8 Classic Fresh Spring Recipes With Jamie Oliver & Gennaro Contaldo

Beautiful pasta carbonara. I'm going to get you as close to the classic technique as possible and I'm going to give you a nice little surprise for ingredient number five. I'm going to use penne. This one takes 10 minutes. We're going to go in with 300 grams of the pasta and then we're going to season that with salt. Let's talk about the other classic ingredient. Fresh eggs, smoked bacon. That's what I'm going to use today. Then on to the cheese. I'm going to use parmesan today because I think it's more accessible. Now look, as this has come to the boil, lid will come off. Let's give it a nice little stir so nothing sticks together and let's get cooking. I'm going to start by being controversial in the sense of I'm going to add a veg. This is not classic at all. I'm going to use some lovely asparagus. Why? Because it cooks really quickly, because it's sweet and delicious, because it contrasts the salty, smoky, savoury flavours. What I would encourage you to do is to cut it to around the same size as this pasta. I'm just going to cut the asparagus stalk at a slight angle. Okay so pasta cooking, let's start frying things. So take your bacon and I'm just going to thinly slice it. I'm going to go into the pan with a little oil and then we want to render the fat out of the bacon and get it nice and golden. So while that's happening, I want to do my egg sauce. Take four eggs, remove the yolk, leaving behind the white. So the yolk here is delicate, it's rich and that's what's going to thicken this sauce. Save those egg whites, put them in the freezer and that will be for another day. So now if we look in the pan, it's getting nice and golden and crispy and I want to give you a nice convincing amount of black pepper now, right. So about a teaspoon. Let's finish this sauce. So I'm going to take the parmesan, a little handful is all I need. Now just whip it up. I'm going to steal just a little bit of cooking water and just stir it in. You can see the bacon is nice and dark. We're going to go in with the asparagus. Eggs cook really quick, we do not want scrambled egg, okay. So I'm now going to turn the heat of this pan off. I'm then going to take the pasta and some of this water into this pan and we'll go in with the penne. So you want this pan to cool down. If you put that egg sauce in there now, it would scramble. You want to just leave it for one minute. Then we're going to go in with the sauce like that and it's that residual heat that gives you the classic sauce. That's beautiful. Silky smooth, elegant and then to finish just one little stroke parmesan on top and one last little flourish of black pepper. The flavour is massive. Hi lovely people of Food Tube. It is springtime and why not to make a fantastic, delicious springtime risotto. I love risotto because it's so simple, so good. Full of flavour, full of aromas. This is spring. I make it for about four. First of all you use about quarter of onions. Cut them very, very, very, very fine. Spring in the head with the onions, yes! Gorget. Chop them lengthway. Now one stalk of celery. Remove the stringy bit. Chop it. Smell the flavour, the aroma is incredible. So we're going to use 10 asparagus. Remove it, the top of the asparagus and keep them on the side. Cut them in small pieces. Last, not least, fresh peas. It's so beautiful. But if you don't have fresh one, do not worry. Use frozen peas. I'm going to bring this pot because it's quite hot. Just a knob of butter. Fantastic, look at that. Then I use a very good olive oil, a tablespoon. Now you've got this beautiful combination of butter and oil. Let's start to cook it. Onions straight in. Get the celery in. Sweat, not burn. Now we need to get the rice. I cook it for about four, so I use four handful of rice. Stir the rice in. Yes, oh that is fantastic. You cook it for about a minute and then you get the good wine. Remember white wine. The wine you're drinking is the wine you have to cook it. There is no such thing as a cooking wine. You put about half a glass of wine inside. The music, this is what I'm talking about. The music is unbelievable. Now the alcohol evaporates. The lovely flavour of the grapes stays inside the pot, which is incredible. Then make sure you have a very hot stock. Just put one ladle. Chicken or vegetable stock is perfect. For about four people you need about a litre and a half. Now is the time I put the courgette inside. I get the asparagus, just put them inside. Give me a quick stir. You have one ladle or two ladles of stock. Turn the gas down and keep stirring. You have to keep stirring it. You always have to make sure that you use a wooden spoon, not metal spoons. Because if you use metal spoons when you stir the rice, you actually break the rice. When you do it with a wooden spoon, you caress the rice. You give it that lovely flavour. You see now because I stir it, the grains of rice touch the other one and become very, very, very, very creamy. And finally now, lovely fresh peas. Use about one generous handful. Stir it. You can see it's starting to dry up. So it is the time now to put more stock inside. It's ready. Let me just