Bûche de Noël

Bûche de Noël is traditionally made in France for Christmas.  When I managed a French artisan bakery it was Christophe's specialty and he used to make three flavours, chocolate, coffee and a white chocolate and raspberry.  Hotels and restaurants loved to order them for a centre piece.

I have to be honest and admit I had never made one until now but I used to watch Christophe making them. 

Chocolate Bûche de Noël

The first thing to make is the crème au beurre or buttercream.

Crème au beurre
125g butter (unsalted)
1 egg and 1 egg yolk (reserve the white)
87g sugar
25g water
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of rum

Soften and whisk the butter in one bowl.  In another bowl whisk the eggs and stand aside.
Measure out the sugar and water accurately and place in a small pan with a sugar thermometer. Dissolve the sugar and then heat until you reach 121 degrees C.  If you are using a heavy based Le Creuset pan for example remove from heat when you hit 120 degrees as the temperature will continue to rise.  Cool to 110 degrees.  Continue to whisk the eggs adding the cooled sugar syrup in a steady stream.  Continue whisking for another few minutes.  Add this mixture to your whipped butter.  Add in cocoa powder and rum and place in fridge to stiffen up.

For the sponge

4 eggs and the reserved egg white
140g sugar
100g flour
1 tablespoon cocoa powder

Line a swiss roll tin with baking parchment and grease it with a knob of melted butter. Mine was 36 x 25cm or 14 x 10 inches but you can use a bigger one to get a thinner sponge which makes rolling it easier. 

Pre-heat your oven to 170 deg C or 160 if fan assisted.

Put the eggs and sugar in a bowl and place over a saucepan of water.  Put the heat on under the pan and bring to a gentle simmer all the time whisking the eggs and sugar.  When it turns thick and creamy and you can write on the mixture with your whisk and it remains visible for a few seconds it is done. 


Sieve in your flour and cocoa powder and gently fold in with a metal spoon.  Pour the mixture into the tin and tilt the tin to move the mixture into the corners. 

Place on the bottom shelf in the oven and bake until it springs back to a gentle touch for 25-35 minutes.  Place a damp tea towel on a board and slide the sponge out of the tin onto it.  Cover with a dry tea towel and leave to cool.

When it is cool spread the buttercream gently all over it with a pallet knife or a spatula.  Cut a line about 1cm in along the shorter side and fold this over and start to roll from here using the greaseproof paper to guide it into a tight roll. 

Set aside and prepare your ganache to cover the log.

Ganache
250g dark chocolate or half and half dark and milk if you don't like it too bitter
100ml cream

Break up the chocolate pieces into the cream in a heavy based pan and put on a gentle heat until the chocolate starts to melt. Stir until it all melts and then set aside to cool. This ganache sets very hard so keep an eye on it.  When it is the right consistency to spread cover the sponge and make marks in it to resemble a log.  Decorate and serve.

For the coffee flavour replace the cocoa powder with 2 teaspoons of coffee liquid extract.  For the white chocolate add 75g of melted white chocolate to the buttercream and make a white chocolate ganache as above to cover.

Her Shell

The day came I was dreading and to be honest I didn't know if I could go through with it. Sausage the pig had reached weight far quicker than I had anticipated.  The decision was made, the help organised, the abattoir arranged and the butcher lined up.

This is what I had traipsed up and down the lane for; everyday, in wind and rain and that was just the summer; to feed her.  She had been fed the best - rolled barley, fruit and vegetables and potatoes.  She had had fresh air, space to run and root and a lovely big deep bed of straw to sleep in when it was cold or wet.  She had a better life than the vast majority of pigs on the planet.

I had the help of a neighbouring farmer and a friend who is also a farmer. Neither had any experience of pigs, just cattle and sheep.  They assured me we would load her easily. In the end we did, but I think they were surprised at her strength when she knocked the gate out of their hands they were holding onto, to block her escape.  The trailer was pushed into the shed beside her sister and she was left overnight to calm down.

