Sunday lunch in Technicolour

Suppose a friend is coming to spend the day, and she's asked what to bring for lunch. You have wine, neither of you feel like drinking anything except your elderflower cordial out of champagne flues, you have dessert ingredients to hand, so you say "could you bring the chicken?" She will say "Splendid. Will source an organic, happy, free ranging all singing and dancing little cluck-cluck." Or words to that effect.

The chicken arrives, you insert a halved lemon and peeled and halved onion with a couple of cloves of smushed garlic into its orifice, smother it in butter and salt and pepper and after an hour or two the juices will run clear and your cluck cluck will look like this:


While I give the potatoes roasted in goose fat another shake and drain and season the broccoli and beans, why don't you have a closer look:


Even if you are a rubbish carver like me, be sure, after everyone has had second helpings, to turn the carcass upside down and prise out of the underbelly the oysters. Fight over them. Eat.

For pudding, you are determined to perfect something that's been bothering you. Melt two ounces of butter with a quarter of a pint of water and bring just to the boil. Take it off the heat, drop in two and a half ounces of sifted flour all at once, then beat until it comes away from the pan easily. Set aside to cool before blending in two eggs, a little at a time, until you make a smooth, glossy paste. Pipe it onto a greased baking tray in a ring. Bake at 200 degrees C for 20-25 minutes. Pierce to release steam.

While you are waiting for it to cool, whip the double cream, and, on the advice of your guest, add caster sugar and vanilla extract to taste. Take four ounces of caster sugar and put in a heavy bottomed stainless steel pan to melt over a medium heat. Do not stir until you see the caramel forming around all the edges, then stir until all the crystals have dissolved. Take the caramel off the heat and add two tablespoons of tap hot water but stay back, as it sputters. Slice the choux in half, fill with the whipped cream, then drizzle the caramel over the top to harden. Now dribble over a melted chocolate ganache (two parts single cream to one part chocolate) and scatter over toasted almonds. Yours should be prettier than mine, as it collapsed coming out the oven:


Once you've finished eating, you will sit groaning on the sofa watching movies until it's time for a cup of tea and a game of scrabble. And maybe the last scrapings of choux ring. Mmmmmm.....