Today I'm gonna cook the most delicious pulled
pork extravaganza, and you can use it in so many different ways, it's gonna be brilliant. First up I went to the butchers, this is a
half shoulder of pork it's the hand end, I prefer this part of the shoulder because there's
different cuts in there and they're different flavours and it just falls off the bone so
beautifully. We've got four carrots, we've got four apples,
we've got four onions, and then we're gonna use a lovely herb. Beautiful sage, it could be rosemary it could
be thyme, and this will become the trivet for this pork. I'm just gonna chop the onions in half once
I've peeled them, like that. I wanna keep them quite big because this pork
shoulder will cook low and slow for a number of hours. They're gonna get caramelised and sweet and
delicious. Then the carrots, we'll split them down the
middle. Get your apples and just cut them into quarters,
remove that core, and there you go. When I'm roasting this pork I'm doing it for
my family, it makes the most amazing roast dinner, it's fantastic for party food, it's
also brilliant if you're living on your own honestly I would still do it. You can freeze it and for months to come you've
got the depth of flavour and the deliciousness that you can put to a whole bunch of different
recipes. And it'll save you a load of money as well
because you're stretching a cut of meat a long way. And then we've got sage here, right so all
I'm gonna do is grab the stalk like that and then twist it and it's that simple. Let's get the pork ready to roast, for that
I'm just gonna lightly drizzle it with a little olive oil, couple of tablespoons, the same
amount of red wine vinegar. So the vinegar and pork has a very good relationship
right, the fat and the acidity and the flavour is a phenomenal thing. We'll hit it hard with black pepper and lovely
sea salt, and we'll rub this all over the pork. And then there's one spice that I wanna hero,
and that's nutmeg. So grate that nutmeg in. Smells amazing. Just give it a nice rub all over. So once you've got this all rubbed up nicely
we simply just grab the apples, and the carrots, and the sage, and bung it underneath. While this pork cooks it'll be kind of raining
all of its gorgeous juices down onto that trivet and the flavour you'll create will
be absolutely phenomenal. So give that a nice little mix-up and last
but not least, a whole bulb of garlic. Leave it in the skin, no work at all right? As that roasts it'll go creamy and mild and
delicious and perfume. So that's it - three minutes work and then
we're gonna let the oven do the work. So, let me just wash my hands, now as far
as the oven's concerned I'm gonna preheat it to 200 degrees Celsius which is 400 Fahrenheit. And we'll give it two hours right, two hours
to get this beautiful pork shoulder going. And then after two hours just turn it down
to 150 and we'll cook it for three hours. That will guarantee you crispy crackling and
the most soft, tender, gorgeous pullable meat. So now I can do whatever I want, three minutes
work to put it together and the oven does all the hard work, brilliant. Hello. Come on boy! Absolutely outrageous smells of that beautiful
pork. It's had five hours of love and care -- not
from me, from the oven. Oho! Look at that! Something special that is. Ok, so let me show you how to take this beautiful
piece of pork and create the potential for meals, many meals, over the next month or
two. So look let's just take that crackling there,
whoa! Now that is a pork scratching. Crispy and delicious. Get yourself two forks, very very simple. Get in there to the shoulder and just pull
this off. So look the only thing that you have to do
is just pull the meat off the bone. I've broken most of it up right, now we're
gonna chop it up. Look the dog's turned up. Hello mate! You know that something's happening. You'll see there is a little bit of fat, here. This is not waste... it makes the best, the best, roast potatoes. And I'm just gonna squeeze the garlic out
of its skins and what you're left behind with is this amazing garlic puree. The smell is phenomenal. And then get that meat back into this incredible
dripping tray. What we're gonna do is toss the apple and
the onion and the carrot and that lovely sage-yness around this pork. And the flavour will now be off the richter
scale, I haven't tried any yet I'm holding myself back. And I reckon you could easily feed 15 portions
out of that if not more, so when you talk about y'know value for money. That's kind of done, let's have a little wipedown,
and flip the board here. Lemme just wash me hands. So then we've got this, the biggest crackling
I've ever seen. Let's just kind of cut it up into chunks. Yep, people are gonna fight over that. Look at that... beautiful. Down in my little recipe hut I've got the
perfect sharing dish to kick off our Friday night. I am so excited to give you a recipe for an
amazing homemade pie. Beautiful crumbly pastry, chicken, sweet leeks,
