming Italians. So I'm going to do Mama recipes and I'm going to keep it ultra local. Oh, burrata is like one of the most fantastic things in the whole wide world. Basically, it's the haute couture in the Ferrari of mozzarella. You get this cheese that has a really soft sort of milky inside and then a normal sort of soft mozzarella outside, so when you eat it, it's like heaven. This whole shop specializes in just mozzarella cheese. See, this is what I love about the Italians: do one thing or one or two things and do it really, really well. The party's at Grandad's cottage in the country, but I don't know what they think I'm going to cook. The kitchen ain't up to much. Few pipes and the oven don't work. Oh, it's my van. Good man, he got it fixed. So I'll see you at 1 or 2. 1:00? Okay, cool. Okay, okay, mate. Cheers. 35 Italians are arriving in just a couple of hours. I've got no oven, it's the hottest day of the year, and I'm cooking local recipes that I've never tried before. It's like cooking in the outback. For the second course, I'm going to do a version of what the kids were eating in school the other day: pasta al forno using the orecchiette that I made in the street, but without an oven I haven't quite worked it out. Baked emotionally? I guess pasta al forno is very similar to a shepherd's pie or fish pie, a real cozy home dish. I'm sticking to their simple tomato sauce with onions, garlic, and basil, just like that mama said. That garlic can go straight in here. I'm going to put these tomatoes in the boiling water until the skin comes off, then just whip them out, remove the skin, squeeze most of the seeds out, scrunch the tomatoes, nice bit of salt and pepper, a little bit of basil, nice bit of olive oil, just simmer it for an hour. For my first course, I'm doing what the woman in the cheese shop advised: just boiling up some simple greens like Swiss chard and some broccoli to go with that beautiful burrata mozzarella. I should probably be panicking a bit more because it's half two now, so I've got about an hour to go and I haven't put my al forno together yet. See, everyone's arriving. Now, tranquillo. Okay, I'm going to dress them with good quality olive oil. Now it looks like a lot of olive oil, but remember this is for 35. And for the main course, I'm simply grilling a whole loin of pork rubbed with fennel seeds, which I'll serve just with a little side salad. Oh, how you doing, boy? How are you? Bee, Bee, woah! It's a good, good. Tina, happy birthday. Panzanella? No, panzanella? No, pasta. I'm a bit behind, to be honest, but happens in life. Salute, saluti. You want to do layers of tomatoes, little bit of cheese, pasta, mozzarella, and keep repeating those layers. It's just like Franco did in the school. Italiano, smells Italian, which is good news. Okay, mozzarella basta. See, I knew that they were thinking that's probably enough. That's probably enough mozzarella. And I will ask, and see, here comes the hard bit. This is the bit I'm worried about. The family have already started picking because they're so hungry, and I haven't even worked out how to bake this bloody pasta. See, I know what I'm going to do. Everyone's a little concerned at the moment, as you can imagine, that they're going to get fed. It's all right, we'll be half an hour late, but you know what, it'll be good. So straight on the coals, and then I need to come up with another plan. And then I put this in here. Okay, so essentially that is an oven. I know how to give myself extra pressure, don't I? I'm just going to tear this open. See how beautiful they are inside. Absolutely delicious. Just serve with a simple sauce of smashed anchovies, good oil, and lemon. Poss. [Music] Please be good. If I'm not good, I'll look a prat. Oh, I'm so, so pleased. I think I finally worked out how to keep Italians happy: just give them what they're used to. Best, best. What I feel I've learned is heart and soul, heart and soul, heart and soul and feel of Italian cooking. I know that when I go back to England and I'm thinking of a dish and I'm putting it through that bl**dy Italian filter, I know that it will be these experiences in the heart and soul that make it a more authentic, brilliant thing. Cooking Italian food is one thing, but to cook for Italian people and get them to like it, you know, it's quite hard really, as you've noticed. So I'm quite proud, yeah.
It's 3 days before my 30th birthday, and you know what? I want some time on my own to cook for myself before I head off to the Amalfi coast. Wow, I'm going to Campania here tonight. Got a bottle of wine. Heaven. Tomorrow I'll be starting my last week in Italy, facing my toughest and most important critic. Yeah, sometimes you make beautiful things and at the last minute you mess up. Then I'll celebrate my birthday by cooking for all of the people who have given me a hard time around Italy. I still don't know if Jools and the girls are coming. Poppy, are you going to come and surprise Daddy in Italy? Or even how I'm going to get there. Just conked out, but there's all really I can do about it.
