When you have done puff shells once or twice you will find that it takes less than 30 minutes from start to finish to make them ready for the oven, and that they are a wonderfully useful invention. Hot, bite-sized, filled puffs make delicious appetizers. Large ones may contain creamed fish, meat, or mushrooms and be a hot first course. And sweet puffs with ice cream or custard filling and chocolate or caramel topping are always an attractive dessert.
The Pastry Bag
A pastry bag makes the neatest puffs. If you do not have one, drop the paste on the baking sheet with a spoon.
Small Puffs
For 36 to 40 puffs 1¼ to 1½ inches in diameter
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Ingredients for 2 cups warm pâte à choux from the preceding recipe
A pastry bag with ½-inch, round tube opening
Make the pâte à choux.
Fold the top 3 inches of the pastry bag over your left hand as illustrated. Using a rubber spatula, fill the bag with the warm choux paste.
2 buttered baking sheets
Squeeze the paste onto the baking sheets, making circular mounds about 1 inch in diameter and ½ inch high. Space the mounds 2 inches apart.
1 egg beaten with ½ tsp water in a small bowl
A pastry brush
Then dip your pastry brush into the beaten egg and flatten each puff very slightly with the side of the brush. Avoid dripping egg down the puff and onto the baking sheet, as this will prevent the puff from rising.
Set the sheets in the upper and lower thirds of your preheated, 425-degree oven, and bake for about 20 minutes. The puffs are done when they have doubled in size, are a golden brown, and firm and crusty to the touch. Remove them from the oven and pierce the side of each puff with a sharp knife. Then set in the turned-off oven and leave the door ajar for 10 minutes. Cool the puffs on a rack.
Large Puffs
For 10 to 12 puffs about 3 inches in diameter
Use the same ingredients as in the preceding recipe, but provide your pastry bag with a ¾-inch, round tube opening. Squeeze the choux paste onto the baking sheets in mounds 2 to 2¼ inches in diameter and 1 inch at the highest point. Space the mounds 2 inches apart. Flatten each mound slightly with the flat of your pastry brush dipped into the beaten egg. Place the baking sheets in the upper and lower thirds of a preheated, 425-degree oven and bake for 20 minutes, or until the puffs have doubled in size and are lightly browned. Then reduce heat to 375 degrees and bake for 10 to 15 minutes more, or until the puffs are golden brown, and firm and crusty to the touch. Remove from oven, and make a 1-inch slit in the side of each puff. Return the puffs to the hot, turned-off oven, and leave its door ajar for 10 minutes. Then open one puff as a test. If its center is damp, either reach into the other puffs through their slits with the handle of a teaspoon and remove their damp centers, or cut all the puffs in two horizontally, and scrape out the uncooked portions with a fork. Allow the halves to cool and crisp, then re-form the puffs.
Freezing Puff Shells
Puff shells freeze perfectly. Just before using frozen puffs, set them in a 425-degree oven for 3 to 4 minutes to thaw and crisp them.
Filling Puff Shells
For appetizer or entrée puffs, use any of the cream fillings. Either place the filling in a pastry bag, slit the sides of the puffs, and squeeze in the filling, or remove the tops of the puffs and insert the filling with a spoon. Reheat for 2 to 3 minutes in a 425-degree oven. For dessert puffs, use ice cream, or the custard filling, crème pâtissière, plain or with beaten egg whites.
Petits Choux au Fromage
[Cheese Puffs]
As cocktail appetizers, these may be served hot or cold, and need no filling. Because of the large amount of cheese, they do not rise as high as plain puffs.
For about 40 puffs, 1½ inches in diameter when baked
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
1 cup (4 ounces) grated Swiss, or Swiss and Parmesan, cheese
2 cups warm pâte à choux
Beat the cheese into the warm pâte à choux. Correct seasoning. Squeeze into circular mounds on a baking sheet, paint with beaten egg, and bake as in the preceding recipe for small puffs. After painting with egg, you may, if you wish, sprinkle each puff with a pinch of grated cheese.
