This is a French squash. You've got an acorn squash there, cricket ball squash, butternut squash here. You can get these in all the supermarkets, I think good delis or farmers markets. I'm going to use this one. And I want to take essentially the lid off of this part of the squash. It's very simple. I just put the knife in here, right? I stick it in. Hands are away. It's all safe, right? And we just rock it sort of around like that. And you can get someone to help you, you know, if you're not entirely sure. But you just rotate it until it joins up again.
And then that exposes this, a natural bowl that I'm going to cook in a way where you eat the whole thing, but also it can hold things. And I'm going to fill this up with lovely sweet leek white cheesy sauce. Okay. So, let's take the seeds out. Go around the bowl like this and just disconnect all those amazing seeds. And if you want to, you can wash these and roast them with a little spice. You can save them, put them in a little envelope, and try and grow them the next year. Don't worry about the stringy bits because they are full of flavor. This first bit of preparation is so, so simple. A little drizzle of oil around the rim and also on the inside. We're going to go in with some salt and some pepper. And there's one other little spice that I want to use as well, which is nutmeg. Now this is a mighty spice of Christmas time. About half of one grated. Smells amazing. Put that into a little dish where it snugly fits. So in the oven we go. One and a half hours. 180°C, 350°F.
Okay. Three nice large leeks. Just take the outer layer off, which tends to be a little bit more fibrous. Just split the leek down the length like that. And then when I wash it under the tap, wash it away from the stalk. Just open up the leek and just wash any grit away. And actually, this little bit of water here is not a bad thing because I'm going to start frying it and it's going to steam nicely before it fries. So, right, leeks washed. Finely slice that about a quarter of a centimeter. And then as it gets to kind of the whiter part here, then about a centimeter thick will go because they're more tender. I'm going to use garlic as well. Two cloves. Don't need much. Just a little slice there. I'm going to cook this in a large pan. Whack that onto a nice high heat with some butter and olive oil. This is going to serve like 10, 12 people, right? So, our job here is to make these leeks like the best leeks ever. So, when that butter starts to bubble, in we go with the garlic. I'm going to use thyme, but you can pick any herb that you love, but just a little thyme really makes all the difference. Take the darker green part of the leeks first, and that can benefit from a little bit more direct cooking. The smell is amazing. In with some salt and pepper. Get that seasoning happening. Go in with the whiter part of the leeks. Put the lid on. Turn it down to a medium heat. I'm going to cook this for about half an hour. And that environment of frying and steaming is going to tenderize those leeks like you wouldn't believe. I'll give it a stir every now and again, and these will be soft, tender, and gorgeous.
So, this smells amazing. It's had just under half an hour. It's shrunk right down. And I've added a little splash of water here and there as well. And that just ensures that it's really tender and soft. Add a little bit of seasoning. I'm now going to turn it into a white sauce. One heaped tablespoon of plain flour. You can use gluten-free flour. No trouble at all. And that of course will start to thicken with the butter and the oil that we put in. And then we'll add about 500 ml of milk. Just gently stir that in. It will thicken. It will go shiny. And it will give you that kind of really comforting, unctuous kind of silkiness that you get from a bechamel sauce, but obviously with leek in it. At this time of year, we're all kind of getting our hands around a fair old bit of cheese. So, um, you can use whatever you want. I'm using cheddar because it's nice and oozy. If you want to mix it up with other chosen cheeses that you love, of course, who doesn't love a little bit of Red Leicester? I'm just going to put a little bit of Gruyère in there, which is fairly mild. It's not too funky, but it's going to really melt in the most beautiful way. Take it over to our white sauce, and I'll turn the heat off. Now, I don't want to boil cheese, but that residual heat of the sauce is just going to melt it into the most amazing sweet leek cheesy fondue white sauce. And this over your typical cauliflower cheese is like a game changer. Next level. Even a spoonful over a little fillet of fish baked in the oven. Joy, joy, joy, joy, joy, joy.
I want to show you how it all comes together. I've got some breadcrumbs here, about 100 g. And some walnuts. Just scrunch the walnuts into the bread. And then a little olive oil like that. And some salt. And this will be an incredible little crunchy topping for this dish. I've got the pumpkin here. It's had an hour and a half. Look at that. It smells amazing. It smells really festive. Super, super cool. You can see it's shrunk a little bit. That shrinkage means concentration of flavors. And what it gifts you with, which is really unusual, is this little broth. It is utterly festive. Take some of that amazing pumpkin broth. And this method of cooking pumpkin like this, I just love. And if I'm doing a curry, I will do this and just spice it slightly differently. And this juice you can put into your rice. If you were doing like a North African dish, a tagine or something like that, cook that as well. You know, this is a really cool, really cool technique. So, fill this up with the beautiful white sauce. You can kind of just go over the rim of the pumpkin. So, be generous. Just look at that. And then on top of this, I'm going to go on with those beautiful breadcrumbs and nuts. Just do a pile like that. And the great thing about this recipe is you can do it the day before, right? So, Christmas Eve or even the day before that if you want, right? You can put it all together, let it cool down, cover it, put it somewhere cold, and then on the big day when the turkey comes out, you can get that in the oven. And you just blast that until it's bubbling and gorgeous. Look at that. Come on. Imagine that on Christmas day, right? Let's get it in the oven. Let's finish it. So, in the oven now for 20 minutes until golden, bubbling, and delicious.
Look at that. Come on. Get a little platter or a cake stand and just move it over. Come on. That's something different, right? Let's just serve up a little portion just to show you. Beautiful silky creamy leek sauce with a chunk of that lovely squash. That oozy cheesy sweet leek sauce and those crunchy bits. So good. Oh my lord. Imagine that in the middle of the table on any Sunday roast, Christmas time, special occasion. It is a beautiful, spectacular thing. And whether you scoop it or slice it, do whatever you want, it's utterly delicious.
Here in my culinary potting shed, you know, the nice thing is I can kind of get myself away from trouble. You know, this is where I do experiments. This is where I do my pickling and smoking, fermenting. Often things might explode. It might be a bit messier than when I'm in front of my wife. But what I love to do in here is batch cook. I'm a massive believer that everyone should have a couple of big pans, even bigger than this, you know, for doing big vats of soup, chili con carne. I think that a lot of cooking now is geared towards speed and efficiency and very busy people. But actually on your days off, the ability to love something once, get it in the freezer in little portions, two portions, and it can keep loving you back in months to come. I love that. And I'm going to batch cook today a beautiful twist on a bolognese. I'm going to show you a very British bolognese. I've done a couple of little tweaks that I'm kind of excited about by using amazing smooth pale ale. I'm going to use cheddar instead of parmesan. And then a brilliant twist on how to make a pasta that just wraps around that mince meat in a very cool but fast and efficient way. So, let's crack on with this. In this nice big ragù pan, I'll put in some olive oil. I'll start the story with a very reliable herb, rosemary. Two or three sprigs into that oil and that will be the beginning of flavor. Fantastic herb. You can put them in whole. The flavor will come out, but they'll be really crispy. Just give it a little move around. That was amazing. Another really good trick worth mentioning are these pre-chopped bags of carrots, onions, and celery. I think they're really handy because you can kind of get into stew mode or soup mode or in this case bolognese mode straight away. Those bags are 400 g. So there's 800 g in there. So the first lesson in getting maximum flavor in this bolognese is do not rush this bit. We have to soften this veg and we have to start lightly caramelizing this veg. If we don't, if we just boil the veg, it's only ever going to be average. So let's let it do its business. Now in this recipe, I'm using mushrooms. Wonderful chestnut mushrooms. I think that this is brilliant because we're upping the veg and they're almost going to act like the mince meat. They're going to give you huge flavor and amazing color. So, I've got 500 g for this big old batch. And I'm just going to slice it up. Kind of make them the same size as the carrots and the onions, give or take. So, look, if you look in the pan now, you can see, and I can smell that we're frying nicely. There's little bits of caramelization starting to happen here. And I'm getting quite excited.
