Foodie files

He was the star of Saturday Kitchen, now James Martin shares his culinary secrets with Weekend

HIGH STEAKS

The secret to cooking great steak is to start with the meat at room temperature, not straight out of the fridge. Then cook it in a really, really hot pan with just a little vegetable or olive oil. Make sure you oil the meat not the pan. You can add a little butter later on to flavour it, but remember to season it with salt and pepper after you have cooked it and not before, otherwise the pepper burns in the pan and the salt just draws the moisture out of the beef.

SOUP IT UP

While a dash of curry powder livens up parsnip or celeriac soup, squeezing in a little lime juice just before serving gives a great lift to carrot, butternut squash or pumpkin soup. Another trick is to use amaretti biscuits, again right at the end. In Italy they sometimes add them to pumpkin ravioli, but with soup you just break up a few of the biscuits and sprinkle over the top.

TRADE SECRET

If you’re a keen cook I’d point you towards Nisbets, a massive catering equipment company that not a lot of people seem to know about. They supply everything from walk-in fridges and commercial chefs’ ovens right down to crockery, ladles and even wooden spoons. They started out for the

trade, but now have a huge online business, and it’s a great website just to browse. Then, if you find something you want and decide to buy it, they’ll send it to you overnight. If you can’t find the item you need elsewhere, generally Nisbets will have it because their target market is chefs, restaurateurs and hoteliers. Visit nisbets.co.uk.

CRACKING ADVICE

Some people say you should keep eggs in the fridge but others, like me, disagree. Eggs are porous, so will absorb all the flavour from whatever else is in the fridge, like cheese. But if you do prefer to keep them in there, store them in their box at the back, not in the door, where they’re subject to temperature changes.