When life's crazy busy, all I crave is delicious food that's quick and easy to make. So after all of these years, I've come up with a new way of cooking that's completely changed my life, and it's going to take the stress out of yours too. I'm stripping back cooking to its bare essentials, and I'm going to show you some amazing dishes using just five ingredients. With so few ingredients, these incredible recipes are quick to cook and easy to remember. The ultimate set of go-to dishes for those of you who love your food but don't have the time or energy for complicated cooking. If you've got a long old list of ingredients for a dish, that's one more reason to not cook. And I want to get you all cooking using killer ingredient combos and time-saving tricks. Even the busiest of you will be able to master dishes to bring the house down. Let's make it. In this show, I'm cooking up four quick and easy dishes for you to make this week. If you think you haven't got time to cook, think again. All you need for these time-saving recipes are just five ingredients plus the most basic store cupboard staples. You mustn't confuse simple with not delicious. This is really delicious. On the menu: my crazy good pork burger, a naughty fast food treat made with five epic ingredients. You know it makes sense. Sticky mango prawns, a speedy sharing platter with a shortcut to phenomenal flavor. Here we go, look at those colors. Woohoo! My easy rustic gnocchi, an elegant veggie supper made with a super quick sauce. Light, delicate, melt-in-your-mouth utter heaven. And a chilled-out party showstopper that's irresistibly simple to make. If you did a survey of a million people, I'd be amazed if most of them didn't love that. With these incredible quick and easy dishes, you can be a great cook no matter how busy you are.
First, my crazy good pork burger. A wicked little treat that takes fast food to the next level. I want to give you a method that's going to get you some of the best burgers you've ever had in your own home, cooked by you. All you need is free range minced pork, mixed salad leaves, a ripe pear, soft buns, and delicious rich blue cheese. Don't go thinking this is some kind of posh burger that doesn't relate, right? It's still filthy and naughty and gorgeous and sumptuous, but it's got elegance and it's a bit different. You could swap pork out with lamb or beef, and you could swap Stilton out for cheddar or whatever melts beautifully, but this combo works hard. Also, this recipe is for one. You can of course double it or quadruple it, but it's quite nice to do a recipe for one, something for you. I've got lovely pork mince from the butcher. It's from a free-range pig; that makes all the difference. Now look, over the last 50 years, burgers have had a bad rep for being the icon of junk food. That's because when you're working with mince meat, you don't know what's in it. But when you go to your lovely butcher and you order 150g of freshly minced pork shoulder from a free-range pig, it's going to be next level straight away. So you're already in the premier league of patties of burgers. Right, so all I'm going to do is just season this pork mince with a little pepper and a little salt. Simply work the seasoning through as you shape your patty. You don't want it to be perfect. This is quick and easy cooking, and you want it to be just a little bit bigger than your bun, okay, because it's going to shrink. So that goes into your pan on a medium high heat. I'm going to add a little bit of olive oil just to get it going. We're going to cook that for about 2 and a half minutes on each side until it's golden and caramelized. Beautiful. For me, the thing that links the pork and the Stilton together is the humble pear. Just remove the little stalk and I'm going to just slice it as thinly as I can. This is super speedy, fuss-free prep. You don't even have to core it. The sweetness from the pear just works with the funk of the Stilton and the savoriness of the pork. I'm going to just dress it like a typical salad: a little bit of red wine vinegar goes on top, a little pinch of salt and pepper, and a little extra virgin olive oil, and then we'll put a nice little handful of our mixed salad in there. Just toss it up, and the acid from the vinegar will stop the pears from discoloring. So it's been cooking for a couple of minutes. Let's just flip it over. It goes so, look simple so far, but just you wait. What happens next is what makes this. Your bun, I like a nice stodgy spongy bun. This is a brioche bun, so I'm going to go face down in here and that will start to suck up all those lovely juices that have rendered out of the burger. So that's nice and lightly done, and then we're going to put them on their backs as well, just apply a little bit of pressure to it like that. And then I'm going to take these out and look at that. I love the way it sort of just blisters on the top like that. Beautiful. Okay, so we're back to the patty. The last flip. Can you see the color we've got on this burger? Now the magic is about to happen. 30g of quality Stilton, and we're going to go into the pan with it, and as it starts to melt, we're going to put the burger on top, and it's just going to coat and shine up this amazing burger. Look at it, it's just kind of caramelizing and getting crispy on top of there. We'll start now layering a little bit of our mixed leaf salad and our pear on the bottom like that. Then I'm just going to place the burger on the bun, okay. But then in the pan here is all the crispy bits, and I'm going to put the bun in here to mop it all up. We're going to waste nothing. Can you see it's sizzling away and it's gone crispy? And then just a few more bits of your gorgeous pear. Shove all the greens in on the top of the patty, and that, my friends, just needs to be attacked in the only way I know how. Juicy, pungent, sweet. Feels naughty but is classy naughty. So for all you burger lovers, try something new, widen some of the flavor combinations. Pear, Stilton, and pork. You know it makes sense. Delicious. An outrageously tasty fast food favorite. The perfect fix for when you're craving something naughty to eat. Five to reality.