Look, this idea of doing a British bolognese wasn't kind of born out of being an idiot or just like being creative for no reason. Like when I'm batching at the weekends, I always sort of like try new things. And naturally, that's where this British bolognese came from. Kind of looking at British beer, cheddar cheese, you know, and trying to embrace it and make it part of the depth of flavor in this dish. So, look, you can see now that all these lovely veggies are really soft and they're taking on color. Now, we go in with the mushrooms. Now, here's the thing about batch cooking. When you batch, you'll save money. And look, it's no more work. It's no more work. And that same love, care, and focus that you put into this one batch here can keep giving you love back for many weeks to come from bagging it up and putting it in the freezer. It's like the gift that keeps on giving. And I love that. You can hear it's changing by adding the mushrooms. The mushrooms are mainly water. So, they're now going to start giving water to the pan and then it will go back to frying again.
So, I've got a kilo of beautiful minced beef. If you wanted to, you could do a blend of pork and beef, which is quite nice to do as well. Use the back of the spoon to break up the minced meat. Carry on cooking this for another like 10, 15 minutes to get back to frying again. So look, it's had a nice little cook off. So now is when I love to add the beer. So a beautiful pale ale goes in. It's got amazing malty flavors. Really deep kind of chocolatey vibe. Going to put a bottle in, about 500 ml. So, what I want to do now is bring that to the boil and cook it down. So, next up, we've got the tinned tomatoes. So, four tins of tomatoes will go in our ragù.
Oh, hello. Are you hungry? Oh, you know what we're doing. Bunny buddy bolognese and tomatoes. Buddy's foods. Tomato. Well, I'm putting tomatoes in now. You want to put one in? Um, one of the important things is to cook the beer away. Not just to intensify flavor, but to kind of get the alcohol out. So, now we go in with the tomatoes. And we'll let that simmer for like one to two hours until really tender and delicious. To blush that in. Blusher. Yeah. Yeah. What's this? Failed it. It's a blusher. You mean a masher? One of these. You want to use that? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea. So, um, get your four tins of tomatoes in and then it's nice to fill two tins up with water. Um, babe, this will be cooking for an hour and a half, then serve up dinner. Bye-bye. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Have you got... What are you serving it with? What am I serving it with? Like, yes, pasta. Beautiful type of pasta. Special pasta. Buddy, can you suck it up is what he's asking. Uh, can you suck it up? Um, kind of. Uh, no. No. What is it then? It's a special pasta. Buddy's going to do it with me. Spaghetti. I want success. Suck it up, River. So, there you go. If you're wondering why I have a kitchen in a shed far away from the house, that's exactly why. So, River wants spaghetti, cuz he wants the pasta that you can suck up. Right. Uh, he hasn't got that today. So, that also just puts this very safe family meal uh at slight jeopardy, but that's all right. I'm not going to bow to his wants. Bring that to a boil and let that simmer for an hour or two until it's succulent, gorgeous, and tender. And what I'm going to do then is show you how to make the most amazing pasta. It's a really cool little trick.
Right, I've gained a little helper. I want to show you what I think is the coolest little hack for turning a sheet of fresh lasagna into a really beautiful thing. So, in the fridge, I've got two packs of fresh lasagna. Buddy, if you just separate those, my darling boy. Yes. And what's brilliant is from the sheet of pasta. You know, normally people would make lasagna, right? I think we can do way more. What we can do is cut this into pappardelle by going 2 cm thick. Tagliatelle, 1 centimeter thick. Tagliolini, just even smaller than that, or you can make up a new shape. So all I do is slice down, gap, slice down, gap, slice down, and then kind of put it slightly ajar and do slice down, gap, slice down, gap. Can you copy that, buds? Yeah, wobbly. You can be wobbly. See where that gap is there, buds? See that gap? Then I put another bit down there. So basically score, gap, score, gap. Score, gap, score. Once this is cooking, all these little cuts that I'm doing right now will open up, right? It's going to separate like a concertina. This is going to grab hold of the ragù and the sauce in a very different kind of cool way. So, look, buds, you do me one. Do me one more sheet so I can get cooking. I'm going to make a little portion for me now, just to kind of, you know, test with the ragù. What we want to do is just check it for seasoning. So, just try a little bit. Massive big flavor. The beer and the mushrooms. Amazing. I've got the rosemary in there as well. We'll adjust the seasoning for sure. So, I've got a pan of boiling water. If you want, you can put a little oil in the water. This will help these not stick together. And then we'll literally drop this into the water. And the other one. And the other one. The brilliant thing about this pasta is that it cooks in like 3 minutes. Can you see how all the little cuts are opening up? Nice work. That's perfect. Yeah. So, buds, can you go and rally the troops? Yeah. Good, man. Off you go. So, let me just show you how I love to serve this dish. I'll put in a little bit of the ragù here. Just a couple of spoons. Then I'll take that amazing pasta. Look at the shape of it. A little splash of water, by the way, just to make it oozy. A kiss of oil. And then the last very British ingredient, some cheddar. It really melts beautifully. And then I like to use two spoons just to almost dress it like a salad. But just look how gorgeous this serves up. The little ribbons, the little slashes. And you can see how the pasta is clinging onto the sauce in a very different way. Look at that. And I just find this way you go from the everyday to something really sublime. A beautiful little take on the great bolognese.
Right, let's have a little try. Wowzers. The beer has this big malty flavor, but there is an underlying bitterness, right? But then when it's contrasted with the sweetness of the ragù, the vegetables, the tomatoes, that is so tasty. I'll let the ragù cool down and then I'll bag it up and I can freeze it. I'm really pleased with that.
So, me and my family try and eat meat-free at least two or three times a week. And look, I love it. It's really great. We can have this adventure with veggies and these beautiful portobello mushrooms if you give them a bit of love and care. The depth of flavor you get from these is incredible. So, let's do it. A great little family favorite dish, toad in the hole, right? Yorkshire puddings, with the sausage, with the onion gravy. But how about we do one with mushrooms? Mushroom toad in the hole with the gravy. It's amazing. So, first things first, let's get the batter going. So, four big free-range eggs. And give the eggs a good beat. Really get the air in there. Nice pinch of salt. And then go in with 175 g of plain flour and 175 ml of good whole milk. Then 2 tbsp of water. And actually that water is a little bit more important than you might think because it's a reaction between the water and the hot tray and oil that gives you that lift. So one, two, give that a nice little whisk up and put that to the side. So next job, the mushrooms. Four portobella mushrooms. Right, you can get these everywhere. But how can we make these incredibly delicious? Just take the skin off. So just peel it. And by doing this, you're just opening up the mushroom to take on more flavor. And also these lovely bits of skin here, these help make the best gravy. They're full of flavor, right? So we'll just put them to the side. And while you're doing it, just enjoy it. It's weirdly therapeutic. It's like a stress ball. When I was a little kid, I used to have a BMX and it used to have mushroom grips that looked just like that. And they were so comfy and I always think of that when I do this. So, get yourself a nice big tray, high sides. Put these mushrooms in. Give them a basic seasoning with olive oil, a little salt and pepper. Rub that around the cap of the mushroom. And we're going to keep it capside down. And then when I roast that in the oven, basically it's going to intensify and concentrate the mushroom flavor. And then on the inside, you get a little pool of like little stock, which is going to make it really juicy as well in the middle. So half an hour at 200°C, which is 400°F. And just let a little bit of time do a lot of the flavor work for you. Let me just wash my hands.
