In the late 90s I went through a phase of French cooking. It was a regrettable phase, because I did not have many cooking skills at the time. I don't know why I decided to go from 0 to 60 and skip the in-between stages of learning how to cook "normal people food" like casseroles and roasts. That stuff seemed boring to me, and I had this vague idea that you should aim high. I guess I thought that if you're going to learn cooking, learn the best cooking! Also, I have always been the sort of person who goes straight for the highest difficulty level in anything, and usually ends up regretting it later.
I was reminded of this phase this morning as I browsed the Chow website and saw their article about making Pâte à Choux shells. When I saw it, I laughed. I had forgotten all about the Pâte à Choux "incident," but seeing this article brought it back in vivid memory.
Pâte à Choux are little puff pastry shells which you can fill and use in desserts. Make them tube shaped, fill them with cream, drizzle them with chocolate, boom: eclairs. Make them round, cut off the tops, fill them with ice cream: boom, profiteroles.
Best of all, they are rated as "easy." What's not to like?
I spent an entire weekend making batch after batch of Pâte à Choux. The best were only barely edible. The worst were lumpy, and oddly damp. I still don't know where I went wrong. (It probably didn't help that I had never had a profiterole or Pâte à Choux, and had only the vaguest notion of what puff pastry was like.) But I vividly remember consoling myself for my baking failure by eating the chocolate sauce straight out of the bowl with a spoon.
I'm sure you will have better luck if you try it, though? I mean, come on, doesn't that look delicious? And they say it's easy! Give it a try, I dare you! (And if it doesn't work, you can always eat the chocolate sauce straight out of the bowl with a spoon.)
Image courtesy Flickr/jlaceda
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