- Hi, I'm Jacques Pépin.

(soft music) - And I'm Claudine Pépin.

So what's cooking, Pa?

- Well, today I thought I'd show you how to make pâte à choux, a simple cream puff dough that you can turn into all kinds of sweet and savory choux prizes.

- Like profiteroles filled with pastry cream and bittersweet chocolate sauce.

- [Jacques] Yes, and swans swimming in raspberry under a caramel cage.

- [Claudine] Cream puff fritters are wonderful on their own or filled with ice cream.

- [Jacques] On the savory side, Parisan gnocchi are a wonderful make ahead first course.

- [Claudine] What about gougères, those nice little cheese puff hors d'Suvre?

- Yes, and Pommes Darphin turned pâte à choux into a fluffy golden mashed potato puff.

Okay, (speaking French).

- Join us for a crash course in choux making.

Next on Jacques Pépin Celebrates.

Well, Papa, you know, you've taught me how to make bread, how to make puff pastry dough, how to make regular dough, I wanna learn how to make choux dough.

- Choux dough to make little (speaking French) - And savory, too.

- And savory also.

- Yeah.

- So today I'm doing you a lesson in choux making.

- All right.

- I'm the choux maker.

- There you go.

- Okay, so here I have a cup of milk.

You can use water also.

Depends, you know, (fork clinking bowl) sometime when it's really very humid in the summer sometime I use water.

So one cup of liquid, a little dash of salt, a bigger dash of... sugar.

And I want that the butter to be mixed.

And the first part of the choux making here, that mixture is called the panada.

And we use panada to do, to do all kind of thing.

You see the way it's melted now?

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- [Jacques] Here is my flour.

- [Claudine] Uh oh.

- You don't try to put a teaspoon at the time, you go inside one block, otherwise it doesn't work.

And you see what I use there?

- You're using a wooden spoon.

- A very heavy spoon, you know, which go and you see the thing look like a mess.

- [Claudine] Yeah, it does.

- Well, (bowl clunking stove top) you're going to come back into another mess.

Now going to come back into a smooth - [Claudine] Wow.

(bowl clunking stove top) - Yeah, a smooth mixture, will just hold together.

See, go like this.

- [Claudine] I'm- - [Jacques] See it's like modeling clay.

- Yeah, hmm.

- So now I'm cooking it a little bit on top of the stove.

I want to dry it slightly.

- Why?

- Because it'll give some body to that panada.

And you see it when you see the bottom of the pan, which is happening now is getting white and cakey.

You see that here?

- Mm hm.

But if I do that, (spoon scraping pan) you see I have a crust here.

- Yeah.

- Well that's dry out a little bit so I can stop.

- Okay.

- At that point this should cool off a little bit.

Put the cover on it (cover clicks shut) and turn it for like a few seconds like this.

(blender revs and stops) Okay, that give me some, yeah, okay, so we go in there - [Claudine] So.

because we do that in the food processor.

The best way of doing it.

Midway like this, (blender whirring) put that directly here.

One, two, three, four egg.

(blender whirring) That's it.

(blender shuts off) So, let's put that directly in there.

So, you know, you do quite a lot with this.

You know, with this here, I would do like 30 profiteroles.

It's really very inexpensive, you know in a, in a restaurant or I mean at home or anywhere to do this.

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- Okay.

And you see the way I fold this like an accordion, so it doesn't come out.

We are going to do the choux.

So the choux you be about that size, you stop and you press.

- [Claudine] Oh, that's it?

- Yeah, well choux about that, that size, you know?

Now we're gonna do swan with this.

You want to press it.

Stop pressing and pull out.

See I want to tail here, well maybe a bit too long you do this, you know, that's it.

So you do a bit of a swan.

You know?

Wait a minute, you saw what I want to do first.

The neck for the swan.

- Okay.

- So give me a little bit of that dough in there.

- [Claudine] Ah, I understand this thing.