The next day I followed the trailer in my car. I felt as if I was part of a funeral procession.  In a way I was.

The abattoir is a small one and he had almost finished a consignment of pigs when we arrived.  The smell was all embracing - it seemed to settle in a gelatinous layer on me.   The screams of the pigs were blood curdling and I glanced at Sausage who had shrunk down into the corner of the trailer, fear in her eyes. 

She was unloaded and pushed into the shoot.

I was heartbroken.

I drove home and decided to go and pick up the other pig immediately to get the experience out of my mind.

Little pig is a an eight week old male Saddleback.  He has settled in now, but initially he wouldn't eat as he was scared of a bucket.

Rasher getting to know little pig

Next day I went back to the abattoir to collect the carcass and take it to the butcher.  To my surprise I didn't feel anything. What was carried out was her shell, Sausage was gone.  The relief was enormous and I know now I will have no difficulty eating her.

Everyone said to me it will get easier but I hope it never does.  It should be difficult.

The reality of living as a small holder.

She Married one of the Rockybottoms.

My mother came from a large family in Castlebar Co. Mayo.  When we were children we loved nothing better than when she and her siblings got together (mainly after funerals or weddings) and told stories about Castlebar in the past.  All were blessed with a great ability to tell a story. I was firmly convinced when I was a child that everyone was completely mad in the town.  However, now I think about it maybe people were better accepted for eccentricity then and not labelled as they are now.

One of the characters often spoken about was a lady called Maimie Graham. To this day I have a picture of her in my mind.  Considering I never saw her or met her, this has to be attributed to my aunts and uncles' ability to create a picture. 

Maimie and her sister Annie used walk into town from a neighbouring village, to sell milk in old-fashioned churns.  For some reason they only did this after dark.  When my mother was a child she was terrified of the shadowy Maimie, walking outside on the road; visible from the driveway of my grandparents' house.  She used wave a torch and as there was little or no street lighting then, my mother was convinced she was a ghost as the light danced about through the trees. The fact that her older sisters perpetuated this myth did not help her fear either. Maimie wore a hat pulled down on her face and grey or dark coloured clothes.

My mental image is of a slightly mad old lady with straggley, grey hair and a dirty face wearing layers of petticoats and an old overcoat.  The hat pulled down over her face and dark sturdy mens' shoes with streaks of dirt on her bare legs.

My grandmother was very fond of saying to us we looked like Maimie Graham particularly when we wore a certain type of hat. Recently I heard myself telling my daughter the exact same thing when she arrived home wearing a hat.  I then had to try to explain to her what I meant.

The Cobweb today

I was talking to my mother on the phone when the subject of the Rockybottoms came up.

My sister had met someone recently who came from Castlebar. She told my mother her name.  My mother trying to place her said that she thought this woman's mother had married one of the Rockybottoms.  When what she had said sank in, I started to laugh and asked her what she was on about.

Apparently the Rockybottoms owned a shop next door to our family pub which at that time was a pub, grocery, undertaker and my great grandmother held court there as the local matchmaker. The Rockeybottoms sold furniture and other various household items.  The proprietor used to stand outside on the footpath shouting "come on in - rock bottom prices" and so the family became known as The Rockybottoms.

They understandably did not like this nickname and apparently there was war if they were called the Rockybottoms. 

Ironically the shop is still there and is called Rocky's.

In the same conversation she then started to tell me about another pub further down the street called Bucko Sheridan's. They had cows and walked the cows through the town and in through the bar for milking, twisting their tails to prevent the inevitable.  My mother said that the locals sat up at the bar never blinked when this procession occurred at the same time every evening. 

This pub is still called Bucko's today.

Sadly, characters such as these seem to have all but disappeared from towns in Ireland or else they are not spoken about.  I really wish that I had had the foresight to record the stories at the time.  Most of my uncles and aunts are now dead and the three that are left are well into their eighties.  But I am so grateful that I got to sit spellbound as a child and listen to all the stories.  It was magic.