Dara's Recipe: Pate Choux Dough
Ingredients:
• ½ cup Milk • ½ cup Water • 3 oz Unsalted Butter room temperature (sliced) • 1 cup All-Purpose Flour • 1 tsp Sugar • ¼ tsp Salt • 4-5 eggs
Recipe:
- Combine Flour, Sugar, and Salt. (Flour mixture)
- Bring Milk and Water to a boil in a saucepan with the Butter.
- Make sure that butter, and milk are blended together.
- When Liquids are boiling, add entire flour mixture at once to pot.
- Keep flame on Medium to Medium High.
- Stir until dough is in a ball.
- Once the dough has absorbed all liquid, and dry ingredients, is in a ball, remove from heat.
- Keep stirring dough to cool down dough before adding eggs, so that eggs don’t cook.
- Test dough by touching with back of fingers, so you know when it’s lukewarm, cool enough to add the eggs.
- Add one or two eggs at a time, and stir. Allow dough to absorb eggs. More eggs make a more shiny dough. Stir until a nice paste quality, and still warm. If too cold, it will be difficult to work with.
- Put dough in Pastry bag with ½" tip.
- Cover baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Squeeze with one hand, and guide with the other. Pipe the dough into 1½ - 2" circles with tip ½" away from baking sheet. Give bag a flick, and lift up bag to release and move onto next circle.
- Using a wet fingertip, to flatten top of dough.
- Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes, then lower heat to 375 degrees for 15 minutes.
- Bake until golden brown, and risen. There will be a large hole inside for cream.
- Make a hole in the bottom of each cream puff with a paring knife.
- Pipe Pastry cream (recipe below) into bottom of cream puff and fill.
- Wipe off excess pastry cream.
- Garnish with sifted powdered sugar.
Dara's Recipe: Pastry Cream
Ingredients: • 4 egg yolks • ¼cup sugar • 1 TBSP corn starch • 1 ½ cups milk • ½ vanilla bean split and scraped out (for speckles in pastry cream)Recipe:
- Scald milk on the stove in a saucepan.
- Cut vanilla bean in half, split vanilla bean down the length, take back of knife and scrape vanilla bean seeds out of bean.
- Add vanilla bean seeds to milk while it's heating.
- Add sugar, and corn starch to egg yolks. (Combine egg yolks and sugar just before mixing to prevent a grainy texture. If blended too soon, and they sit too long, the sugar pulls the moisture out of the egg yolks, and it becomes too course and grainy.)
- Whisk together very well, until yolks are pale.
- Once there are bubbles around the circumference of the pot, remove from heat.
- Temper the milk into the eggs, slowly so eggs don’t scramble.
- Take small amount of hot liquid, and stir into eggs, over the wires of the whisk.
- When ⅔ is incorporated, pour the eggs back into the pot.
- Put pot back on stove over medium to medium low heat.
- Continuously stir with spatula to scrape down pot. Once it comes to boil, the corn starch gelatinizes the mixture, and it will thicken.
- Take pot off heat when mixture is thick.
- It will thicken as it cools down.
- Put pastry cream into pastry bag, and fill cream puffs. See Step #18 of Pate Choux recipe above.
Recipe:
- Boil pasta in hot water with salt added.
- While the pasta is boiling, in a pan pour the oil and garlic and sauté for ten seconds or until the garlic is golden.
- Add the Ahi Tuna, olives, capers, tomatoes and roasted peppers to the pan. Add a pinch of salt and a pinch of black pepper. Sauté for one minute.
- Pour a quarter cup of white wine to the pan. Let the wine evaporate for another minute then add butter.
- Add a quarter cup of boiling water and reduce for another minute. Drain the pasta and add it to the pan. Then add the spinach and sesame seeds and toss all ingredients together. Serve on a plate.