turn it off. Look at that cream inside. Incredible. All the vegetables which are put inside, they release that fantastic, beautiful flavour and the rice took more. Like a sea. Have you noticed it? How many ribbons go inside the sea? And the sea never say enough. And this is what the rice is doing. It takes all the flavour it can put inside. This is why it's good. Asparagus, because those are so tender you don't need to cook. A little knob of butter. Just cut them in small pieces. A couple of tablespoons of grated parmesan. And give it a lovely, cheesy flavour. Put them all together with such a joy. Now, zest of a lemon. The smell is incredible. Look, just a little bit, do not overdo it. Mint. Mint makes everything spring. Very, very small. Straight in. Because I left for an extra second, I need to put a little bit more of stock. This is so beautiful. Oh my goodness, look at that creaminess. Grated parmesan. Olive oil. Just a little touch. Mint. And this is the perfect spring risotto. Look at this. Beautiful shoulder of lamb. And I have to be honest, the shoulder of lamb is my favourite bit of the whole animal. And I tell you what, if more people bought it, it would give butchers all around the country a much easier life, because legs of lamb, walk out the door. Racks of lamb, walk out the door. But these little babies need a tiny bit of thought, a little bit of TLC and cook it slow. And this meat is sweet, it's delicious and you don't have to do too much to it. So, first of all, get yourself a knife and just score up erratically the lamb. Just to open it up a little bit. Like that. And then all I want to do is get a roasting tray. I'm going to get a garlic clove and just smash them up like that. Throw a few on the bottom. Get some salt. Season the lamb on both sides. And then pepper. And real simple. The whole point of this is utter simplicity, but then care when you cook it. Get yourself a nice wodge of rosemary. Look at that stuff. Beautiful. And just tear it into bits and put it in the bottom of the tray. Rosemary and garlic, classic combo for lamb. And then put your lamb in nice and snug here. And then put a few of the garlic cloves on top here. Tear up some nice big handful of rosemary. Be brave. And then just a tiny little drizzle of olive oil, just to get that fat rendering and going. And then tin foil. Two sheets of tin foil. Put this over here like this. Tightly seal it. And then this is the bit that's going to turn this simple, good value piece of meat into the most incredible roast, right? Four hours at, well, what I've done is I've got an oven at full whack, okay? And as soon as it goes in, turn it straight down to 170 degrees Celsius or about 330 Fahrenheit. And what happens is that intense heat gets on the lamb, gets it sort of going and then the oven cools down and we're going to gently cook that now, that lower temperature for about four hours. And in four hours time, that lamb is going to be so delicious. Sticky, you can pull it apart. It'll be the best roast lamb you ever have. Right, let's get this lamb out. Beautiful. Fantastic smell. Look at that. Absolutely beautiful. And you can see, even though it's had tin foil over it, it's got beautiful colour all the way over. And what I do now, the shoulder of lamb, you can see the bone is literally falling out. That's how tender and delicious it is. I'm just going to pick it up, put it onto our platter, like that. Let that just sit. You know there's a bit of meat that's just, see how that, look, that is total, total tenderness. And, oh, beautiful. So in here we've got these beautiful garlic cloves and if you just squeeze them, then all this beautiful, lovely, soft, sweet garliciness, you can just mix it with a bit of gravy and then, you know, potato or veg or whatever and it is the best thing ever in the world. So don't go throwing those away. And then what you need to do now is get rid of the rest of the rosemary and any of the excess oil, like that. So if you look in the bottom of the pan now, what you've got is beautiful stickiness. So I'm going put that on the heat and we're going to make a funky old school caper and mint sauce, but not like a cold mint sauce, hot mint sauce. So first of all, with all the sticky goodness here, I want to put a tablespoon of flour and obviously what that's going to do is that's going to allow you to thicken your sauce, which is fine, and you can see the colour of it already is that marmitey stickiness that's cooked out of the lamb and you never want to throw that away, that's gold dust. And while that's doing their thing, I've got some lovely fresh mint from the garden. Finely slice it and I tell you what, when you make your own fresh mint sauce as opposed to just getting it out of the jar, you know, it takes seconds to do and it just tastes so fantastic. And then bring your capers into it, literally put the two into each other and continue to chop. Go straight in with your mint and capers and then I've got a pint of chicken stock. Bring it to the boil, I need you to simmer it for hours, just enough to get all that stickiness dissolved so you've got that wonderful flavour and you'll be ready to rock and roll. Over