James Martin: Home Comforts

Long and lazy winter days are the perfect times to enjoy some indulgent home cooked meals and for James, those dishes are a perfect chicken and mushroom puff pastry pie and some slow cooked spare ribs. Also this episode, food historian Ivan Day reveals how slow cooking years ago meant a very indulgent spit roast, and one of Wiltshire's local microbrewers, Alasdair Large, visits the kitchen to see what James can cook with his own locally produced beer.

There’s a culinary twist on some of our favourite Mid Week Suppers today as James creates his own Toad in the Hole with Onion gravy and shows how simple it is to create a delicious blackberry and apple Millefeuille out of homemade puff pastry.

In today’s programme James cooks his favourite winter warmers including jacket potato skins hot from his own patio pizza oven and a chocolate and clementine steamed pudding.