Next up, my sticky mango prawns. A sensational sharing plate that's unbelievably quick to cook and so easy to remember. So we're going to do a beautiful recipe. This is like the coolest little thing to do with prawns. You'll need fresh king prawns, garlic, lime, curry powder, and sweet mango chutney. It's an amazing process and recipe that gives you texture, crunch, softness, sweet, sour, spice. It's really, really good. So big pan, let's whack that on a medium high heat. We're going to be bigging up prawns, of course. So we've got 300g of prawns here. These are absolutely delicious. They're fresh. You can see by the beautiful blue color. I love this size, really, really nice. I find it gives you the best kind of sweet flavor. They've got all their shells on, and I always look for the MSC approved accreditation so they're sustainable. Right, so 300g of prawns. What I want to do is make it easy to pick up and eat. Most of the flavor is in the head, so I'm just going to peel the prawn all the way down to the tail, and you can leave the tail on as well. Now by peeling this prawn, we can do a couple of other things as well. One is remove the little vein from down here, and you can do that easily by just running a knife carefully down the back of a prawn. It's very, very simple. And if you put that tip in, you'll pull out this little vein like that, and you can just lose that. But also, by running the knife down there, you're allowing this prawn to butterfly, and what that means is just to open up like a butterfly. This is a stunning way to prep your prawns and a great tip to help them take on added flavor in the pan. Okay, so we are all done. Garlic, we're going to use quite a bit of actually. We're going to use six cloves of garlic, which for two people, you know, that's kind of cracking on a lot, but we're going to make them sweet and delicious, so it's not going to be garlicky in a pungent, horrible way. We're going to flavor the oil to cook the prawns in, and we're going to make them like little crisps, like literally like crisps. Try and slice the garlic the same thickness. If you don't, then you won't get that lovely even cook, so they're all crispy and crunchy. So a bit of love goes a long way. So the garlic is done. Then I'm going to be using a couple of little condiments that make this dish. First one is a good curry powder, a really nice blend of all those spices. Each kind of curry powder varies. Pick one that you like. They're in all the supermarkets. Then the star of the show, as well as the prawns of course, a nice mango chutney, because you get so many layers of flavor. You get a real bang for your buck, but most importantly, you get that glaze and that sort of sweetness that wrists off the spice and off the garlic. That's going to be amazing. So in a pan, I'm going to add a tablespoon of oil, and then I'm going to go in with the garlic. If you angle the pan like this, you almost create like a little mini deep fat fryer. Garlic is very sensitive, it's got natural sugars in there, and I want to fry them until they're crisp and golden. If you make them kind of go black, they'll go slightly bitter. So these are looking really good. So all the garlic's out. Now we turn the heat up, and we've got this gorgeous garlicky oil. So we go in with a teaspoon of curry powder, just move the oil into that curry powder, and it will just start to toast and go beautiful. Then we can go in with our prawns, and they'll go from that amazing blue color of the raw prawn, and as the heat penetrates it, it will start turning that amazing pink. And where you've butterflied it, it will start to transform. Here we go, look at those colors. Woohoo! So that garlic oil is infusing with the curry powder, and don't forget we've got loads of flavor in those prawn heads there. Look, there, there. Oh yes. And they're basically done now. You don't need to overcook prawns at all. We're going to go in with one nice big spoon of mango chutney. So now the mango's in there, this is kind of the sizzle time, right? It's going to glaze it, it's going to shine, and then onto the plate we go. So of that lovely juice just in the middle, and then we get those beautiful garlic chips and we just sprinkle those in and around. Then our last ingredient is lime. So little strokes of the lime zest makes all the difference. Then we can simply just slice that into a little wedge. A fantastic little sizzle plate. It will be impossible to not want to get stuck into that. Lime juice over the top. Don't be polite about it. Get in there. Oh yeah, absolutely delicious. The crunch of the garlic is totally worth it. Every now and again you get a little chunk of mango. The prawns in all of that just work really well. You've still got the sweetness. They're perfectly cooked. Fresh, thingy, sweet and sour, hot and sizzling. I love it. Quick to prep and ridiculously tasty. My lip-smacking sticky mango prawns. A pleasure to cook and a joy to share. To real.