here I've just chopped up some swede, some carrots, some potatoes, boil them till they're soft and I'm going to drain them. So pour your veg in there and then once you've drained it, put it back in the pan and we can put them straight back on the heat. Nice knob of butter and for me this is it, you know, put the lamb on, go out, have some fun, go do your thing with your mates, your kids, go down to the pub, go watch football. Come back, you know, you've got the tin foil and the lamb, nothing's going to go wrong too quickly. Get the gravy on, bit of smashed veg and you can put it all together pretty damn quick and a nice pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper and then get a masher and just mash them up like that. I don't want you to mash the hell out of them, I'm not looking for a puree, you're not going to get extra points for making baby food but just look at the colours, beautiful. So sauce is ready, let's bring this together now. We get our smashed veg in here, look at the colour of that, total comfort food, just great and then a little extra knob of butter just in the top there, let it melt. With the sauce you've got that intensity of the lamb and the flavour, you've got the stock, the freshness of the mint and the capers, about a tablespoon of good red wine, white wine, cider vinegar to give it a bit of a twang and obviously that acidity will help cut through the richness of the lamb and then I'm just going to pour this lovely gravy in, look at that, wonderful hot caper and mint sauce which will just knock your socks off, works with lamb, a proper treat and then I've got some lovely cavolo nero, just been quickly boiled, look at that, tossed in a little olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice, it's got salt and pepper in it already, so lovely bit of greens, proper mash or smashed veg, incredible gravy here and I want to show you this beautiful lamb because the whole point of this dish apart from the sweetness and flavour is the tenderness right and literally all I have to do is put my knife in here and you can see it all just bust apart, look at that, that is the real deal and once you've tried that lovely shoulder of lamb, you'll be doing it again and again and again. Hi lovely people of Food Tube, today I'm cooking in my garden, look at that, even I didn't know that, I can almost match the shirt with the flower, what I'm going to cook, I'm going to cook farfalle with pancetta, fresh peas and mint, it was delicious, you will love it, what a combination, first of all for the farfalle I need to put the salt inside, so don't forget 10 grams or less for each litre of water, now because we use fresh peas, so fresh peas are sometimes a little bit crunchy, we want that crunchiness, so three handful of fresh peas and farfalle, you need about 100 grams of farfalle for each person, so I'm going to put nearly 200 because I love it, right we need the pancetta, if you don't have a pancetta you can do with a nice bacon, don't be afraid, you know bacon is good, special smoked bacon is unbelievable good, right slice it, thin slice, then you put them all together and you slice it, thin slice it, it's about 100 grams, 150 grams this is what it's about, fantastic, an onion, you need about half onion, medium onion, a very good olive oil, pancetta goes in yeah, onions goes in straight away, cook it, I'm going to get the spoon out, I'm going to get the spoon out, watch this, is it good, stir it, I want it to be softened, I don't want it too browny, okay let's put the pasta inside, the pasta is ready, takes about a minute, it's done, we put them inside, pieces done exactly the same time, look at that, all in, all in, all in, okay that is done, now let's go put it back, yeah, now let it cook a little bit in this pasta water, the peas, the pancetta, the onions and the farfalle, now I'm waiting for this pasta water to evaporate a little bit and then can coat it that the pasta can become very very silky, just do this, you can see it become more saucy because the pasta took more that lovely pasta water flavour inside, some of the evaporate and that become more easy to handle, at this stage just turn it off, now we need to put some parmesan cheese inside, yes, it's good, stir them a little bit, nice mint, what a combination, mint and peas, the world love mint and peas, yeah, just a nice little bit, just put them inside, I mix like this and last not the least, shall I do it three times? I'm happy lemons, I love it, little lemons, now let's plate it, come on get in, get inside, grate it over parmesan, just a little bit, not too much, little touch of a mint and this is farfalle with pancetta, peas and mint, enjoy! This is risotto primavera, so the beginning of every risotto we ever make starts with onions, so I'm going to use two onions, okie dokie, so in a pan we'll go in with some olive oil, we want to fry the onions now, this is one of my favourite veggies of all time, this is where it went into the ground, it's a bit more woody here, so if you just bend the asparagus, see where it just cracked and if I take four or five, see how they all do it at different levels, so what I've got here is 1.2 