Christmas lunch

I suppose it might be a little late to write about our Christmas lunch, but as it was only 2 days ago I’d still like to tell you what we had.  I will start by saying that there were only three of us here for lunch.  Alberto, his mother and I, and although they were both unwell with flu, sniffles and high temp included, I was not going to give up on a (kind of) traditional lunch.  In Italy it is traditional to start with tortellini in broth (brodo), but I decided that what I was cooking was enough food, considering the sickies also told me they didn’t have much appetite! I asked the butcher to cut/open/butterfly a piece of pork and I filled it with prunes and apricots, rolled it up and tied it with string to keep it all together.  (I spread mango chutney on the pork first before scattering the prunes and apricots on top.)  We had roast potatoes, sweet potatoes, brocoletti, and of course no roast is complete in my book without gravy to accompany it.  It was really yummy.

Apart from red wine with lunch, I can’t believe we didn’t open a bottle of champagne! It was decided (not by me), that to open a bottle when only me would be drinking it maybe was silly!!!  Some people don’t know me that well.  I think Christmas morning should start with a glass of champagne!!!

For dessert, I put together a platter of the food I had made leading up to Christmas, plus the panforte I had bought in Florence and of course also some panettone.

All in all I had a lovely Christmas day. I make an effort to keep busy and positive as having Christmas day without my children can sometimes make me feel a little sad.  They arrived yesterday though, so Christmas is just drawn out for another day, and over the next 12 days I shall continue cooking up a storm so Annabella and Joseph can also associate Christmas with the food that comes out of my kitchen.