Gnocchi à la Parisienne

Over a year ago, I saw a video of Thomas Keller preparing parisienne-style gnocchi in the Per Se kitchen, and I knew I had to make his recipe! Unlike regular Italian gnocchi, which are potato-based dumplings/pasta, Gnocchi à la Parisienne are made from pâte à choux dough. Even if pâte à choux-based gnocchi are new to you, you are no doubt familiar with pâte à choux, which is traditionally used in éclairs, gougères (cheese puffs), and profiteroles (cream puffs).

The flavor of these gnocchi “pillows,” as Chef Keller calls them, is so much better than plain potato gnocchi. It’s all about the Dijon mustard, cheese, and herbs. Our neighborhood grocery store did not have chervil or tarragon in stock the day I went shopping for my herbs, so I just left them out and doubled the amount of chives and parsley called for in the recipe. It wasn’t a problem.

While my gnocchi-making project took some time, it yielded at least two meal’s worth of gnocchi. Half of them are now hanging out in our freezer, parboiled and ready for whenever we need a quick and tasty meal.

After parboiling the gnocchi, I sautéed them with mushrooms and chard and served them with John Dory filets. Without the fish, this would be an elegant and satisfying vegetarian dish.

You can find the unabridged recipe from Chef Keller’s Bouchon cookbook here.

This is my version of the recipe:

Gnocchi à la Parisienne

It’s important to measure all of your ingredients and gather your equipment before proceeding with the recipe.

Special Equipment:

Stand mixer with paddle attachment

Large piping bag with a 5/8-inch piping tip. (I did not have a tip this size, so I used a plastic “coupler” as a piping tip. It worked wonderfully.)

2 baking sheets, one lined with a tea towel or paper towels.

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups water

12 Tbsp (6 oz.) butter

2 ½ tsp salt

2 cups AP flour, sifted

2 Tbsp Dijon mustard

1 Tbsp each: chives, parsley, chervil, tarragon, finely chopped

1 cup grated Emmentaler cheese

5 eggs, plus one additional egg in reserve

Procedure:

1. In a 3- to 5-quart saucepan, bring 1 tsp of the salt, the water, and butter to a simmer over medium-high heat.
2. Turn the heat down to medium and add the sifted flour. Immediately begin to stir the dough with a large wooden spoon until the dough pulls away from the sides of the saucepan. Stir for 5 more minutes until you see a thin coating of flour on the saucepan and steam escaping from the dough. While you should smell the slight nuttiness of cooked flour, you should not allow the dough to brown.
3. Place the cooked dough into the bowl of the stand mixer, along with the Dijon mustard, the 4 Tbsp of herbs, and the remaining 1 ½ tsp of salt. Mix for 30 seconds on low speed, then add the grated cheese.
4. With the mixer running on low speed, add the first 3 eggs, one at a time. Increase the speed to medium, and add 2 more eggs, one at a time. Turn the mixer off and evaluate the consistency of the dough. If the dough is so dry that it does not slowly flow from a spoon, but falls off in one clump, add the reserved extra egg.
5. Fill your piping bag with the dough and let rest about 30 minutes. (Unless you have a very large piping bag, you will not be able to fit all the dough in at one time.)
6. Bring a large pot of water to a simmer – do not boil. Lightly season the water with salt.
7. Hold the piping bag in your dominant hand, and a paring knife in the other hand. Hold the piping bag so that the piping tip is just over the edge of the pot and the rest of the piping bag points away from the pot (not over the simmering water). Begin to squeeze the piping bag, and after about 1-inch of dough is dangling from the tip, use the paring knife to slice the dough from the tip. The 1-inch section of dough should fall into the simmering water. Moving quickly, repeat until you have about 12 of these newly-formed gnocchi in the pot.
8. When all of the gnocchi in the pot are floating (this will happen quickly), allow them to cook about 2 minutes more. Then use a slotted spoon or skimmer to scoop the gnocchi from the water, and place on your pre-lined baking sheet.
9. Repeat the process of piping and parboiling your gnocchi until you are out of dough. This recipe should yield over 200 gnocchi.
10. After the gnocchi have drained on the lined baking sheet, move them to another baking sheet and allow them to finish cooling. You may freeze the gnocchi for long term storage, making sure that the gnocchi do not stick together while freezing.

Parboiled Gnocchi

To Serve the Gnocchi:

If appropriate, precook the vegetables you will serve with the gnocchi. Then sauté the desired portion of gnocchi in a combination of hot butter and oil until the gnocchi are just browned around the edges. Add your vegetables and desired herbs to the gnocchi pan and heat through. Season to taste with lemon juice and freshly ground black pepper.

