Monsieur Technique

It’s a tough crowd Jacques Pepin is facing, a couple of hundred cooking school teachers and cookbook writers gathered at the annual convention of the International Assn. of Culinary Professionals this past spring in Philadelphia. The audience has seen it all, cooking-wise, and there’s not much that can really impress them.

Working the raised stage under bright lights in a darkened banquet room, Pepin whips through a couple of dishes, carefully explaining each step in his thick French accent. The audience listens politely.

He is a handsome man, once quite the heartthrob of the culinary world. And he’s still almost boyish-looking at 61. A little silver in the hair and a slight softness along the jaw are the only concessions to his years.

Pepin plops a chicken onto the cutting board. The crowd stirs. “I only need the breasts for this recipe,” he says, “but would you like me to show you how to bone a chicken?”

It’s a sucker’s question. All great cooking teachers have their star turns, their signature tricks. Giuliano Bugialli flips a mile-long banner of fresh pasta. Martin Yan hammers out drum riffs with his cleaver. Graham Kerr cuts fat. Jeff Smith dispenses frugal homilies. Julia Child is, well, Julia.

And Pepin’s got his chicken. The crowd has seen it before, some probably dozens of times. Pepin has been one of the hardest-working teachers in the business for more than 20 years. Still, they edge forward in their seats.

He cuts off the wings, removes the wingtips and lollipops what’s left. “You can dip them in cracker crumbs and fry them,” he says. Deftly, he cuts around the wishbone, then pulls it out. “It’s a pain in the neck when you want to carve in the dining room.”

He works his way down the bird, scraping with his knife, pulling with his hands, rarely cutting. “Probably the biggest misunderstanding is using the knife too much,” he tells the teachers. “You have to cut the articulation here and there and the rest is hands.”

He scrapes the meat from the legs, cuts the knee at the joint, scrapes the drumstick, cracks the knobs at each end with the back of his knife and, voila, the chicken is perfectly boned--probably in less time than it took you to read this description.

When Pepin bones a chicken, the bird seems to cooperate. It looks as if he is merely helping it shrug off a pair of loose-fitting pajamas. His hands move as quickly and easily as flowing water.

The crowd goes wild. Pepin dips his head, abashed. “Really, it’s nothing,” he says. “Boning a chicken should take between 30 and 45 seconds.”

Yeah, right. Maybe when you’re Jacques Pepin, formerly of the Plaza-Athenee in Paris, once the personal chef to three French heads of state and probably the best pure cook teaching today.

Of all the teachers plying their wares across the nation in cooking schools and on cooking shows, Pepin is the most technically skilled. That’s his trick.

“I consider him a teacher of teachers,” says Martin Yan. “His skill is superb. He is truly the finest craftsman of all the cooking teachers.”

“Of course he is remarkably able, he does everything so well you forget how difficult it is,” says Julia Child. “But what people don’t talk about enough is how good all of his food tastes. All of his sauces are absolutely perfect.”

The two books on which Pepin built his teaching career, “La Technique” and “La Methode,” are really nothing more than step-by-step photographs of kitchen techniques, from the basic (chopping onions) to the arcane (curing a ham). There are recipes, to be sure, but they serve the photos, rather than the other way around.

It’s the same, only a bit more so, with his masterwork, the two-volume “Jacques Pepin’s The Art of Cooking,” for which he says he staged 15,000 color photographs.

Pepin has carved a niche for himself in the highly competitive business of teaching cooking. He’s not the loudest or the funniest or the one you’d most like to be your best friend. He’s the chef. More specifically, he’s the French chef.

And if that hasn’t made him quite as popular as Julia, Jeff, Martin and Graham, he can live with that.

*

Pepin was born in 1935 in Bourg-en-Bresse, near Lyon.

“I was 13 years old when I started working in kitchens,” he says. “I didn’t think about being a lawyer or a doctor or a professor. It wasn’t that there was anyone telling me no, but my father was a cabinetmaker and my mother was a chef [at a small local restaurant], so I just naturally assumed I would do one of those things.”

When he was 17, he went to Paris to work. “I was young and I had a kind of yearning for adventure,” he says. “To a certain extent, that was spurred by my mother. She would tell me stories about a chef she had worked for who had cooked on a boat and had gone around the world. Remember, there was no television then.”

