Rest assured, this Portuguese holiday delight isn’t quite what it seems
Just like every rational human being with taste receptors and a functioning parietal lobe, I love chocolate. Milk chocolate, sweet chocolate, couverture, gianduja—I love it all. If there’s so much as a cacao nib in the house, I will search it out and make it mine.
I feel exactly the same about salami. Whether it’s Genoa , Soppressata, Nduja or a simple Cotto salami, that intoxicating mix of cured meat and spices are impossible for me to resist. I’m not sure what I would do for a Klondike Bar, but I am certain I would do terrible, unspeakable things for a good salami.
I lived my entire life in the comforting bosom of certainty that chocolate and salami would never share even a single strand of a Lahousse foodpairing, much less a place at my holiday table. There is no situation where those two wonders of the food world should ever meet in one dish—but then I made some Portuguese friends.
The Portuguese love affair with pork is well known, so when Tânia and Jose walked through my door with a sausage-shaped package tied with string like a proper salami, an irrepressible Cheshire grin spread across my face. Before their coats were off I had already sliced the cured comestible in my mind and plotted what cheeses to pair with this unexpected holiday offering.
“This is a special Portuguese holiday treat,” Tânia informed me. “Chocolate salami.”
Chocolate salami. Time slowed to a molasses-like crawl as those words washed, syllable by painful syllable, over my consciousness, turning my cheerful holiday dream of charcuterie delights into a misguided, fusion nightmare of Moreau-esque proportions.
In the safety of my kitchen I unwrapped the package as Tânia explained that this Portuguese holiday bonne bouche was not a tortured mutation of cured meat and chocolate. In fact, there is no meat involved in this dessert at all. Chocolate salami gets its name from its appearance rather than its ingredients, which made my heart release an audible sigh of relief from within my chest.
Salame de chocolate is a spectacularly delicious cylinder of rich chocolate flecked with broken cookies and nuts that give it its namesake, salami-like appearance. It’s less sweet and much less dense than a candy bar, with a texture that’s somewhere between chocolate fudge and cookie dough, and yet lighter than either.
Salame de chocolate is shockingly easy to make. Simple enough for a kitchen amateur to create, but the finished product is impressive enough to make your friends think you’re been possessed by the spirit of Dominique Ansel.
Happy holidays and bom appétit.
Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup slivered almonds
- 1/4 cup slivered pistachios
- 5 oz butter (or 10 tbsp)
- 8 oz semisweet chocolate chips
- 2 egg yolks
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder
- 6 tbsp white sugar
- 7 oz of Maria cookies (or for a Southern touch use vanilla wafers)
- 2 tbsp confectioner’s sugar
- Waxed paper
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 F. Spread out the almonds and pistachios on a baking sheet in a single layer and bake until lightly toasted—about 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside.
Add the butter, chocolate chips, eggs, cocoa powder, and sugar to a saucepan on medium heat and cook for 3-5 minutes, stirring well, until it becomes smooth and silky.
Mix the chocolate mixture and toasted nuts together until smooth and even.
Break the cookies into small, random-sized pieces and add to the chocolate mixture.
Refrigerate the mixture for 15-20 minutes until it begins to harden, but can still be molded into a sausage shape.
Place the mixture onto a sheet of waxed paper and form it into a thick, sausage-like shape.
Roll the waxed paper tightly around the mixture and twist the ends like it’s a party time at Willie Nelson’s. Roll the log on an even surface (like you’re making a PlayDoh snake) until it takes the form of a salami.
Refrigerate for at least 3-4 hours.
Remove the hardened chocolate salami from the refrigerator and unwrap, spreading the waxed paper out flat. Dust the waxed paper with the confectioner’s sugar and roll the salami around in the waxed paper to coat it with the sugar. Wrap the salami back up in the same, sugary waxed paper and place in the refrigerator.
When you’re ready to serve, take it out of the fridge and slice off pieces as needed.
To give as a gift, wrap with parchment paper and tie with twine like a proper salami (see YouTube for how to tie salami)
Longtime food writer and professional chef Mike McJunkin is a native Chattanoogan currently living abroad who has trained chefs, owned and operated restaurants. Join him on Facebook at facebook.com/SushiAndBiscuits