creamy sauce. This is gonna be amazing. It starts here, with a chicken. So a nice free-range chicken. What I wanna do first is cut it in half. Just hold the chicken, get the tip, cut down
the back, and then down the breast. So in a pan we'll have just a tiny bit of
oil. So chicken goes into the pan. I'm using the whole chicken, you get maximum
flavour from the bones and the bone marrow, but also the joy of white meat, brown meat,
and the sweet meat is incredible. So we got a second pan on a medium heat, and
what I wanna do is start frying off a beautiful base to give you the best pie filling ever. For that I'm gonna start with some smoky bacon,
just cut ourselves some little lardons. So into the pan we go, add a little oil, and
that is an incredible welcoming party for vegetables and herbs. So we'll start off with thyme, so rip that
in, and then base vegetables: one heart of celery, one onion, one carrot and one leak. Roughly sliced into sort of 1-1.5 centimetre
dice. Into the pan. I don't want the veg so small that it's gonna
disappear, I wanna have chunks of veggies. So about 10-15 minutes of gentle frying, so
that gives us time to clean down and make the pastry. Add 500 grams of plain flour to a bowl, a
pinch of sea salt, and 250 grams of very cold butter. So by the grating the butter like that it
just makes it so easy to rub into the flour. Pour in 100 ml of cold water and bring it
together. And kind of hug it. No kneading, just hugging. That's what we want. And I'm just gonna form it into two balls. Divide so it's a third for the lid, and two
thirds for the base. Wrap them up and flatten out, and leave to
chill in the fridge until needed. If you look in here now we have a nice little
bit of colour, that means we've got mega flavour already. I wanna turn this into a beautiful sauce to
stew that chicken right, to pull out all that flavour. I'm gonna use scrumpy, a beautiful cloudy
cider. Just a nice little swig goes in. The smell is phenomenal. And we wanna cook all that cider away. Go in with a heaped teaspoon of English mustard,
two heaped tablespoons of plain flour, a litre of chicken stock, and bring to a simmer. At this point in the story we've created that
stewing environment and we're taking that lovely crispy golden chicken and those bones
are straight down into that sauce. So lid on top and just let it blip, blip away,
for around about an hour until the thigh meat pulls off the bone and that will be incredible. This fat in the pan by the way I'm gonna keep
that for a little secret later. So the chicken is done, if I just pull the
thigh meat and it should just fall off the bone that's what we want, super delicious,
super tender, happy days. So meat into here. I have been slicing up 500 grams of button
mushrooms. By putting the mushrooms in at this stage
you get a really sweet sweet nutty mushroom flavour. Stir that through. Ok, so now two forks, and just pull that tender
meat from the bone. At this point the bones have done their job,
they've given you awesome flavour. Carefully remove all the bones, add the chunks
of chicken back to the stew, and mix through two tablespoons of creme fraiche. So I want this stew to do two things, give
me an amazing perfect filling and then also an incredible sauce, and we can have both
by one easy little trick that I love. Get yourself a pan, get yourself a colander,
and sieve that filling. The sauce will go through it and you can reheat
that later to pour on top of your pie! Put that to one side and now we can make our
pie. So we'll get our pastry out of the fridge
and we'll roll this out. So it's gonna line this beautiful pie dish. What I will do is just give a little bit of
olive oil to the bottom of the dish and give it a rub. Put your chilled pastry in between a sheet
of greaseproof paper and roll it till it's half a centimetre thick. Add to the pie dish, pour in the cooled filling,
and roll out your pie lid. I don't care if it cracks, I embrace it. Look I'm gonna tear. Oh no there's a crack, it doesn't matter. We're gonna just tear it up and put it in,
just like that. And as we take in the sides we're gonna create
just a beautiful rustic pie. So just a little eggwash. So I'm gonna cook that now for about an hour,
put it at the bottom of the oven, the temperature will be 190 degrees Celsius which is 375 Fahrenheit,
and that will be a thing of beauty. So that glorious pie is nearly done and I've
just knocked up a bit of mashed potato. You guys know how to do that but what you
might not know how to do is make cabbage beautiful. We're gonna do something quick, and delicious,
and amazing. Roughly slice up the cabbage and add to the
chicken fat you saved earlier. Cook over a high heat until softened and lightly
charred. Add a splash of water, a teaspoon of mustard,
and a pinch of salt and white pepper. These three things bring out the most wonderful
flavour, just takes your everyday cabbage to another place. So cabbage is done, and gravy is bubbling