Right. Next, gravy. So, two onions. Just take the end off and then finely slice it. This is going to be a really nice chunky onion gravy. And onion gravy is just one of those brilliant sauces that you can have with your pie, a steak, and of course for toad in the hole or mushroom in the hole. Amazing. Now, if you think back to the old Yorkshire puddings, they would have always given you a big old Yorkshire pudding with gravy first. You know, you could have had it in the pub or at home. And the idea, I'm told, is that they fill you up and then when the meat comes out, you don't need too much of it cuz the meat, of course, still is expensive. It's the most expensive part of the meal. So, if you're wanting something comforting, beautiful, something that makes people happy, fills you up, then you're going to want to have a go at this. So, in the pan on a medium heat, go in with two tablespoons of oil, grab a couple of sprigs of rosemary. Now, rosemary is one of my favorite herbs. It has the incredible ability to give you a feeling of meat, savoriness. It's so connected with things like steak, beef, lamb, you know, when you do it with the mushrooms, it just kind of works. So, by putting the rosemary in the oil first, you get that crispiness. You get that fragrance and the natural oils coming out of the rosemary, then in with the onions. Smells great already. Don't forget now these little skins. Delicious things don't always come in beautiful packages. Bit of old mushroom skin. That's big flavor. So, I'm just going to slice it up. And then in we go. You will not regret putting that in there. You don't want to waste anything either. So, that's good vibes. At this stage, I'm going to let that cook for about 15 minutes or so on a medium low heat, stirring it every now and again. Don't rush it. Get that sweet, soft, and get that caramelization going.
Okay, so the mushrooms, they're nearly there. The onions have cooked down beautifully. So, I'm going to just turn it up a little bit now. And then I'm going to introduce a little bit of booze. Now for me, gravy. You know, it can go a few different directions. You could put red wine in there, but I'm putting some porter, which is a beautiful dark ale, smooth, chocolaty, and that's going to be amazing with the sweet onions. I'm going to use about 250 ml. So, half of it for that, half of this for me, and 2 tbsp of red wine vinegar. And that's going to give it the ability to really cut through the richness of the Yorkshire pudding batter. Beautiful. Boil that up and really reduce that porter. The great thing about that is you kind of take away any sense of alcohol and what's going to be left is just deep, sweet, and really smooth. We want that in a gravy. Now I'm going to do a little dressing for the mushrooms to make them really, really tasty. So two more sprigs of rosemary. Pull the rosemary off the stalk. And I'm doing it now because I want to have lighter, more fragrant flavors than if I put it in at the beginning. Then two cloves of garlic. Now, just do the best you can to do some nice thin slices. And we're going to scatter that over the beautiful open cup of those portobella mushrooms. A little bit of olive oil. And that will send those slices of garlic really beautifully even golden and those lovely bits of rosemary will go crispy like little crisps. Fantastic. So look, that's our little sprinkle. What I want to do now is get in there and get the Yorkie going. I've got my lovely batter that's ready and raring to go. So let's get these out. It smells incredible. Now, what's really nice to do with these mushrooms is you can just take them out one by one and pour that stock into our gravy. You will not regret doing that. Really, really nice. So, that's what I mean. You know, you start concentrating on one ingredient like a mushroom. How can I drag out the best of flavor and the best of texture? And here we are getting all kinds of flavors out the mushroom. Now, back in here, we're going to go in with our batter. And then place our mushrooms back on top and sprinkle over our rosemary and our garlic. And if it goes into the batter, that's fine. Back in the oven for 25 minutes at the same temperature. Close the door and don't even look again. Don't look again. It's too stressful. We want it to go lifty and light and gorgeous. Now if you look in the pan, can you see how already this has reduced. So add a little bit of flour, about a heaped tablespoon, and stir it in. And then about 700 ml of water. Check the seasoning. And you can reduce this to the consistency that you so love. Bit thinner, fine. Bit thicker, fine. But that, my friends, will be an amazing gravy.
Okay, so we're nearly there. The gravy is just bubbling away, looking thick and delicious. I've got some lovely sprouting broccoli, and I am going to feed my boy Buddy cuz Jules and the girls are out. Okay, buds. Are you ready for dinner? Yeah. Are you hungry? Yes. Here's knife and fork. There you go. So, you excited? Yeah. This, my friend, is mushroom in the hole. So, big mushroom. What's the stuff? That, my friend, is Yorkshire pudding. Ooh. Should we do this? Yes. I'm looking forward to the Yorkshire pudding. I just love the way it just tears off. Let's go in with your gravy. It's a lot of gravy. Should we have a go? Ow. Love it. It's really good. What do you think, buds? It's really nice. The mushrooms are really meaty, aren't they? Gravy's just got like loads of flavor. It's just a joyful thing. Don't tell mom that we're standing up here having dinner. I feel like I should pick it up and have a little mop-up. I agree. Permission to use hands, buddy. Thank you. Have a little mop up.
We are going to do potentially one of the most amazing roast pork dishes ever. A little cheeky twist from America, right? From memories of Louisiana and Georgia. So, I've got a homemade bay salt in there, a double crackling. I've got the most amazing sauce to go with it. Bourbon, peaches, a dirty gravy. Oh my lord, the flavors are big. I think that you're going to love it. And it all starts here with the pork. This is a Gloucester Old Spot. A brilliant, beautiful pig. You can see there's an inch of fat here. I have asked my butcher to evenly remove the skin. So, we're going to achieve double crackling. And I'm going to make a flavored salt to kiss this with gorgeousness. So, first up, let's take the pork. So, a little bit like a checkerboard, I'm going to lightly score the fat in a crisscross fashion. We don't want to cut into the meat, right? But we do want to score this. It's going to aid the speed of rendering of the fat. Brilliant. But also, surface area will give you crispy bits. And we want this fat to almost become like a second crackling. So, we've scored this ready for flavoring. So, in a pestle and mortar, I'm going to add some fennel seeds, then black peppercorns, then bay leaves. Bay is such an incredible herb, way underrated. So, give it a good smash. So, we're busting these spices. We're reawakening and opening up the natural oils. We can then use a little speed peeler and do lemon zest. It works so well in salt, right? We can take thyme, which I love. Thyme and pork, incredible friends. I've got some rosemary. So, get the wet stuff in there and we'll have another bash. The smell is phenomenal. You can see now the texture has changed. So, into this 250 g of salt. Yes, it's a lot of salt. No, I'm not using all of this in this recipe. This salt I'll be using for the next 8 months. So, give it a bash. Give it a muddle. And I'm going to sprinkle it from a height. Get it into all the little cracks and crannies. Pork seasoned. Next up, veg. So, parboil some peeled Maris Pipers. Drain and chuck in a tray with some parsnips. Just take the tops off. This skin is the chewy, sweet, delicious part, right? And you might notice that I haven't put any oil or butter on them. And that is correct because this is what we're going to do. My oven is on full whack. It's screaming hot. I'm going to put these dry in the bottom. Then I'm going to take the pork and I'm going to place it onto the bars. I turn the oven down to 200°C, 400°F. So, as that cooks, it's going to start raining delicious flavored fat, and it's going to be amazing. Now, crackling. A clean new Stanley knife is brilliant. And the reason I do this is I can set my depth. So, you can literally do it at a centimeter and then you can score it. You can have fun with it. And a Stanley knife is a really brilliant little cheat that will give you consistent depth. So, rub a little bit of flavored salt into your crackling. Then, carefully slice up a small pumpkin. Look at those colors. Now, I'm just going to put the crackling back on top. I'm not cooking this until I take the pork out of the oven to rest. So, now sauce. One of the first times I ate grilled and roasted pork with peaches was in America. And then, of course, we have our little friend, bourbon. So, let me show you a little technique. It's very, very easy. Put your greaseproof paper on here. I'm going to put my pear, apple. I'm not going to prep it, peel it, or core it. Onions. You can leave the skin on. Got the whole peach in there. Beautiful. I definitely do want to have a swig of bourbon. This is a 30-second recipe that is going to make your roast dinner so beautiful. Bring up the sides and then bring in the tin foil. And that, my friend, is going to cook at the side of the oven. Happy days. So, let your oven do all the hard work. And after an hour and 20 minutes, come on. Look at this. A thing of beauty. And you can see like how crispy this is. Double crackling. Woo. Also, what we have is our little package of goodness. Smelling amazing, by the way. And the most incredible roast potatoes. Look at that. While the pork rests, get that second bit of crackling directly onto the oven bars and cook for 30 minutes with the pumpkin below. Let's just have a look at our little lazy pork sauce. Oh, the smell's phenomenal. And if I just sort of stab... Look at that. That is peach and bourbon juice just giving you a little bit of love. Chop up all that amazing fruit and veg and we can get our gravy on the go. I am making what the Americans would call a kind of dirty style gravy made with minced meat. It's delicious. So, into the pan with a tablespoon of fat from the roasties. 200 g of pork shoulder. And let's get some color on there. Then, finally, chop a red onion and throw in a heaped teaspoon of mustard and 2 tbsp of flour. We don't want it to burn, but we definitely like caramelization. At this stage, what I love to do is go back to my friend Mr. bourbon. So, add a generous splash. Then, finish it off with a liter of chicken stock. While your gravy is simmering away, bring all your roasted veg together and pop it back in the oven until your crackling's ready. Look at this, guys. We'll get some crackling. And then you've got that epic dirty gravy. The skin is so crispy. So, come on then. Let's plate up. Look at that. So juicy. And then that fantastic peach and bourbon sauce. Happy days. That, my friends, is a little plate of gorgeousness. Let's have a little try.
