The aftermath: ham risotto, fluffy pancakes

Have you eaten all the ham yet? Probably you have, but in case you've still got a chunk sitting around, I thought it could be timely to call up a lovely recipe for ham and cheese risotto, or to give it the proper name, Risotto Antico Sabaudo. It's in Claudia Roden's The Food of Italy, and now that we have ham instead of a roast, I make it every year after the big event. Roden calls for only75 grams of ham, but I must admit I like to use about twice that much.

      I first posted about it in January 2011, three weeks after Harvey died.  I noted then that in the last two weeks,  "I've eaten dinner on my own nine times....haven't done much shopping and I've been inclined to eat pasta and rice." I'm recalling it here partly because five years have passed since then, as we recalled when we toasted him and all our other "absent friends" on Christmas Day this year. I served the same risotto again this week for a post-Christmas dinner with friends. 

http://somethingelsetoeat.blogspot.co.nz/2011/01/savoury-comfort-food-from-italy.html

After all the festive food, ordinary breakfast can seem a bit of a let-down. With two house guests, my son and my New York friend, I thought we should have something a bit more exciting - not, of course, on Boxing Day, when I try not to set pan to stove at all but just point people to the fridge, with its cache of leftovers, but the next day, falling neatly on a Sunday this year. 

       Ages ago I picked up a really good lemon pancake recipe in Moore Wilson, so I made that. It's sad I never made it for Harvey - but he was a real stickler for tradition when it came to pancakes (large with lemon and sugar only),  so he might not have liked it.

http://somethingelsetoeat.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/light-lemony-pancakes.html

This time we had them with poached strawberries, grapes and blueberries, and of course whipped cream.