Tour de France '20 - Stage 19: Bourg-en-Bresse to Champagnole.
Welcome to Franche-Comté, home of Comté cheese, which I stirred into these crisp, airy and grassy Gougères while we enjoyed a glass of mineraly and luscious white Bourgogne Chardonnay.
As I’ve gone through this culinary journey, I’ve forced myself to face a lot of unfounded culinary fears I’ve harbored. As I tell my little girls, when they’re afraid of something, “the mind is a very powerful thing. It has the power to help you, but it also has the power to hurt you, or even control you. You need to tell your brain what you want it to do and it should bounce back to ‘helper mode’.” Sometimes, I need to follow my own advice. I was afraid of my soufflé failing. I was afraid to make pâté and work with offal. I was afraid to make a farcement…”what the hell is a farcement?!”. “Can I even make gourgères? They’re so good at restaurants, but I’m SO bad at baking.” All of these thoughts, whether they’re about food, or any other thing in our lives, do nothing but hold us back. They plant a seed of doubt, a negative thought, and over time we feed that seed with more negative thoughts until we’re at the point where we’re frozen in fear, trapped by the controlling vines of a hearty weed. Rather than try and break through - many times we’ll see something and think “there’s no way I can do that.” - we prevent ourselves from taking a chance: to avoid embarrassment, the potential of utter failure, or making a small mistake, along the journey of education. It’s all nonsense.
You can do this. I can do this. Look at the photos of these food items: they speak for themselves. While I’ve done some research, I hadn’t rehearsed these dishes and I’ve made them all the day of the race’s stage. Sure, no one should set expectations of perfection on day 1 if you’re new to cooking or a new technique. I’ve been cooking for roughly 20 years, with no technical training, so you learn things the hard way and perfect things over time. That’s how you grow to know what to do IF you’re actually faced with culinary adversity. But, the first step is to get out of your head and into the kitchen, and start cooking. Don’t fear flops or failures: that’s precisely how you learn. Most importantly, the feeling of accomplishment is so much better, intense, and rewarding than the alternative. It helps plant seeds of positive thoughts, so instead of automatically thinking of failure, you’ll start telling yourself regularly: “I can pull this off. I’m going to make this.” Not to mention...you get to eat some good food along the way!
Gougères (Cheese Puffs)
The cool thing about this recipe is you can swap out the cheese based upon your preference, with some exceptions. You will need to stick to hard and semi-hard cheeses with lower moisture content. Don’t expect airy gourgères if you decide to use melty mozzarella. I only chose Comté because it was the cheese of-the-region for my culinary ridealong entry.
1 stick of butter
½ tsp table salt
½ cup milk
Nutmeg
1¼ cup all purpose flour
4 large eggs + 1 egg yolk
8 oz cheese (Comte, Parmesan, or Gruyere)
Preheat the oven to 400. In a saucepan over medium heat, bring the butter, salt, milk, pinch of nutmeg and ½ cup of water to a boil stirring frequently. Add flour and stir to incorporate with a wooden spoon. Continue to cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the dough comes together. Eventually, a light film will develop on the bottom of the pan (maybe even the sides of the pan - this is fine and what should be expected - don’t worry about trying to stir those bits in - keep stirring the dough ball). Keep stirring until the dough is no longer tacky, about 6 minutes overall from the point you add the flour. Set the pan aside, off the heat to rest for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and lightly whisk the one egg yolk, with a splash of water, in a small bowl and set aside. Then, one-by-one, stir in each of the 4 eggs, incorporating an egg fully before adding the next. Finally, stir in the cheese and ½ tsp of pepper.
Using a small cookie scoop, ball out the dough onto the parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Alternatively, transfer the dough to a plastic bag (or pastry bag with a ½ inch tip) and cut a small tip in one of the corners. Press the dough out, and using a knife or spoon, slice through the dough at the tip of the bag when the desired amount has been expressed from the bag. You want roughly a tbsp of dough in each ball. When expressing the dough, make a slight downward motion, then pull up, almost somewhat forming 2 tiers of the dough ball. Once all the balls are on the baking sheets, lightly brush them with some egg yolk/water mixture. Do not douse them or they’ll end up tasting eggy...we’re going for cheesy!
Bake them for about 25 minutes, checking around the 20 minute mark. They should be golden and sound slightly hollow with a tap. As I learned, these can even be reheated gently an hour or two later and the cheese flavor comes through even more.
Copyright 2020, Brendan McCann, All Rights Reserved
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