litres of lovely veggie stock, those stalks that I've sort of taken to one side, I'm not going to throw that away, okay, because that is full of flavour, so if I just get these stalks and sort of crush them, so I just crack them, so they release that flavour even more and that goes into the stock, then back to the asparagus, the most prized piece are these tips, we'll chop the tips off right here for kind of, let's call it garnish, right, so we can see it and we don't want to overcook it, however this bit, that's full of flavour, so I'm going to finely slice this now, this is what's going to give the risotto most of its flavour, so just fry this off now for about five to ten minutes until they're all really, really soft and it's nice and tasty, so in the meantime I'm going to prep some mint, so what I do is I just take off the bigger leaves here and put them to one side and then the small cute leaves I'm going to save for garnish and then the stalks, we can get those in the stock, so into the stock they go and then look, this is softened up beautiful, now we're going to go in with the risotto rice, you know for me I reckon every house should have a packet of this, right, just sit in there waiting because you know risotto is one of those things that most people love, so you want about 300 grams of beautiful risotto rice in there and we'll stir that into the onions and the asparagus, so if you just fry that risotto rice off a little bit it starts to go translucent, we're going to start adding the stock, ladle at a time, so I'll use a little sieve just to catch any bits and you can see frying straight away, we'll stir it in and then once it's gone we'll add some more and that's the recipe, basically you add the stock bit by bit and once it's mainly cooked away then you add some more, if you look in the pan you can see how it's already starting to get creamy, in about 18 minutes that rice will be cooked, so I'm using something completely not Italian, which is a cottage cheese, so the parmesan is our authentic friend, another great product by the way, absolutely brilliant, so I'm going to grate some of that, so definitely the fine side of the grater, back over here, wow smells so good, now when it comes to the rest of the mint here, what I love to do is just gather it up and sort of just roll it up and then we're going to finely slice it, okay so we're about 16 minutes in and I've added nearly most of the stock so I'm going to go in with the asparagus tips, so the theory there is that we get all the flavour, all the sweetness from the stalks, really, really nice, so the asparagus tips go in, so just give yourself a handful of lovely frozen peas and again the peas are already blanched so they don't need loads of cooking, so at this stage in the game what I'm going to do is two things, turn off the heat because that's done, I'll just put a nice bit of extra virgin olive oil in there, then I'll go in with the cottage cheese like that and then a nice handful of parmesan and then our fresh mint, so it all goes in at the end off the heat and then I kind of fold it in and look at the change, so although the cottage cheese is totally not Italian, the curds start to act like oozy mozzarella, so lid goes on top, let it relax for a minute or two, right, let's serve it on a nice platter, so I quite like serving these either in the bowl if I'm going to be rustic and scruffy or on a lovely big old platter, I'll take this off, look at that guys, it looks so good, guys look at that texture and try not to splash yourself like me, okay look at that, oozy, gorgeous risotto, come on what a dish, finish it with those beautiful mint tips, a little bit of parmesan, what a thing, let's have a little try, wow, it's the sweetness from the peas and the asparagus, oh that is spring in a mouthful with the parmesan and the little curds of cheese, so, so, so, so good, so what are you waiting for, get the recipe and have a nice little cook up. With toasts of whipped ricotta, lemon zest and chilli, this is a delicious little soup that I know you're going to love, full of colour, full of texture, full of nutrition and this is a brand new recipe from my new cookbook, Eat Yourself Healthy and it can happen in about 25-30 minutes, it's a really nice thing to do, so this is a celebration of veggies and actually veggies in many different forms, I'm going to be using artichokes which are jarred, I'm going to be using fresh leeks which is fantastic, you can swap these out for onions if you wish and then some frozen veggies from the freezer, raw beans and peas, this is a real celebration of veggies but I think it's really important that we don't get so kind of worthy about seasons and it has to be from a farmer's market, I love all that by the way, even if you grow your own but also like being busy, corner shops, supermarkets and kind of working with things so you can enjoy spring all year round or more importantly you can enjoy the nutrition of spring all year round. So let's start it off, pan on, nice big pan, we'll kick off with these artichokes, these are actually already cut into quarters, if yours aren't cut them into quarters, we'll place that into a