Cooking the Classics: My First Roast Dinner

This week takes a turn away from my usual subject matters reviewing adaptations or restaurants, cafés, tea rooms and coffee shops in my local area. This week I’m writing about cooking my first roast dinner, from scratch.

 

 (Sadly not a pic of my delicious dinner! Too stressed for pictures!)

My boyfriend and I moved into our first home together this summer and to say thank you to my mother for her help as we went through the difficult moving process, we invited her and her partner over for Sunday lunch. I’ve cooked plenty of meals before and thrown numerous dinner parties but I’ve never cooked a full roast dinner from scratch with all the trimmings, plus some extras!

I was nervous already; my mother had only seen the new flat when it was total chaos, a shambles of clothes, boxes, bags and furniture. So in addition to the pressure of cooking my first roast dinner with traditional, quintessential British pudding, I had the added pressure of making our new home looking sparkling! I like to impress so now that all of our furniture and possessions had been cleaned, sorted and organised I wanted our home to look like a show home! Now, I have attempted to cook roast dinners in the past but only on a couple of occasion. Most of the time, I do a lazy version of a roast involving cooking a joint of meat (non-specific type), some form of carbohydrate (in this case often just cous cous or sweet potato wedges) and then vegetables (either salad or if I’m feeling posh some roasted Mediterranean vegetables). However, at the grand age of 26 and moving into my first proper home I felt it was time that I learnt how to do a proper roast dinner. Especially when my boyfriend loves them! The couple of times I attempted cooking a roast dinner, it was the timing that through me off but I’m glad that I had had my two failed attempts to look back on as it meant that I was more prepared this time. I did decided to cheat for one of the side dishes on this already tense occasion. I’m from a family of roast potato lovers and the BF adores them too, so I bought some ready to roast potatoes in beef dripping from M&S. However, these were actually rather disappointing and I can’t say that I’d ever buy them again. They had a most peculiar flavour, I’m not sure if it’s the preservatives or chemicals but they just taste weird when eaten alongside a load of homemade comestibles.

I should also add here that just to complicate matters further, I have a nut allergy and my boyfriend does not react well to dairy and all four of us are making sure that we are eating healthily at the moment (with the naughty exception of the roast potatoes being a treat!). As its one of our favourites, I cooked roast lamb with garlic and rosemary, roast carrots and parsnips, boiled peas and runner beans, colcannon and homemade gravy. For pudding, I made an apple and blackberry crumble, which was, of course, served with custard (low fat straight from the tin in this case). Those are my two cheats in this dinner; tinned custard and ready to roast beef dripping potatoes. The low fat custard was nice and none of us had any complaints about that, the only thing that was a flop was the ready to roast potatoes as I said earlier.

Instead of using olive oil where you would normally, i.e., when roasting carrots and parsnips, I used coconut oil. I also add a small drizzle of honey to my parsnips for extra sweetness whenever I roast them. Try it! They’re amazing! The colcannon was a combination of the usual Maris Pipers but with sweet potatoes chucked in and then mashed with boiled cabbage. Finally some thinly chopped fresh spring onions are stirred into the cabbagey mash just before serving to give it some bite. The lamb, I’d stabbed all over and pushed fresh garlic and rosemary into the holes before drizzling with the smallest amount of olive oil to aid the cooking immediately before roasting.

Sauces can be a controversial subject for some factions. Some people just like the usual homemade gravy; others like to slather their plate with mint sauce or even mint jelly. However, there are some interesting characters out there who like to bastardize their plates by creating unusual sauce-to-meat combinations, such as roast chicken with mint sauce, or roast beef with cranberry sauce, for instance. Personally with lamb, I love salsa verde. On this occasion, I made this to go with my roast lamb after having had some success with Jamie Oliver’s recipe for this delicious herby sauce about a week beforehand (See Jamie’s recipe here: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetables-recipes/salsa-verde/) As with my other attempts making Jamie’s salsa verde, it worked perfectly again and because of the oil in the recipe, when made airtight the salsa lasts for several days afterwards ensuring that there’s no wastage.

All in all, because I was aware of the fact that I had to get my timings right this time, i.e., preheat oven whilst you prepare either your pudding (or salsa verde in my case) and prepare the meat for the oven. When the meat is in the oven prepare your roasting potatoes and check the time required for them to cook (whether you’re making them from scratch or cheating like I did!), prepare your roasting vegetables and whilst these all start cooking prepare your boiling vegetables before eventually getting them on to boil in the last fifteen minutes before you serve. Mash (or calconnon) takes a little longer but can be easily warmed through allowing you to prepare it in advance. I boiled my potatoes (sweet potatoes and Maris Pipers in together) before even looking at the rest of the food and just left them with the lid on whilst I got everything else going meaning that when the time came I only needed to mash them, stir in the boiled cabbage and add the finely chopped spring onion. As I was aware of this delicate juggling act this time, I was able to balance and organise my food preparation. This was my biggest failure in the past, but this time due to my practice efforts it all came together on time.

I prepared the fruit for my pudding when everything was bubbling away merrily in the last few minutes before serving. I had decided to make a traditional apple and blackberry crumble with custard. I decided rather than making the whole crumble whilst I waited for the dinner to cook, to just prepare the chopped apple and blackberry with cinnamon, honey and coconut oil and arrange in the Pyrex dish. This meant that when we were all stuffed and needing a food break, I only had to spend five minutes knocking up the healthy crumble topping of desiccated coconut, cinnamon, honey, a little brown sugar, linseeds, sunflowers seeds and poppy seeds with ground almonds and melted coconut oil. The topping I then sprinkled over the already prepared apple and blackberry and popped into the oven for 15 minutes before covering with tin foil and placing back into the oven for a final ten minutes.

Sadly I’ve not got any photos of the dinner I cooked, I was too stressed and nervous for pics! But I have been assured of further attendance at my next Sunday roast dinner and my boyfriend definitely enjoyed it as I’ve had repeated requests for a recurrence ever since! I think I’ll save myself until Christmas now though!

Finally, I’m glad I got over this massive personal hurdle, I’m pleased that I was able to cook a really tasty and healthy meal and that I did it despite all my anxieties about failing miserably. It’s certainly a life lesson!

 

It’s better to fall sometimes than never to learn to fly!

 

 

Find your wings!