GNOCCHI
Gnocchi and quenelles are types of dumplings made of pâte à choux into which a purée is beaten. They are shaped into ovals or cylinders and are poached for 15 to 20 minutes in salted water or bouillon until they swell almost double in size. After they have drained, they may be covered with a hot sauce, or they may be gratinéed with cheese and butter, or with a sauce.
Both gnocchi and quenelles are relatively simple to make, and as they may be poached ahead of time and either refrigerated or frozen, they are a useful addition to one’s cooking repertoire.
GNOCCHI DE POMMES DE TERRE
[Potato Gnocchi]
These make a good luncheon dish, or may be used as a starchy vegetable to accompany a roast.
For about 12 gnocchi, 3 by 1½ inches when cooked
3 to 4 medium-sized baking potatoes (1 pound)
Peel and quarter the potatoes. Boil in salted water until tender. Drain and put through a ricer. You should have 2 cups.
Dry out the potatoes by stirring them in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over moderate heat for a minute or two until they film the bottom of the pan. Remove from heat.
1 cup warm pâte à choux
⅓ cup (1½ ounces) grated Swiss, or Swiss and Parmesan, cheese
Beat the pâte à choux and the cheese into the potatoes. Correct seasoning.
Take the mixture by dessert-spoonfuls and roll it with the palms of your hands on a lightly floured board to form cylinders about 2½ inches long and 1 inch in diameter.
A 12-inch skillet of simmering salted water
Slip the gnocchi into the simmering water and poach, uncovered, for 15 to 20 minutes. Water should remain almost but not quite at the simmer throughout the cooking. If it boils, the gnocchi may disintegrate. When they have swelled almost double, and roll over easily in the water, they are done. Drain on a rack or a towel. Serve as in the following suggestions:
TO SERVE
Gnocchi Gratinés au Frontage
[Gnocchi Baked with Cheese]
The preceding gnocchi
½ cup grated Swiss or Parmesan cheese
2 Tb butter cut into pea-sized dots
Arrange the drained gnocchi in a shallow, buttered, baking dish. Spread the cheese over them and dot with the butter. Set aside uncovered.
Ten minutes before serving time, reheat and brown them slowly under a moderately hot broiler.
Gnocchi Mornay
[Gnocchi Baked with Cheese Sauce]
For about 3 cups of sauce
4 Tb butter
4½ Tb flour
A 2-quart saucepan
3 cups boiling milk
¾ tsp salt
⅛ tsp pepper
Big pinch of nutmeg
Cook the butter and flour together slowly in the saucepan for 2 minutes without coloring. Off heat, beat in the boiling milk and seasonings. Boil, stirring, for 1 minute.
¾ cup (3 ounces) coarsely grated Swiss cheese
Remove from heat and beat for a moment to cool slightly. Then beat in the cheese and correct seasoning.
The potato gnocchi
3 Tb finely grated Swiss cheese
1 Tb butter cut into pea-sized dots
Arrange the gnocchi in a buttered baking dish about 2 inches deep. Spoon the cheese sauce over them, sprinkle with cheese, and dot with the butter. Set aside uncovered.
About 10 minutes before serving time, reheat and brown slowly under a moderately hot broiler.
ADDITIONS TO THE POTATO GNOCCHI PASTE.
Any of the following may be mixed into the gnocchi paste along with the cheese, and are especially good if your gnocchi are to be served as a main course.
3 to 4 TB minced fresh green herbs, such as chives and pa
rsley
¼ to ½ cup minced cooked ham or bacon
¼ to ½ cup sautéed diced mushrooms or chicken livers
GNOCCHI DE SEMOULE AVEC PTE À CHOUX — PATALINA
[Semolina Gnocchi]
Italian gnocchi are made of semolina with butter and seasonings. This French version with pâte à choux gives the semolina a puff and a lighter texture. Semolina is farina, which in turn is the residue of middle-sized particles left over from the sifting of durum wheat, the type of wheat used for making macaroni. Untreated semolina takes 20 to 30 minutes to cook. Quick-cooking farina breakfast cereal, which is semolina, cooks in 3 or 4 minutes.
