I'm not sure when it became an institution in our household but it has now achieved iconic status. Perhaps it started a long time ago when I was a kid growing up in Africa and on Sunday we went to Church in the morning and had Sunday roast in the afternoon, even in oppressive heat when its so hot you can barely move.
And so it followed that when my children were small I did the same thing. I would take them to Church in the morning followed by a Sunday roast in the afternoon. Well I tried to take them to Church, but as the years went by it got harder to take them so I suppose I just gave up. Now of course, my youngest child who is just seven has never really been to church and loves to go when given the chance. But Sundays have always held one common theme and that is when the family gets together and sits around the table and enjoys a lovely roast with all the trimmings.
What I like about it is that it is one day of the week when everyone gets together and sits around a table set with a table cloth, china, cutlery and glasses and partakes in what is often a feast. Usually during the week everyone is coming and going at different times and no one has the time to sit down together for a meal. Often my kids eat 'on the go' standing up, before flying out the house.
So how to prepare the ideal roast. First of all you have to go to the butcher and find a nice big piece of meat. Personally I like lamb, but you can have a piece of bolar beef or belly of pork or a couple of chickens. I say a couple because now that I have teenage children, especially a teenage son one chicken for all of us is no longer enough. In the old days what was nice about a Sunday roast was the left overs for the next day, there would be enough meat for sandwiches and for dinner on Monday. But now there is hardly anything left over at all, perhaps just one potato and a couple of carrots.
While the roast is busy sizzling away in the oven I usually start on the pudding. When the children were small I used to often make a bread and butter pudding which was a useful way of using up all the stale bread left overs. But they seem to have outgrown that now and generally prefer a bought pudding, although I usually make an apple crumble which always goes down a treat and its so easy to make too. This usually goes with a bit of vanilla ice-cream or even fresh cream. Once the apple crumble is in the oven I start with steaming a few vegetables. I have also by now popped a few roasted vegetables in the oven with the roast, such as potatoes, pumpkin, onions and sometimes towards the end big flat mushrooms.
At this point I have usually poured myself a glass or two of wine and have started to do a bit of quality control on the sizzling roast which has browned nicely on the outside by now so I cut off a little slice making sure everything is going according to plan. The smells are now wafting through the house so that brings my teenage son into the kitchen wanting to do some quality control as well and asking with a pained expression when dinner is going to be ready. I try to fob him off at this point by getting him and the little daughter to set the table as once the table is set with a table cloth, cutlery, glasses and even sometimes a few candle then dinner is usually tantalisingly close. Around this time the elder daughter comes home, usually from a weekend of being out with her mates, but on Sunday by late afternoon she's like a homing pigeon and arrives impeccably on time for dinner.
My husband knows that I usually take ownership of the Sunday roast dinner and does not interfere. However, there are some things that I am not good at. Making the gravy is one of them. Somehow when I make it, it always comes out a bit lumpy, I've have never quite got the hang of making a roux. So when its gravy time I generally abdicate from the kitchen leaving him to it and remind him to use the water from the steamed vegetables. This is a bit of an in-house joke as I've been "reminding" him for about 20 years. The other thing my hubby always does is carve the meat, a bit of a man's job, whilst I pop a few Yorkshire puds into the oven.
Once everything is served on the table one of the hardest things for the kids to do is to wait for me to sit down before starting which is something my hubby has always insisted they do. Its taken years of training and still its often quite difficult to control them. Nowadays we also have to hold my son back so that he doesn't eat all the meat in one go. But mostly what is the nicest thing about the Sunday meal is that once everyone is sitting around the table and chatting we all get to know each other again. We find out what my daughter has been studying at school and how many balls she is going to go to this year. I discovered just how much my son doesn't believe in God and sees no point in religion. And often we have many interesting philosophical debates about God, our existence and the meaning of life.
A couple of years ago there was a campaign to Keep Sundays Special. I think it is one special day of the week because that is the day when we have our Sunday roast.