At the Plaza-Athenee, he worked for Lucien Diat and rapidly climbed the ranks. By the time he was 21, he was chef de partie, the youngest in the history of the hotel, in charge of a kitchen staff of 50.

He served his military duty as an admiral’s personal chef during the Algerian war. Upon his return, he became personal chef for a succession of French heads of state: Felix Gaillard, Pierre Pfimlin and Charles de Gaulle. (“We were changing governments so fast it was like the Italians,” he says.)

In 1959, he moved to New York. “I had always wanted to come to America,” he says. “For me, it was El Dorado, what Paris was to me when I was 17. And from the first day, I loved it.”

He happened on the cooking scene when Americans were just discovering fine food, which at that time was, by definition, French. And the greatest French restaurant in America was Le Pavillon, owned by Henri Soule.

“It was veni, vidi, vici; I was extremely lucky,” he says. “I went to Le Pavillon on my first day in New York and Mr. Soule hired me. That’s where I met Pierre Franey [the chef turned cookbook author and TV star who died last week]. Through Pierre, I met Craig [Claiborne, then the restaurant critic and food editor at the New York Times]. Through Craig, I met Helen McCully [a prominent New York food writer], and she became my American mother. She introduced me to Julia and to James Beard. And all of that happened less than one year after I got here.”

*

All that is a fairly typical resume for a French chef of his generation, at least in outline. But other things about Jacques Pepin might surprise you.

For one thing, he was a corporate chef at Howard Johnson for 10 years. (Actually, that is fairly typical as well, though it is usually left off resumes these days; Pepin followed Franey to the company.)

“I had a choice then between the White House and Howard Johnson and I chose Howard Johnson,” he says. “I had done state dinners and I didn’t want to go back. Howard Johnson was perfect for me then. I wanted to work in a very American environment; I wanted to work with American food, and I wanted to work in the American language.

“I learned so much about production and marketing and the chemistry of food there. In restaurants, they squeeze you like lemons and then they throw you out. Howard Johnson was a big learning experience and it was very good for me. I helped develop all the recipes from clam chowder to beef bourguignon. We’d make 3,000 pounds at a time and you really learn how cooking works then.”

Howard Johnson also allowed Pepin to stay in New York and continue his education. The thing that might surprise you most about Jacques Pepin is that, after dropping out of school in France at age 13, he is now just shy of getting a doctorate degree. In fact, he is an adjunct professor at Boston University in addition to being dean of special programs at the French Culinary Institute in New York.

“I left school when I was 13 to go to work,” he says. “When I got to New York, I asked what was the best school and they said Columbia, so that’s where I went. I told them I never went to high school and they said they had this special program for non-native speakers and they gave me this long test and somehow I did well enough to be admitted.”

At Columbia, Pepin studied philosophy and literature. His master’s thesis was on Voltaire. He finished all of his doctoral studies but the dissertation. “I wanted to do it on the history of French food in the context of French civilization and literature, from Ronsard, a 16th century poet, to Proust’s madeleine,” he says.

“But this was in ’68 or ’69 and they didn’t want to hear about that. I decided I had a family to support--I’d been going to school in the evening for 10 years while I was working at other jobs and I was not going to spend all of my time writing something about a denominative verb or something. I just quit.”

It was at about that time that he started teaching cooking. “I was in the right place at the right time,” he says. “Luck is very important, too. Just when I was thinking about doing more teaching, I was in a very bad accident and I broke my back. That was the catalyst that pushed me in the direction of writing and teaching, rather than cooking in a restaurant.”

Again, Pepin caught the wave at its crest. All of those Americans who’d spent the ‘60s going to French restaurants, flying to France on vacation and watching Julia teach French cooking on television suddenly wanted to do for themselves.

“Right from the start, I had more work than I could do,” says Pepin. “If it had happened 10 years before, I would have been completely out of luck. Before, there were not that many professionals teaching cooking. People were very satisfied with learning from Mrs. Smith down the street who did a great apple pie.