Bûche de Noël

I would not blame you for thinking that a Christmas cake is irrelevant to your life in January. However, the mocha buttercream that I used to fill and top my bûche de Noël is relevant to pretty much any cake you plan to make this year, so I advise you to keep reading...

For those who don't know, a bûche de Noël is a traditional French Christmas dessert. It's a rolled, filled cake, that is shaped and decorated to look like a yule log. If you have seen a proper bûche de Noël before, you will notice right away that mine is missing the standard meringue "mushrooms" that are supposed to make the cake look even more like a branch fallen on the forest floor. The sad truth is that I did not make my bûche until Christmas day, when I had a lot of other things (read: a boned stuffed duck) going on, and meringue mushrooms that nobody would eat were not a top priority.

The first step in making this cake is to make the buttercream. It is so good, you might just end up spreading it on a cracker and forgetting about the rest of the cake. After looking at the buttercream recipes in all my cookbooks and poking around online, I found the recipe for "Outrageous Mocha Buttercream" on the blog Zoe Bakes. If you want an illustrated guide to the recipe, you should click over there for pictures, or just to look around the blog of a pastry chef. I would bet that all of her recipes are good!

Here is my version of the recipe:

Mocha French Buttercream
You can prepare French buttercream well in advance and freeze it. Once thawed, beat it in a mixer to return it to the proper consistency. This recipe makes quite a bit of frosting—enough to fill and frost a standard cake recipe, including an 18-inch roulade.

Special Equipment: Candy Thermometer, Stand mixer

6 oz. of bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate, chopped.

2 extra-large eggs, room temperature

2 extra-large egg yolks, room temperature

¼ cup granulated sugar

1 pound (2 cups, 4 sticks, 454 grams) unsalted butter, softened

2 tsp instant espresso powder dissolved in 1 Tbsp water

For the Sugar Syrup:

½ cup water

¼ tsp. cream of tartar

1. First, melt the chocolate pieces in a double boiler and allow the melted chocolate to cool.
2. Bring the sugar syrup ingredients to a boil over medium high heat. Continue to boil the syrup mixture until it reaches 242° F. As with any other sugar syrup, it is important to avoid getting sugar crystals on the inside wall of the saucepan, or your entire syrup may crystallize. One way to prevent this is to place a tight fitting lid on your saucepan so that condensation that forms on the lid drips down the sides of the pan, washing down any sugar crystals. The other way, Zoe’s method, is to wipe down the saucepan with a pastry brush dipped in water if you see any sugar crystals clinging to sides. Whichever method you use, do not stir sugar syrup with a utensil. Swirl the pan instead -- but be careful. Hot sugar can result in terrible burns.
3. While your sugar syrup is coming to temperature, put the eggs, yolks, and ¼ cup sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Turn the mixer on medium and whip until the mixture “forms the ribbon.”
4. When the sugar syrup is 242° F, with the mixer running on low speed, stream the sugar syrup into the mixer bowl such that the stream runs down the inside of the bowl. Once you have added all the syrup, turn the mixer speed to medium high, and continue to whisk until the mixture cools to room temperature. This may take 8 to 10 minutes.
5. Switch the mixer attachment from the whisk to the paddle. Add the butter 2 tablespoons at a time, just incorporating each addition before adding the next. Continue to mix the buttercream until it achieves a somewhat fluffy, silky texture. It may go through a “grainy” or curdled stage, but do not get discouraged! Go on mixing—15 minutes or more in some cases— and your frosting will eventually come around.
6. When the butter cream is the proper texture, add the chocolate and espresso flavorings to the butter cream and mix to incorporate. It will taste divine!

Chocolate Roulade Cake
I found this recipe satisfactory for rolling into a roulade, but the cake itself was a touch dry. This may have been due to over baking on my part (or a side effect of using Swiss flour in an American recipe), so I caution you not to over bake!