pan, I'll pour in a couple of tablespoons of the oil that it comes in and let's just put the artichokes into the pan like that, add some vinegar to it and some mustard, put the lid on, shake it up and you make a lovely French dressing and that'll be good for a week in the fridge. So I'll put that over here, what I want to do is start off the frying by just putting these artichokes in one little layer. Let's go to the world of fresh, so we love leeks, sweet, creamy and delicious. What I tend to do is just take the outer leaf off like that and just run my knife down like that, pull this off and once I've done that, get the tip of my knife and run it down the length of the leaf. We'll compost this, so I'll trim the green part off here and I'll use this for making a stew or something nice like that, wash away any of those gritty bits and then what I want to do is just run my knife down the length again. What's nice about giving them a wash as well is you create a little bit of moisture, it's going to really soften up nicely and then in we go with all these veggies. So look, mix everything up, give it a light seasoning with salt and pepper and we'll let the excess water from washing the leeks create a nice little bit of steam and what we want to do is cook this on a medium heat for 15 minutes, just to really help those leeks become sweet, delicious and beautifully buttery. So let that cook and then I'll show you what to do next. After 15 minutes you can see the leeks have really cooked down, it smells amazing, you've created good flavour and texture here. If you want to kind of get real good food into your life and you're busy, like using jarred food, tinned food, fresh food and even frozen food, this is important and there's a few things that we should probably know about the freezer. The freezer's amazing, it's like your best friend, so when you pick veggies their nutrition is depleting all the time but when you snap freeze it, it's really, really helpful and useful. This is broad beans, really common, you get them in most of the supermarkets, really, really delicious. So we'll stir that in. A classic, frozen peas, people just love it and again embracing the freezer and frozen veggies, it's super cool. They're sitting there in the freezer waiting to be used. So what I've tried to do in this book and in this recipe is show you how easy it is to get more veggies into your life, which are super nutritious and often incredibly affordable. So here I've got 60 gram bunch of mint, just grab it at the top, rip that off like that and do the same on the other half, right. So we can keep these stalks for putting in stews or cooking potatoes, so do not waste that. We'll put that to one side and then with this we just roughly chop it and boldly and bravely we're going in with the mint. So mint, broad beans, peas, leeks, they love each other, it's a good combo. So stir in the mint, cook it down and we're almost treating it like spinach. Now I'm going to add a litre of boiled water, you could add a chicken stock cube or a veggie stock cube if you wanted to but actually I think we've achieved enough flavour by slow cooking those leeks already. Bring that now to the boil, we don't have to cook the life out of it because we want to keep the colour, the texture and the nutrition right, but I want to give you the really nice little trick and it feels really indulgent. So I can take just a couple of little ladles of this beautiful soup and whizz it up. We can simply pour it back in, salt and pepper and let that tick over while we make some beautiful toasts and I've got a lovely loaf of bread here. So four nice centimetre slices of good bread, the better the bread the better the flavour. So this is going to go under the grill so we'll let that grill, it won't take long at all. In that time we're going to grill it, what I want to do is show you a way of using a really delicious cheese that's very, very healthy. This is ricotta, kind of neutral, light, delicious and super healthy, high protein cheese. You can get it in the supermarkets and what I love to do is just put a pot of the ricotta in like that, season it with a little salt. I'll take a little lemon zest and then some parmesan, 20 grams in weight of parmesan, a little bit of lemon zest in and on it like that. We'll season it a little bit with salt and pepper and then we just take a little spatula and smash it, whip it, mix it. You can go coarse or you can go smooth and shiny like that. So soup done, that lovely ricotta done, lovely hot toast. Look at that, put a nice little dollop of that ricotta on each toast, any extra you have you can put in the fridge, that'll last for two, three days easily. Just use the back of the spoon just to push that ricotta around to the edge. If you've got any extra ricotta you can put that in a little bowl in the fridge, it's good for like two, three days and you can use it as a dip. To make this even more delicious I just want to take a little bit of lemon zest and a little bit of extra parmesan, look at that, and a little parmesan goes such a long way. Just a few extra mint leaves just on top, I love it and very important flaked dried chillies, that