“I was in a better situation because I’d had professional training. My nature, which is very Cartesian, helped too, in the sense that I like to teach and I like to get to the bottom of things. So when people ask me why you do certain things, I really want to figure it out.

“That never happens in a restaurant. Your chef says to do it this way and you never ask why. But it’s in my character to find the reason for everything. And I discovered I love to teach. Whether you’re teaching literature, skiing or food, it’s teaching--taking something and putting it in a very coherent, very Cartesian, very structured form. That pleases me.”

*

It has also exposed him to the food transitions of this country he might never have seen otherwise. As a French-trained chef, and an analytical one at that, Pepin has been an interested observer at the American food revolution.

“The American public used to be very insecure in its own taste,” he says. “That’s why restaurant critics were so important. But at the same time, some critics would praise food, then people would go to that restaurant and they would say ‘I know it’s great, I know it’s terrific, but I’m just not crazy about it’ and they would believe it was themselves who were wrong.

“That’s changed a great deal now. People are much more comfortable with what they like and don’t like. It’s taken awhile, but it would take a century to do in Europe what you’ve done here in the last 10 years.

“That’s one of the things I love about America--to a certain extent, it was virgin territory. That’s why we French chefs could come here and become famous. At the same time, there is no limitation on the American palate. In France, you eat French food 90% of the time. In Italy, you eat Italian food 90% of the time. The same is true in Germany.

“But that’s not the case in America. In America, you might eat French food Monday night, Italian food Tuesday night, German food Wednesday night and Chinese food on Thursday night and never think another thing about it.

“But there is a dichotomy here as well. You have this group of people who love to eat, and then you have people who eat five foods: hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, fried chicken and ravioli in a can. The spectrum of tastes for those people is very limited compared to Europe. But on the other hand, you have groups that have a much wider spectrum of taste than anyone in Europe.”

Pepin is one French chef you’ll never find moaning about the good old days back home.

“Twenty years ago, 25 years ago, the cook was somebody working in a black hole who came up only when he was called,” he says. “Thanks to Paul Bocuse, who brought the chefs into the dining room, we became stars.

“But that wasn’t all good. In the ‘30s and ‘40s, the chefs didn’t speak to each other and everyone did their own kind of cooking. After the Bocuse explosion, all the chefs know each other and they know what everyone else is cooking. That’s nice because it’s much friendlier, but a lot of the food seems to be the same. You go from Troisgros to Bocuse and you see the same ideas.

“At the same time, I’m against being different just for the sake of being different. It’s only for shock effect and it creates a lot of stupid kinds of dishes.

“For so long we had these little Japanese gardens on our plates that didn’t have much to do with food anymore. Really, it was almost like the Roman Empire. If you need that kind of excitement to bring your appetite up when two-thirds of the world is dying of hunger, that’s crazy. It’s immoral.”

*

You get the sense that Jacques Pepin is a man between two countries, operating in two worlds. He’s not so much divided as in suspension--between France and the United States, between academia and popular cooking. He is neither, yet he is both. Maybe that makes him definitively American.

“I don’t really know what to call what I do,” he says. “I think it’s American, but my American friends say it seems French. It’s not Swahili and I guess it can’t really be French, because I cook for my mother and she tells me it’s not French. I’d have to say it’s American.

“I was on a panel talking about the definition of American cuisine and we decided it was something undefinable. It’s more an attitude toward cuisine than a cuisine in itself. It’s not a mixture of ingredients, but the casual way they are put together.

“I feel more American than French now. I came here by choice, a very determined choice. I came here as an adult. I didn’t come here for any political reasons or for any economic reasons. Nobody made me, it was a very rational choice and that is very American.”

And, of course that faith in deductive reasoning is purely French, as is his food. Despite the presence of New World ingredients, Pepin’s cooking still has a very formal, very Gallic bent.

In “The Art of Cooking,” most of the dishes are named after someone, in the old French fashion: squab Danny K., chicken Jean-Claude and fish roe Evelyn. The presentations are definitely French: potato baskets, galantines and quenelles. Shrimp are propped and garnished so they look like bunnies. Most dishes include the three classic components: meat, sauce and vegetable accompaniment.

