Sunday Lunch at the Half Moon Pub

This was the Sunday lunch we produced at The Half Moon Pub when I was the licensee just over two years ago.

Roast beef medium to rare , roast carrots and steamed broccoli

Sunday Lunch has returned as one of the most popular dishes of the week for the British public.
It is also one of the hardest meals to perfect if you are in the kitchen trying to produce it in a pub and make money from it and sell it a reasonable price. 

You set up your kitchen to cook for 60 -80 people, who will all arrive at the same time into what is an already busy pub. 

The football is on the big screen, its Arsenal V Man U and its three deep at the bar.

Oh and I forgot to mention everyone who orders a Sunday Roast in your pub is also an expert at cooking it him/her self at home.

They know exactly how they like their Beef cooked - Medium rare to pink, well thats half of them and the other half like it medium to well done. 

They all want an extra Yorkshire Pudding because we do them so well.
The trick we found with Yorkshire puds was to leave a gap between each row so the air could circulate around them, not sure how accurate this was but it worked for us in the pub.

Don't get me started on where would you like your gravy Sir? Over your parsnips or on your Brussel sprouts. This problem was negated by the small jug of gravy on the side, they get to pour their gravy wherever they like and it also stay warm in the jug. 

It took us about four weeks to get it down to perfection.

The beef is the crucial one , you don't want to over cook it whatever you do or all the flavour will be gone. The roast potatoes have to be perfectly crispy on the outside and nice and fluffy on the inside. 

The Roast chicken has to have lovely crisp skin and still be juicy on the inside. So we chose Half a small chicken and we cooked cook it in  our Pizza oven at very high temperature, it worked perfectly as you can see below and the roast spuds were to die for.

Rosemary and Lemon Roast Chicken

We even managed to get our South American chef to produce a decent Yorkshire pudding and not one of those fancy big hat jobs produced with a blow torch, just a nice Yorkshire like you mom would make for you. 



All together delicious and all the plates always came back emptied and the customers loved them.

Sunday Lunch was a great challenge and one we got just about right.