Gougères by Casu Marzu

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Recipe by: Casu Marzu Uploaded by Drimble Wedge

I've been meaning to try my hand at choux pastry, and I didn't feel much like anything sweet tonight. Instead, I found a recipe for gougères in Ratio, and decided to take a swing at it.

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At its simplest, choux is just 2 parts water:1 part butter:1 part flour:2 parts egg.

Easy, right? I hope so.

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This is what we get out of the above ratio (plus cheese):

  • 8 ounces of water
  • 4 ounces unsalted butter
  • 4 ounces AP flour
  • 8 ounces of eggs
  • a bit of pepper
  • a bit of nutmeg
  • I used about 6 ounces of cheese. In this case, a mix of parm, 7yo cheddar, and some gruyère I needed to use up.

I strongly suggest having your mise en place right at hand ahead of time, since everything moves quite fast in this recipe.

The next couple steps were a flurry of activity, and I kinda forgot to take photos.

First, you melt the butter into the water, and let it come to a rolling boil. When the water/butter mix comes up to a boil, add the flour and mix like a fucking madman. MIX MIX MIX MIX MIX MIX OH GOD MIX, JESUS CHRIST MIX FASTER!!

Okay, now it should be a shiny, goopy, pasty dough that is forming around your spoon. Keep stirring and cooking the flour ball for another minute or so to cook the rawness out.

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Dump the dough ball into a bowl and let cool for two minutes or so.

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Add a bit of the egg and mix. It's gonna look a bit curdled, something like spaetzle at this point.

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Keep mixing.

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Keep mixing. It will come together sooner or later, as long as you keep at it. Repeat until all the egg has been added.

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Add your cheese, pepper, and nutmeg.

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Mix again.

Get a piping bag, a couple of spoons, or a small ice cream baller and toss onto a pan. It is preferable to use parchment under the gougères, but I just greased the pan with a bit of veg oil, which leads to a bit more browning on the bottoms. Not a big deal.

Toss the pan into a 450F oven for 10 minutes. Drop the temp to 350 for another 15-20 minutes, until the tops are nice and golden brown.

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They should look like this. A handy tip is to poke the tip of a sharp knife into the sides of the gougères and leave em in the now shut off oven to help dry the middles out.

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And there you have gougères.

The same ratio can be used to make profiteroles, doughnuts, all sorts of delicious things. :)