Merry Christmas!!!

I'm not Catholic and don’t celebrate Christmas, but in Brazil there are an estimated 137 million Catholics(which is the highest number of any country in the world), representing 74% of the Brazilian population, so the pressure is big! At this time of the year everybody is happy, shopping and partying, so it’s normal to feel like doing some (or all) of those things! Also the family is getting bigger and some people are marrying outside of the religion, so this year we end up doing a Christmas tree at my cousin’s house and a small dinner at home. But I was working hard, doing parties for other people, and didn’t have much time left to prepare our own meal, so I end up doing a table full of appetizers. We had mostly cold food and drank Champagne; it was very good and appropriate for a very hot night. In the menu were: Big mixed salad greens with balsamic vinaigrette, Paris mushrooms with lemon and fresh herbs vinaigrette, prosciutto with caramelized fresh figs and a dollop of Mascarpone cheese, blinis with smoked salmon, crème fraiche and caviar, bressaola with lemon sauce and arugula, and so on… We had also great cheeses like Brie, Camembert, Cablanca, Fol-Epi and quality breads to eat them with. I know I'm a chef and I'm supposed to cook, but everybody enjoyed it! So if you are having people over for food and don’t have much time to cook try something like that, it works, I recommend it!

Bûche de Noël

Bûche de Noël or Yule log is a traditional French dessert served during the Christmas holidays. One popular story behind the creation of this dessert is that Napoleon I of France issued a proclamation requiring households in Paris to keep their chimneys closed during the winter, based on the notion that cold air caused medical problems. This prevented Parisians from being able to use their fireplaces, and, thus, prevented them from engaging in many of the traditions surrounding and involving the hearth in French Christmas tradition. French bakers, according to the theory, invented this dessert as a symbolic replacement around which the family could gather for story-telling and other holiday merriment.
The traditional bûche is made from a Génoise or other sponge cake, generally baked in a large, shallow pan, filled with chocolate cream, rolled to form a cylinder, and frosted on the outside. As the name indicates, the cake is presented and garnished so as to look like a log ready for the fire. Last Christmas I made this one in the picture and hopefully I’ll have some time to do it again soon. I had a lot of fun doing the cake and the decoration plus it turned out so good and pretty that I promised to do it again every year, only changing the flavors. The one I did was a basic genoise filled and covered with a chocolate ganache. The most common combination is a basic yellow sponge cake, frosted and filled with chocolate buttercream, which is ideal to produce a bark-like texture. Many variations on the traditional recipe exist, possibly including chocolate cakes, chestnut cream or any flavored frostings and fillings. These cakes are often decorated with powdered sugar to resemble snow, tree branches, chocolate leaves, fresh berries, and mushrooms made of meringue, very cute! For a good result the most important thing is to get the genóise right, so here it goes the recipe for a perfect one!

Genóise:
5 large eggs
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 cup cake flour, sifted
2 tbsp butter

Preheat the oven to 400F, and line a 10x15 inch jelly-roll pan with parchment paper. Fill a medium saucepan one-third full with water and bring to a simmer. Whisk the eggs and sugar by hand in a bowl of an eletric mixer and place the bowl over the pan of simmering water, whisk constantly until mixture is warm. Transfer to the mixer stand and beat at high speed until the mixture doubled in volume, about 8 minutes. Gently fold in the cake flour. Place the melted butter in a large bowl and stir a scoop of the cake batter into the butter until well combined, then gently fold that mixture into the cake batter. Scrape the batter into the pan and bake it for 7 minutes, until the top is light golden brown. Be carefull to not overbake and end up with a dry cake. Place a wire rack over the cake , invert and cool completely. Make the filling you like and scrape it onto the cake, spreading in an even layer. Roll the cake up tightly and decorate it as you wish.