¾ cup (3 ¾ oz.) AP flour

¼ cup (¾ oz.) Dutch-processed cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

5 large eggs, room temperature

¾ cup (5 ¼ oz.) sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Butter a 18x13-inch rimmed sheet pan. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper, then butter the parchment paper. Also, butter a second large sheet of parchment paper and set aside for use in rolling the cake after it bakes.
2. In a mixing bowl, whisk the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt to combine.
3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with an electric mixer on medium-high speed, slowly adding the sugar over the course of a minute. Continue beating 4 to 8 minutes, or until the eggs and sugar are thick and fluffy.
4. Add the vanilla.
5. Sift the flour mixture over the egg mixture. Then fold the flour mixture into the eggs, being careful not the deflate the eggs.
6. Spread the batter onto the prepared sheet pan.
7. Bake the cake 12 to 17 minutes, rotating halfway through baking. Take care not to touch the cake when rotating, or that part of the cake may deflate. The cake is finished baking when it is firm and springs back when touched.
8. As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, run a knife between the edge of the cake and the sheet pan. Turn the hot cake out of the pan onto the second piece of buttered parchment paper. Peel off and discard the sheet of parchment paper on which the cake baked.
9. Now it is time to roll the hot cake. Start from a long side of the cake, rolling tightly around the parchment paper, so that the parchment paper is swirled inside the cake. Let cool 25 minutes or until the cake is no longer warm enough to melt your buttercream filling.
10. To assemble the roulade, unroll the cake and spread filling over it in an even layer, leaving a ½-inch un-filled border around the edges. Re-roll the cake around the filling, this time leaving the parchment paper on the outside of the cake.
11. To dress your cake as a bûche de Noël, cut a 2- or 3-inch piece from each end of your cake, and place along the sides or top of your roulade to resemble branches on a log. Secure the "branches" in place with a little buttercream. Frost the outside of the cake with the remaining buttercream. To create a wood grain pattern on your cake, gently drag a fork through the buttercream. Sprinkle with powdered sugar "snow" and garnish with meringue mushrooms, if you have made them!

Cake recipe adapted from The Family Baking Book.

Boned Stuffed Duck Baked in a Pastry Crust

The main course of our Christmas 2010 dinner was Pâté de Canard en Croûte, which is a boned (that is, de-boned) duck wrapped around a highly seasoned ground meat stuffing, the whole thing encased in a pastry crust. This is the recipe that is played up as a Monumental Undertaking in the movie Julie & Julia: “Can you even conceive of boning a duck?” My personal conclusion, having made the thing, is that it is far more time consuming than expected, but not difficult. It would simply be hard to make it taste bad. I also took away from this experience that Pâté de Canard en Croûte is a make ahead recipe -- almost all of the individual components can and should be prepared in advance.

Going back in time a little bit, the boning of our Christmas duck was not my first time boning poultry. A few weeks before Christmas, I boned a two-pound chicken that was destined for the soup pot. I boned it just to see if I could do it, removing every last bone, including the drumsticks and wings. I named the chicken “Opti Gal,” after a name-brand of Swiss chickens.

Opti Gal’s surgery was successful (or unsuccessful from her point of view) thanks to my prior “research” on YouTube. If you would like to try boning a bird yourself, I recommend viewing several how-to videos on YouTube first. Watching multiple videos is a good idea, because it allows you to see the whole process from start to finish from different camera angles.

Returning to the recipe for Pâté de Canard en Croûte, after de-boning the duck, you cut out some of the meat from the thickest parts of the thighs and breasts. This meat is chopped up and laid back in the bird, the interior of which is splashed with port and cognac, and then placed in a bowl to marinate while the cook prepares the forcemeat stuffing.

To make the forcemeat, I ground veal and pork together through the meat grinder attachment of my mixer. Despite an attempt to communicate with the Swiss grocery store butcher on Christmas Eve, I could not locate fresh pork fat to grind with the meats. Instead, I removed two fresh, mild veal sausages from their casing and ran that meat through the grinder as well. The seasonings for the forcemeat mixture included allspice and more port.

At this point, it was getting LATE, my mom and husband were hungry for Christmas dinner, and I still needed to stuff the duck with the forcemeat, sew up the incision from which I had removed the bones and tie the duck into a log shape, brown the re-formed duck on the stovetop, make pastry to encase the browned duck, brush the pastry with egg wash, and bake the whole thing for two hours.

I rushed through the pastry, resulting in what was undoubtedly the worst pastry of my life. Foregoing the pastry cut-outs that garnish the duck in the cookbook, I stuck a venting cone made out of aluminum foil through the top of the pastry crust, down into the meat, and put the whole thing into the oven. About a quarter of my hasty pastry (ha!) collapsed during the baking. John helped me push it back up along the side of the bird and secure it with a toothpick.

