Buche de Noel - a Holiday Yule Log

Earlier this month I mentioned that I would be creating a Yule log for the holidays and provide the recipe. As promised, here it is...

Buche de Noel
Chocolate Cake with Chocolate-Orange Caramel and Meringue Mushrooms

Chocolate Cake
6 large eggs, separated
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
12 tablespoons sugar
½ cup slivered toasted almonds
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
Parchment paper for lining pan

To prepare the cake:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter 15 x 10 x 1-inch jelly-roll pan. Line bottom with parchment paper, allowing 1-inch overhang on short sides. Butter paper and lightly dust the paper inside the pan with flour; tap out excess. Pulse toasted almonds in food processor until finely ground. Using electric mixer beat egg whites until foamy. Add cream of tartar and beat until soft peaks form. Gradually add 6 tablespoons sugar, beating until stiff peaks form. Set aside.

Beat egg yolks, cocoa powder and remaining sugar in another large bowl until thick, about 2 minutes. Stir 1/4 of whites into yolk mixture to lighten. Fold in remaining whites and ground almonds until just mixed. Gently spread batter in prepared pan.

Bake until cake springs back when pressed in center, about 15 minutes. Transfer pan to rack. Cool completely. Line a baking sheet with foil. Invert cake onto sheet. Peel off paper.

Caramel Sauce and Chocolate-Orange Caramel Ganache

11/4 cups sugar
1/3 cup water
11/4 cups heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons bourbon or other liqueur such as rum or Grand Marnier
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
2 teaspoons finely grated orange zest

Stir 1 1/4 cups sugar and 1/3 cup water in heavy saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat; boil without stirring, occasionally swirling pan and brushing down sides with wet pastry brush until deep amber color (about 8-10 minutes but keep an eye on it as caramel can go from quite pale to burnt very fast). Remove from heat; immediately add cream (mixture will bubble vigorously). Whisk in butter, bourbon, and salt. Set about 1 cup caramel sauce aside to be served with cake. Add chopped chocolate to remaining caramel in saucepan. Let stand off heat 5 minutes; whisk until smooth and stir in orange zest. If chocolate does not appear to be melting completely, stir over very low heat for 1 minute until smooth. Transfer to bowl. Let frosting stand until fairly thick but spreadable, stirring occasionally, about 1 hour.

Spread 1 cup frosting over cake in even layer. Beginning at long side and using foil as an aid, roll up cake jelly-roll style. Arrange cake, seam side down, on platter. Cover cake with frosting. Run fork in circles on cake ends to create log appearance. Decorate with the meringue mushrooms and other festive holiday decorations if you like.

The cake can be made and frosted 1 day ahead. Cover loosely with waxed paper and let stand at room temperature.

Meringue Mushrooms

2 large egg whites
Pinch cream of tartar
½ cup superfine sugar
1 teaspoon cocoa powder for dusting mushrooms.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using electric mixer whip egg whites on medium until foamy. Add cream of tartar and continue whisking. Slowly add sugar over 2 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl gently if sugar is sticking to sides. Continue beating on medium high until stiff peaks form.

Set aside 1/3 cup of meringue for attaching mushrooms caps to stems. Take 2/3 of the remaining meringue and place in a pastry bag fitted with a large round tip (about ¾-inch opening). Pipe round mounds of meringue to form mushroom caps onto parchment lined baking sheet. Make different sizes of caps for variety. Next, load another pastry bag with the remaining meringue fitted with a medium size, round tip (about ½ inch opening). Pipe mushroom stems onto parchment paper. Stems should be about 1-inch long and ½ inch wide. Make sure the layer of meringue forming the mushroom stems is pretty thick so the stems will be strong enough to support the mushrooms caps.

Place the baking sheet with the piped meringue shapes in the oven for about 1 hour. The meringues should be firm and dry. Remove meringues from oven and let cool. Take each cap and make a small hole on the underside of the stem. Pipe a little meringue into the hole and attach a mushroom stem and place back on the parchment lined sheet. When all mushrooms have been made, place cookie sheet back in oven and turn it off. Leave meringue mushrooms in oven to dry for at least 1 hour. Can leave overnight as well.