So, this is a great dish. We're going to do a beautiful mushroom cannelloni with a gorgeous oozy cheesy sauce. I think it's a family classic. You know, certainly in the last couple of months, I've really loved doing dishes where I can kind of prep it in the morning, finish it at lunch or dinner time. So, this is perfect for that. It's a real family-friendly dish. So, cannelloni, these little tubes. I remember when I was like 8 years old, I'd had the lasagnas, I'd had the bologneses, and then my mom rattled out a cannelloni, and I'm like, just a minute. The idea of kind of stuffing these tubes with beautiful things. Of course, a classic cannelloni that us Brits know has meat in it. And this is going to be like a meat-free dish. And me and my family, we're trying to do meat-free at least two, three times a week at least. And we love it. So mushrooms, I think, are perfect for this. I'm using one of the most common mushrooms, chestnut mushrooms. And the depth of flavor you can get from those if you cook them right is unbelievable. So with a cannelloni, I'm thinking about it in layers. So we've got the cannelloni with the mushroom. We got the beautiful cheesy white sauce on top. But I want to put some lovely greens at the bottom. I've got some spinach growing. So, I've taken that. You can use the bag spinach. Easy, easy peasy. If you've got someone in your house that completely disagrees with any kind of meat-free day, this recipe is probably quite a good one to get them on because if this is made right, they probably wouldn't even notice a difference, right? Cuz this has the depth of flavor that you'd get from a lovely cannelloni. So, I've caught people out loads of times before. So, look, the residual moisture in these greens will just steam and wilt. So really clean, simple cooking. This will take like 30, 40 seconds. If you didn't have spinach, it could be like peas or, you know, beautiful roasted squash or pumpkin. I think that's what we need now more than ever. You know what's in the fridge? What's in the freezer? Oh, I haven't got that. Well, I can try that in there. So, how quick was that, right? And that can then go in the bottom of our tray. This is going to get cascaded with cheesy sauce and the seasoning from the mushrooms. So, this won't go short on flavor. Just a little kiss of salt. Right, that's the beginning of the story. Let's get on to business. So, in this pan, I want to cook down leeks, which I love, and onions. They have the ability to give massive flavor. They also caramelize beautifully. So, in the pan, olive oil will go straight in with the onions. And then as I prep each vegetable, just add it to the story. So, a little bit of pepper and I've got some garlic. Just finely slice it up straight in the pan. So, what I love about the leek is the green part has more of a spring oniony oniony flavor, but the white part is like silky and buttery and tender and really like luxurious. So, I love using both of those parts. So, just slice up the white part straight in there. With the greener stuff, I tend to chop this up finer anyway, just to help it cook. What's happening in the pan now is softness, sweetness, depth of flavor. And then we're going to add the mushrooms. You can make this with the flashiest mushrooms, porcini, girolle, chanterelle, trumpet, truffles, I don't care. Or you can do it with a button mushroom and everything in between. And they all taste amazing. They're really nice to test your tap chopping. And if your chopping's not great, you have to remember every time you cook a dinner, you're able to sort of like pick up a skill. And if you can tap chop nicely, right, it just speeds up your cooking. Four-leaf clover again. Have we made a wish? Okay. Make sure it's a nice one. Right, big boy. We're making cannelloni. Give it a little seasoning with salt and pepper. But don't rush this. There's quite a lot of veg gone in here, right? If it just boils, it's going to be bland and miserable. Don't bother. If you want to make this extraordinary, just 15 minutes of stirring and frying will be amazing. So look, that's the pasta there. So the cannelloni I grew up with was almost like the bolognese mince meat goes inside, but roasted pumpkin in this exact way. Amazing. You know, take beautiful courgettes and mint exactly the same way here. Incredible. So it's a really flexible workhorse for your family. Um, thank you. Come back and see us in a little bit and you can help us put it together if you want. Yes. Go and find your mad brother. Okay, stuffing's done. So, chop that up into a fine texture almost like mince meat. Simply put this on a board. You can use a food processor. No worries at all. As much as I love those gadgets, this is how proper cannelloni would have been done in the old school, right? This is how the nonnas, the grandmothers of Italy would have done it. They wouldn't have all those electrical things. So, what's different is you create your own puree just with one blade and then it just feels so homemade and you get more texture. So, look, if you lay it out flat, let that cool down. Let me make a really simple white sauce. Super simple. So, no butter today. In the same pan that we made the mushrooms, go in with three tablespoons of olive oil. Three tablespoons also of plain flour goes in. You don't have to make it with butter. Classically, yes, but in real life, no. Olive oil is fine. The same thing happens is it comes together like this to make what they call a roux. Looks a bit like breadcrumbs, but this is a thickening agent. If you just toast it a little bit, you'll get it to be really nutty and slightly darker, which I quite like. So, in there, we're going to add some milk. I'm just going to add it slowly, slowly. So, as we add the milk, you can see it getting thicker and thicker. I mean, this is never going to be silky, silky smooth. That's cool. We're doing a really nice rustic white sauce. It's even got the odd bit of mushroom in it. It's all good. This is home cooking. So, I'm going to go now from spoon to whisk. You don't have to, but it kind of just helps speed things up a little bit. Then we can get all of that milk in there. That's quite a rushed version to be honest. That's what I always do at home. I'm not sitting there doing it like when I was at college, you know, getting a slap around the back of the hand for not adding it slow enough. You know, I got a family here to feed, stuff going on. So, look, as the white sauce does its magic, let's fill these cannelloni. So, literally all I do is stab around like that. It will fill up half. Can you see that? It's done half already, right? You can put your finger in if you want. It's fun, isn't it? Look. And then turn it around, do the other half. It's as simple as that. And that is your beautiful mushroom stuffed cannelloni. I think the best gadgets in the kitchen that you can use are your hands. So, I don't get much happier than this. This is about as good as it gets for me. Outside. Decent day cooking really gorgeous, tasty, humble family food and kids are playing. They're dotting about. Just that's what makes me happiest, honestly. Okay, so look, there we go. A tray full of beautiful cannelloni. Um, this little mess on the board, the leftovers. Don't be inclined to throw that away cuz it's still flavor. All these little bits kind of help make it a bit gnarly and full of flavor. Off the heat now because I'm very happy with that consistency. That consistency we want to basically have sort of to coat a spoon like that. So I'm going to take this bubbling away white sauce and put a nice big handful of grated cheese in there. I'm using cheddar. You could put a bit of blue in there. You could use parmesan, but basically a nice big handful goes in. So, let's get that over the top here. And all those little gaps in between the cannelloni will let this incredible sauce. Look how oozy it is. Yeah. And you can see the chunks of leftover mushroom in there. That's the nice thing about sort of not using another pan, saving on the washing up. Get more flavor. Last but not least, I'm just going to put these little bits of mushroom on top. Just a few little slices kind of.
of in and around. And then just a little drizzle of oil. So, this will go in the oven at 180° C for about 40 to 45 minutes until golden, blipping, and delicious. Right, time to clean down.