- That's it, that's it.

- [Claudine] I stopped, - That's it, that's enough.

- [Claudine] I stopped pushing - [Jacques] We press this.

(paper crinkling) I show you how to do this, right?

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- Do you know how to do it?

- Ah, pretty well.

Mine kind of fell apart, but then I recovered it.

So that was good.

- I can show you again if you have to.

First I press this like this, maybe a bit bigger.

You can use that to do a lot of thing with it.

So for the neck here, what you want to do, you wanna do a head like this and ah- - Like a pretty S.

- For the beak here, you wanna put that back in there, just touch it with this and pull.

Make a mess here.

Try to do better on the next one.

So I do a wrong thing.

You do that and you pull out like this.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- Then you do one thing.

Do the neck.

You see what I do at the end also, Claudine, when I'm doing this pressing and I'm doing this at the end, I don't stop here.

I press down to stop it.

Otherwise, if I lift it, kind of lift up with me.

- Oh, okay, you squish it down, - Right.

Okay, this... you know you can use water like this if you want a little bit to flatten the tail, you know, to make it rounder and nicer.

Actually you do also do it with this.

So we brush this.

This is a beaten egg, you know.

- [Claudine] Just- - If you really want it to be very glazed and that (speaking French), you know, that you get.

You put a little bit of the glaze like that on top.

- [Claudine] Mm hm.

- And after that you let it dry for 15, 20 minutes outside.

When it stop drying, you give it another coat.

- [Claudine] And that's what makes it very ultra shiny?

- That shine even more.

This will take 30 minutes or so to cook.

The neck will cook probably in 12, 15 minutes.

So be sure to remove it before, - So you take them out?

You don't remove your tray out.

This will be dry.

You just grab it out.

Leave your tray in the oven.

(tray scraping against oven rack) We are doing a pastry cream.

Your classic crème pâtissière.

A cup and a half of milk.

I have four yolks here, start mixing this.

Oh, you have yours, okay.

Now I'll give you sugar.

That's it.

A little dash of vanilla (whisk swishing mixture) and then my flour.

(whisk swishing mixture) Okay, you're about right now?

- Yep.

(whisk knocking bowl) - So now my milk is boiling.

- Work out.

- It's hard work, you see that?

I told you, you don't have to to do special stuff, you just have to work in the kitchen with me.

Beat egg white, (Claudine laughs) do that type of thing.

Okay, we dilute it and as you can see here, it need recooking first the starches roll.

So that comes back to a boil.

- So the whole thing goes back in?

- Yeah, when that come to a boil, be sure you see with the palm of my hand, you see the way I drive it here?

- You taught me to do that with a (speaks French).

- That's where it's gonna stick, so go ahead.

Pour me that.

You see the way it thicken?

And it's beautiful and smooth.

- It's beautiful and smooth.

- Good.

We wanna cool that off now (ice clunking in bowl) because this is a standout pastic pastry cream, we are making a very rich pastry cream.

So we're going to add some butter in it, but I don't want to add butter right away because it's still too hot.

Meanwhile, I'll show you those - [Claudine] choux - that we did.

You see the way it empty here, you have the little cap.

That's nice.

Now the classic profiteroles often is served with, with ice cream or but also with a pastry cream.

We serve that with a chocolate sauce.

- [Claudine] Oh, it's, it's kind of thick.

- Yes, that's the way I like chocolate sauce.

So this is done with milk and chocolate with a cup, cup and a half of milk, an ounce of chocolate, you melt it.

When it's boiling hot, we put a couple of egg yolk in it, which thicken it.

And now let's see, that's, that's cooling off.

(mixture squishing) Okay, I'm going to put my butter in there.

But about half a stick of butter also.

Which again, if you don't want to do it, you don't do it.

This is a richer pastry cream.

- [Claudine] Do it, good.

(whisk swishing vigorously) - So there, what you want to do, we wanna stuff it with two spoon.