And that boned chicken . . . it’s a wonderful piece of showmanship, but it assumes that you’re going to want to stuff it, truss it, roast it and then slice it carefully to show the cross-section. And who really serves ballotines anymore?

Perhaps it is this, combined--in an odd way--with his technical fluency that has kept Pepin from achieving the kind of superstar status he deserves. Certainly, he has done well--15 books and seven television series. But he has never captured the public imagination in the way some other, less talented, cooks have.

Maybe it’s the essence of television or maybe it’s the essence of America. The cooks that seem to do best on TV are those who demand the least of us. We prefer easily digestible characters, whether they’re manufactured or not. Perfection does not necessarily play well on the small screen.

Martin Yan, who is a close friend of Pepin’s, has a master’s in food science, yet he becomes a cartoon character on screen. People love Jeff Smith for his warmth, whether real or imagined, even though his culinary skills are arguable.

“Jeff and Julia and I, we have very, very pronounced personalities,” says Yan. “And so does Jacques. If you see him perform in front of a live audience, he’s very warm and very funny. But on television, I think he concentrates so much, he is so focused. . . .

“In a true sense, he considers a cooking show a cooking class. But when you do a cooking class, if you go 10, 15 or 30 minutes over, it’s no problem. On television, he knows psychologically he only has 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 2 minutes to get things across, then it will have to be edited. I think he gets so focused he sometimes forgets to have fun.”

Child agrees. “Jacques is a great deal of fun and he is very witty. But I don’t think in his television show you get that sense because he’s always rushing to get things done.”

“I am who I am and I can’t change for the audience,” says Pepin. “And if everyone doesn’t like me, you can’t please everyone and you shouldn’t try. From the first word you put on that white page, you are aiming at something, at a certain segment of society. I have a certain identity. People relate to me as myself and I can’t try to be somebody else.

“Most of the time I don’t even think about that. But I have to tell you, when I went on one of the home shopping channels, I thought I did terrific. I sold 4,000 books in my first show, 10,000 all together. Then the host told me the biggest they’d had was this guy called Mr. Food who is basically just opening up cans. He sold 35,000 books. That flabbergasted me.

“But that audience is something I can do nothing about. They really are speaking a different language. That’s not being condescending, but we’re just very different.

“When I started writing books, I had this romantic idea--maybe I was very naive--but I thought that if you did something with a lot of quality, it would be recognized and it would sell. Now, I know that you can take anyone and have them write a book and if you publicize it enough, it will sell. But I still think that only lasts for a short time. I’m still doing this after 20 years. Things without substance are forgotten.”

Plates above and on the cover are from Strouds.

Kitchen Tip

Jacques Pepin gives these directions for making a cornet in “The Art of Cooking.”

“To make a paper cornet, or icing horn from a sheet of wax paper, start with a piece cut in a right-angle triangle with the short sides about 8 1/2 inches long. Fold the triangle at the center of the larger side, overlapping the ends to form a cone. Do not worry if this point is not very tight at this time.

“Keep twisting the paper around to double it. The tip of the cone is still not tight. To make a needle-size opening at the tip, place your thumbs on the inside and your fingers on the outside of the cone and slide your thumbs down and your fingers up so the paper slides and the tip tightens into a fine point.

“Then, simply fold the outer edge of the paper inside the cone to secure it, holding your fingers in place all the while so the cone doesn’t unroll.” (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

TUNA TARTARE ON MARINATED CUCUMBERS

Pepin notes: “Delicious and attractive, this simple but sophisticated dish makes a great first course. The tuna should be chopped by hand rather than in a food processor. When mixed with vinegar, the chopped tuna will ‘whiten’ somewhat, becoming opaque. This is because the acetic acid in the vinegar coagulates, thus ‘cooking,’ the protein in the tuna.” This is a recipe from one of Pepin’s classes.

TUNA TARTARE

1 pound tuna

Salt

1 large shallot, finely chopped (2 tablespoons)

2 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped (1 teaspoon)

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 1/2 teaspoons white vinegar

1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

Reserve 4 small slices (1 ounce each) tuna, and chop remainder by hand into 1/4-inch dice. Place 1 reserved tuna slice between 2 sheets of plastic wrap, and pound into thin round about 4 inches in diameter. Repeat with remaining slices.

