Roast dinners, I think, are the sort of meals that allow you to practice the art of preserving every single bit of flavour and always get me thinking how I can squeeze the most out of every ingredient. Just the thought of cooking a meal with so many elements – all needing to come together at the same time but practice has seen fear dissolve into excitement.

Recent adventures in Yorkshire pudding making have led Chris to perfect his method. It seems that, whatever your recipe, allowing the batter to rest, heating the oil until very, very hot and definitely not opening the oven door during cooking are all crucial. These sound like tips I always knew about, so how come it’s only just started working? We’ve started cooking Yorkshire’s in the iron skillet instead of individually out of necessity but they work perfectly and are great for filling with sausages and onion gravy…In fact, putting the entire roast dinner inside is a very tempting idea.

The past few months, we’ve roasted pheasant, lamb, beef and quails. I recently learned that adding a small amount of water to the roasting tray creates some steam which helps to keep the meat moist (particularly in the case of pheasant, which can be dry) and leaves you with a nice amount of reducible juice for graving making at the end. I suspect this may not be news to everyone else…I love it when a good bird comes with heart, kidneys and maybe even the neck, a little gift for the gravy and a treat for the chef. The bones are then left for making stock, which we freeze for using in soups and sauces for example.

We like to bring elements of the meal together and get flavours running throughout so we might make a celeriac and apple mash for example and then continue the apple theme by making a cider gravy. If something is fried, maybe some bacon to combine with spring greens as a side dish; the fatty pan is waiting to impart flavour into the next part of the meal. We can get a little carried away, trying to preserve every last bit of flavour. 

And afterwards there must be something sweet (and often chocolatey!). The baked cheesecake in the picture is a Gordon Ramsay recipe from his book ‘Sunday Lunch’.

Sometimes I like to change the menu completely and hop to a totally different cuisine, perhaps serving a middle eastern buffet followed by a baklava. Tomorrow, I am told, it is my turn to put my feet up (it’s Saturday not Sunday but I kept my mouth shut) and Chris will be cooking for me. I feel this may be a more regular occurrence if only I would get the hell out of the kitchen once in a while and let the poor man in!

Anyway, what I am wondering is – what do you like to cook on Sundays?