little bit of heat with the peas and broad beans works so well with the lemon, the creamy ricotta, the peas, the broad beans, it's a beautiful thing. So let's just plate some of this up, I'm just going to take a nice big bowl of this creamy and chunky soup, look at that. So look I'm going to serve up two lovely bowls of this soup, any leftovers you can keep in the fridge for like three or four days and if you just serve that with a nice little toast on the side like that, I think that is just a beautiful way to enjoy veggies. You can slurp it, you can get involved, it's comforting, you can dip in your beautiful toast. So for me just that simple act of making a delicious homemade soup with accessible ingredients is a cool thing. Okay Mr Oliver here, today we're going to cook scrambled eggs three ways. We're going to go a la English way, a la the French way and the American way. Beautiful scrambled eggs, so delicious. The chicken egg is the most delicious and cheap form of brilliant protein on the planet, fact. They have loads of micronutrients and they're so quick to cook. So English scrambled eggs, we're going to go onto a medium heat. I am going to go two eggs per person. I'm going to do it for two. So just whisk those eggs up. Now one little request, I hate battery eggs, so minimum for me standard eggs is barn eggs and of course free range and free range organic is the way to go. So let's do it. I'm going to go in with a nice knob of butter, straight in just with a little salt. In we go and for me the perfect thing to move the eggs around is a little spatula like this. So I'm just going to move it around and very quickly you can see it setting around the base. You can see there's little cooked curds and the raw egg. So I'm just going to leave it every sort of five seconds. I'll give it a little move around. You don't want it to catch too much. Some people put milk in, some people put cream in. If you cook it right you don't need any of that. This is cooked now but you've got to remember that this pan is still warm and they're going to continue to cook. So all I do is when I get to this stage I just put it to one corner of the pan and that way it's not going to kind of overcook anymore. I get my toast. You can butter your toast but remember we've got a nice knob of butter already on our scrambled eggs. So on we go with our lovely beautiful English style scrambled eggs. You can see it's medium curds, still with moisture around. Completely beautiful but also still soft in texture. So English eggs done. Soft, gorgeous, delicate. Next French style. Bonjour, je m'appelle Jamie. J'aime le oeuf. Oeuf, oeuf, oeuf. Anyway French style eggs. You lightly season for free range eggs. We whip it up and see here we've got about an inch of boiling water and we're going to cook this over a bain marie, a water bath okay. Now here's the thing, eggs cook at a very low temperature and it takes a while. Okay so now you can see there are kind of curds beginning to form. You can see them on the end. Now is a good time to put a few knobs of butter in there. So I'm going to go from a whisk now and I'm going to use a little spatula and you're going to start to see a more gentle, delicate curd coming out. So look there we go. We're in a good place. On we go and very, very different to the English. When you eat it it's very, very fine. It's very luxurious. So there you go guys, French style eggs. They are delicious. And finally FoodTubers we're going to finish with the American style eggs. Okay so we're going to start off the same. Put a little salt into our four eggs. We're going to use a frying pan. Go in with a knob of butter. Let's get that bubbling away. We're going to go in with the eggs. You'll see it starts to set and as it starts to set I'm bringing in these beautiful sheets and you get this kind of roulade folded gorgeous diner eggs. See these beautiful sheets happening guys? The same rules apply to the French and the English. We want it to be gentle cooking so it's a joy. So we're looking good guys. Last but not least there's something quite delicate but substantial about this and you can see the shiny parts where it's just cooking. There's cooked parts that are delicate and sheety. Look at that. Scrambled American style eggs. So tasty. Now all of these styles, French, English and American, they've all had the same eggs, same pinch of salt, same amount of butter but the method that we've used to cook them has completely not only changed the texture and the look but the taste. So we've done the English, the French and the American. That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's hundreds of countries from all around the world. So how do you cook your eggs? Let us know. We love it. That's what Food Tube is all about. I'm gonna use the sweet irony taste of this incredibly versatile spring veg that's bang in season right now. Giving a bit of time and love to create this beautiful pasta, stuffed with an utterly Moorish filling to create an oozy cheesy spring cannelloni. I'm gonna get a pan on, nice medium high heat. Three tablespoons of olive oil. I'm then gonna get some herbs, go in with some of this lovely oregano. You can