Remove top sheet of plastic wrap from slices and season lightly with salt to taste. Set aside.

Mix chopped tuna with shallot, garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, pepper, oil, vinegar and hot pepper sauce.

*

CUCUMBER GARNISH

1 cucumber (about 3/4 pound)

1 teaspoon vinegar

1 teaspoon peanut oil

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons minced chives

1 1/2 teaspoons drained capers

Peel cucumber, and cut into long thin strips with vegetable peeler on all sides until you come to seeds. Discard seeds and mix strips with vinegar, oil and salt.

To serve, divide garnish among 4 plates. Form chopped tuna mixture into 4 balls, and place 1 ball on top of cucumber on each plate. Wrap slice of tuna around each tuna ball, sprinkle with chives and capers, then serve.

Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

247 calories; 292 mg sodium; 43 mg cholesterol; 14 grams fat; 3 grams carbohydrates; 30 grams protein; 0.60 gram fiber.

SPINACH, HAM AND PARMESAN SOUFFLE

Pepin notes: “A souffle is always an impressive addition to a meal. As a first course, this recipe will serve 6 to 8, but it also makes a great luncheon main dish for 4 people. You can eliminate the ham if you are cutting down on calories. Another green or even mushrooms can be substituted for the spinach. Although this souffle can be prepared in a conventional souffle mold, I like it best made in a gratin dish. The crust and topping, made of Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs, will be browner and crunchier as a result, improving the look and taste of the dish and making it easier to serve at the table. Note: Leftover souffle will reinflate if reheated in a 375-degree oven.” This recipe is from “Jacques Pepin’s Table.”

1/2 pound trimmed spinach

1 slice bread, processed in food processor to make crumbs (1/2 cup)

1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

4 teaspoons butter

1 tablespoon oil

3 tablespoons flour

1 1/2 cups cold nonfat milk

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

3 egg yolks

1/4 pound lean ham, cut in thin strips (1 cup)

5 egg whites

Wash spinach and place, still wet, in skillet. Cook over medium to high heat until spinach is wilted, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat and cool. When cool, drain, chop coarsely and set aside.

Mix bread crumbs and 3 tablespoons cheese in small bowl. Grease sides and bottom of 6-cup gratin dish with 1 teaspoon butter. Add 1/2 of bread crumb-cheese mixture and shake dish until crumbs coat sides and bottom. Set aside.

Melt remaining 3 teaspoons butter in saucepan. Add oil and flour. Mix with whisk and cook over medium to high heat about 30 seconds. Whisk in milk, salt and pepper, and bring to boil, whisking constantly until mixture boils and thickens. Remove from heat and whisk in egg yolks. Add reserved spinach and ham, and mix well.

Beat egg whites in mixing bowl until firm but still soft. Fold into spinach mixture along with remaining cheese.

Pour souffle mixture into prepared gratin dish; sprinkle remaining bread crumb and cheese mixture on top; place dish on baking sheet and bake at 375 degrees until souffle is set inside and top is puffy and brown, about 35 minutes.

Spoon souffle directly from gratin dish onto plates and serve immediately.

Makes 8 servings.

Each serving contains about:

159 calories; 487 mg sodium; 121 mg cholesterol; 9 grams fat; 8 grams carbohydrates; 12 grams protein; 0.27 gram fiber.

SAUTEED LETTUCE PACKAGES

Pepin notes: “Unfortunately, people don’t often cook lettuce. I am very fond of it sauteed with garlic, mixed into souffles or combined with peas or carrots in a stew. Here, I poach whole heads of Boston lettuce, then halve them, fold them into triangle-shaped packages and saute them in a little butter and oil. These make a great accompaniment for almost any roast meat.” This recipe is from “Jacques Pepin’s Table” (KQED Books, 1995)

3 quarts water

4 firm heads Boston lettuce (2 pounds total)

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon peanut oil

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Bring water to boil in large pot. Meanwhile, wash lettuce thoroughly, gently opening leaves to let water flow over and around them but taking care not to separate leaves from cores.

Add lettuce heads to boiling water and cover with inverted plate to keep submerged. Bring water back to boil, reduce heat to medium and boil lettuce gently 20 minutes. Remove plate, drain water and add enough ice to pot to cover lettuce and cool quickly.