Remove mushrooms from parchment and dust lightly with a little cocoa powder for color. Mushrooms are now ready to be placed on the frosted Yule log.

To serve: Slide cake and serve on plates with a drizzle of the caramel sauce around the edges of the plate.

The Making of a Foodie - The Travel Influence

From the early years of learning to make scrambled eggs, to the later years of watching Julia Child reruns on TV. Where did it all go from there?

As I grew to be a teenager and had less time on my hands, my interest in cooking continued to grow but at a lesser pace than in the early years, and also than in years to come. One area that really did grow during this time was my interest in food generally and opportunities to experience new food and cuisine through restaurants. And oh, did I love, and still do love a good restaurant.

Indiana in the late 70’s may not have been a mecca of fine cuisine but I still had plenty of opportunities to explore. This came about mostly through trips to Chicago or other places and many of those were with my Mom’s friend Annette. Annette had a knack for not only great cooking herself but also seemed to know where all the best places were with really great restaurants nearby. It was only much later that I came to realize that many of those trips were probably planned around the food rather than the destination at hand. She exposed us to a lot of different delights such as real southern fried chicken, pierogi, the best of the Friday night fish frys, pecan pie, soulf food, a myriad of beautiful and unique Christmas cookies, and the best Chinese food to be had in Chinatown. It was during this time that I began to realize just how vast the restaurant world was and I was only scratching the surface. I also came to see that my desire to experience the world could only somewhat be had through a restaurant meal.

So, I knew then that there would have to be more. Some of that more, for a teenager growing up in Indiana, was the firmly held belief that I would someday leave the small town I grew up in and live in Chicago. Another aspect of that belief had to do with finding the means to travel.

As I made my way through high school and college, it was always with the notion that I would be going on to this life in the big city and hopefully to opportunities to visit many other places. I did manage to get to Chicago, landing a job in an advertising agency shortly after graduation. I also began to travel. Some of my favorite food recollections have to do with experiencing a meal in a place far from home. These were not all exotic locales, particularly fancy, or even foreign, but they spoke to me. Some of my most delightful travel and food memories are:

La Mere Poulard, Mont St. Michel, France
Eating at Charlie Trotters restaurant kitchen table, Chicago
Frontera Grill, Chicago
Everest Room, Chicago
The Lobster Hut in Cozumel
Peter Luger’s steakhouse in Brooklyn, NY
Indian Restaurants in London on every occasion I’ve visited
Chinatown in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco
Harbor Village, San Francisco
Le Restaurant, Paris
Le Bistrot, Venice
The little bar/café in Milano
The Vault in Westbourne, Bournemouth, England
Traditional Hawaiian menu at the Kaanapali Beach Hotel menu
Chilaquiles in Mexico City
Morton Bay Bugs in Cairns, Australia
Pumpkin soup, Melbourne Australia
Pierogi and mushroom barley soup at Sophie’s Busy Bee in Chicago,
Marrow bones at the Fort near Denver
Seafood Newburg at some restaurant near Tralee, Ireland

What is it about a place and a meal that speaks to you? Why is it that some really resonate with you for years and possibly forever and others fade away?

Making of a Foodie - More about Julia

When I think back to my childhood and my subsequent interest in food I can’t help but think back to those early years of watching Julia Child on TV. I was often so very intrigued by the things she would make and definitely wanted to create more of them than I was able. So much of it seemed so sophisticated that I really wouldn’t have known where to start. I probably could have managed to get the ingredients back then, and maybe even have managed the recipes but my mind wasn’t able to make that leap from TV-land to real-life. Part of the joy of it all was the way she went about it, with such seriousness and whimsy. Here was this larger than life, worldly woman with an amazingly childlike aspect to her. I think back to an episode on the Christmas cake, Buche de Noel that I watched one summer. I was so caught up in how she made the little meringue mushrooms and decorated it with dark chocolate icing and little holly leaves. It was so real and imaginary all at once. I wanted every little part of that experience and only ever had it through the show. At the time, it was all I could have wanted.