I can hear it sizzling. So, it's had about 40 minutes. The wood's just a little bit hotter. Look at that. Come on. In Italy, this would often be done on a Sunday and they go to church. That would be in the back of the car. It's a nice little quick reheat at someone else's house.
Whole family comes together. This kind of cooking is all about family. So, I've got six very generous portions there. We're a family of seven, so it's perfect. You know, the little one might get two little cylinders. Buddy might have three or four. You can kind of play it by ear because we got that lovely cheesy sauce. You get all the crispy bits. Look at the crispy bits. Yes. And then, of course, we added that lovely stack of greens. Can you see how it's kind of holding itself together? Crispy bits, the greens, the tubes full of the good stuff. I love it. Nice little wedge salad. So, there you go. For sure. It's got to be one of the best meat-free meals ever, whether you're vegetarian or not. Right, let's get amongst it. That lovely salad leaf. Quite like using that as a receptacle. Look at that. Oozy, melty, mushroomy, crunchy, fresh.
I mean, I love meat, but when you kind of win on veggie food, big flavor.
Oh, yeah. Kids, today I'm going to make this incredible pumpkins, chestnuts, a sage lasagna. So simple, so good. What a treat. You will love it.
Look at the pumpkins I have here. Wa wa wa. This particular one is called a Cinderella pumpkin. Slice right down. You need a nice knife to do that. It's about a kilo all together. This is what you need. You remove all the seeds and the pulp. It's time to slice with weight. You need about half a cm slice.
I need to put some olive oil in a tray. All the pumpkins just put them inside. Little bit of salt for start. Little chili flake. Nice sage leaves. Four, five or six. Now chestnuts. Yeah. Roughly 250 g. So crisscross. Crush it. Put it back. Cut it. Cross it. Crush it.
Get two lovely red onions. Cut them in half. And then you cut them in quarters. Put them on top. Little olive oil again. A little bit of salt. Little chili flakes. And you put them in the oven at temperature 180 for 35 minutes to 40 minutes. Let's do it.
That's incredible. Yes. Have to taste it. Happen. I just want it the way it is. But we're going to make this lasagna. The water is boiling. It's about four, five liters here. I need to put some salt inside. With this particular lasagna, I use fantastic spelt pasta. Whole grain pasta. So delicious. Slowly just lay in just a few at a time. I blanch it for about two to three minutes. Let's put them on top here on a sheet of oven-proof paper to dry up a little bit. And let's put the rest inside. Right.
You can see this is all the pasta is blanched. You can see I cooked the maldon which I can move around in exactly the same time. I made a lovely bechamel sauce. Clicky on the side. You can see how to make perfect bechamel. Now I need to make the topping. 100 grams wholemeal bread. Roughly chopped. Roughly chop. Yeah. Then I need 40 grams of parmesan. Straight in. 40 g of almonds with the skin on. Two cloves of garlic. Just cut them in half. Just put them inside. 40 g of lovely smoky pancetta. Cut them little bits. Just put them all inside. Covered. Stop. Full of flavor. Now get a bake tray. Nice and deep inside. We need to put them on the lasagna all together. You can see the old chestnuts is all done.
Then you start with the pumpkins, the onions as well. Sage. I love it. The pasta goes on it. You have to adjust it. Let's get some bechamel. Oh gosh. So nice. Especially the nut milk inside is incredible. Some of the chestnuts because you crisscross you melt it. Put some on top. Now we go back again with pumpkins and you keep doing lay one on top the other. Easy, simple. And yes, let's get the bechamel on top. It's going to taste it so good.
We need to get all this breadcrumb with almonds, with the garlic, with the pancetta, with the parmesan crumble on top. Little bit of black pepper as well. A little bit of parmesan. The rest of the chestnuts. So fantastical. So good. Don't be afraid to put sage on top because when they crisp it up they're really, really, really good. A little bit of olive oil. Put them in the oven for about 35 to 40 minutes. Temperature 190. Yes.
Oh yes. Fantastic. Look at this. I told you it was going to be good. I can guarantee it was going to be good. And it is good.
That pumpkin is incredible. It's so delicious. I can taste almost every ingredient inside. The crispness on top is just unbelievable. My family is a bit topsy-turvy, probably like yours, and I want to do a dish that's good for everyone, from my three-year-old right up to Jules. I've always got someone that likes certain things, some people that like others. So, look, chicken winner, sausage winner, and I've got the simplest way to put the two together. There's a few little tips and tricks that amplify flavor and deliciousness. We're going to do beautiful Cumberland sausages under the skin. It's going to absolutely make that breast meat so succulent and tasty. Just going to be so good. Right, let's get cracking. So, even though this is all about the chicken, let me just put that aside for a second. I want to make the most amazing sliced potato, parsnip, and leek bake. The flavors of these three things together are amazing. So, I'm literally just going to slice up a scrubbed parsnip. I haven't peeled them. The flavor is definitely in the skin. Go as thin as you comfortably can. And just get slices like this. If it's ever a bit wobbly, go on that flat edge. And we'll just slice through that again. So, I'm kind of pulling my finger out because if I've learned one thing in 20 years of marriage with my wife, it's do not be late for lunch. She keeps me on time. That's good. So, two parsnips, about 700 g of potatoes. You can use Maris Pipers. I've just dug these up. Beautiful red skin potatoes, but it could be carrots. It could be celeriac. It could be turnips. You can muck about with it. Anything crunchy, any great root vegetable can be sliced up and put with this. With the leeks, I often look at them in two ways, right? You got the white part that is just silky smooth. So, we can do nice sort of same size slices as the potatoes with this. And then where the sunlight has sort of seen the leeks, it's turned it green and it's a little bit tough. So, what I tend to do with those darker parts is finely slice that a bit more if you can. It just helps the heat get to it. So in here, I'm going to add some sage leaves. You could use rosemary, you could use thyme. The nice thing as well, it's in one tray, so less to wash up. So perfect if you kind of got stuff to do or, you know, family running around and you want to kind of just enjoy the moment a little bit more. Who wants to wash up all day, right? So, we're going to bring that together with a nice lug of olive oil, a good pinch of pepper, a good pinch of sea salt, and we'll give it a good old toss. So, the genius thing here is I'm going to cook the chicken on top of it. So, chicken juice is raining down on this potato dish. It's going to be really, really good. Right, let's get on to our chicken. Now, first up, I'm going to take some sage and do the only polite thing, which is stick some up the jacksy. That will flavor from the inside out for no reason other than aesthetics. Um, if you want a nice knuckle on the end of the chicken bone, just run your knife around the top of the chicken leg. Just like that. It's super simple. And then just disjoint it like that. And then you get that as a finish, which I think is better. Then we come to stuffing it. The challenge with roasting the perfect chicken is this breast meat often gets cooked before the legs. Right. So, what we can do is even up the cooking times by protecting the breast with a lovely Cumberland sausage. Get your finger and put it on one side of the breast. Can you see my finger under the skin? And just make a little bit of a gap. Then in with a spatula and just carefully pulling the skin at the tip towards you. You don't want to tear it. See how the spatula easily goes down? And that will prize a gap. Now, this means opportunity. Opportunity for herbs, marinades, and in this case, a ruddy good sausage. We're going to use this almost like a piping bag, right? So, we can kind of squeeze it out. Now, there's nothing glamorous and visually appealing about this, but if you love food, you got to go with the flow. This is family cooking here. I remember the first time I saw my mom stuffing the Christmas turkey, and I got shocked. But it's just love. It's flavor. So, I'm going to squeeze the meat out of the sausage, right, and into this breast area. Get rid of the skin. What we're doing is creating like a little protective layer that will stop the heat from the oven getting to the breast as fast. On the other side, spatula in like that. Sausage number two. It's just a really easy way to do it. You can shape it in and then just grab a cocktail stick. Then you can pull the skin over like that. See how I've gone through two bits of the skin? Then you can kind of wind it up like this and then secure it in here like that. What I'll do now is just wash my hands. You all right, River? What's the matter with him, Jay? He's having a meltdown about positions of seating. I want that side. Very demanding three-and-a-half-year-old. So then just a little bit of olive oil on the chicken. Touch of salt and pepper. Rub that all over. We'll roast that in an oven now. Any oven at about 180° C, which is 350°F, for about an hour and 20 minutes, an hour and 30 minutes, depending on how big your chicken is. As that roasts, it will drip onto that potato dish and it will be double flavor.