- [Claudine] Hmm.

- That'd be easier this way.

Isn't that good?

- [Claudine] Uh huh.

- And then the cap on top.

- [Claudine] Mm.

- Right?

It helps with two spoon.

Don't put too much at a time.

That's it, here.

And put your hat right away.

(utensils clinking) - Now, you want sauce in the bottom of the plate?

- Uh yeah.

That's fine.

But then you move your plate like this.

- Oh, it makes a better circle.

- I'm going to need, you know what?

Maybe a little bit of powder sugar would be very nice on top.

What do you think?

You have it?

- Yeah.

- [Claudine] That looks so beautiful.

- And this is your real profiterole so choux chocolate.

(bright music) Okay, we have to do the swan now.

- Okay.

- So what I have to do, I may do show you how to do a caramel cage.

I'm gonna put sugar in there.

Just enough water to moisten the sugar.

(pan scraping on stove top) You don't wanna shake your pan moment after it's cooking.

You know, all you do at the beginning, you mix your sugar water, be sure that it's diluted.

- You just leave it alone.

- You leave it alone.

- Okay.

It's better.

In the swan there, the way you want to cut it, you cut it this way (knife slicing pastry softly) because that part here, we're gonna cut in half and we're going to put that as the... - [Claudine] Oh the wings.

- The wing, you know.

More in the bias.

- [Claudine] Well that's, that's why- - No, no, that's too much, that that's not enough.

More this way.

That's little wing.

So here again you have to cut your wing here, get them ready on each of the swan.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Now what you can do after, what we're going to do is to flavor it with a little bit of blackberry preserve here.

- Now you put it inside.

- That's it.

Okay.

So you finish doing this.

The caramel is boiling nicely now, but it will take probably another four, five minutes until it really get to a caramel color.

So we'll just have to wait.

Okay, you see Claudine, you see the color of it?

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- The outside is starting, caramel is a color.

You know, you indicate by caramel color.

It's about 320 degree when it get to the caramel stage.

You wanna get me the bowl.

- The bowl has already been oiled.

- Oil, okay, you oil it.

So this one we're going to do on the inside.

You want it a nice brown color and at that point I told you not to shake your caramel.

But at that point I could, doesn't make any difference.

Until 310 degree, it made mess.

When it get to that temperature then it doesn't, nothing happened to it anymore.

So this has to cool off a little bit.

I have some water here.

(pan steaming and sizzling) I wanna cool it off a little bit because otherwise I have to wait too long and I want it to get thicker.

And sometime if you don't cool it off, if the pot is really good, it continue cooking and get darker and darker and darker, which sometime you don't want to, you know.

So thereby cooling it off, see the bottom of it is already - Mm.

- Forming a thread like that, which is what I want.

(pans clinking) So you want it to be thread like this.

And I go inside in all kind of direction here, you see, Don't... do that too much when it's really humid, you know.

Mix it all there.

- [Claudine] Its not, yeah.

- It should, it shrink in there, you know.

- [Claudine] What do you mean?

Because it's on the inside?

- The caramel tend to shrink when it cool off.

And that's why it should come out of the bowl.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- Okay, so the raspberry sauce here is very easy.

We take fresh raspberry or frozen raspberry, at that point doesn't make any difference because we put it in a food mill without sugar in it.

And then you put some raspberry preserve in it.

I put some raspberry preserve in it that I don't put any sugar.

So here we are.

We put that in.

So this is the Red Sea and the swan are going to go into the Red Sea.

So first you fill the body of the swans with some frozen ice cream balls.

Okay?

That's it.

And then I wanna put some, some the whipped cream.

I want to put the cream like this.

What I want you to do is to put the two wing this way.

I want you to take a neck, put a neck inside like this.

Okay, Claudine, you do this.

Put your neck more - [Claudine] Swan like.

- Swan like.

This other one look like a duck.

(both laughing) And the two last one.

