Sunday dinner in summer?

[pinkishtongue]

What’s your favourite thing to make for Sunday lunch/dinner when the weather is warm?

Personally I love a roast anytime but DH thinks it’s mad to eat gravy in summer…so we have to swap it up and I’m out of ideas for tomorrow.

Chat gpt offered me a charred nectarine salad as an idea which sounds pleasant but not hearty enough for a Sunday lunch imo 😂

I rarely eat a roast dinner in Winter, and never in Summer

I still roast meat but we have it with salad and potato salad or jacket potatoes. We tend to go for things like gammon or chicken.

A summer roast is lovely- roast meats with various salads e.g. griddled summer vegetables with herbs/ peach, tomato, cucumber& burrata, plus roasted baby potatoes with garlic and herbs

I made kleftiko for the first time today. A sort-of roast.

Dh thoroughly approved, anyway. I used half a boneless lamb shoulder, which I don’t usually like (fatty) but after hours in a slow oven the fat had disappeared and the meat just fell apart. My carefully made parcel of baking paper and foil stayed intact, with all the juices inside. 🙂
Next time I’ll use more mint in the marinade, though.

Anything with a Greek salad, often, grilled chicken, burgers, salmon, tuna steaks

Marinated beef or lamb kebabs with heavily herbed cous cous salad and roasted veg.

Warm potato salad with vinaigrette, Cumberland sausages on the barbecue and a big green salad with dill and pickles.

Salmon portions en papillote with new potatoes and asparagus or baby leeks and peas.

A gammon ham cooked in advance and thinly sliced served cold with egg and chips

Home made pizza and salad

A big salad of fresh green leaves from fat round butter lettuce, spring onions, sliced radishes, smoked bacon lardons and mini roast potatoes with a honey and mustard vinaigrette.

A salad niçoise

Kedgeree

A large steak marinated with Asian seasonings rested and sliced diagonally served on a bed of wilted bok choi and rice with shaved ginger.

Spatchcocked roasted chicken, green salad, tomato salad, good quality baguette.

A roast chicken shredded, served with a big salad of finely sliced white cabbage, red cabbage and carrot with , chopped mint, dressed with an Asian style vinaigrette made of a little sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, chilli flakes, honey, garlic, minced ginger, dark soy sauce etc to taste.

If its the gravy that he dislikes in the hot weather its an easy swop to serve a roast chicken or joint of beef with chiummichurri .... it completely changes the base dish and is very cooling and refreshing.

Sorry I’m late to the party, but maybe for next week! We do a summer roast, joint of meat on the barbecue then while the meat is roasting par boil mini potatoes then cook them in the drip tray that we set up and grill veggies eg peppers, mushrooms, aubergine, thinly sliced carrot to go on the side.
Sometimes also serve with salad

I’m with you and we have a roast every Sunday. I tell him if he doesn’t want gravy, or if he wants salad instead of veg, he’s welcome to do that himself, but if I’m cooking it all, I’m cooking a roast! The kids like their roasts too which helps.

Will you link the recipe please?

We had lots of meats or fish with salad. Nothing fancy, mixed leaves, tomatoes and cucumber and small peppers in brine. Burgers with rice, salad and tzatziki for instance. We were without our oven for a couple of weeks so we panfried chicken breasts with some seasoning and did microwave veg.

I actually cooked a roast yesterday. I'm trying to clear some room in the freezer so I got a bit of pork out, and we had a few roasties and veg. It was lovely! We couldn't remember the last time we had a roast.

Unless it’s absolutely boiling, I still love a good Sunday dinner. I’ve also done Sunday dinner sandwiches/paninis. Chicken and/or pork, with stuffing apple sauce, cranberry and a bit of gravy. Pigs in blankets and parsnips made like crisps.

I’m hungry now 😂

I can't eat a full roast dinner in the hot weather! I will sometimes roast a chicken and we'll have it with potato salad or roasted mediterranean vegetables. Or roast a leg/shoulder of lamb and have it with couscous and salad.

I do roasted meat, salad potatoes, veggies, crusty buttered bread, antipasti

Yesterday I cooked a roast chicken with loads of herbs and spices, and served it with a rice salad and a green salad. I couldn't face doing toasties and gravy

I do a leg of lamb with flat breads / rice / hummus/ tzatziki and Greek salad

I do a lamb shoulder with pomegranate glaze and serve with Greek lemon potatoes, tzatziki and salad.

Yes, great suggestion, and two sauces similar to chimichurri are Italian salsa verde and North African Cheroula and they are all great with roasted or barbecued meats.

I’m amazed so many people still have ‘Sunday lunch’. And I’m a church goer! But surely Sunday is just like any other day food-wise? How many women are chained to the kitchen on a Sunday because of this?

In our house none as it is my OH that cooks our Sunday meal.

A summer roast is actually a very easy lunch to throw together. At its most basic; season and throw joint of meat or chicken in oven, make a green salad with vinaigrette and new pots with pesto or salsa verde. Can be done in about half an hour and table set while joint looks after itself.

A winter roast with gravy takes more planning but still very manageable before and after church.

Make gravy at last minute with meat juices and home made stock prepared earlier and frozen. Root veg peeled and stored in damp zip lock bags night before in fridge. Make batter for Yorkshire puddings the night before and put in fridge to rest. The resting actually makes them lighter.

Prep roast pots by semi cooking them, roughing them up and putting in a tray with goose fat ready to throw in hot oven once the joint comes out to rest, same as at Christmas.

Meat goes in as you leave for church and the rest happens when you get back. Even better if you have a dh at home keeping an eye on it and cooking another veg or throwing together a crumble.

I don’t manage it every week and it’s too expensive to have a big joint weekly nowadays anyway, but when we do, we tend to share it with friends and have leftovers for the next day which makes Monday night very easy.

We often do a ‘summer roast’ (no women chained to the kitchen here…my DH does it because he volunteers to and loves doing it!) He does a normal roast chicken (sometime with a rub) and then we have it with cous cous, roasted summer veg, salad, tzatzik and flatbreads.

Other summer favourite for a family lunch/dinner are coronation chicken, pulled pork baps with coleslaw or a good old BBQ (not currently, obviously!)

I know I'm autistic, but there must be some trigger missing in me that makes me change what I eat according to the weather - DH always wants salads in summer, I'm happy with stew and dumplings

BBQ if the weather's nice. Otherwise some kind of pasta, or something like paella etc that doesn't take too long to cook.
I'm fine with gravy in the summer but no way I'm am having my oven in my south facing kitchen on for hours in the summer.

If he doesn’t want what you’d like to have, he needs to be coming up with an alternative and making it for himself.
He doesn’t get to order food. It’s not a restaurant!