For about 12 pieces, 3 by 1½ inches when cooked
1½ cups water
1 Tb butter
½ tsp salt
⅛ tsp pepper
Pinch of nutmeg
Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan with the butter and seasonings.
¼ cup (2 ounces) quick-cooking farina breakfast cereal
Stirring the boiling water with a wooden spoon, gradually sprinkle in the farina. Boil, stirring, for 3 to 4 minutes until the cereal is thick enough to form a mass on the back of the spoon. (You will have about 1¼ cups of cereal.)
½ cup (2 ounces) grated Swiss or Parmesan cheese
2 cups warm pâte à choux
Beat the cereal, then the cheese, into the pâte à choux. Correct seasoning.
Roll the gnocchi paste into cylinders on a floured board, poach in salted water, drain, and brown under the broiler with grated cheese or cheese sauce as for the potato gnocchi in the preceding recipes.
QUENELLES
A quenelle, for those who are not familiar with this delicate triumph of French cooking, is a mixture of pâte à choux, cream, and purée of raw fish, veal, or chicken that is formed into ovals or cylinders and poached in a seasoned liquid. Served hot in a fine sauce, quenelles make a distinguished first course or luncheon dish—they are individual small independent mousses really, almost as light as a soufflé, with just enough body to hold themselves in shape for poaching. If the mixture is too solid, the quenelle will have a dry and heavy texture. You therefore want to choose the kind of fish—if it’s fish quenelles you’re making—that has the firm gelatinous flesh that will absorb the maximum amount of cream. It’s the cream that makes for lightness and delicacy of texture.
Manufacturing note
In the 1950s, when we were working on our book in France, any kind of a mousse mixture like this was an arduous process because it was the era BFP—Before Food Processor. Quenelles were the province of the haute cuisine, or at least of the great restaurants with plenty of young apprentice cooks to do the dog work. First the fish had to be pounded with a large wooden pestle in a vast marble mortar. When reduced to a purée, it was beaten into a pâte à choux and turned out onto a large drum-shaped sieve. Then began the hateful process of rubbing it through that sieve with a wooden masher—you had to eliminate gristly bits, bones, and so forth. After you rubbed it through, you removed the sticky mass off the bottom of the sieve with an oval-shaped palm-sized scraper made of horn—actual animal horn. (That was also the era BP, Before Plastics.) Then you beat the mixture over ice to chill it so that you could beat in as much cream as it would take and still hold its shape. It took, literally, hours to do, and was perfectly delicious—but not the least of it was the washing of that drum sieve when you were through, scrubbing bone bits out of tiny mesh crevices. Not an everyday affair, for the home cook at least.
We thought we were clever indeed, in our first edition, to have eliminated the mortar and pestle. The electric blender, which did exist at that time, was not at all satisfactory, but we found that two times through the fine blade of the meat grinder, a chilling, and a beating up with the electric mixer made a more than satisfactory quenelle. We eliminated that self-torture, the sieve, and eliminate it still; some cooks, however, do use it, and sieving does undeniably produce a more velvety texture. Sieving is optional, in this book.
Now, of course, with the food processor, all of the preceding is ancient lore. Quenelles and mousses take literally minutes and have stepped out of the never-never land of ultra fancy food into the everyday life of the average home cook.
QUENELLES DE POISSON
[Fish Quenelles]
Fish quenelles in France are usually labeled quenelles de brochet, and are presumably made from pike, a fish of excellent flavor but so webbed with little shadlike bones that a quenelle is the most convenient way of eating it. If you do use pike, then, you will have to pound it in a mortar and then sieve it or you’ll never rid it of bones. However, boneless fish filets may be pureed as is.
