The promise a roast makes is to deliver the works with little effort. When time is tight, what you want is no effort at all. Most of all, you don't want to baste. At worst, basting involves spittingly hot fat, and metal searing enough to burn through a tea towel. At best, you receive a faceful of heat, stripping you of make-up and the last vestiges of calm.

Perfect, then, the no-baste roast. This has much to do with shopping and a little with wilful disregard of regular practice. Buy a joint with a thin-ish but not mean layer of fat around it. You are looking for enough fat to protect the meat from the heat and render juicily over it, but not to burn (about 5mm-1cm depending on the joint; a butcher will happily advise). If you are thinking of chicken, go for a fat, golden, English bird rather than the very tasty but scrawny French varieties - they are too slender to cope with high heat - and push slivers of butter down between the skin and breast. Posh cuts, such as beef fillet, are delicately marbled with fat and don't need an outer layer at all. Rub the surface with oil and season generously, adding herbs and aromatics.

Calculate your roasting time per weight as usual, but start off at a very high heat - 220/gas 8 is good. Only when the oven is truly hot should you bang in the joint. After half an hour (a chicken needs only 20 mins) when the fat has begun to sizzle, turn it down to a little below the regular temperature you would roast it at (180 is good for most). And then let it be. When it is done, allow it a good rest out of the oven and it will forgive you the lack of basting. I like to give it a 15 to 20 minutes to relax before serving.

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