You got everything you need at the table. Look at this. So, you can see how that chicken has been cooking and dripping juices onto the potatoes. So, maximum maximum flavor. Love that. I'll serve it in the roasting tray again. And another less thing to wash up. The chicken, I'll just let rest for a second. So here I've got some watercress. You can use any salad you want. I'm just giving it a little spin. So I just washed it. Spin it. Get a lovely ripe pear. Finely slice it like that. I'm going to go through the whole thing. Seeds and all. Just go as fine as you can. That will start to discolor. So then we go in with some lemon. Little bit of salt, little bit of olive oil. And what's really nice is I've got resting juices coming out the chicken here as well, which is delicious. And then we'll pour some of those resting juices on the salad. Beautiful. But what I really love about the kind of pear and watercress salad is it helps you kind of take a roast dinner to the summer, but also I'm coming. I'm coming. Let me show you the benefit of this technique of stuffing. Take the cocktail stick out. Just cut in the skin here and this leg meat will just pull off. Pure tenderness right there. So, I can joint that off like that. Look at that beautiful chicken drumstick right there. The skin's gone wonderfully crisp. River, my little three-year-old, loves the old crispy skin. And then we got the breast meat. So, let's have a little look at this. Because the idea of this Cumberland sausage is to protect the really delicate white breast meat. Look how juicy that is. Look at that cross-section. Just beautiful. Put that on the platter. I'll do all the work for the kids because if I leave it to them, they'll just create carnage. Lunchtime's only go the right way about five times out of 10. Who's hungry? Come on then.
We're going to make the most delicious pumpkin pie. I cannot wait to share this recipe with you. It's the perfect time of year. Autumn, winter, Christmas time, of course, Thanksgiving pumpkin pie made famous by America, Canada. They love it. And actually, I love it too. So, this is what you call a delica pumpkin, but you can also use squashes. Butternut squash is a really easy one to get in supermarkets. Normally in America and Canada, they often would buy this pureed pumpkin in a tin. This is convenient, but the flavor from this is much, much better. So, how do we cook this? It's really easy. Turn the oven on to 180° C, 350°F. Take yourself a little fork, give it a little prick just a couple of times, and literally chuck the pumpkin in there, close the door, and let it cook for an hour and a half to 2 hours. Inside it will go like nice and soft and gorgeous. The outside will be kind of burnt. It doesn't matter. So, if you have a look at these, these are completely cooked now and cooling down. So, I want to give you a really simple recipe and method for a classic sweet shortcrust pastry. The classic bit is half fat to flour. Okay, so we have 150 g of fat, butter, nice butter. We've got 300 g of plain flour. We're going to give it a little pinch of salt. I'm going to sweeten it just lightly with 50 grams of icing sugar. Now I want to accent it with just a little bit of orange. Orange and pumpkin really good friends. So I'm going to take a little fine grater like this and just give it a little rub. And it smells amazing already. So we've got that there. Use your fingers. And then all we're going to do is just rub the flour and the butter together. And it just takes like a minute and a half. So now we're going to make a little well in the middle. And I'm going to steal one egg here. Nice little free-range egg. Crack that in there. No shell. And I'll just take a little fork. And I'll just whisk this up. And once you've done that, we're just going to stir it into the pastry like that. I don't want to be kneading it like bread because that's just going to make it firm and hard. We don't want that. So look, you can see it's just coming together. It's just beautiful. Now you could wrap that up and you can put that in the fridge and let it relax. Absolutely fantastic. Um, I'm actually not going to do that today because I'm going to cheat and I'm going to get on with it just to show you that you can. You would normally once you've let it rest sort of roll it out with a rolling pin, bit of flour. You can do all that. I want to show you that it can even be simpler. Right. I'm going to just take a little bit of this pastry. Slice it and then press it into this mold like this. Right. Probably slice it about just under a centimeter thick. And this is very simple. I'm just using my fingers to press out and join these little slices and push it up the edge. And it might not be perfect, but I like all the little notches, all the little imperfections. I like the fact that we're not trimming off the edges. Okay, so that's that. Right, super easy. I can smell the orange. It's going to be amazing. So, that bit is done. I want to use this pumpkin and I want to puree it and get it really, really smooth. If I just cut this in half, you can see that it's soft. And if we get in there, look at the color. I mean, it's extraordinary. Just take a little bowl and get the seeds out. These seeds, by the way, you can just kind of wash them off, toss them in a bit of oil, salt, and pepper, and roast them. But what we want is the flesh. We don't want the skin, and we don't want the seeds. So, we'll remove those. Right, let's get on with this. So, what I'm going to do is get my food processor, and we want 400 g of beautiful cooked pumpkin in there. Then I'm going to add 175 g of golden caster sugar in. And 100 ml of double cream goes in as well. So we've now taken pumpkin that is traditionally sort of savory and is now in the world of sweet. And we can go further with that delicious sweetness with a little help from some friends here. First up, let's start with vanilla. So I'm going to go 3 teaspoons of vanilla paste. I'm then going to use 3/4 of a level teaspoon of cinnamon. Don't go mad, right? Cinnamon is quite powerful. Then I'm going to go for half a teaspoon of ground ginger. This is allspice. I'm just going to go for a quarter of an allspice. And then another great one, nutmeg. Just take that fine grater again and just do 20 little gratings. This is really going to make this delicious. Now, three eggs. So, we're going to split the eggs two ways. So, we are going to just crack the egg and put the egg whites into a nice large bowl that we can whisk these eggs and then keep these lovely yolks here. Okay, so this is going to go into my machine. Look at that color. Okay, while that's doing its magic, a nice little pinch of salt and just whisk it up until it's nice and stiff. And you know when it's stiff when you can hold it over your head and nothing happens. Woohoo. Okay, we're good to go. We have our lovely cake mix. And we'll pour that into here. Look at the color. Now, we want to fold in the egg whites. So, from the outside to the inside. So, really go around the rim and just get all of those bits of egg whites. And even though it's not cooked, I can smell all the spices. Look at that. Hot. Okay. So, in this recipe, we are not going to bake this pastry case blind, right? We're going to have it raw. We're going to have it raw, and we're going to cook it in the oven. So, get your oven preheated to 180° C, which is 350°F. Look at that. Heavenly. Very importantly, we're going to put this beautiful pie. Look at that. Right, that's going to go right on the bottom of the oven. Right. I know that's a wood oven. Ignore that. In your oven, put it on the bottom, not on a shelf. On the bottom. That way you're going to get max temperature under that pastry. We're going to cook it for around 45 minutes and that's going to be utterly delicious. What's going to happen is this will swell up a little bit and it will look amazing as it cools down. It will just sag and it might even crack and it's all going to be gorgeous. And then I'm going to show you how to serve it with the most delicious pecan nuts that we're going to caramelize in maple syrup. Right, let's cook this.
