A cold roast lunch on a hot Sunday arvo
Last Sunday we went to my brother Mark and his wife Ange’s place for lunch. We hadn’t seen each other since before Christmas, before Jac and I went on our NSW holiday, and we were really looking forward to catching up.
It’s looking to be a little cooler this weekend, thank goodness, but last weekend temperatures were in the mid to high thirties Celcius. Mark and Ange cooked our lunch the night before (“And here’s one I prepared earlier!”) and served it cold, which was most welcome. It was a roast chicken lunch. Mark’s always been known in our family as Chicken Boy, and I’m not far behind as a Chicken Girl myself.
Ange prepared her special stuffing, which is baked in its own dish, rather than in the chicken. Yes yes, so technically it’s not “stuffing”! :) I believe it’s Ange’s secret family recipe, so I can’t share that with you – sorry! I don’t know the recipe either. I just devour the stuffing whenever it makes an appearance.
We also had a spinach salad, with sweet cherry tomatoes and shaved parmesan. Mark made a delicious dressing using oil, wholegrain mustard, balsamic vinegar, a clove of garlic, pepper and something else that gave it a special tastiness I loved but couldn’t quite put my finger on. You know what it was? Soy sauce! My mum would be proud! I think I’ve mentioned before how she seasons the minced meat with soy sauce and pepper when making spaghetti bolognaise. :)
Here’s the roasted chicken. It had been done Jamie Oliver-style, cooked with lemons stuffed into um, the cavity.
I had a thigh and a little breast meat. Cooking the chicken stuffed with lemons had left a delicate lemon-tinged flavour to the meat, which was really lovely, but I think my favourite thing on the plate was the shaved parmesan. I love shaved parmesan and don’t get to eat it that often, so when I do it’s such a treat. The simplicity of the salad was perfect – I love spinach and cherry tomatoes too. Easy to please, aren’t I? :) And that salad dressing with soy sauce in it was fantastic and so delicious.
I took a great video of Mark carving the chook, but I have to check with Ange and Jac if they’ll be happy for me to post it here, as they were chatting away in the background the whole time. I think video is and the background chatter is fine, but I’m not sure they (especially Jac) will want their voices/conversation posted up on the net. Nothing terrible was said, and there are no faces in the video, just voices, arms and legs, a roasted chook and a dog(!) but I just want to make sure they’re OK with it. If permission is granted, it shall be posted soon.
After lunch, we sat in the lounge and had a good chinwag, munching on these choc chip cookies Ange had baked.
The last time I wrote about my niece Ruby was after her full moon celebration (click here to read that post). She was awake when we arrived but sept through most of lunch and then woke up again in time to hang out with us for a little while before we had to go home.
Look how much she’s grown! Photo taken by her proud dad. Her eyes may be bluey-greyish but the dead giveaway of her part-Chinese heritage is the palm-tree hairdo, a must for many Chinese babies. :-D She’ll be starting on solid foods soon, which is quite exciting!
That’s all the posts for now. Time to get cracking on my weekend.