You’d think that after that episode with the clam soup, I would have known better than to believe everything I read, even if it was by the editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine. Once burned, twice shy, right?
Apparently not. It seems my brain is wired a lot looser than you give me credit for. It must have short-circuited when I came across another Ruth Reichl recipe, this time for gougères. She made it sound practically foolproof.
If you have no idea what gougères are, do not let the fancy name fool you. I was all over Facebook declaring how wonderful the kitchen smelled as they baked when an old college classmate wrote in. “I’m intrigued,” she confessed. “What are gougères?”
“They’re just cheese puffs,” I wrote back, almost adding “dear,” but we weren’t that intimate. Still, I could sense her disappointment. The French — they’re not snobs for nothing. Even in as trivial a matter as naming a pastry, they still manage to give us barbarians the middle finger. Goozhair, indeed. (Oh yes, I had to look up the pronunciation.)
I was disappointed, too. My gougères — excuse me, cheese puffs — came out looking as unappealing as Joe de Venecia’s mug, as hollow as Gloria Arroyo’s promises, and as bland as Ponzi-schemer Celso de los Angeles’s protestations of innocence. I even singed my lip when I eagerly bit into one and the trapped steam came rushing forth like so much venom from Miriam Santiago’s mouth. See? I really was burned!
Okay, so it was my fault: I should have waited a bit before tasting it. So I’m impatient, is that a crime? I also admit that “unappealing” is too harsh an adjective. It had appeal, all right, if of the rustic variety. As for the “hollow” part, gougères are supposed to be light and airy and, yes, hollow. Don’t look at me like that. Given a chance to poke fun at La Gloria, wouldn’t you? Hmmm?
But maaan were those things bland. I had taken no liberties with the recipe, so what went wrong? Was it the cheese? The flour? The oven temperature? Or was it, simply, me — who had NEVER had gougères before, so what did I know, right?
Wait — I have back-up. My sister was unimpressed as well. “And that’s it?” she’d asked, scrunching up her face after her first bite. I didn’t feel the least bit slighted. I had asked myself the same question.
Then there was that voice inside my head, the one that could be counted on to call a spade by its name (and many more besides). Gourmet, my ass, it hissed. Remember the pizza slurry from Yummy?
But how could I forget? Have you ever tried making dough from equal amounts of flour and water? You should try it some time. I got a good rise out of that one, and I’m not talking about the yeast. (On that note, check out the gougères recipe at Culinate and look for flour in the list of ingredients.) Did someone say something about doing things by the book?
Oh, I know: I’m not cut out to be a baker. I don’t have the temperament for it. Some people smugly point out that baking is a science. Well, they’re ones to talk. I’ll eat their science project, sure. I’ll even undertake one myself on the rare occasion when I feel like following instructions. But I do expect results, you know? I expect to feel good about myself after going to all that trouble. And what makes me willing to do that, in the first place? Why — a recipe from Ruth Reichl, of course! The woman is smart, funny, irreverent — a wonderful writer. Can I be forgiven for thinking that she tests her recipes as well?*
Sometimes I surprise myself. Failure and disappointment do not usually spur me on to do better, aim higher. If at first you don’t succeed, throw in the towel (life being too short, la-la). So you could say I wasn’t quite myself that day. Out of sorts, as it were.
How else to explain why I did it again?
A bit of Googling had led me to David Lebovitz, who, after all, lives in France (if not exactly Burgundy, where gougères are a specialty). His version included chives, which sounded right-savory to me.
Mixing the dough, I noticed that it was less gloppy that Reichl’s, more manageable. Was it the amount of water, then? Or the number of eggs? Who cared? The resulting gougères were delicious: warm, pillowy, and cheesy, with a hint of garlic from the chives. They tasted like I imagined they would, if that makes any sense to you. (Please try, and I would appreciate it if you refrained from pointing out that my gougères resemble mini-ensaimadas, not balls.) Even better, my sister approved, the voice was soothed into grudging silence, and all was well in the land once again.
Save for my lip, swollen and smarting.
Because I’d read something in a book. And believed. To think many a revolution got its start that way — and countless people had died as a result.
I got off lightly, didn’t I?
This post has no comments.
Post a Comment