Pate à choux

Pate à choux is a type of pastry that always sounded, and looked, so complicated that I never entertained the idea of trying to make it at home. I can't remember the last time I ate any, either, because we don't exactly frequent restaurants with profiteroles and Paris-Brest on the menu. (We go to Chipotle on special occasions, and take out chicken pho that is actually really good from a place nearby when M is sick.) But Michael Ruhlman (via his book Ratio) convinced me to try pate à choux when he wrote, essentially twice in this one little chapter, that he has no idea why it's not usually part of the home cook's repertoire, since it is easy, fast, economical, and extremely versatile. And delicate and French and pastry at the same time. Wow. Say no more.

So pate à choux consists of nothing more than butter, water, salt, sugar (if it's going to be used in a dessert), flour, and eggs. The preparation is unique, but nothing resembling advanced pastry skills is needed: you bring the water, butter, salt, and sugar to a simmer in a medium saucepan, then stir in the flour quickly, at which point it becomes a soft, homemade-playdough-like dough that you cook for another minute or two to let it release some of the water. The dough must be cooled so that the eggs do not cook too quickly (i.e. scramble), so after a few minutes' rest you whip in whole eggs, one at a time, which eventually assimilate themselves into the dough, which starts looking like a batter again.

Then all you do is pipe out logs for eclairs, or just spoon golf-sized balls, onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. They're baked at 425 for 10 minutes, then the temp is reduced to 350 and they continue cooking another 10-20 minutes, during which they start rising and puffing out quite a bit. I chose to make little balls for cream puffs and they were pretty much done after 20 minutes.

For filling I adapted a recipe for pastry cream from CI's Restaurant Favorites (which I am incapable of simply opening to find a particular recipe---I always get drawn in and lose myself for a few minutes in glorious possibilties such as Asian five-spice chocolate cake, or pear and green tea sorbet, or cannoli gelato...). It called for half-and-half instead of cream (which I did not buy this week), and a fairly modest amount of egg yolks. It was very quick and tastes not too rich or cloying to me, which has been the case with other pastry cream recipes. I opened the cream puffs halfway around the middle and scooped in some cream, then drizzled a lazy chocolate sauce (half-and-half heated, poured over 4 oz. bittersweet chocolate and vanilla, whisked til smooth).

Even if pate à choux were much more complicated, I would be willing to make it again. These were delicate, positively cloud-like, and though they possibly needed a tad more sugar, I thought they were perfect with a filling and a fairly sweet sauce on top.  Now that I know how unbelievably easy and versatile this pastry is, I'm afraid I might be making it more than is good for us in days to come...

(photos next time, my camera batteries went out on me and I was more interested in eating dessert than going to look for replacement batteries at the moment...)