So, it smells amazing. Okay, so this has had I'd say just under 50 minutes. Look at that. Such a lovely rustic pumpkin pie. Look at the color. Really, really autumnal. Smells amazing. Okay, so now what we want to do is let that cool down so you can slice it beautifully. I like to do that onto a little cake rack like this. Look at that. Right. So, let that cool down. And now I want to show you how to make the most incredible praline of pecan nuts with maple syrup. I'm going to get a pan on. So, maple syrup. You know, I am always thinking about Canada, North America. I'm thinking about, you know, all those gorgeous flavors. Pumpkin. Um, pecan is a really nice nut to play with. Have a little look at this. Of course, you can do other nuts, but it just feels a little bit more right to use pecan nuts. Delicious. So, four or five tablespoons of lovely maple syrup goes in. We're going to bring that to a boil. And then as it boils, it is going to start to caramelize a bit more and thicken a little bit more. Now, when you do that, it goes a little bit darker. You're concentrating the flavor more, but also this is currently a syrup, but when we're kind of evaporating sort of moisture from this, you're going to make basically like a little caramel that's hard, crunchy. So, I'm going to put a couple of handfuls of the pecans into here and cook that into them like this. And just for like a minute or two, we're going to reduce this down so it's a nice caramel. Get a tray. Get some greaseproof paper. Just have a little look. You see how dark that's got? So, when you're doing anything around the world of caramel, do not have kids running around, right? It is hotter than boiling water. Okay? So, we'll use a metal spoon, not a plastic one. And while it's hot, we'll move it around like this. And it will cool down pretty quickly. And as it cools, because you've reduced the syrup, it will cool like hard. So, look, let that cool down. I've got a nice little kind of I think a nice vibe to have with this pie. I'm going to take that orange that we used the zest for the pastry. And I've got here some cranberry sauce. So, what I'll do is just squeeze in the juice of half of that orange and just let it down. Right. And I think this is really nice to have on the side with the cream and almost ripple it through. It's going to be a good thing. So, that's going to cool down. I'm going to wash this up and then we're going to serve up. While that's chilling, how about giving us a little bit of love, click the like button, and even subscribe. Oh, and remember to turn on that notification bell so you know what's happening. Now, back to the recipe. So, this has cooled down nicely. Uh, a little tip. So, if you get a bowl that's nice and sturdy, and in theory, if I put that on there like that, that falls off like that. Very dramatic. Uh, so we can take that off and remove this. And then what I can do is pop this on the board and get my knife just underneath that little bit of the mold like that. Carefully run your knife around the base and carefully just move it out so it's all lovely and protected. Look how lovely that tart looks. It's a really nice rustic tart. I love it. I love its imperfections. I love the little ridges. I love the little cracks. It feels really, really hearty. Smells amazing. So, um, one thing to go with this is I've got some double cream here that I've taken the liberty to just whip. I'll put some in there like that. And then a little bit of that orange and cranberry sauce. So, I'm just going to fold that through. It's going to be good. So, now it comes on to our little brittle here. So, this is nice and cool. And you can see that it's turned into kind of like a giant thing. So, it's still a little bit warm. When that gets cold, that will snap. So, you can just break this off. And then what you can do over here is just chop it up. That's sensational. So, we've got pecan chunks. We got pecan brittle. We've got our lovely cranberry and cream ripple. And then here we've got that amazing pumpkin pie. Straight into the middle. All the way down. Let's do a nice little slice. Oh, it's pretty good. So, there you go. Beautiful. And then we can take a few of these beautiful bits of caramelized pecan here. And look, we got the brittle here. That can just go to the side. Look at that. Oh, and then we've got our little ripple of cream and cranberry. Right here we go. Little quiet moment in my favorite place. Crumbly pastry, soft, velvety, fluffy pumpkin pie filling. Just so many textures. So good. So guys, what are you waiting for? Homemade pumpkin pie spiced up. Go on, have a go. Happy Halloween. I'm going to show you how to turn this on this.
Hi lovely peoples. Let me show you how to make a perfect risotto. I'm going to make pumpkin risotto. What you do your pumpkins Halloween? You cut it, you carve it, put a kettle inside, leave them outside the door and all the children comes along. Trick or treat. And then at the end, you know, the day after you get a pumpkin, you throw them away. Don't do that. All right. You can make a fantastic pumpkin risotto. It's so good. The ingredient I use here is rosemary because it goes well. Onions, little chili, I use a guanciale, but you can use bacon and if you're vegetarian, just remove the bacon, the guanciale, the prosciutto, whatever you want to use. I don't use it. So, what do you actually do? First of all, well, before anything goes, look at this onion. So good. And then I already cut the pumpkins because you can use any pumpkins. So I have done a little square. Cut big, small. Please yourself which way you want to do it. I used to be very professional cutting. I think I lost all my... I didn't lose anything. Then this is it. You just put them on the side on a chopping board. Man, you all chopping boards there. There you cut it. Okay. Get a lovely guanciale. The nice bit of fat on it is so good. You don't have to use all this. Just a little bit. Just a slice. That's all. Then again, you just do little strip and then have the guanciale inside. The perfect marriage also is the chili and the rosemary. Then you put them all inside. So goes in, just switch it on and just drizzle a little bit of olive oil inside. Original risotto is made beginning with a butter and let it sizzling. Why is sizzling? Get nice big onions. Actually squirted onions. Look at that. Let's see again. And then I chop it quite fine. Quite a lot onions now. Oh my god. I love make risotto. I think the king of risotto. I remember when my good friend Antonio Kuchi used to make the risotto. Everything had to be just cut them in small pieces. And me I used to put everything inside. And then when we taste it, he says to me, you'll see how good it is. This was good. My mind was better. You keep stirring a little bit. The butter and the olive oil don't make burn it. Now you have a little bit of a chili. Make sure the chili is not very very hot. How can you tell if the chili is hot or not hot? I don't know. I just put them inside just a little bit. So you can see you sweat everything. Remember again the word is sweat when you actually jocking burn when you go in Spain you sit under the sun I changing nations before it was Italy and you become like a pepperoni you don't want to do that that's a lovely hot pan nice bit of rosemary inside you can see I put the rosemary with everything because I can remove after go straight inside chili rosemary one charlie is unbelievable. Then you get the rice. Each handful is in a risotto. So we do one, two, three, four bit. That is for me. Keep stirring it. When the rice become a transparent almost transparent, you can see you know the little bit of shade like a ghost ghost. Yeah. On the side. It's nice and hot. Then you get nice little bit of wine. Bit too much. It was not like that, but somebody put more wine inside. Music. Music. Oh my god. You can smell. Come inside. Come have a look. Let evaporate it a little bit because I'm going to use a stock now. When it's almost evaporated, you get all this beautiful Halloween pumpkin. Soon as it's ready, you don't want to get stick. I'm going to get the stock. Make sure it's very hot. There we go. See that stock? I made a stocks. Good vegetable stock. Chicken stock will do as well. If you're vegetarian, don't. Just put a couple of ladle over this stock inside and keep stir it. Oh my goodness me. So good. Keep stir it and then keep stir it. Now we want the pumpkins to melt it. Turn down the gas slowly. A little bit slowly. And usually risotto for one person it will take 17 minutes. For two will take over 20 minutes. For three again 25. For four perhaps takes half an hour. That's all. See? And then you keep stirring. Look at that. And then you keep add the stock. And if you finish with the stock, good luck. You have to put some water inside. But always hot. Everything have to be hot. Also, now again, you check if the pumpkins is soft enough. Some people are like a puree of pumpkins straight melt inside. Mine. I just like it because I want to see when I have the risotto. See, as soon as it start to to evaporate it, let evaporate.
