Mmmm what a yummy dinner!

We had the yummiest dinner last night, initially, I had intended for it to be a Sunday Roast lunch at 1pm, but we decided to go to the 'Good Guys' in Oxley and we ended up walking out of there $1000 poorer...we bought a new Canon camcorder (which records onto the little 8cm DVDs) and we also got a new fan dangled, state of the art, flip cordless phone..a very expensive piece of plastic you can talk into in, other words!

Anyway, sorry for the diversion there, where were we..ah yes the Sunday Roast, well I am trying to attempt a revival of the old school Sunday Roast lunch in my family. I think it would be nice to make a tradition of it, so when the kids are older and Aaron and I are old, grey and wrinkly - we can all have Sunday Lunch together once a month or whenever the kids will have spare time in their busy lives to come and visit their oldies lol.

So the lunch I had meticulously planned ended up becoming dinner due to the time factor of going out and blowing a thousand dollars..but it was all good as it tasted, smelt and looked divine AND I didn't take any photos because I was so hungry, that I ate it before I remembered to take a snap.

I had a rolled shoulder of pork, with a nice fine layer of crackling on it. I dried the roast through the netting with a kitchen paper towel, and then rubbed some sea salt flakes into the skin, and then flipped it over and rubbed my 'rub' into it.
The rub consisted of crushed 4 colour peppercorns (red, black white and green), sea salt, lemon zest, rosemary, a ton of garlic and the best olive oil money can afford - all smashed into a fine paste in the trusty old mortar and pestle and smeared and massaged into the meat...I then returned it to the fridge for a few hours for the flavours to penetrate the meat.

I made Cauliflower Cheese, beautiful creamy, white cauliflower - steamed, smothered in a white bechamel sauce topped with grated parmesan and tasty cheese and nutmeg and baked until bubbly and golden.

And then the vegetables..just the usual ones which accompany a roast dinner..baby spuds, whole baby carrots, pumpkin and quartered onions...the spuds and onions I 'tossed' in some olive oil, salt and pepper and rosemary and put in the roasting pan as is..and the carrots and pumpkin the same but with the addition of some cumin as well, as this really compliments them. All banged into a roasting pan and roasted.

Took the meat out after it was done (220c for the first 30 Min's and then 180c for the remainder 45 minutes) let it rest and then carved it...what a great joint of meat!
Used the pan juices to make the wickedest gravy..basically just added a little plain flour as a thickening agent - bit of white wine..stir it around, and it was done.

After ALL that, I had dished every ones dinner up and realised that I forgot to make apples sauce and some peas....ah well, there's always next time...