Britain’s Greatest Culinary Tradition: Sunday Roast

I love the idea of Sunday roast. No, not the kind where you berate your supposed friend and mock his achievements (that only happens on Comedy Central), the one where you make a delicious meal with friends and family. That kind of roast.

Sunday roast is just wonderful. It’s usually a lunch affair, traditionally involving some sort of roasted meat, potatoes, other veg (UK-speak for vegetable), and a “pudding”. “Pudding” is UK-speak for dessert, but the traditional Sunday roast dessert is Yorkshire pudding, so … whatever. There’s also gravy involved.

We wanted to do a Sunday roast, but our flight leaves Sunday. So we had our Sunday roast on a Friday, our second-to-last night in London.

We made a roast chicken on top of roasted potatoes and carrots and sweet potatoes. I put a spring of rosemary and a half of lemon inside the cavity of the chicken to give it flavor and keep it moist. We washed everything down with sparkling wine and cider.

Everything turned out wonderfully — the meat was juicy and tender, the vegetables were brown and delicious. The wine and cider were fabulous. The only problem was we filled up too early and bailed on dessert. Dessert would have to wait for another day … maybe Sunday breakfast before the flight.

The really cool thing is that pubs do Sunday roasts, and usually it’s a deal. I love that. Sort of like the Sunday brunch tradition in the US. All the cooking shows do special Sunday roast recipes as well.

So we’re doing this from now on. We’re committing to the Sunday roast tradition. The first Sunday we have our own kitchen, everybody’s invited. We’ll do Gordon Ramsay’s roasted pork belly. Anybody know where we can get good, Somerset cider in Ithaca? I don’t think we can bootleg that home.