Roasts

We’re having a roast chicken for dinner tonight.

It’s seems ages since we last had one. I checked in our diary - I usually note down what we cook each day. Sure enough I haven’t roasted a chicken since May. We’ve had other roasts particularly lamb, but no chicken.

In my childhood roast chicken was a fortnightly treat. Every other Sunday was roast chicken day. It remains something to look forward to.

The intervening week was roast pork or lamb depending on season. We never had pork in months with an R in them. In pre-fridge days, pork had a tendency to go off faster than lamb. Months with an R in them are the cold winter months whereas the months without an R are the warm summer months. Mum kept to the tradition even though all my lifetime we did have a fridge.

These days I also look forward to what can be done with the leftovers – chicken curry, chicken pies, chicken in all sorts of sauces, chicken vol-au-vents, chicken croquettes etc. In my childhood any leftover roast was served cold with chips on Monday – a quick & easy meal on washday in the days before you had automatic washing machines so Mum had to spend all day with the machine, clearing it away, mopping up - water seemed to inevitably land on the floor as washing was heaved out of the machine to be rinsed in the sink before returning to the mangle, or later the spin drier. Life is so much easier these days when washing machines can just be filled, programme switched on & left while you can go away & do other things.

Left over turkey was the only exception mainly because there was so much of it. Then we also had turkey sandwiches & turkey salad. Mum never re-heated cooked meat of any sort. Dad reckoned it could collect bugs which would multiply when the meat was re-heated so she never re-heated meat. Much as I suspect he was right to some extent, I’m also convinced, heat up the meat high enough & thoroughly enough, & any bugs will be killed off. I’ve never hesitated to re-heat meat & we’ve never had upset tums. We’re also excited by the idea of leftovers & what they can become. Sometimes the leftovers are more exciting than the roasts.