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After two crazy weeks away I’m back again with another British inspired classic.

But, before that, an update. Since the last post I was struck down with a terrible cold. I felt so awful at the beginning of the week there were days I’d get to London to start work and actually feel like I’d collapse. Once I’d managed to drag myself from the Tube to my desk without collapsing I’d feel like a self-conscious pubescent boy, scared to answer the telephone without knowing what terrible croaking sound would emerge from my mouth.

I was also put off food completely which wasn’t good seeing that, as my friend’s parents had gone away on holiday leaving him with a free house, our group of friends decided to take turns cooking meals for each other in a ‘Come Dine With Me’ style game. That’s right – instead of doing what most other people in their early 20s would do with a free house and throwing crazy drunken house parties every night, for once we actually sat down every night for a civilised meal. Love my friends. My team came second by the way.

Italian night

And when not suffering from severe coughing fits and spreading my germs everywhere, I spent plenty of time fussing over the pooch as he had his 10th birthday this week.

When I got my appetite back, I proudly cooked my first roast for my parents.

Bella’s Roast Dinner with Homemade Gravy

I have great memories of these as a kid, making this my ultimate comfort food. Most Sundays after my dad would take me and my sisters swimming, we would come home starving and sit down as a family to a roast. So two things from my childhood I miss: regular roasts and actually sitting down regularly as a family. I also have vague memories of trying to get through mum’s roast beef and having giggling fits with my sisters across the table, pissing my dad off and being sent away from the table. Yep – if we didn’t drive our parents crazy by not getting along, we also drove them mad when we did get along. Great childhood memories.

For this one I got lots of help from Kerryann Dunlop’s great Youtube video where she helps beginners like me to cook their first roast – simple and delicious.

I roughly chopped up two onions, celery and carrots along with a couple of crushed cloves of garlic and put them in a roasting dish, which acts as a bed for the chicken to sit on and will also go into making the gravy.

In keeping with the war-time cooking styles I’ve adopted in previous posts, I kept the carrot peels simmering in some water for later use as stock for the gravy. I’d argue that there is a lot we could learn from the attitudes of those during the war – just one example being that it doesn’t make it ok to waste as much as we perhaps do today just because we don’t face government restrictions on food.

I crushed a chicken Oxo cube and mixed with butter to rub over the chicken and laid it on top of the vegetables. I also sliced a lemon and put this inside the chicken to steam away and flavour the meat.

After an hour and thirty minutes in the oven, I took it out of the oven and left it to rest with tin foil and a clean towel over while I prepared the gravy, potatoes and veg.

Once I lifted the chicken away, you’re left with the chicken juices, vegetables and burnt bits at the bottom of the roasting dish to make into a gravy. I grabbed a potato masher and mashed and mixed everything up. This bit doesn’t look pretty but it works.

I add flour to mix in to thicken before gradually adding the stock.

Keep mixing and mashing.

I then sieved this into a saucepan and continued simmering on a low heat until ready to serve.

As a side note, I fluffed up a bit on the potatoes as I walked away from the kitchen while they were boiling so I ended up coming back to almost mashed potato… click here to see where I actually succeeded 🙂

After eating I decided to take Archie for a walk so I could walk off my meal while he walked off his endless amount of energy he had that night. Excellent for ten years.