Matt Dunn and Sue Watson
Matt Dunn – author of nine novels including A Day at the Office, What Might Have Been and Home. He’s also written about life, love, and relationships for various publications including The Times, Guardian, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Company, Elle, and The Sun.
Roast chicken, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, peas, carrots, gravy… It’s my favourite meal, my death row choice, my desert island dish, and without fail the meal my mum produced – after seemingly the whole morning spent slaving away in the kitchen – at one o’clock every Sunday – and with a regularity you could set your watch by – when I was growing up.
So good, it was, that on one memorable day, I ate fourteen roast potatoes. Fourteen! A record that still stands in my house. And is still talked about, some thirty years later.
The downside to my spud-diction (apart from the food coma it always leaves me in)? My mum’s version was so good it’s spoiled roasts everywhere else for me. Pubs, restaurants (and especially my own one, pathetic attempt) are pale imitations, so I don’t bother – to paraphrase Paul Newman, why go out for a pub roast when you can have a proper one at home?
And though the chicken now comes pre-roasted from Tesco’s, the potatoes, peas and carrots are no longer from my dad’s allotment, the Yorkshires are Aunt Bessie’s ready-made rather than my grandmother’s recipe, and the gravy’s from granules, it’s still the meal that, at 87 years of age (her, not me), my mum treats me to whenever I’m home on a Sunday.
And if I’m honest, it’s the meal I go home on a Sunday for.
Sue Watson – author of six novels including Love, Lies and Lemon Cake, Bella’s Christmas Bake Off and Summer Flings and Dancing Dreams.
‘Fifty Shades of Sunday Dinner’
Sunday dinner is my favourite meal of the week. I LOVE that every Sunday the stars align and juicy roast meat, creamy mash and crispy sweet greens come together in an orgiastic symphony of deliciousness. Then just when you think it can’t get any better the gravy comes … and another, deeper wave of pure pleasure wraps itself wantonly around all that loveliness. Don’t get me started on pudding…
Bookaholic Confessions 