Basic No-Effort Saturday Lunch

• Roast chicken with green salad
• Summer fruits and cream or ice-cream

A roast chicken is my basic Saturday lunch, Sunday lunch, any day, or even ceremonial dinner. This explains why I singled it out in Basics. You can use ginger to spruce it up instead of lemon. Rub the skin of a chicken with fresh ginger (make sure you’ve got a juicy tuber) and then cut some slices off the root and stuff the inside of the cavity with them. Gingered chicken makes for a wonderful chicken salad later: bring out that tin of water chestnuts from the bottom of the store cupboard if you dare, use lots of crunchy green leaves and some raw sugar-snap peas (or failing that, mangetouts) and sprinkle with some sesame seeds which have been briskly toasted in a fatless pan before generously dousing with an orientalish dressing. Use soy, use sesame oil, use rice vinegar – one in a fairly normal vinaigrette or all three in conjunction as you wish – and eat in front of the TV.