This is my quick and easy food. A delicious set of go-to recipes for those of you that love your grub but don't have the time or energy for complicated cooking. Using just five simple ingredients, these incredible recipes are quick to cook and easy to remember. Next up, my easy rustic gnocchi. A simple veggie dish that transforms the humble spud into an elegant supper. You, my friends, are going to love what we make out of these little bad boys. All you need is Maris Piper potatoes, parmesan, fresh thyme, plain flour, and asparagus. Gnocchi, the Italian dumplings made out of potatoes, are unbelievable. So luxurious and so comforting. And often we think of them as cheffy and hard to do, but we're going to make them really, really easy. So we start with 400g of beautiful potatoes, and we're going to cut them up into centimetre chunks. We're going to leave the skin on, very very importantly. Now in nearly every recipe I've ever seen, you always peel the potatoes, but look, we're going to go on a bit of a journey with gnocchi. I want to find all the excuses for you to not do it. Okay, sitting there peeling potatoes and throwing away the most nutritious part? That's one of them. Right, so let's make it with skin on, and you can be the judge of how good or bad you think it is, because I think it's amazing. The potatoes go in salted boiling water, lid on top. We'll cook those for about 10-12 minutes until they're nice and tender. So we're going to start with the sauce made out of these asparagus. They're really quick and easy to prep, and they make the most fantastic sauce. Just take your asparagus and then let it naturally click wherever it's getting tender. It always works. The most heralded part is the tips, so we'll have those, thank you very much, and just split them in half by cutting them a little smaller. We're speeding them up in the cook. So I've got the rest of the asparagus here, and I'm just going to take a little bit of care just to finely slice it like this. Now back to the spuds. Once they're done, simply drain and let them steam dry. Let all that residual moisture just fade away, and then we want to mash it to a nice dry mash. Very important. Now to season it nicely with a little salt and pepper. Look at that steaming away. And then we're going to go onto a clean kitchen surface. Now, my friends, it's time to make some gnocchi. You can see it's quite nice and dry. No eggs are going in here. About 50g of flour, and we're just going to need it. So treat it almost like making a dough, pasta dough, bread dough. Just roll it out, squeeze it, and I'm just pushing it into a kind of rough sausage. It's that quick and easy. This is the perfect amount for two people. Just divide and cut into small pieces. Let's make this as simple and as humble as possible. Take a little portion, right, let's put it in your hands and let's just clench it, right. And naturally you're going to get this lovely little curve that holds sauce in a particularly beautiful way. Couldn't be simpler. Let's start the sauce. So we're going to go in with a tablespoon of olive oil on a medium heat. Then we're going to celebrate thyme. We'll just strip it off into the oil, and it will start to crackle and do beautiful things. And I'm going to go in with the asparagus. In one and a half to two minutes, that's going to be tender and ready to finish. Let's cook the gnocchi. Salted boiling water, we're just going to throw it in. The gnocchi only takes about a minute to cook. Super quick. As soon as they start to float up, they're done. So I can now take this off the heat. Now a very important ingredient: starchy cooking water. Okay, that will break the frying, it will start to naturally emulsify with the olive oil to create elegance. You don't want a thick, old sauce; elegant, silky. Then I'll use a slotted spoon to start taking these gnocchi out when they're ready. And all I'm going to do now is grate some parmesan. 50 grams of parmesan is what we're looking for. My kids absolutely love gnocchi. You know, making it a little bit of mess, shaping it, forming it, eating it. It's got everything that a kid could possibly want. Parmesan goes in. So we're done. Look at that, absolutely gorgeous. Finish with a little stroke of parmesan and thyme tips just because they're full of life. Homemade gnocchi, light, delicate, melt-in-your-mouth. That, my friends, is a thing of beauty. Utter heaven. The thyme is there in the most stylish way. The cheese is just kind of holding the whole story down. What's not to love? Potatoes are like eating little clouds of happiness, and the asparagus is just showing off really. What a joy. My gorgeous rustic gnocchi. Elegant comfort food made easy. The perfect reward to round off a busy day. Yeah, five to reality.