This here.

This here.

I'm giving them a bit of dusting, the snow in Central Park.

- I'm protecting the other desserts.

Okay.

- And you don't have of course to do the caramel cage.

Let them face one another.

And let me see if that thing will come out.

That should be... Cool, is not quite cool yet, but maybe cold enough - Whoa.

to come out this way, Claudine, (Claudine laughing) to cover the cage.

You wanna put a couple of little flowers in it or something?

- I don't know if I even wanna touch it.

It's so beautiful, just like that.

- [Jacques] Maybe one.

- [Claudine] Yeah.

You know what?

- [Jacques] That's it?

- [Claudine] That's it.

- Isn't that perfect?

And this is our swimming swans in raspberry sauce with the caramel cage.

We are whisking away here.

- This stuff is thick.

- It's thick, yes.

This is all the pâte à choux or the cream puff dough that we just made with a slight difference.

Cup of liquid, cup of flour, three eggs, instead of four eggs.

That's the big thing.

Then we wanna show you how to make different type of dishes with that.

We do it with less eggs because this, we're going to fry.

The other one, we're going to poach and we don't want to expand too much.

- Oh.

- So I have a cup of that pâte à choux.

This is a cup of... - [Claudine] Mashed potatoes?

- Mashed potato.

It's not really, it's not really mashed potato, Claudine.

It's just a... - A mashed potato?

(laughing) - Mashed potato, (laughs) a potato which is mashed but without - [Claudine] Oh, so it's just boiled potato that's mashed, But there's no milk or salt or whatever?

- There's no milk, there's nothing in there, yeah.

You can take like a baked potato, - [Claudine] Uh huh?

- You know, and empty it inside and do that type of thing.

So this is... Pommes Darphin.

- [Claudine] Pommes Darphin.

- So you take it like this.

About that size, and I go close enough to the thing, you know, so that I don't burn myself.

If I go from that it's going to splatter.

So here.

(liquid bubbling) We are going to be full there.

- [Claudine] Is that enough?

- [Jacques] By the time they expand.

Yeah, that's plenty.

- [Claudine] Okay, then I won't do my last one.

- So there, you know, that going to take seven, eight minute to cook.

- Okay.

And in the meantime, what else can we make?

- Second one.

Now we're getting to something sweet.

So we bring vanilla in there and this, you know what that is?

- Orange water.

- Yeah.

You really want to do just a tiny thing because this is really strong.

Yeah and it's classic in that dish.

Now if you don't like it, you don't put it in.

It doesn't matter.

Here we are (spoon swishing mixture) mixing it.

(spoon swishing mixture) Okay, this is our second one.

And it's the same idea- - What is this one called?

- In the fritter, this is cream puff fritter.

You know what we call padana in French.

- Oh yes.

- Okay, and we do them all right here.

Okay, thank you, so we cook this.

Now the third one is a famous dish from Burgundy, France, which we call a gougeres (speaks French).

- Gougeres.

- You know?

- Gougeres, so we have grated Swiss cheese.

- [Claudine] Oh, I'm gonna like this already.

- Yes, a lot of it.

(Claudine laughs) Some Parmesan cheese.

Paprika.

- [Claudine] Mm.

- And a dash of cayenne here.

- [Claudine] Dash, not a lot.

(laughs) - That's it.

Now, we make this.

And for that, you know you get a- - This, you need a tray for?

- You need a tray because that goes into the oven.

It's a different type of thing.

But this is very classic to go into, well we do it at home, but in small place in Burgundy enough that they give you that for a (speaks French).

- Would you have a pastis with this?

- Well, we could.

So you want to do that a bit bigger, just like this.

All of those, you can of course do it with with your pastry baguette, you know.

(spoon clinking pan) But it's fine if it has funny shape like this.

- [Claudine] Oh it is?

Okay.

- Yeah, because it has a lot of cheese, it's gonna melt, you know, to a certain extent.

