Sunday Roast.

I must admit, I was laughing when Nicole Kidman named her baby girl Sunday Rose, which was quickly turned into Sunday Roast by some devilish funny media people. I guess she should have seen it coming...

I am probably one of the few people who usually don’t enjoy Sunday roasts or Sundays in general. It may have to do with the fact that in Germany everything is closed on Sundays. No shopping last minute or leisurely, no spa treatments, no nothing. If in desperate need and willing to pay the horrendous price, you go to the gas station and buy microwave fast food there. If you just feel the urge to go shopping for fun, you better live in a big enough city where you can go shopping at the train station mall.
Neither options were available when I was growing up plus I had to sit through Sunday lunch with my parents, which I hate to say it, was just not all that exciting. My Dad would make a roast of some sort and expect eternal gratitude from my mother for taking the cooking off her hands for a day. He didn’t realize that it would have taken my mother less time to cook and clean the kitchen than it took her to just clean the kitchen after my Dad was done cooking. That usually ended in the same argument every week.
Even when I was younger and my brother and Opi would join, the highlight was usually Stephan spitting on Opi’s bold head, telling him it was raining and being delighted when he believed him. I’m not sure if that is a true story or was just passed on in my family to demonstrate my Opi’s general gullibility better. I do know for a fact though that Opi insisted on pre-warmed plates for every meal and would test the temperature by grabbing the side of the plate. One day my mother got so fed up with his high maintenance that she heated the plates till they were scorching hot. We can all imagine how that ended and hopefully understand now, why I’m not a big fan of Sunday lunches.
Another good reason why Saturdays are so much better than Sundays, is the simple fact that they are further away from Mondays. Last weekend though I had decided to turn the usual blue Sunday around and re-introduce Sunday lunch. My way. And so the Beef Wellington project was born. Initially for the reason that I had never eaten one before, owed my uncle a thank you for jump starting my car in the middle of the night and was planning a little video cooking show for my Dad’s birthday blog.

As one can guess, wine more helpful...

...than kittens.



Fillet or duck?

With good help from a few bottles of wine and of course the kittens we prepared on Saturday evening and off it went into the oven on Sunday for lunch. Unless you are a vegetarian, the idea of beef, chicken, and pork in their various best forms i.e. fillet, parfait, and bacon all rolled up in one dish, can’t be anything but heaven. And it was. Even the non-meat-eaters at the table, and there were plenty, had to admit – our little Wellington looked amazing. For us who had a slice, it tasted even better. I, for a change, enjoyed my Sunday since it came with lots of sunshine, family, chocolate for desert, and a Tupperware with leftovers for breakfast.

The Wellington in all it's glory.