Sunday lunch....My way!

Sunday lunch, traditional family meal, roast dinner and Yorkshire pudding, food heaven?...well it can be, but , in my house at least, it is more like this... 'the beef is too bloody', 'ahh, I don't want broccoli' and worst of all 'damn, my Yorkshires didn't rise'

What starts off as a lovely meal can leave you stressed and harassed.

This Sunday my dearest OH found himself suffering from the dreaded 'man flu' poor him, or poor me depending which way you look at it :). So this left me with a dilemma, a Sunday dinner for myself and the kids, well one child as my son was also poorly, would be far too much work and not worth the bother. Using this to my advantage I made Sunday lunch my way.

Completely selfish and completely enjoyable, relaxing and delicious.

I had a few organic chicken legs in the fridge so decided on cooking one of my favourite meals 'Tagliatelle with chicken from the Venetian ghetto' from Nigella's How to eat.

I love this recipe, although I altered it slightly, by using linguine in place of tagliatelle and whole chicken legs in place of a whole chicken, well, there was only two people eating it.

This is so simple, roast your chicken (I throw some chopped onions and unpeeled garlic cloves in with it too), rip it apart, toss chicken, skin and all the roasting juices in the pasta with some toasted pine nuts and sultanas, delicious. Perfect for slurping.

My Sunday lunch version of Venetian chicken :

2 chicken legs

1 tbsp EVOO

needles from 1 / 2 sprigs of rosemary

I onion, peeled and cut into 8

4 cloves of garlic (in the skin)

20g sultanas (soaked in water)

50g pine nuts, lightly toasted

200g linguine

Preheat oven to 200c

Rub chicken with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, place in a baking tin with the onions and garlic and sprinkle with the rosemary.

Roast for 30 - 40 minutes, until well browned, and the juices run clear.

When the chicken is nearly done put a pan of water on to boil.

Remove the chicken from the oven and take the meat off the bones, leaving on all the skin, rip apart into 'mouth' sized chunks.

For the sauce pour all the juices from the roasting tin, along with onions and garlic cloves, into a saucepan, add the drained sultanas and toasted pine nuts, simmer while you cook the pasta in the salted water.

When the pasta is cooked and drained, toss it in the pan with the sauce, throw in the chicken and transfer to a large bowl. Enjoy.

Pudding

I always cook a pudding on Sunday, but my original plan for rice pudding got put on hold, as due to illness it would get wasted.

My self indulgent, simple Sunday pudding was gooey chocolate brownies with creamy vanilla ice cream and hot blonde chocolate sauce.

These were absolutely delicious, although after two helpings I started to feel slightly nauseous.

Hot blonde sauce:

100g white chocolate buttons

280ml double cream

Heat cream in a saucepan til just warm,

add white chocolate to the pan,

after a minute or two turn off heat,

stir until chocolate has melted and the sauce has thickened.

Pour over gooey brownies and cold ice cream.

Sunday lunch heaven....I wish it was like this every Sunday.