For this holiday season I think I will make my own Buche de Noel. Watch for a recipe later this month.

Making of a Foodie – The Early Years

I readily admit I’m a foodie. But just what makes one a foodie anyway? Webster describes it as “a person having an avid interest in the latest food fads” and while that’s certainly an interest of mine, it goes way beyond that. Foodie.com defines the obsession in a way I find to be a little closer to my personal truth: "The foodie lives to eat, and eating to live is definitive boredom. A true foodie clings to all things culinary…To find the perfect cheese or the best macaroon recipe is life's work." So, while it may not be macaroons for me, I have been to known to research and experiment with dozens of lemon meringue pie recipes or to otherwise spend far more time than is practical trying to figure out just how to make the best ascolane, an amazing meat-stuffed, fried olive snack from Italy.

I sometimes wonder where my interest in food came from. My obsession runs the gamut from eating it (a particular favorite), making it, reading about it, researching it, experimenting with, traveling to, and to generally always be in search of, and then some. It’s certainly not from my upbringing, unless you believe that children will always rebel against their parents as in, if your parents like rock music you will go country. Growing up in northwest Indiana in a family of limited means, it would be fair to say there wasn’t a whole lot going on of major epicurean interest. Sure, we always had plenty of food on the table and as I grew older we even had dishes like tacos from time to time but it’s not as though there was an emphasis on fine dining, exotic cuisine or seeking new experiences with food. It was about getting the family fed, having a meal that didn’t lead to too much squabbling (about the food or anything else) and chiefly about getting it done without too many complaints or outliers with their “I don’t like that” who therefore wouldn’t eat.

What I do know is that my interest in food, especially cooking, started very young. Before I was 5 my Mom had me up on a chair stirring my own scrambled eggs and it really seemed to take off from there. She had this set of cookbooks she must have received as a wedding present or young newlywed that I just loved. It was about a ten or twelve book set and I poured over those books like most kids poured over Encyclopedia Britannica or roasted ants with a magnifying glass. These cookbooks covered everything from beverages to butchery and loads in between and each book even had a few inserts of color pictures! I was completely smitten.

By the time I was old enough to read, I already had a few dishes under my belt including scrambled eggs (by then with bits of ham), grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup and anything that could be made with peanut butter and marshmallow Fluff. For some reason, I came to believe that anyone who could read and follow a few directions could cook just about anything be from those books or just about any other book. I know over the next ten years or so, I certainly set out to try. I cooked lots and lots of things from Mom’s cookbooks. My early repertoire was very baking-focused. I consider this to be a formative period for me in the way that Picasso had his blue period. Baking is great for kids for any number of reasons: it’s fairly easy, kids love sugar, it usually involves things already in-house, you get a lot of takers, and there’s an amazing comfort factor in the aromas involved whether it be bread – which I made quite a lot of, sugar cookies or chocolate cake. I literally cannot count the number of cakes, cookies, candies, or Jell-O concoctions I made between the ages of 7 and 12. Any time we needed something for a barbecue or family event, I’d volunteer to make a cake or other suitable creation. For some reason, even though I was then and remain completely lacking in visual artistic talent, I loved to decorate cakes and make sugar cookies with all kinds of wacky color schemes involving colored sugar, sprinkles, icing, you name it. I was the queen of food coloring and anything that could be done with it. One of my biggest regrets was when trying to make a Halloween cake that I could not get the black icing to work out no matter how much food coloring I used. It ended up being more like orange and purplish-brown!

As I grew to be a little older, a lot of other cooking influences came my way. I discovered there were cookbooks at the local public library and I also happened to stumble upon this wildly eccentric, giant of a lady with a strange accent and a flair for the dramatic. Her name was Julia Child. When I was about 7, she had a show on Channel 11 in Chicago, our local public broadcasting station that aired every day at lunchtime during my summers off from school. It was probably strange to see a kid watching her show but I rarely missed one. One of the things I loved about her was that things didn’t always go to plan, yet she had to finish the show so she made the best of it no matter what. Over the years I saw most of her shows several times throughout the course of a few summers.

