The Perfect Plain Sunday Lunch for 3

For three, I would buy a joint weighing about 1¼kg or even 1½kg. I love it cold the next day, cut into thick chips and put into a salad, with lettuce, cucumber, sliced gherkin and spring onion, with a mustardy dressing and topped with crumbled, finely chopped hard-boiled egg. And any leftover potatoes can be halved or thickly sliced and profitably thrown in, too.

Preheat the oven to gas mark 7/210°C. While it’s heating up, put in the dish in which you’re going to roast the beef, then, 5 or so minutes before you want to put the beef in, add a small dollop of dripping or whatever fat you’re using. Work out the roasting time for the meat, based on 30 minutes per kg – that’s if you like it bloody. Put the meat in the dish and in the oven along with a tomato, cut in half, an onion, ditto, and 2 unpeeled garlic cloves.