Now we need to put some butter inside. Just nice big knob of butter. Stir the butter in. While the butter is melting nice, you can see nice bit of parmesan. Go gadget. Go. Come have a look now. Now you have to have a look that creamy become. Look, you can still see the pumpkins. It's nice and soft. I kept them all together. Now you have to leave it for at least couple of minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes. This is about 20 minutes all together. You know, always keep stirring. Stir it. Look at this. It's ready now. Let's just put them on a plate. Oh my goodness me. A bit of parmesan. With mine I just prefer a little drop little drizzle of olive oil. Just a little touch of raw oil. Look at this pumpkin. It still stays together on a potato. Should I? Yes. To be or not to be. I eat it. Oh my god. That little kick of the chili, the rosemary, the guanciale, the parmesan, the rosemary, the onions, the wine, and a beautiful stock. It's really good. Try to make it. If you don't have a pumpkins, use something else. But one thing I can tell you, when Alins's coming, you go pumpkins, you ch don't throw them away. Don't just make lovely salt. You will love it. But actually, I'm going to go by the fire here. Any chest nuts anywhere? I can sprinkle on top. Walnuts. No, you know what? I'm going to roast some pumpkins as well. Do you want some?
So recently I've had a bit more time to focus on simple ingredients, particularly vegetables and that whole thing as a parent trying to get more of the good stuff into my family and of course I want them to enjoy it, right? So cauliflower is a veggie that most of us buy most weeks and that kind of set me off because cauliflower cheese is a win-win. It's a home run, right? But if I go to another world, which is the world of pasta, that's another home run. So, how about we bring the two worlds together? Delicious, silky smooth, cheesy, cauliflowery pasta with crunchy garlicky breadcrumbs. It's going to be a texture and flavor sensation. So, I bet, and I'm not judging, that most of us get the cauliflower, do that, pick all this up, and throw it in the bin and the compost. I've done it myself. But what I want to do is use these outer leaves in my crunchy breadcrumbs because if you put a pan on the heat, kiss it with some oil, take these outer leaves, put a little pinch of salt on it, and you fry it. We're going to make essentially like a culinary veggie crisp. And that is going to be used as a flavor enhancer in my crunchy breadcrumbs. Look, look what's happening. It it it's funky. It's deep. It's got umami, the fifth flavor. So, I want that. I don't want it in the bin. I want it in my tummy. The moral of the story is there's some really tasty stuff going in the bin. And if you want to save yourself money, give yourself more nutrition, and probably most importantly, give yourself more pleasure, we can cook with it. So, I want to just finely chop it. Also, I'm going to use garlic. This is fresh garlic from me garden. What's really interesting about fresh garlic is the first month and a half you can use all the way up to here and then like every week you can use less and less and less and less and then it starts to become papery and dry like we know it. But actually it's almost like a giant spring onion when it's first harvested which is pretty pretty exciting. So look, I'm just going to cut that up. Take the end off. I want sort of two big fat cloves. I'll use a few more of mine because it's a little bit smaller. Just finely slice or grate. Put a pan on the heat. Kiss it with some oil. Go in with the garlic. That's going to scent the oil and it'll be delicious. Look at that. Then I'm going to go in with cauliflower leaves that could have gone in the bin. The flavor goes deep and delicious. And then in with a couple of handfuls of breadcrumbs. About 30-35% of all the bread we buy ends up in the bin. But a fantastic way to not waste bread is to make what they call in Italy a pangrattato or pangrattato is crispy breadcrumbs. And in old Italian cooking and if they couldn't afford parmesan to give it that saltiness and that richness and that big flavor, they would use this. They fry breadcrumbs. Think of it like little mini croutons. Look at that. Look at the color. Fry that for about 10 to 15 minutes. When it's golden and crisp, it's done. That is amazing on pastas, raviolis, soups, stews, salads. Really, really cool. In actual fact, if I don't serve this with a pasta dish, normally my kids get a bit aggro. It's like, oh, come on, dad. You know, so it's a great way of using up potentially wasted bread. Right, let's make the simplest creamy cauliflower sauce. I think you're going to love it. You need 400 g of cauliflower. I want to just slice this up into little bits in a pan. Put in 400 ml of milk. Go in with the cauliflower. Slice up one onion and get that in as well. Give the onions and collie nice little mix up. We'll have a little pinch of salt just to get the seasoning happening. Lid on top and we'll simmer that for about 10-15 minutes until the cauliflower is tender. Now, when I was coming up with this, what I was trying to achieve was a really clean, simple, sweet cauliflower flavor, right? And a really pale white sauce. So, one of the lovely things about cooking the cauliflower like this, it's almost like poaching fish, right? You do that in milk. With the cauliflower, you know, it's infusing delicate flavors. It's a very simple sauce. Seven ingredients for this whole dish. And it's just a nice thing to think about now that simple pleasures, simple ingredients, a little bit of love, care, you know, looking at things that you might just throw in the bin. And it's a dish that my kids will just destroy.
Breadcrumbs done. Sauce beautifully cooking. The nice thing is my little boy River loves sucky pasta as he calls it. Um and loves the fact that it's sort of whipping him everywhere. There's sauce everywhere. You know, they just like mess, don't they, kids? So, I've got 300 gram of spaghetti. Of course, you can use any pasta you like. I personally love sort of the noodle style pasta with this, so you can suck it all up and it clings to the sauce really, really well. So, I've seasoned this water. Just get your pasta, twist it, and then in we go. I'll cook that for about 10, 12 minutes. But just look at the packet instructions. I think the sauce is done now. You could make exactly the same sauce with any vegetable that you love and do exactly the same. So instead of a white fresh looking sauce, you could have carrots orange, you know, broccoli green squash orangey ready. Do you know what I mean? You can have real fun with this as a principle. I love that about recipes when it's flexible and generous. All you have to do now is liquidize that sauce. So, in we go with all the cauliflower and onions. And then add 70 g of cheddar cheese. It does a really good job of seasoning this sauce, but also giving it that ooze, that stickiness. If you wanted to use a potato masher and have a rustic sauce, you can. You can use a stick blender. No trouble at all. I like the simplicity and the smoothness. It's just Oh, it's come on. Cauliflower cheese but smooth. And now we're going to throw it on pasta. It's the simplest but most brilliant thing. So, uh, where's me colander? I love cooking out here because I don't get told off for mess, which is great. And then I can do things like this. But you got to be careful. You want to save a little bit of that water as well. Let's put this amazing dish together. I'm so excited to show you. Tumble in our lovely spaghetti. I've cooked that al dente so slightly undercook it. And then the amazing cauliflower cheese sauce. Silky heavenly. And actually that pasta's absorbing that sauce. Come on. Cauliflower cheese pasta. If you let it into your life, it will be a new favorite. I'm telling you, it's getting quite thick now. So that's why we save a little bit of this starchy water because the elegance of this dish is in the consistency. Oh, look at that. I just love the way that that just clings to the sauce. You sexy beast. Then imagine comboing that up with audacious crunch. Funky bits of the cauliflower leaves and garlic. I'm telling you, do not throw those little green bits of cauliflower leaves away and the bread. There's something beautiful to be had. As you go in with a fork and start twiddling that pasta by default, it will start picking up all those crunchy bits. I mean, look, you know what cauliflower cheese tastes like? Clean and cheesy and gorgeous. That pasta is another level. I'm so into this. Get it on those breadcrumbs. Look at that. Whoa. You know that makes sense. I'm so happy. You could reheat that if you wanted to, but I would suggest just crack an egg or two into that in a pan, breadcrumbs on top, put it in the fridge. When someone wants something nice, pop it in the oven for half an hour and you get the most amazing cauliflower cheese spaghetti pasta cake. That's good as well. I really suggest you have a go at this. That's phenomenal. It's full of the good stuff and just so tasty.