It was through this broadening of my food influences that I started to branch out into lots of cooking beyond baking. I was a taken by anything with vivid color and a photograph so when I first saw a picture of an autumn stew baked inside a pumpkin I knew I had to make one. I remember reading about Country Captain, a rather basic chicken curry dish that was most exotic to me and not just because of the curry powder (which surprisingly, we had) but because it was served with about a dozen condiments – everything from raisins, to chopped hardboiled egg, to coconut. So, of course, I had to make this dish and find a way to get all the condiments, even the mango chutney which was not something easily found in our Midwestern town. For whatever reason, I was particularly drawn to making food that seemed exotic to me, whether it was due to the ingredients themselves, or simply that it came from a place far away from Indiana where I dreamed I might visit one day.

There is much more to this story and what led to my interest, both personal and professional (at times), for food that will be shared in future posts. Today I share my recipe for Ascolane, that amazing olive snack from Italy that pairs superbly with anything bubbly, be it a nice, slightly fruity prosecco, beer, or Italian soda.

What early food memories do you have and how have they informed your interest in food over the years?

Ascolane (Recipe makes about 25-30 stuffed olives)

For the stuffed olives:
1-1/2 lb. very large, pitted green olives (should be fairly mild in flavor although we like to use the chili marinated ones and rinse them well)
4 oz. fresh ground pork sausage
4 oz. ground lamb
4 oz. ground veal
2 oz. pancetta (or use about 2 strips of good bacon), finely chopped
1 teaspoon minced garlic
½ cup dry white wine
¾ cup freshly grated Parmigiano
About 1/2 cup fine bread crumbs (not seasoned)
¼ cup finely chopped parsley
¼ teaspoon ground fresh nutmeg
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook the chopped pancetta in a heavy skillet over medium heat stirring regularly until lightly brown. Remove pancetta from pan and set aside. Cook the pork sausage, lamb, and veal in the same skillet, stirring often until thoroughly cooked. When cooked, drain off excess pan drippings and set aside. Add the pancetta back to the pan with the other meat. Stir in the garlic and continue cooking until the garlic starts to soften. Add the white wine and continue stirring until the wine is mostly evaporated. Set the pan aside and cool until the meat is just warm. Run the meat mixture through a meat grinder or pulse quickly in a food processor until finely ground. Stir in the Parmigiano, parsley, and nutmeg then stir in the breadcrumbs a little at a time until the mixture holds together easily when a small amount is placed in your palm and squeezed. Add a bit more of the pan drippings you set aside if the mixture seems dry. Season with pepper and additional salt, if needed. Let cool.

To stuff the olives, take a pitted olive and stuff as much of the meat filling as you can in the center. Depending on the size of the olive, you may need to slightly split the olive a little to really get the meat into the center. Take about another tablespoon or so and completely encase the olive with it, pressing firmly to make it into a fairly round ball that holds together well. Continue with remaining olives.

For the breading and frying:
Oil for frying – at least 3-4 cups depending on the size of the pan you will fry in but make sure you have a depth of at least 1-inch of oil.
1 cup flour
½ teaspoon paprika
Salt and pepper to taste
2 eggs
¼ cup milk
2 cups fine bread crumbs (not seasoned)
1/ 2 teaspoon Italian seasoning

Heat the oil to 350 degrees.

Set up a breading station:

In a shallow dish or bowl stir paprika into flour and season with salt and pepper to taste. The flour should have a savory flavor without being too salty or peppery.
Make an egg wash in a separate small bowl, by whisking the eggs and milk gently. Set aside.
Place the bread crumbs in a separate shallow dish and stir in the Italian seasoning.

To bread the stuffed olives:

Roll each stuffed olive ball in the flour to get a light but even coating. Shake off excess flour.
Dip the flour-coated olive ball into the egg mixture.
Roll the olive ball in the breadcrumb mixture to coat lightly but evenly.

Fry the stuffed, breaded olives:

Fry the olives in the hot oil until lightly browned in each side. Remove from the pan and drain on paper towels. Let the olives cool a little bit before eating as the olives taken straight from the oil will be very hot. The olives are best eaten shortly after frying while still a bit warm or are even at room temperature.