Having the folks round for dinner – the full three courses.

I admit, to me, having people round for dinner is just an excuse to spend the day in the kitchen listening to music and cooking. So when we had my mum and dad round last night that's exactly what I did. The great thing about this meal was that loads of it could be prepared in advance, and then it was just a case of shoving in the oven for a while and forgetting about it.

The menu:

- Piedmontese peppers with home made bread

- Slow roasted shoulder of lamb with mash, gravy, roasted vegetables and something green

- Chocolate mousse (Make this first!)

The starter:

Obviously if you're making this you don't have to have home made bread, I just fancied making some on Friday. See here for bread making:

http://idontjustmakesoup.blogspot.com/2011/07/rosemary-and-olive-bread.html

For the peppers just cut a load of peppers in half, take out the seeds and put some finely chopped garlic in. Season, then put in a load of peeled tomatoes. Shove in as many as you can fit in.

(to peel tomatoes put them in a bowl and cover with just boiled water for a minute. Refresh in cold water and the skin should come away easily.)

Halve some anchovies and cross them over the top. Pour in a generous tablespoon of olive oil. These take 45 minutes to an hour in the oven, or just until the look like they're collapsing a bit. When they're done stick some basil leaves in. I made these early in the day and just covered them and kept them in the fridge. Shove them in the oven an hour before you're ready to serve.

Peppers before they go in the oven to get juicy and lovely

The main:

This is the easiest roast ever. Heat your oven up to it's highest heat. Rub a shoulder of lamb (or a bit of one) with olive oil and season it. Chuck in loads of garlic, rosemary, thyme and whatever else you fancy then cover tightly with tin foil. Shove in the oven, then turn it straight down to about 150 – 160 degrees. Forget about it for four hours. Your house will smell fantastic. It will just fall apart. So tasty. It's not an expensive cut either - less than a tenner to feed four hungry people. 

It'll start out like this...

...It'll end up like this!

For the roasted veg, cut carrots and parsnips into big chunks and toss them in some honey, olive oil, grain mustard and salt and pepper. Your oven will be on quite low, so they'll take a while (45 minutes?) but will be sticky and lovely. Then just make mash and steam something green (we had broccoli and green beans)

When it's gravy making time, take out the meat and put it on a plate. Cover it and leave it to rest, it'll stay warm for quite a while. Pour away most of the fat and take out any big bits of rosemary and thyme, but leave the garlic in. Put the roasting tray on the hob. Stir in a teaspoon of flour and start the all important process of scraping up all the sticky bits. Add a glass of wine and stir and scrape as that comes up to the boil. I used white wine for this, as I was making so much food I didn't want it to be too rich, but you could easily use red for a much richer sauce. Add a pint of stock, again I used vegetable so it wasn't too heavy, but you could use lamb for it to be much richer. Then just reduce down to half the volume. Make sure there's nothing sticking to the bottom, and all the lovely roast garlic is squished out of the skin, then just sieve it. Sorted.

I wasn't too good at taking photos for this one, as I was busy chatting to my ma and pa. But here's the meat after you've pulled the bone out: 

You can't carve this... just serve up big hunks of meat

The pudding:

Make this early in the day as it takes a while in the fridge. I'm not big on desserts, as I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but this is very tasty and nicely rounds off the meal. I won't type it out, here's the recipe:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/330616/really-easy-chocolate-mousse

We don't have four matching ramekins... or four matching wine glasses for that matter

 I grated a bit of dark chocolate over the top.

There you go! Lovely and very very easy meal, with no stress. Serve with bucketloads of red wine.

This week's soup: Curried carrot and parsnip. I'm making this up because I've got loads of carrots and parsnips left. It's the Lidl effect, you end up with big bags of veg and massive boxes of fruit because they've cost about 10p.