Need your advice! Sick of cooking a roast on a Sunday

[ValerieDavis]

Every Sunday without fail I cook a big Sunday roast for the family... I would really like to cook something else for a change that will still fill my family up and is a big meal, but won't take ages to cook and prepare!

Does anybody have any suggestions of any alternative Sunday lunch dishes I could give a go?

Cottage pie, lasagne, casserole with dumplings - all good heavy stodge

If you still want to do the joint of meat (?)

I do this sometimes but serve with a varity of salads and crusty bread.

Rice Salad or Pasta Salad too, anything goes really!

But then I am rather a lazy cook!

toad in the hole, spag bol, steak pie - we alternate these with a roast

Curry goat/mutton with rice & peas and sweet potato or home-made coleslaw? Very more-ish and filling but really easy to do. Other than the rice there's no timing issues either (relaxing Sunday for you).

Great advice thank you! Think I will try out the curry idea tonight actually, my DD loves sweet potatoes!

For Sunday lunch my fave 'easy but impressive' is Sicilian lamb.

Take a leg of lamb, brown it and put to one side. Soften some chopped onions, add two or three chopped garlic cloves and then two tins of chopped tomatoes, two dessert spoons of balsamic vinegar and two dessert spoons of sugar, mix and heat through. Put lamb in a roasting tin, add tomato mixture, cover with foil and then roast as per normal lamb, basting with the tomato sauce.. Take off the foil for the last five minutes or so.

Once you have uncovered the lamb, cook some pasta (can be spaghetti or ... any type really). Remove lamb from the oven, and set aside to rest. Once the pasta is cooked, drain it, add to the tomato sauce from the roast and mix thoroughly.

Slice the lamb, then serve with the pasta, bit of parmesan and a green salad.

Dead easy and different. I tend to put all of it into the middle of the table and just let people help themselves, that way, rather than put all of it on a plate at once, people can have some pasta, then meat and salad or any variation they fancy. It's also worth saying that it's a favourite of DD and DS!

I like to make a couple of whole chickens marinated in Indian spices the night before. Best served with potatoes.

Also, a lamb curry is great, but to save time, boil the lamb with some garlic and ginger to tenderise it for approx. one hour.

Then saute onions, spices such as 1 tsp garam masala, 1/2 tsp turmeric, 3 fresh green chopped chillies etc, salt and pepper, 1 tbsp cumin and coriander powder, add the lamb and brown, then add 1/2 tinned tomatoes and simmer for 30 mins. Add some Greek yogurt and simmer for 2 mins. Garnish with coriander. This is absolutely amazing with rice or even good quality baguette or naan bread.

We often have paella on a Sunday, usually during the summer months as it makes a nice change from a roast dinner. Otherwise I think a curry would be a nice alternative to the roast dinner.