Okay.

- Wait, one more.

You're boiling.

- One more.

Yeah, I'm gonna show you this.

Take a look at it.

As they start going to the top, they start up turning around, you know?

(pan clunking stove top) And you wonder- - [Claudine] Do they turn on their own?

- Well they do sometimes, sometimes they need a little help, like this.

(Claudine laughs) - I will take this into the oven.

- Good, and the last one that we have here, again, Parmesan cheese, a bit of grated nutmeg.

And we are going to do a gnocchi.

This of course is - Ooh, a gnocchi.

the gnocchi.

Parisian, you know the Parisian gnocchi.

- I know that this, the other one needs some salt on it.

So lemme just go sprinkle the top with - Oh, yeah, this is- this is fleur de sel.

- Yeah, flour of salt, which is a coarse salt.

You put a few drop, if you don't do it, it's fine Claudine.

But it give a bit of crunchiness when you- - I'll go do it.

- Okay, so this we're going to do in a pastry bag.

(bag crinkling) And as we say, all of those you can do in a pastry bag.

(bag crinkling) And when you're ready to go, I wanna put it in that direction.

And I want a little knife like this.

I put that right on the side of it.

I wet the knife and I apply pressure and I cut.

- [Claudine] Whoa!

- [Jacques] See I have a machine here.

(Claudine laughs) Get closer.

They're all exactly the same size, right?

- [Claudine] Absolutely.

- [Jacques] Look at those, how beautiful they are.

- [Claudine] They really are.

- Today I'm going to cook them a bit longer than I would normally, and just make them with Parmesan cheese and basil.

(knife knocking cutting board) Okay.

Now those are nice.

I'm going to remove those.

Okay.

It is good to drain them on that type of things because they're dry underneath.

- Oh, so the air circulates all around.

- [Jacques] Yeah.

- Okay, so I can take these out now?

- Yes, now look, those are boiling now.

- [Claudine] Now they're all puffy.

- They get very puffy.

Those are probably one of the lighter.

- Whoa.

(pan sizzling) - Okay, I have my butter underneath here.

Just warm like this.

Okay, Claudine, you give me a little bit of Parmesan cheese.

- Okay, hang on lemme get it.

- On top of that.

- [Jacques] Good, that's good.

- Salt and pepper?

- A dash of salt and pepper.

Maybe a bit of basil in there.

- [Claudine] Mm hm.

- During that time, I'm gonna start arranging that on there.

(utensil clinking strainer) Powder sugar, you know?

You want a lot of powder sugar on top of this.

This is the other one.

Boy, those are very light, too.

And this, my mother would serve with from meat to poultry.

Anything like that would be served with the Pommes Darphin here.

And here.

(pan scraping) We have our gnocchi Parisian and our gougeres, Claudine.

(gougeres tumbling onto plate) You know, you let them cool off a little bit.

They're lukewarm.

Okay, and here we are, the gougeres, the Parisian gnocchi, the Pommes Darphin, and the cream puff fritter.

We have an incredible buffet for you of cream puff dough.

(Claudine laughs) First with a savory dish, the gnocchi Parisian with the shredded basil and all that.

The gougeres.

- [Claudine] The gougeres.

Specialty of Burgundy, cooked in the oven.

The potato fritter, I mean potato, the Pommes Darphin.

- [Claudine] Pommes Darphin.

- And tell us what that.

- And then we have the beautiful caramel cage with the swans floating on- - [Jacques] Swimming in the Red Sea.

- Well, maybe I wouldn't say that.

But on the raspberry - Yes.

- Coolly.

And then the profiteroles in chocolate, which is very, very cool.

- [Jacques] The padana.

- [Claudine] The padana.

- [Jacques] That's what it is.

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- So this was great.

(glasses clink) - This was fun.

- It was great making choux pastes with you (speaks French), and I hope you're going to do it and do all of that with your family.

Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.