Not A Cooks Blog ... Mastering French Cuisine With Julia Child ... (Once A Week): 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.