Christmas

Growing up eating roast duck often, especially during holidays, stoked my love for all things duck. Foie gras, pâté, or duck confit, I love it all. It's a rich food in more ways than one. But for the holidays it's worth a little splurge. Most of my family's Thanksgivings were always about the juicy roast duck and not the dry turkey. As the years passed we've held to American tradition and dined on turkey for Thanksgiving, but we always have duck on Christmas day. Roasting is a great technique, but sometimes the breast tends to get dry since it cooks faster. I find the best way to cook it is by searing, which renders all the fat and crisps the skin, leaving behind a very flavorful, medium-rare cut of meat. Any steak lover would be pleased with the result. Plus searing is a fast and simple technique that does not have to be limited to holidays.

Duck always pairs well with something sweet, tart, tannic, and astringent. All of those lip-smacking aspects work to cut the richness of the duck. A good tart, tannic wine is also a must. But I knew I had the perfect pairing in pomegranate juice, pressed from the jewels or arils of pomegranates. The red, hexagonal pod fruit is readily available in the markets in the winter season. I had already been planning on developing a recipe to feature this duck-pomegranate pairing when POM Wonderful contacted me to see if I was interested in taking up a challenge of cooking with their juice. I agreed and was sent a box of juice bottles to experiment with. From that juice I was able to create the feature sauce and a complementary vinaigrette for the salad.

I've always wanted to make a yule log or Bûche de Noël for Christmas. This year I vowed I would. Here is my updated version of the traditional holiday cake. Instead of the more common génoise made with eggs and sugar beaten over a bain marie, flour, and melted butter, I decided to make a flourless cake. Simply made with sugar, eggs, and ground walnuts, this recipe results in a light and nutty sponge cake. The filling of chestnut purée and a little bit of rum is my favorite kind. And the frosting is a traditional chocolate buttercream.

Hungarian in nature, this recipe is loosely inspired by the logs my great aunt used to make whenever we visited her in Hungary. I think you will find this cake to be highly irresistible. One thing to note: Since the cake is flourless, it does shrink after baking.

Walnut Yule Log with Chestnut Filling and Chocolate Buttercream

6 large eggs, separated
6 tablespoons confectioners sugar, sifted
1-1/4 cups ground walnuts
1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a rimmed baking sheet, line with parchment paper, and butter again.

In a small bowl, beat egg yolks by hand. In another small bowl, stir together dry ingredients: ground walnuts and baking powder.

In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat egg whites, adding sugar a little at a time, until soft peaks form. On low speed, drizzle in egg yolks. Fold in dry ingredients by hand until just combined.

Spread mixture evenly into prepared baking sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes or until edges are lightly golden. Immediately turn cake out of baking sheet onto a linen towel. Remove parchment paper and flip cake so that bottom is in contact with towel, and roll cake with towel. Set aside for at least 20 minutes, so that cake takes on rolled shape.

It’s not easy being Jewish during the Christmas season, especially if you’re a kid. Chanukah is great, don’t get me wrong. Presents for eight nights in a row. Lighting the candles and watching them flicker in the menorah until they gradually fade away. And I’m a big fan of the latke. But compared to Christmas? Really?

Imagine, then, what my son Luke had to contend with, growing up Jewish and having an older brother who got to celebrate Chanukah and Christmas while he celebrated only the Festival of Lights. And it was all my fault. I married a non-Jew, had a son with him and got divorced. Then I met my true love (Luke’s father) and created our modern nuclear family. Three Jews and a mixed-breed (sorry, Craig), who marched in a Christmas pageant at his father’s church wearing the robe of a king – the same year he was deep in preparation for his bar mitzvah. Holiday time in our household was always a bit fraught.

It’s become fashionable to say that your favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, and every so often I say those words. What I mean is that Thanksgiving is a holiday that’s entirely about food. The glorious turkey. The stuffing your mother used to make. And pies, pies, pies. When you say your favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, you’re not just praising Thanksgiving – you’re secretly dissing Christmas, with all its mercenary trappings and its promise of day-after holiday depression.

But the truth is I am demented over Christmas. I love it. I love twinkle lights, I love my tree (which I put up the first week of December), and I love Christmas dinner. Unlike Thanksgiving dinner, which is practically written in stone, Christmas dinner is a feast with no real rules. Days of discussion precede it. Goose? Prime rib? Turkey all over again? What about ham?

And then there are the desserts. The desserts of Christmas are divine, and they are true holiday recipes, the definition of which is that you would not be caught dead eating them at any other time of the year. It wouldn’t be Christmas without something like gingerbread, or a Yule log, or a plum pudding with hard sauce.