The Royal Chef At Home: Easy Seasonal Entertaining

S unday Lunch is a treasured English tradition, a pause in all the busyness of life. The classic image is of an impossibly large roast of beef or lamb being carved at the table surrounded by Yorkshire puddings, a variety of vegetable dishes and a gravy boat filled to the rim. It might start any time between 1 PM and 3 PM, smack in the middle of the day, and it unspools leisurely over hours. Sunday lunch is defiantly anti-mod ern and unhurried, a conscious refusal of the status quo, and, to my mind, utterly brilliant. If you are inviting friends over, you’ve got to apply some criteria. Generally (and of course, you can do what you wish) pub friends are preferred to hiking friends, chatty friends are better than reticent ones and fine connoisseurs of weekends will always edge out workaholics. A friend just back from exotic travels? Yes, you make the list too. Since it is summertime, I’ll not be pulling a leg of lamb out of the oven. Instead we will have some easy grilled steak, mashed potatoes with lots of cream and butter (because who on earth doesn’t like mashed potatoes?) and vegetable kebabs. I’ve got my favorite white chocolate crème brulee with a little stewed rhubarb chilling in the fridge for dessert. Add to that one or two bottles of wine I’ve been meaning to open and, should things go as planned, a nice bottle of scotch to sip later. The world will continue to spin and people will be rushing about doing all sorts of amazing things, and I will be just fine, sitting here with the people I love who have all turned their phones to silent. LUNCH FOR A LAZY SUNDAY AFTERNOON

105 SUMMER · LUNCH FOR A LAZY SUNDAY AFTERNOON