Week 20: Christmas Quenelles and Buche de Noel

This Christmas we were staying at home, enjoying hosting my sister, bro in law and niece and nephew. With four adults, four teenagers and two dogs it was busy, and typically being the festive season, there was a lot of eating going down.
Christmas day we were all totally spoilt having a wonderful Christmas lunch at my parents house.
However Boxing Day was with us... and of course this meant the time to shine with French cuisine.
Julia did not have a Christmas section in her "Mastering the art of French Cooking", so I had to do a little homework on what would be a traditional French Christmas meal.
Wikipedia to the rescue - moved past the annoying little plea for funding from the site to find the list of food items traditionally eaten at Christmas:
Oysters - rather expensive beginning, lets see what is further down the list
Foie fras - not sure if I can support the action of force feeding ducks
Crepes - yes, but hard too do and for 12 people I would have to get up at 2am in the morning to get things done in time
Chapon - roasted chicken - had Turkey on Christmas day, don't really want to 2 birds in 2 days
Goose - difficult to source (although there are a few wild ones living close by..) and see comment above
Buche de Noel - Yule log - yes - chocolate
Thirteen desserts - traditional in Provence the 13 desserts represent Jesus Christ and the 12 apostles (not enough specific information)
Fougasse (Provencal bread) - like the sound of that.

Unfortunately Julia did not have most of these dishes in her book. So I looked to Julia for something different, yet special for the occasion. Quenelles caught my eye. Julia describes these as a distinguished first course which were the province of the haute cuisine, or  least of the great restaurants with plenty of young apprentice cooks to do the dog work. It was arduous process because it was the era of the BFP - Before Food Processor. However food processor was at the ready and so was my daughter Imke and niece Anneke- my two kitchen hands. They were the queens of the quenelle, shaping those fish quenelles into oval shapes and poaching in barely simmering water. There were some tense moments when we thought the quenelle may disintegrate - but unlike the highly tense reality food programmes or hells kitchen, we proceeded with calm and dignity. Also we had a back up plan, supported by Julia who has a section "In case of disaster". Julia recommends if by any chance your quenelle paste turns out to be too soft to poach it will taste every bit as good if you declare it to be a mousee. Love her practical nature!

Julia did not have a recipe for a Buche de Noel, so I sourced one from Nigella. I have always loved the look of a Yule log however have never made one. Slightly nervous about the rolling, and I almost rolled a stump rather than a log as started rolling the wrong end. However with declarations from the extended family observing the process, I was corrected - and proceeded to roll correctly. Nigella uses a chocolate ganache for the filling and for the icing... so of course it was gorgeous and voluptuous.

To complete the French theme my sister Jac and husband Mark presented us with some outstanding French cheeses. These were divine and we enjoyed these as our starter, although my sister did note that she had no idea what they would be like but they were French (a great blog supporter).
To accompany the cheese, Imke made the Fougasse (Provencal bread with olives and herbs).

It was a great meal with eating extending through most of the day, inter-dispensed with puppy play and general overeating malaise.

With the cousins... Caroline, Henk, Frankie (the dog), Imke and Anneke

The queens of the quenelles

Probably Yule log is not traditionally served in France with someone wearing a red beach towel!

Kneading

French cheeses

Mum and sister Jac

Jamie - in charge of the ham

Week 19: Oeufs Poches

"Gosh Mum, you are getting slack" was the report back from youngest daughter after serving up poached eggs for lunch. I admit, I missed last weeks blog write up as was supporting same daughter for weekend sporting event -  and with the pre-Christmas rush on, things are busy (excuses, excuses) so I have not invested so much time in increasing my culinary skills via Julia.

However, as I explained to my family, do not underestimate the poached egg. Julia dedicates 2 pages of explanation on how to make the perfect oeuf poches.  She explains that the perfect specimen is neat and oval and the white completely masks the yolk. The recipe for success includes having fresh eggs at hand, and a pan of barely simmering water with a touch of vinegar which helps the eggs keep in shape. Once you have broken the eggs into the water you immediately and gently push the water over the yolk with a wooden spoon. After about 4 minutes your egg should be ready for removal from the pan.
I must say the end product wasn't perfect but it was a vast improvement on my past poached eggs attempts where the egg whites were more of a milky way appearance - wispy and covering a large amount of space. On the removal of one of the eggs it flipped before landing on the plate, and from this perspective it looked perfect. The egg yolk remained liquid as per requirements. Although this was the desired effect it had two disadvantages. First disadvantage - eldest daughter does not like egg yolk so cutting off egg white was a delicate operation and with only one small nick of the egg yolk saw the contamination of the white - like a oil spill in the ocean. Second disadvantage is that with vigorous discussion over lunch accompanied with hearty gesturing saw the spray of egg yolk off the fork onto the table Christmas runner. The family did notice that this yellow did match the embroidery golden thread weaving through the runner, however I did insist on a quick spot clean. So there, I am  not entirely slack :-) 

Week 18: Carottes glacees & Chou-Fleur a la mornay, gratine

A sudden drop in temperature from our balmy summer hot weather saw a return to winter fare. Lucky there were vegetables at the ready including a cauliflower which was found in the depths of the fridge. I had fungating tomatoes last week so I am loathed to admit another repeat of "almost at the point of going off food ". Let's just say the cauli was ready for the eating. Although I do believe that the rotten food experience is known to more than us that we would perhaps admit. We may have cleaned up our act in adulthood  but the rotten apple at the bottom of the school bag was a pretty typical childhood experience. My legendary tale (according to my parents) was that they found 16 cheese segments in the bottom of my school bag - this was when chesdale processed chedder cheese was big.
So tonight was a great opportunity to cook up a couple of new vegetable dishes that were warm and comforting. I choose to follow Julia's Carottes Glacees - glazed carrots recipe. This involves boiling the carrots slowly in a covered pot with stock, sugar, pepper and butter for 30 minutes until the liquid has reduced to a syrupy glaze. Slightly got my timing wrong so didn't get to the glaze stage, rather soggy but tasty little numbers.
The cauliflower au gratin with cheese was prepared ahead and was far more relaxing in relation to timing, sitting patiently in the oven ready to go. Accompanying the steak I followed Julia's Champignons sautes au beurre instructions. Here Julia provides the requirements to have successful sauteed mushroom which are lightly browned. The secret is you need to ensure the mushrooms are dry, the butter very hot, and the mushroom must not be crowded in the pan. It was a rather uncomplicated dinner that night, but an opportunity to try a couple of new vegetable dishes. And with the less labour intensive meal meant I could use that time to clean out the fridge (almost as bad as the end of year school bag clean out!)

Reduction in progress

 

 

 

Hearty fare