sunday lunch for 6 adults and 6 kids? not a roast

[hatwoman]

hello foodies. I need a recipe for a nice lunch. maybe a pie or a casserole (ie something with minimum last minute faffing). I saw in Waitrose a prepacked chicken, pancetta and chestnut thingy and ever since have been hankering for something similar but can't find a recipe.

can't help with the chicken (does sound nice though) but I sometimes do a leg of lamb for big numbers - in big casserole dish with couple of tins of tomatoes, chopped up aubergine, shallots, garlic, cannelini or similar beans, red wine, herbs, salt and pepper and literally just bung it in the oven on about 150C for a long cook - depends on the size of the meat obviously but usually 3-4 hours. No last minute faffing whatsoever.

What about a nice, hearty shepherd's pie? All prep done earlier, fling in oven, enjoy company and produce good, wholesome, traditional food?!

All good offerings.
Or a really smart fish pie?

My quick easy impressive recipe is chicken breasts with parma ham:

wrap each chicken breast in a slice of parma ham, put them in a roating dish (do in advance and put in fridge until needed), cover with foil and put in the oven for 20 mins on 200 degrees. Goes well with ratatouille, which you can prepare in advance too.

skinless, boneless chunky cod loins or monkfish tails also work really well with parma ham

I've got a lovely chicken and olive casserole recipe if you want it .. its really nice wiht a nutty rice (like waitrose wholegrain brown) and green salad and crusty bread

Twiglet, could I have your chicken and olive casserole recipe, please?

Yes Twiglett - hand it over - I too want the recipe for the chicken and olive thing. Sounds gorg!

We had a fantastic turkey stew an dumplings for dinner today, DH cooked it and basically through all the ingredients into saucepan at 4pm cooked it slowly and then at 5.30pm put potatoes on and I made the dumplings, by 6.05pm we were all sitting down to a lovely and I mean lovely easy dinner. TBH you only had to stir it occ to stop it from sticking- yum

Whoops re: through should read threw!!

i reckon you could invent the chicken/pancetta/chestnut thing. ie fry pancetta, onion & garlic in olive oil/butter. brown chicken bits (free range thighs with skin on probably best for flavour). stir in some flour & cook briefly. add stock/white wine/?tinned tomatoes & some of those merchant gourmet preprepared chestnuts. cook for a long time at a low heat in the oven. or something like that....

hi hc, how are you?

hello cf! good thanks, how are you? we ate lots of noddles yesterday & i thought of you!

c'mon hat, i want to know what you think of my suggestion .

snap hc! we had lovely noodly lunch (viet garden) and i thought of you!

Hi again everyone. sorry I failed to report back been a busy weekend. I did a chicken and leek casserole (Delia recipe - except she turns it into a pie) and I put some cheese cobblers on the top. they sank a bit unfortunately but everyone was very nice about them and insisted they liked a bit of stodge . It was very easy (Delia's white sauce method is INCREDIBLE - my mum has been on at me to try it for ages and I've been unconvinced. I am now a convert). It was a really nice Sunday lunch. kids all played really nicely. adults still at the table at 4pm scoffing cheese and wine. lovely.