As I said in the last blog post, while Benson and I visited our friend Kaila in Waltham, we did a lot of cooking. This dish is from the same meal as the previous post, but I thought it deserved its own explanation. This recipe originates from the wonderful French Laundry Cookbook, featuring recipes from Thomas Keller's Michelin 3-star restaurant The French Laundry in California. It has amazing, gourmet recipes, with full explanations of WHY you do certain steps, and clear explanations of techniques which I might have thought were beyond me or too complicated until I tried them and saw how much they improved things. It was a Christmas present from a thoughtful, sweet, and hungry boyfriend. I've made other dishes from this cookbook, as well, and each of them have tasted delicious. My presentation skills usually are a bit lacking, but, well, the food is good. It's definitely inspiring me to improve myself, at any rate! Anyways, Gruyère Cheese Gougères are hot and crisp and moist in the center, great for a large group of people to munch on, and, despite the long recipe description, pretty easy to make!
Benson and I have made these twice: the first time, Benson described the taste as "like Goldfish" (you know, the little orange fish snacks?) - but the second time it didn't quite have that same flavor - it depends highly on the exact cheese you use. The first time we used an older, harder Gruyere and the second time it was a bit fresher and softer. Both times were good, but I could taste the difference. So, if possible, taste your Gruyere to make sure its a flavor you like. I think I'd go with the older hard gruyere, personally! You could use a different cheese for an entirely different flavor! Chedder, perhaps? I was pretty happy with Gruyere.
For another recount of this recipe, visit the excellent blog "French Laundry at Home" in which one woman cooks EVERY DISH from the French Laundry Cookbook, with her own minor tweaks and advice. Every recipe I've made from French Laundry, I've looked at her blog for advice. She also has a useful list of both the most approachable recipes, and her favorite recipes: and sometimes these two lists even overlap! Find that here.
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| This was the result of shredding a 3.5 oz block of cheese |
For another recount of this recipe, visit the excellent blog "French Laundry at Home" in which one woman cooks EVERY DISH from the French Laundry Cookbook, with her own minor tweaks and advice. Every recipe I've made from French Laundry, I've looked at her blog for advice. She also has a useful list of both the most approachable recipes, and her favorite recipes: and sometimes these two lists even overlap! Find that here.
7 tbs unsalted butter
1 tbs Kosher salt (specifically Diamond Crystal, apparently)
1 pinch white sugar
1 1/4 cup white flour
4 to 5 large eggs
1 1/4 cup shredded Gruyere cheese (a 3.5 oz block is about right)
fresh ground white pepper
A brief aside on salt: I found these slightly salty (and I LOVE salt), so you might want to go a little easy on the salt. The book actually specifies Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt, and warns that if you use some other kind of salt you may have to adjust your salt levels further, since different types of salt have different properties. Kosher salt dissolves fast and is good at mixing it's flavor into whatever your cooking. I've recently started using kosher salt a lot more in my cooking for this reason. I currently have not one, not two, but FIVE different kinds of salt in my house: iodized salt, kosher salt, a grinder full of sea-salt, my flavored truffle salt, and my prized "popcorn and nut" salt . This last is a very uniform and fine flaked salt which sticks very well to things like nuts and popcorn (hence the name). I only use it for things like popcorn, nuts, and homemade fries - things that you want salted in THAT sense, not salted in the sense of a well seasoned soup. My dad always has this around the house, and, before the internet became so convenient for shopping, often had trouble finding it in stores. This resulted in him hitting up movie theaters (mostly the independent Charles Theater in Baltimore) and purchasing them directly from the movie theater. Though since he's a big movie goer, and after a while people recognize him at these places, he often gets the salt for free. This is how I got MY popcorn salt: when seeing Serenity (the movie from the tv show Firefly) in Boston, we noticed that the popcorn stand had laying out a ton of shakers of Popcorn salt. So we went up and asked how much they would sell two of them to us. This resulted in a couple very confused popcorn venders, who checked with the manager, who proceeded to just give us two canisters. It was awesome and highly amusing at the time. Anyway, that aside wasn't as brief as expected, but again, I really like salt.
Back to the recipe: Preheat the oven to 450F, then combine water, sugar, salt and butter in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add ALL the flour at once, reducing the heat to medium, then stir constantly for 2 minutes. During this time, the batter should reduce and start to dry up and form a ball of dough.
Next, transfer to a bowl and beat with a mixer with a dough paddle for 30 seconds. Or in the case of someone who doesn't have such a thing (*cough* me *cough*) just beat stir it with a wooden spoon.