away and reheating nicely. And then, yes, that my friends is what I wanted,
look at that. Bubbling, blipping, look! Just so so good. The hispi cabbage that is soft and succulent
but it's got the char. Good old mashed potato, always a good friend
of a pie. Then we'll get a gravy boat. This, poured over the top of your pie, will
be a joyful thing. Aw look how flaky that pastry is! I'm very excited. Come on! Look at that got the chunks of chicken, the
flaky pastry, that is a slice of heaven. Let's have a dunk, mash... some of that amazing cabbage done good. And then gravy. Let's get in there. Hallelujah! Y'know using the whole chicken gives you the
hyper flavour. Everyone deserves to enjoy a good homemade
pie. Guys what're you waiting for? I wanna let you into a little secret that
makes a massive difference to my life, batch cooking, a big ol' pan of food. Could be a bolognaise, a soup, a stew, in
this case I'm gonna show you how to make a beautiful veggie casserole right, with roasted
squash, chickpeas, mushrooms, tomatoes. But from that you can do so many different
dishes. Got a butternut squash there. Very carefully put the tip in the centre and
then go carefully all the way down, and then rotate it, carefully all the way down. And then take these seeds out. So what I wanna do is amplify flavour of veggies
all the way through this recipe so you don't just get kind of boiled veg, you get delicious
food. So by roasting the squash we're gonna literally
double or triple the flavour. I'm only gonna put a little bit of olive oil
on this squash. And salt... and that's it. Now the oven is at 180 degrees Celsius which
is 350 Fahrenheit, straight onto the bars, skin-side down, and that'll start concentrating
the flavour there. So I've got 400 grams of your everyday cheap
mushrooms. I'm just gonna literally break up these mushrooms
and go in dry to the pan, no oil at the moment just gonna dehydrate the mushrooms and concentrate
their flavour. Let's give this a little stir. You can see the moisture coming out of the
mushrooms. So let that crack on for 10 minutes. Ok let's talk about more veggies. Four onions, peeled, and four peppers. And with the peppers thumb goes in, right,
and then you can split open the pepper like that, take the seeds out, and then I'm gonna
tear it up, chunky. Big chunks like two-inch chunks. As I stir it it's almost squeaking because
it's scalding it it's charring it, so it's giving it a toasty smoky flavour. So roughly chop the onions and in they go. Salt and pepper. And we'll let that carry on and scald and
steam and intensify for another 10 minutes. And then I'm gonna get some chickpeas, some
tomatoes, and some tapenade. It's chopped up olives. What I love about this is it's a flavour bomb
waiting to happen, so that's a nice little hack and an ingredient that I like to have
at home, always. Two garlic cloves will be enough. Peel this garlic and finely slice. So we go in with two tablespoons of olive
oil and two garlic. Then we can go in with the tapenade, two tablespoons
straight in there, deep flavours, seasoning again. I'm gonna go in also with two tablespoons
of red wine vinegar, and what that will give you is this beautiful kind of sweet and sour
veggie base, deep in flavour. And when that's cooked away then, and only
then, we can add the wet stuff. The tinned tomatoes, whole plums, you'll get
a sweeter flavour. Two tins, clean hands. Scrunch it, this is what the nonnas do in
Italy, the grandmothers. And then once you've done that, fill these
tins up with water. That'll clean the tin out, and also gives
you the perfect amount of moisture to really make this into a lovely casserole-y stew. And then the chickpeas. Now you can go for cheap tinned chickpeas
and they're nice. But the extraordinary chickpeas are the jarred
ones, right they're more expensive but they're twice the size, they're twice as delicious,
and they're creamy and amazing. So look out for these in delis you can get
them online, you can get them in certain supermarkets. So whether you're using jars or tins of chickpeas,
go in with them juice and all right, all the juice, that juice is very useful. Beautiful. Bring that to the boil. Let me just wash me hands. So look as that comes to the boil you'll see
that begin to thicken. So give it a nice stir. Tiny bit of seasoning not too much 'cos it's
gonna reduce down. Hopefully what you've got from this method
is that I'm commanding flavour at every stage, and I'll finish it in the oven. Let's check in on the squash, look we've already
got a nice bit of colour there. You might wanna use a pair of tongs, I'm gonna
place that squash on the stew like that, just push it down, and place this back in the oven. So we'll carry on cooking that at 180 degrees
Celsius which is 350 Fahrenheit for like an hour and a half until everything is just gorgeous
and cooked through, and then you can stir that squash in big hunks through it. That amazing casserole took less than half