Choice of fish
Choose fish with lean, close-grained flesh of a slightly gelatinous quality. Flimsy, light-textured fish, like most flounder, will absorb little cream and will therefore produce a rather dull and dry quenelle. Halibut and monkfish do nicely, as does gray sole or winter flounder. Very fresh petrale sole is also excellent. Less available choices are silver hake (merlan), green or ocean cod (colin), conger or sea eel (congre).
For about 16 quenelles
The pâte à choux—for 2 cups
1 cup water
A 1½-quart heavy-bottomed saucepan
1 tsp salt
4 Tb butter
¾ cup flour (scooped and leveled)
2 “large” eggs
2 egg whites (¼ cup)
A 4-quart mixing bowl with a tray of ice cubes and water to cover them
Following the general directions for pâte à choux, bring the water to the boil in the saucepan with the salt and butter. As soon as the butter has melted, remove the saucepan from heat and beat in all the flour at once with a wooden spatula or spoon. Then beat over moderately high heat for several minutes until the mixture forms a mass. Off heat and one by one, beat in the eggs, then the egg whites. Set saucepan in the bowl of ice and stir for several minutes to cool; leave in the ice while you prepare the fish, and be sure the pâte à choux is well chilled before you combine the two.
The quenelle mixture
1¼ lbs. (2½ packed cups) well-chilled skinless and boneless lean fish filets from the preceding suggestions
A food processor (steel blade)
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp white pepper
4 to 6 to 8 or more Tb chilled heavy whipping cream
A rubber spatula
Cut the chilled fish filets into 1-inch strips, then into 1-inch pieces, and place in the bowl of the processor, along with the chilled pâte à choux from the previous step, salt, pepper, and 4 tablespoons of chilled cream. Process 30 seconds or so, stopping if necessary to scrape down sides of bowl with rubber spatula. If the mixture seems stiff, blend in more cream by the tablespoon—you want to add as much as it will take, but the mixture must hold its shape well in a mass on the spoon.
A saucepan of almost simmering salted water
2 Tb chopped truffle OR, a big pinch of nutmeg
Scoop out a dollop as a test, drop it into the almost simmering water, and let it poach several minutes. Taste it: process in more cream if you think it can be absorbed—but better too little than too much! Add more seasonings, too, if you think them necessary. Then blend in the truffle or nutmeg. (If you are not proceeding at once to the next step, refrigerate the mixture.)
Shaping quenelles and poaching them
2 dessert spoons in a cup of cold water
A 12-inch skillet containing 3 to 4 inches of barely simmering fish stock or salted water
(The spoon method described here makes the most delicate quenelles. A neater-looking but less light-textured alternative is to roll them into cylinders on a floured board as for the gnocchi.)
With a wet spoon, dip out a rounded mass of the cold quenelle paste. Transfer the spoon to your left hand. Smooth the top of the paste with the inverted bowl of the second wet spoon. Then slip the bowl of the second spoon under the quenelle to loosen it and drop it into the barely simmering liquid. Rapidly f
orm quenelles with the rest of the paste in the same manner. Poach them uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes, never allowing the water to come beyond the barest suggestion of a simmer. The quenelles are done when they have about doubled in size and roll over easily. Remove with a slotted spoon, and drain on a rack or a towel.
(*) If the quenelles are not to be served immediately, arrange them in a lightly buttered dish, brush them with melted butter, cover with waxed paper, and refrigerate. They will keep perfectly for one to two days.
Fish Mousse
In Case of Disaster
If by any chance your quenelle paste turns out to be too soft to poach as quenelles, it will taste every bit as good if you declare it to be a mousse. Pack it into a buttered soufflé mold, a ring mold, or individual serving molds. Set in a pan of boiling water and bake in a preheated 350-degree oven until the mousse has risen and shows a faint line of shrinkage from the sides of the mold. Unmold and serve with any of the fish sauces suggested or with the delicious sauce mousseline sabayon in the fish soufflé recipe.