The Sunday Roast & Comfort Suppers

There is a particular quality of light on a Sunday afternoon in an English kitchen — golden, unhurried, carrying the scent of roasting meat and woodsmoke and something sweet baking quietly in the bottom of the oven — and it is that light, more than anything else, that I have tried to capture in these pages. This book is not a collection of recipes so much as it is a record of a life lived around a table, of sixty years of Sundays and cold winter evenings and impromptu gatherings that became, in memory, the very architecture of a family. I have cooked these meals for hungry children and visiting neighbours, for anniversaries and ordinary Tuesdays that deserved something better than ordinary, and I offer them now with all the warmth I possess, in the hope that they find their way to your kitchen and keep someone you love a little longer at the table. ---

If there is a heart to my cooking, it is the Sunday table. The roast turning golden, the vegetables from the garden, the gravy made in the pan, the pudding waiting on the side. These are not clever meals — they are generous ones, made to draw people in and keep them at the table long after the plates are cleared. In this book I have gathered all my finest comfort suppers: the roasts, the pies, the slow stews, and the puddings that make an ordinary Sunday feel like a small celebration.

— Agnes