Time for my frozen banoffee cheesecake. Two family favorites combined into one super cool, quick, and easy treat. Let's have some fun. Frozen banoffee cheesecake. Yes, you know that sounds good. You'll need quality dark chocolate, oat biscuits, overripe bananas, dulce de leche, and a light cream cheese. So we've got five ingredients working really hard to make a really flamboyant dessert which is delicious but also cold, crunch, soft, silky. It's going to be so good. Let's get some chocolate melted. So I'm going to use two packs in this recipe. One is going to be for shaving and making everything look beautiful later on, and then the other one I only need 50g of this. I've got a pan with about an inch of water just on a very light simmer, heatproof bowl on top. So just crack it into the bowl. So while that's just melting, I've got 300g of oat biscuits. So nice quality oat biscuits in the machine like this. Rattle it up until nice and fine. Super easy. You can always smash your biscuits with a rolling pin, but the food processor does all the hard work in a fraction of the time. I'm going to put a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil into this. Okay, it's going to make it really nice and crumbly when you eat it later on. And then this chocolate which is melted, we're going to put that straight inside, and then we're going to give it a really good whazz up, and it's going to be delicious. While the biscuit base comes together, oil a 20cm springform tin and line it with greaseproof paper. Okay, so once you've whazzed that up, we're in a really good place where we can pour this gorgeous biscuit base straight into the bottom, and I just want to pack that nice and flat. And of course, as soon as this goes in the freezer, that will set beautifully. Okay, so for the filling, we're using eight overripe bananas. Now when they go over like this, they go caramelly and delicious, and you get a flavor that you can't get from a regular ripe banana. So let's get that peeled up, and then I'm going to take all of these beautiful bananas and get them in the food processor. And then to that, I'm going to add 500g of really good quality cream cheese straight in there, along with a fantastic ingredient: dulce de leche. Basically condensed milk that's been boiled and boiled and you get this amazing caramel. You can just buy it like this. So I need about 225g, which is half a jar of this nectar. It's basically toffee fudge. It's just outrageously beautiful. Dulce de leche is your fast track to a classic caramel, making your pudding extra luxurious. So there you go, all whazzed up. I'm ready to go. You simply just pour it in now, and that is like liquid gold right there. The smell is amazing. And remember, this is not just an ordinary cheesecake; this is a frozen one, right? You've got the crunch, the silk, but also the chill. It's going to be so, so good. So whack it in the freezer now for at least 4 hours. But let's say you did it the day before, 2 days before, a week before. It's sitting there waiting to be used. But when you want it, put it in the fridge for 2 hours, and that lets it just nicely thaw out and go semi-fredo, semi-frozen. So here's one I did earlier, and all I have to do now is just unclick it, and it's going to be beautiful. Get a palette knife in between the biscuit base and the mold, and I can just take this off. That's perfect. Look, and I'm just going to shake that gently onto the base there like that. So I want to embellish this a little bit, and to do that, I'm going to use that second pack of chocolate. Gently scrape your knife down the chocolate bar to create delicate curls, and sprinkle liberally over your cheesecake to finish. Very simple to whack together. It's in the freezer waiting for you to decide the time that you want it, and then when you do, in the fridge 2 hours, this is enough for 10. Yeah, look at that. Come on, let's go for it. Enough talking, here we go. If you did a survey of a million people, I'd be amazed if most of them didn't love that. Chocolate, biscuit, caramelly banana, that lovely fudge. Absolutely delicious. A big hitting dessert that's effortlessly easy. Trust me, this super cool treat is going to be an all new family favorite. There you go, my stress-free menu to see you through the week. Crazy good pork burger, sticky mango prawns, easy rustic gnocchi, and my frozen banoffee cheesecake. A showstopping party piece. My five ingredient food that's quick to cook and easy to remember. Next time, four more delicious dishes for those of you who love your grub but don't have the time or energy for complicated cooking. Using just five simple ingredients, each recipe is ridiculously tasty, unbelievably impressive, but all quick and easy. What's going on?