use dried herbs, it's a very flexible recipe and this is a fantastic principle for epic flavour with greens and it doesn't have to be just chard, it can be spinach, kale, cabbage, things like that. So look, you can see a sizzles coming on here. So give it a little shake. As that comes up, I'll just slice up two small onions and they tend, greens in general, to be a little bit bitter. So to kind of balance the bitterness, we add things like onions for sweetness right. So four cloves of garlic. This is New Seasons garlic, so it's a little bit sweeter and softer, but the regular stuff, it's still brilliant. What I tend to do now with Swiss chard is separate the greens from the stalk. Think about it like, you know, carrots, celery, you can use it beautifully in cooking and I'll put the stalks into the pan a little bit earlier because they need a bit more cooking. Now the stalks you can serve underneath a lovely chicken breast or a steak, lamb chop. Now cannelloni is a filled pasta and this is going to be the filling for the cannelloni. So a little pinch of salt and pepper right. What we can do with these leaves is just clank them up and get them in that pan. This is a kilo of greens. So now we've got these stalks tender, we go in with the leafy part and that massive pile of greens is getting cooked down. Cooked down means concentrated, concentrated means delicious flavour. After about 10 minutes it's cooked down and you can see the colour is dark and delicious. There's a couple of little things I do to make most veggies, but particularly any green leafy veggies, really delicious. About a quarter of a nutmeg. It's really fragrant, it's got a sort of edge of sweetness to it and then a little bit of lemon juice or it could be a little swig of vinegar, just lifts it. Lemons obviously not from this country but you can grow citrus for sure and just a little squeeze of juice like that just lifts these greens to the next level and then salt and pepper. I'm going to get it on here. As that cools down a bit I'm just going to start a very simple tomato sauce. I'm going to do it in the tray that I'm going to cook the cannelloni. Throw it in with a nice heart-healthy olive oil, two cloves of garlic and then dried chilli. You get a more savoury, rounded chilli flavour than when it's fresh. This dried chilli is almost like sun-dried, so when you dry a chilli you do get different flavours. So I'm just going to grab some basil. That is sort of the traditional, you know, tomato sauce vibe. Just tear it in. I think growing herbs is almost the best way to start growing a garden if you've never done it before and then three tins of good quality plum tomatoes. Just fill one can of water. This is a really quick tomato sauce, so just bring it to the boil and you can see now that's pretty fine, no effort. I'm just putting those tubes onto the greens like that. Use your finger, just squash it in. If you wanted to put any cheese through this you can. You could add mushrooms to the story, you could put a few olives in there, like have fun, be creative. For me this dish is about delicious Swiss chard contrasted with this beautiful, bright, light, sweet tomato sauce. We've got our little stack of beautiful cannelloni. I'm just going to nestle these cannelloni into the tray. I'm going to leave this on a low heat and I want to give you a really quick white sauce that's delicious and something a little bit different and based around a cheese from Italy that is much more common in the UK now, ricotta, and you can get it in most supermarkets. So we put the ricotta, 250 grams into here, about 200 mils of milk. Cheddar's delicious, it's not Italian but we love it and I think it bakes really well and it's delicious in lasagnas and cannellonis anyway, so 60 grams of that goes in and about the same of parmesan. Again about 60 grams will make you a delicious white sauce. It's a bit more expensive than cheddar, so that's why I've mentioned cheddar because it's a really good sort of economical swap out, so go one or the other or blend like I have. A pinch of salt and one egg. Just whisk it up in a liquidiser. In no time at all you've now got a beautiful thick white sauce and now what we do is just pour that white sauce over the top like that and that will set and be utterly delicious. Look at that. I'll finish that with just a little grating of parmesan and we're good to go. So that'll go in the oven for about 30 to 40 minutes at 180 degrees celsius, which is 350 fahrenheit. Let's have a little clean down and then I'll go and get some salad. Right let's wash these. I could never do this in the kitchen. See this is my kitchen so I can do it, but also I can upgrade this. Wait for it. Who needs a salad spinner? Okay three tablespoons of olive oil, red wine vinegar, pinch of salt and pepper. Lovely little salad. Right let's have a look at our beautiful canola. It smells amazing. Oh look at that. That my friends is a thing of beauty. I know which way the cannelloni have gone because I've wrapped them up like that. Look at that, just gorgeous. So a little bit of side salad, a little fresh bit of parmesan. Springtime chard cannelloni and that plate is this season.