Martin - James Martins masterclass : make your home cooking easier

There are certain cookery skills that form the basis of all dishes. These basic skills, combined with good ingredients and the application of heat are all that is needed to achieve great cooking. Take a souffl, for example. You can spend hours whisking egg whites and buttering the dishes, but if your basic white sauce is wrong the dish just wont succeed. However, with current food trends changing at such a pace and chefs constantly trying to reinvent the wheel, these essential kitchen skills can sometimes get overlooked.

If there is one thing Ive learnt from my time presenting Saturday Kitchen , its that we should never stop listening or learning. While this means being open to exciting new techniques and methods, it also means taking the time to step backwards and perfect the basics, to get the essential skills right, because these underpin everything else you cook. Letting other people share their knowledge and wisdom with you is also key to becoming a better cook. Ive had the honour and privilege of meeting many brilliant chefs, from Daniel Boulud, with his three Michelin stars, to my true friend Michel Roux Senior, one of the worlds greatest chefs. Working alongside people like this, you quickly get an insight into what is happening in the world of food, and they have taught me a lot. And perhaps the ultimate compliment is when a great chef has learnt something from me : for example, if they place one of my dishes on their menu. (As a result, I now have Michel Rouxs restaurant menu up on the wall in my loo, but please dont tell him!) It just goes to show that, no matter how old or accomplished you are, there is always something more you can learn.

So with this in mind, Ive considered the many skills, techniques and bits of knowledge that Ive picked up throughout my career and have gathered the best of them together for you in this book. Inside these covers you will find the very basics, including step-by-step instructions for filleting fish, jointing chicken and mastering that classic white sauce. I also share the best recipes and nuggets of information that Ive absorbed during my travels around the world, including a recipe for the most delicious pasta sauce that I tasted in Naples and some amazing grissini sticks that I ate in Venice, whilst others stay true to my love for British food, such as Arbroath smokies (my food heaven) blended into a pt and served with warm toasts.

Over the last decade, Ive watched the food and ingredients we use in this country change a lot, with specialist and exotic ingredients now much more readily available. Ive also learnt that its amazing to find what is right on your doorstep when you go out and look for it, with some really excellent local produce available to us. Sadly, many local producers and farmers are going out of business, due to a lack of knowledge about their ingredients, as well as the importation of cheap foreign food. I firmly believe that there is no such thing as food that is cheap and good. You get for what you pay for. Thats not to say it needs to be stupidly expensive, but British beef is worth the extra cost because it tastes brilliant, and the same goes for seasonal strawberries and fresh seafood; these are the luxuries of living where we do. So not only should we be reinforcing our basic cooking skills, we should also be looking after our suppliers and producers by giving them our custom because once they are gone, the void will be a long time filled and our cooking wont be as successful.

Learning from the experience of other people is perhaps the best way to become a better cook, so I hope that Masterclass will equip you with the essential kitchen skills, and give you more confidence in the kitchen. To all the chefs and foodie people who have taught me something along the way, thank you, and to those who I will meet in the future, I look forward to tasting your food and listening to your stories.

James