When I pulled the duck out of the oven, it was almost 10 pm. Not one of us had eaten a decent thing on Christmas yet--well except John and my mom, who finished leftover braised brisket and onion gravy from the fridge. We carefully removed the top of the pastry crust so that we could snip and pull out the trussing string. At this point we were so hungry, we could not be bothered with carving elegant slices and arranging pretty plates. The pastry did not bake up attractively, but it did not taste half bad. The meat was delicious; the flavors melded so nicely that it was hard to distinguish the duck from the filling.

The funny thing is that the recipe intends for the finished duck to be served cold, not hot as we ate it. I did taste some of the leftovers (this dish should feed twelve people, not three) cold from the fridge. While the meat was good cold, I am not one for cold pie crust.

As mentioned above, almost all the components of Pâté de Canard en Croûte can be finished a day ahead of time and held in the fridge. Specifically, the duck can be boned, the meat stuffing ground and mixed, and the pastry made ahead of time, even rolled out and placed back in the fridge, neatly folded. Hopefully someone else will learn from my mistake in this respect, and "Do as I say, not as I did"!!

Tarte Tatin

My husband loves apple pie, so I was looking forward to presenting him with a tarte tatin. Regular apple pie is not high on my list of favorite desserts, especially if the apple pie in question is double-crust instead of "Dutch" style with a crumb topping. Nevertheless, I thought tarte tatin's layer of caramel and caramelized apples sounded like an improvement over other apple pies, and the challenge of the famously finicky French dessert appealed to me.

Unfortunately, my tarte tatin did not turn out exactly as a tarte tatin should be. It almost lacked caramel entirely. I will get into details below, but I blame the missing caramel on a bad recipe. In spite of the under-caramelization of my tarte tatin, it was unexpectedly luscious. In fact, I think I ate as many slices of it as my apple-pie-loving husband. So, even though I hope my next attempt at tarte tatin will turn out a little differently, this version was go down as a qualified success.

Like any other pie, I began by making the crust. Having now compared several recipes for tarte tatin, it appears there is a discrepancy about the proper type of pastry to use. Many recipes use "standard" pie pastry (Pâte brisée), others use puff pastry (Pâte feuilletée), and others use pâte brisée modified with the addition of sugar. The recipe I followed claimed that it is typical to also add an egg, although I have come across no other recipe that does so. In the end, it turned out that I liked the pastry on my tarte tatin (with egg and powdered sugar) far more than I like regular pie crust.

I do not have a food processor that is the proper voltage for Switzerland, so I made my pastry manually, using a pastry cutter to distribute cold bits of butter in the flour. The combination of freezing cold weather and an open kitchen window is a boon to pastry-making! In Houston, my kitchen was rarely cool enough to make a good pie crust. Here, all I had to do was open one of my three kitchen windows, and in ten minutes, I had the perfect pastry environment. The pastry dough rested in the refrigerator for one hour.

While the pastry dough chilled in the refrigerator, I began the apple portion of the tarte tatin. First, I peeled, cored, and quartered five green apples that tasted a lot like the Golden Delicious variety. Next, I cooked butter and sugar in a skillet until the butter stopped foaming, and then made a ring of the apple quarters in the pan, each quarter propped up on one of its cut sides.



Per the recipe, I cooked the apples on the first cut side for about 3 minutes over medium, then turned them to the other cut side, and cooked for at least another 3 minutes, until the caramel between the apple slices was a dark amber color.

I laid the rolled-out pastry over the apples, tucked the pastry edges down the sides of the skillet, and baked in the oven. After the tarte baked and cooled just a bit, I tried to flip the tarte out. Not only did I burn my hand on the skillet, there was a lot of liquidy juice (not wonderful, viscous caramel) in the bottom of the pan that spilled onto the countertop.

Over the next few days, we ate every bit of the delicious tart, but I could not get over my disappointment that it did not turn out like an authentic tarte tatin. I compared the recipe that I had followed, from America's Test Kitchen's The Family Baking Book, to the tarte tatin recipe in The New Best Recipe, another ATK cookbook. I think the apple-cooking technique in The Family Baking Book is what led me awry. The recipe in The New Best Recipe used almost identical amounts of ingredients and skipped the short pre-cooking of the butter and sugar, but cooked the apples over high heat for up to 12 minutes on the first cut side and then another 5 minutes on the second cut side, a total of 17 minutes of apple cooking time.

Surely cooking my apples longer, over a higher heat, would have led to more caramelization and less loose juice. The next time I make this dessert, this knowledge should lead me to a superior tart. In the meantime, I will be sure to research my recipes more thoroughly, and trust The New Best Recipe as more reliable than The Family Baking Book.