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Pate a Choux Recipe

2 years ago

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 PÂTE À CHOUX [Cream Puff Paste]
Pâte à choux is one of those quick, easy, and useful preparations like béchamel sauce which every cook should know how to make. Probably the only reason for the packaged mix, which in addition to its purchase price requires fresh eggs and hot water, is that most people do not realize cream puff paste is only a very, very thick white sauce or panade of flour, water, seasonings, and buttter, into which eggs are beaten. The eggs make the paste swell as it cooks. For half the price of a packaged mix, and in less than ten minutes, you can make your own cream puff paste with the good taste of fresh butter. Baked just as it is in the following recipe or mixed with cheese, pâte à choux becomes puffs for hors d’oeuvres. Sweetened with sugar, it is ready to be cream puffs. When mashed potatoes or cooked semolina is beaten in, it turns into gnocchi. And with ground fish, veal, or chicken, it is quenelle paste, or can become a mousse.
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Instructions
  1. Bring water to boil with the butter and seasonings and boil slowly until the butter has melted. Meanwhile measure out the flour.
  2. Remove from heat and immediately pour in all the flour at once. Beat vigorously with a wooden spatula or spoon for several seconds to blend thoroughly. Then beat over moderately high heat for 1 to 2 minutes until mixture leaves the sides of the pan and the spoon, forms a mass, and begins to film the bottom of the pan.
  3. Remove saucepan from heat and make a well in the center of the paste with your spoon. Immediately break an egg into the center of the well. Beat it into the paste for several seconds until it has absorbed. Continue with the rest of the eggs, beating them in one by one. The third and fourth eggs will be absorbed more slowly. Beat for a moment more to be sure all is well blended and smooth.
Pâte à choux for Dessert Puffs
  1. For dessert puffs, only a suggestion of sugar—1 teaspoon—is added to boil with the water and butter in the preceding recipe, and the salt is reduced from 1 teaspoon to a pinch. Otherwise there is no difference in ingredients or method.
.Leftover pâte à choux
  1. Pâte à choux is usually employed as soon as it is made, and while it is still warm. If it is not used immediately, rub the surface with butter and cover with waxed paper to prevent a skin from forming over it. If your recipe then specifies warm pâte à choux, beat it vigorously in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat for a moment until it is smooth and free from lumps and is barely warm to your finger. Be very careful not to warm it to more than tepid or the paste will lose its puffing ability. Pâte à choux may be kept under refrigeration for several days, or it may be frozen. Reheated gently as just described, it will produce a good small puff; large puffs may not always rise as high as those made with fresh paste.
  2. If you wish to make hot hors d’oeuvres in a hurry, leftover pâte à choux can help you. Beat 3 or 4 tablespoons of heavy cream into ½ cup of warmed pâte à choux, then several tablespoons of grated cheese, minced ham, or minced clams. Spread the mixture on crackers, toast, or triangles of bread, pop them into a hot oven, and in 15 minutes you will have lovely puffed canapés.

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