The ritual of the Sunday roast lamb is, for many of us, synonymous with a rural childhood.

In the 1980s, Alison Holst was the Queen of New Zealand cooking, baking tins were still well stocked with homemade biscuits for Smoko, while farming was going through one of its most challenging times to date.

Eating out was a treat; we were connected to our families instead of our phones.

The Sunday roast was more than a meal; it was an event.

My mother and grandmother would put the leg of lamb or mutton in the oven in the morning, where it would lazily cook, low and slow, until my father came in around noon from the farm.

The entire house would fill with the aroma of meat.

There would always be roast vegetables, often from the garden, peas, gravy and mint sauce.

I would help prepare the side dishes, and there was always companionable chatter between my mother, my grandmother and me.

There was a sense of warmth and belonging.

There was no rush—just the slow rhythm of a Sunday, marked by the steady ticking of the clock, the hiss of meat sizzling in the oven, and the hearty clatter of knives and forks.

While cooking lamb was a job relegated to the women in the family, carving was my father's domain.

The right knife, the right angle, working with the meat's grain.

Usually, the lamb leg was from a sheep he had butchered himself in the little killing shed on the farm.

Arguably, the best thing about the roast was the leftovers: thick lamb sandwiches with cheese on chunky, warm homemade bread.

The rhythmic tradition of it all was like being wrapped in a blanket of security as a child.

It was about family and connection; it was about celebrating the food produced on the farm.

In the busy chaos of life in 2025, when we are more connected to each other in so many ways yet incredibly disconnected in others, could the traditional Kiwi roast be the antidote to all that we have lost with modern life?

Working Men's Clubs, RSAs, and traditional Kiwi pubs still practice the art of the Sunday roast.

While this provides an affordable, filling meal for those living alone and can't justify the time and expense of cooking a roast themselves, how fantastic would it be if the roast returned to Kiwi home kitchens, too?

How can we blend tradition with the diverse global cultures that make up our population and whose cuisines we have embraced alongside the British one we brought here all those years ago?

With National Lamb Day on the horizon on February 15 we have an opportunity to celebrate our national dish and reimagine where it sits in our culture and kitchens.

How will you celebrate?

By Claire Inkson