Banana

I love bananas, they are the most practical fruit that exist: they come with packaging! They are native to the tropical region of Southeast Asia, the Malay Archipelago, and Australia. Banana is mentioned in Buddhists texts from 600 B and probably was spread throughout the African continent by the Arabs. Then the Portuguese started cultivating it in Central America and Brazil. Today, bananas are cultivated throughout the Tropics in 130 countries and are the forth food product most produced in the world. Besides the fruit you can also use the banana flowers and leaves. The banana flower (also known as banana blossom or banana heart) is used in Southeast Asian, Bengali and India cuisine, either served raw with dips or cooked in soups and curries. The leaves are large, flexible, and waterproof; they are used in many ways, including as umbrellas and to wrap food for cooking, carrying and packing cooked foods. The banana plant has long been a source of fiber for high quality textiles. In Japan, the cultivation of banana for clothing and household use dates back to at least the 13th century. Banana fiber is also used in the production of banana paper.
Unripe or green bananas are basically just water and amid and are the staple starch of many tropical populations. As they ripe the amid turns into sugar giving them the sweet flavor, making they delicious and highly energetic. Bananas have 75% of water and are a good source of vitamin A, B6 and C, fibers, potassium and tryptophan. When consumed this substance increases the serotonin levels in the body, as a natural Prozac! It has been said that eating 2 bananas a day during 3 days increases serotonin in the blood in 16%! Isn’t it great? Eat bananas and be happy! Hey, now I get what happened to me when I was a kid… My older cousin Muti created a game I loved so much people though it was very funny. The game was simply to search for bananas in a tent in the dark and he called it “banana tent”. After finding them I could eat or use the bananas to prepare some dessert. Now I know if it was “apple tent” the effect would be totally different! But thinking about it I realized that in fact this story shows I was born to be a cook and him a great designer!(check it out: Muti´s website)

Banana Walnut Tart:
12 ounces pate sucree
2 pounds bananas
12 ounces walnut frangipane
4 ounces walnut pieces, chopped

Roll dough into a 14 inch disk and line a 10-inch tart pan. Chill for several hours. Peel and slice the bananas, arrange then in a layer in botton of the tart shell. Spread frangipane evenly to cover the bananas. Strew with walnut pieces. Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, or until set. Cool and serve.

Pastel

Pastel is a typical Brazilian snack, consisting of a crisp, thin dough envelope with assorted fillings and deep-fried. It’s primarily sold on the streets fairs, but also in bars and some restaurants as hors-d’oeuvre. It’s very cheap, flavorful and sometimes so big that can replace a meal. Some examples of fillings are minced meet, onions and olives (pastel de carne), just mozzarella, or the Brazilian soft cheese called Catupiry, also popular is the pizza flavor with cheese, tomatoes and oregano. It’s not so common, but you can find pastel with sweet fillings as well. I read that it came from Portugal and descends from the sweet pastries they do there, that they call pastelaria. But I also read it’s a variation on the Chinese deep-fried spring rolls. Maybe is a combination of both, who knows? The only thing I’m sure is that the Brazilian pastel is unique and delicious! The dough’s secret is the addition of a little Cachaça (Brazilian alcoholic drink) that makes it very crispy. I never tested the recipe with other alcoholic drink but I guess you could replace it with Vodka. It’s very easy to make pastel at home, so here it goes the recipe for the dough and you can put the filling you want:

Pastel dough:
2 cups of all purpose flour
1 teaspoon of salt
2 tablespoon of canola oil
1 tablespoon of Cachaça
1 tablespoon of white vinegar
About ½ cup warm water

Mix the flour and salt in a bowl, add the oil, the Cachaça and vinegar, then the water, little by little until the dough is homogeneous and smooth, but not wet. Work the dough in a floured surface as you do with fresh pasta. Let it rest a couple of hours or until next day. Roll out the dough so it’s a little thinner than a pie crust. Cut in the size and shape desired, usually its round or square. Put the filling in the center, fold and press the dough together so it won’t open, like when you do raviolis. Deep-fry the pastel in very hot oil, serve hot.

Jabuticaba

The jabuticaba (also called Brazilian Grape Tree, Jaboticaba) is a fruit-bearing tree native to the Minas Gerais region near Rio de Janeiro in southern Brazil. The fruit averages size is one inch in diameter but can run from 3/4 to 1-1/2 inches, grape-like in appearance and texture but with a thicker, purplish black skin. The gelatinous whitish pulp contains usually one seed and has a pleasant sweet flavor. The skin is high in tannin and has a slight resinous flavor. Common in Brazilian markets, jabuticabas are largely eaten fresh and are very popular. Fresh fruit may begin to ferment 3 to 4 days after harvest, so they are often used to make delicious jams, strong wines, and liqueurs. It is very healthy, several potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory anti-cancer compounds have been isolated from the fruit and traditionally, an astringent decoction of the sun-dried skins has been used as a treatment for hemoptysis, asthma, diarrhea, and gargled for chronic inflammation of the tonsils. Besides the consumption of the fruits the beautiful tree, with the fruits growing directly on the main trunks and branches of the plant, is very popular, everybody would like to have one in their garden. Some say it brings good luck, but I only know it brings a lot of birds that love the fruit. Maybe it attracted tortoises in the past since the name is derived from the Tupi(Brazilian Indian´s language)word Jabuti (tortoise) + Caba (place), meaning the place where you find tortoises!