Crowd Pleasers

Michelin-starred chef Tom Kerridge wants to show us how to cook the best ever versions of the kind of food we all love to eat. In this series his aim is to turn ordinary dishes into extraordinary ones with a few simple tricks that will help us all raise our game in the kitchen at home.

In this episode, Tom serves up some great crowd-pleasing dishes, perfect for sharing with mates at a party. However, there are no canapes on this menu - Tom likes to make proper hearty food for his guests that you can eat in your hands, packed full of flavour. To start, he transforms ordinary filled potato skins into extraordinary crispy stuffed skins filled with creamy roquefort and salty pancetta.

He visits Brixton market and discovers a place doing a roaring trade in slow-cooked, barbecue-style food. Tom loves this style of food and, inspired by his visit, he shows how to make melt-in-the-mouth pulled beef brisket. He gives coleslaw a bit of a kick, adding some unusual vegetables and dressing it in a hardcore garlic mayo - the perfect side for his brisket dish.

If he hadn't been a chef, Tom always dreamed of being a fisherman and in this episode he gets his wish and goes mackerel fishing off the Cornish coast. This fish is a great alternative to burgers and sausages when you're doing a barbecue for a crowd. Tom cooks up a fantastic mackerel recipe stuffed with flavours of the sea for the fishermen to tuck into.

Every party needs something sweet and Tom's chocolate tart is sensational. It's pure indulgence on every level, but best of all, it's a cheat's version so is really easy to pull off.