What is it about Sunday afternoons that makes us so eager to break bread with friends and family? We used to have Sunday lunch at TBW’s folks or mine, but things got a little complicated last year. Since then we’ve either gone out for Sunday lunch or done something low-key at home. For some reason today felt like a lazy Sunday lunch day. Our Timothy and Clover box arrived this Friday, filled with fresh, organic veggies. This week’s haul included more sweet potatoes (we never used last week’s), kale (ugh), fresh flat leaf parsley, brinjals (eggplant, for those who don’t know), gem squashes and onions. Friend A said that she’ll pop by before work today, so I decided to make my own vegetarian version of a Sunday lunch.
Growing up, Sunday lunches used to be one massive meal made up of smaller dishes. The meat used to be the main event. The type of veggies depended on the type of meat and whatever was in the house at the time. These lunches used to be heavy and very long and in later years included a fair amount of wine – something I’m always happy about. My vegetarianism threw a spanner in the works for my poor mom, who struggles to this day to think of things to prepare to replace the meat dish.
Red peppers, brinjals, brown onions, kale, gem squashes, cherry tomatoes and sweet potatoes in this week’s T&C box
I wanted to emulate the traditional Afrikaans Sunday lunch by preparing a number of smaller dishes – without the meat. To stick to my system of using the worst vegetables first, I made Spanish rice with kale again. This time, I chopped the raw kale in a food processor and sautéed it with onion and garlic. Then I added the rice, some chopped sundried tomatoes and a stock and tomato puree mixture. Even though I used much more kale this time, the fact that it was so finely chopped meant I could hardly taste it, which was exactly what I was after. I stirred in some fresh spring onions right at the end for a bit of freshness. It worked beautifully and I’ll add a little more next time.
I also made sweet and spicy sweet potatoes again. The post with that recipe seems to have disappeared into the abyss. You can view the original here. This time I added flat leaf parsley instead of coriander, but it worked just as well. I oven-roasted brinjal disks with whole garlic cloves for a bit of flavour and oven-roasted red peppers.
Friend A can’t eat rice, so I cooked some macaroni for her. I used fresh basil from our recently acquired herb pot to make a quick basil pesto, with basil, peanuts and wonderful peppery olive oil. I copped up some roasted pepper and brinjal for her and mixed the whole lot together with some fresh basil and black pepper.
Lunch with love: TBW and friend A sitting down to an old school Sunday lunch
TBW set the table, Friend A brought the wine and we enjoyed a vegetarian version of the old school Sunday lunch. I was quite proud of my old fashioned spread and nobody missed the meat.
Yo, Joburg! 