Add 4 eggs, then mix more on the dough paddle thing (or at this point, blend it in an electric mixer on the "mix" setting). You want it to form a nice, smooth, silky dough, which when you lift up the mixer forms soft peaks which fall over at the tip. If its stiff, add the egg white of the remaining fifth egg, mix more, and if it's STILL too stiff add the yolk as well. Once its softly peaking, add 3/4 of the gruyere cheese and mix until smooth. Taste, and adjust the seasoning by adding additional salt (again, not TOO much) and ground white pepper to taste.
Now, line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or baking mat. In 1 tbs lumps (or perhaps slightly larger), you want to place the batter on the parchment, with 2 inches between each mound. Ideally, these are in nice little balls - we used a melon baller which worked nicely, though I think they turned out a little smaller than I'd like - when they're a little larger they fluff up a bit more. The French Laundry Cookbook recommends using a pastry bag with a pastry tip to put out the little balls - you can do this by stuffing the dough in a ziplock bag and cutting off the corner. Once you've done this, sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of the doughballs, a bit of cheese on each one! About 1/2 tsp of cheese on each puff, ideally.
We halved the recipe, so we ended up with just over one baking tin full of these: if possible, you want to fit all of your puffs in one batch, since you will be changing the temperature of the oven partway through and thus will have to do each batch completely separately and wait for the oven to get back up to heat between if you don't manage it in one go. So, bake for 7-8 minutes at 450F, until they've puffed up a little and hold their shape. Then reduce heat to 350F, and bake for 20-25 minutes more until they're a lovely light golden brown, puffy and beautiful to behold. Biting into one at this point (careful, they're HOT), you'll find it's mostly hollow, slightly moist on the inside but still crisp on the outside. Absolutely delicious, and best when piping hot. The next day they're still tasty, but they lose a lot of the oomph they have right out of the oven. At any rate, a tasty and DIFFERENT type of starch/roll you can add to your meal, full of cheesy goodness!
fresh ground white pepper
A brief aside on salt: I found these slightly salty (and I LOVE salt), so you might want to go a little easy on the salt. The book actually specifies Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt, and warns that if you use some other kind of salt you may have to adjust your salt levels further, since different types of salt have different properties. Kosher salt dissolves fast and is good at mixing it's flavor into whatever your cooking. I've recently started using kosher salt a lot more in my cooking for this reason. I currently have not one, not two, but FIVE different kinds of salt in my house: iodized salt, kosher salt, a grinder full of sea-salt, my flavored truffle salt, and my prized "popcorn and nut" salt . This last is a very uniform and fine flaked salt which sticks very well to things like nuts and popcorn (hence the name). I only use it for things like popcorn, nuts, and homemade fries - things that you want salted in THAT sense, not salted in the sense of a well seasoned soup. My dad always has this around the house, and, before the internet became so convenient for shopping, often had trouble finding it in stores. This resulted in him hitting up movie theaters (mostly the independent Charles Theater in Baltimore) and purchasing them directly from the movie theater. Though since he's a big movie goer, and after a while people recognize him at these places, he often gets the salt for free. This is how I got MY popcorn salt: when seeing Serenity (the movie from the tv show Firefly) in Boston, we noticed that the popcorn stand had laying out a ton of shakers of Popcorn salt. So we went up and asked how much they would sell two of them to us. This resulted in a couple very confused popcorn venders, who checked with the manager, who proceeded to just give us two canisters. It was awesome and highly amusing at the time. Anyway, that aside wasn't as brief as expected, but again, I really like salt.
Back to the recipe: Preheat the oven to 450F, then combine water, sugar, salt and butter in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add ALL the flour at once, reducing the heat to medium, then stir constantly for 2 minutes. During this time, the batter should reduce and start to dry up and form a ball of dough.
Next, transfer to a bowl and beat with a mixer with a dough paddle for 30 seconds. Or in the case of someone who doesn't have such a thing (*cough* me *cough*) just beat stir it with a wooden spoon.
Now, line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or baking mat. In 1 tbs lumps (or perhaps slightly larger), you want to place the batter on the parchment, with 2 inches between each mound. Ideally, these are in nice little balls - we used a melon baller which worked nicely, though I think they turned out a little smaller than I'd like - when they're a little larger they fluff up a bit more. The French Laundry Cookbook recommends using a pastry bag with a pastry tip to put out the little balls - you can do this by stuffing the dough in a ziplock bag and cutting off the corner. Once you've done this, sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of the doughballs, a bit of cheese on each one! About 1/2 tsp of cheese on each puff, ideally.
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| Just before baking |
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| A lovely toasty brown, with the cheese all melted into the puff! |
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