an hour to put together, to get to that stage, and then you let the oven do all the work. So it smells amazing it's had an hour and
a half, look at it blipping away, I love it when it does that. Proper, hearty food. Get yourself a spoon. Now the reason that I've roasted the squash
on top is so that you get maximum roast which is maximum flavour. Also the skin on butternut squash is utterly
delicious, like candy. Get a spoon in and just break it up, into
little hunks of squash. Give it a nice little mix up, then have a
little taste. Mm. You can adjust with a little salt and pepper,
and something I like to do is just a little thimble of vinegar just to bring the flavour
out make it a little bit kind of lighter, more tangy. That is a great fish in its own right. Massive flavour. So there you go. One pan, squash and chickpea casserole, what
are you waiting for? You need to get some of that in your life. What I tend to do is freeze most of it, but
from this dish there's so many thing you can do. You can rustle up loads of different dishes
with flavours from all around the world: go Italian and simply have it with toast, delicious
pesto and buffalo mozzarella, or serve it Spanish style with chorizo and potatoes. And I love to spice up my chickpea and squash
casserole with curry paste to turn it into a gorgeous veggie curry. Look at this. Oh my favourite, curry! Do you prefer vegetarian to meat? 100% Pets sort your dad out, go on. This is the best thing ever dad! If you love sausage and mash then this could
be a new family favourite in your home. So first job in a pan, a little bit of olive
oil, and on a kind of medium heat get those lovely sausages in there. And I want these to be golden all the way
around. We're gonna use leeks but also curveball - apple. Peel these, chunk these up, and then as these
sausages are getting nice and brown we're gonna get our apple straight into that and
we want a little bit of colour. Now my missus doesn't like onions so I use
leeks a lot. So, put the tip of your knife in and go all
the way down the length. Roughly slice it up to be the same size as
the apple. So just take the sausages out now and the
leeks all go in, just give it a little swig of water, just to stop that frying process. A little pinch of salt and a little pinch
of pepper, and now turn that down to like a medium heat. 20 minutes with a lid on. The next job is the mashed potatoes. Over here I've got 1.2 kilos of Maris Piper
potatoes. Peeled and boiled and drained. Just two tablespoons of flour, salt and pepper,
mash this together. Then we need to divide it into one third for
the top, and two thirds for the bottom and the side. This bit I will put over here with my sausage,
and then this two thirds here I'll put in that tray and that little kiss of oil, and
give it a little rub up around the sides. In we go with the potato, and then just use
your hands to just pat it out almost like a type of pastry, and then as you get to the
sides up we go. Super easy, super rustic. The leeks. Once they've had about 20 minutes and they're
really tender we're gonna kind of amp this up now. We're gonna go in with three teaspoons of
English mustard right, that won't be hot by the way it will just give it a nice big sort
of bold flavour. Then we're gonna go in with flour again, just
a couple of tablespoons, and that will be the thickening agent for this sauce. A little thyme, just pick that off the stalk. Once the flour is all mixed in, add the milk. About 600 ml. And now, go in with the sausages. Let's save one of those back. Slice these into 1 cm slices. So this will feed four people very generously. So let that simmer for five minutes, and let's
think about the topping. Get a little bit of greaseproof paper, put
a bit of oil on here, rub it, and then I'll take this potato and press it down again and
again and again, like that. It's about a centimetre thick. You want it to be slightly bigger than this
tray. Go in with the amazing sweet leek, caramelised
apple, and sausage casserole look at that. Then simply pick up your greaseproof paper,
flap it over the top like that, and then un-peel it. We wanna seal it to kind of trap all that
lovely goodness, so get yourself a fork and your flour, just dip it in the flour to stop
it sticking to your fork. And that just seals it nicely. Just as if it was pastry get a knife and kind
of cut down like that. Now there is one sausage left, so slice this
up and then I'm gonna push this into the most beautiful potato. These will get nice and golden and crispy. Now that will go in the oven for 40 minutes
at 200 degrees Celsius, and then about five minutes before the end I'll put some of that
thyme on top just to crispen up and it will look the business. Ohhh yes. Ho ho, come on. Chunks of sausage, creamy leaky sauce, I've
got some greens and some peas. I love a bit of mustard as well. Let's just get in it. Come on, what's not to love, sausage and mash
but not as you know it.
