Now that The Season is upon us what we need most is summer food. On second thought, we need continued summer weather most—summer food is next in importance.
Summer food can be divided into two major categories. First, you have the easy, cold things to set out on platters for meals that literally prepare themselves. If price is no object and you avail yourself of outside sources ranging from supermarket deli counters to more elite caterers like the Besart Shop, The Store, the Bountiful Board, or the Seafood Shop, as far as you are concerned, they do prepare themselves. The food is there, everyone eats and enjoys, and you are spared the obvious drama and effort of a constructed meal.
Gliding through meals like this, whether for family or friends, takes some planning to be sure. They work best in the summer because you can serve an entire meal without hot food, simply cooking or shopping when it is convenient.
Cocktail Time
The second category of summer food is for the cocktail hour. An artfully arranged bouquet of raw vegetables surrounding dips or dishes of coarse salt, wedges of cheese, country pates, seafood of one sort or another, and other munchies ease the guests through the twilight hours, often making a dinner superfluous and unnecessary.
One of the handiest recipes to have at your fingertips in anticipation of cocktail time is pate a chou—cream puff paste—that batter with the miraculous capacity for expansion in contact with heat. Plain pate a chou can be mixed in minutes and baked into individual pufflets to be filled with cold seafood or other salad. Flavored with cheese, it becomes gougere, a Burgundian specialty that needs no filling, is light, may be made in advance and frozen.
The paste itself is traditionally mixed by hand but with a food processor, not only is it accomplished in a twinkling, but the results are, if anything, superior to the hand-beaten paste. It puffs crisply and beautifully.
The following recipe is for gougere. To make plain puffs, simply omit the cheese and herbs and drop or pipe one-half to one-inch rounds of the paste onto greased baking sheets. The recipe makes about 75 small puffs.
Gougere
1 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup sifted flour
4 eggs
1 cup finely chopped gruyere cheese
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon oregano
Freshly ground black pepper
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter a nine-inch cake tin with a removable bottom or a flan ring.
Combine water, butter and salt in a saucepan. Simmer until the butter melts then bring to a boil, remove from heat and drop in the flour all at once. Beat vigorously with a wooden spoon until the paste is smooth and leaves the sides of the pan. Place over a low flame and cook, stirring, until the mixture begins to film the bottom of the pan.
Remove from heat and beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well to thoroughly incorporate each egg before adding the next one.
In Processor
This step may be done in a food processor. Place the water-butter-salt-flour mixture in the bowl, process briefly. Add the eggs one at a time, processing for about a minute after each addition, stopping to scrape the sides of the container if necessary.
Transfer to a mixing bowl and stir in the remaining ingredients, adding the pepper to taste. Spoon rounded tablespoons of the mixture in a ring inside the cake tin or flan ring. Place in the middle of the preheated oven and bake for about one hour, until the gougere is brown and firm to the touch and the beads of fat on the surface have just about stopped bubbling.
Remove the sides of the tin, slit the gougere in a few places along the side, and return to the oven with the heat turned off and the door ajar to crisp for ten minutes. Cool briefly and serve.
Serves six to 12.