When lettuce heads are cold, remove from pot and, holding gently to preserve original shape, press each head between your palms to remove as much liquid as possible. Cut heads in 1/2 lengthwise (top to core), then fold each 1/2 head into triangle-shaped package. Set aside until cooking time. (Lettuce can be prepared to this point up to 1 day ahead, covered and refrigerated.)

When ready to serve, heat butter and oil until hot in large skillet. Add lettuce packages, folded-side up, and sprinkle with 1/2 of salt and pepper. Cook over medium to high heat 3 to 4 minutes. Turn packages over and sprinkle with remaining salt and pepper, and saute until lightly browned, 3 to 4 minutes longer.

Arrange lettuce packages on serving platter and serve immediately, 2 per person, or place in gratin dish and warm in 180-degree oven up to 30 minutes before serving.

Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

125 calories; 225 mg sodium; 8 mg cholesterol; 7 grams fat; 11 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams protein; 2.86 grams fiber.

PROFITEROLES WITH CHOCOLATE SAUCE

Pepin notes: “Each cup of flour, obtained by dipping a measuring cup directly into the flour bin and leveling it, will weigh 5 to 5 1/2 ounces and require 4 or 5 eggs, depending on size. If the pa^te a choux is too thick, the pastry will tend to open up too much as it bakes; on the other hand, if it is too soft, it will have a tendency to sink on the cookie sheet and not rise properly.

“Be careful of air-conditioning. If, after emerging beautifully puffy from the oven, the choux is exposed to cool air drafts or high humidity, it will have a tendency to collapse because of the moisture inside the pastry. To prevent this, when the choux is almost finished cooking, open the door of the oven and continue cooking with the oven door held slightly ajar (close it over a large metal spoon, for example) or shut the oven off, open its door and allow the choux to cool off slowly in the still warm oven so that the moisture inside the pastry can escape. Do not leave the choux in the oven too long, however, or it will dry out. Another way to release the moisture trapped in the hot choux is to remove the pastry from the oven and cut off the top of it so the moisture can escape. The choux should hold its shape but be tender and moist to the bite.” This recipe is from “Jacques Pepin’s The Art of Cooking” (Knopf, 1992).

BASIC CHOUX PASTE

1 cup milk or water

3 tablespoons butter plus extra for greasing pan

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon sugar

1 cup flour, scooped up and leveled (about 5 to 5 1/2 ounces), plus extra for dusting pan

5 or 6 eggs

2 tablespoons water

Bring milk, butter, salt and sugar to boil in saucepan. As soon as mixture comes to boil, remove from stove and add flour (flour does not have to be sifted unless lumpy) in 1 stroke (otherwise, mixture will tend to lump).

Using sturdy wood or metal spoon, stir mixture fast until it gathers together.

Place mixture back on stove. Mixture should now come away from sides of pan. After stirring about 30 seconds over medium heat, mixture should collect into 1 soft lump almost texture of modeling clay.

Continue cooking 1 to 1 1/2 minutes more, stirring until bottom of pan is white and cakey. This indicates that dough has dried a bit more, which makes dough smoother and stronger.

Transfer dough to bowl to mix by hand or use mixer. Add 1 egg to mixture and stir. Dough will form lumps and will not hold together. Keep stirring and mixture will tighten. When thick, add another egg and stir until tight again. Add 2 or 3 more eggs, 1 at a time, stirring after each addition until incorporated. Dough should be very smooth but not too soft to hold its shape.

Lightly butter and flour baking sheet (if too much butter and flour are used, dough will tend to lift as you pull up on pastry bag to release).

Place dough in pastry bag fitted with star or plain tip. Squeeze out about 1 tablespoon pastry onto baking sheet for each profiterole, moving bag in circular motion to make swirl. The mounds of dough should be about 1 to 1 1/2 inches apart.

Remove 1/2 white from remaining egg and discard. Beat remainder of egg with water to make egg wash.

Using brush, gently dab tops of dough mounds with egg wash to flatten “tail.” (Small amount of egg white in wash will give nice shine to puff and egg yolk will guarantee deeper and darker glaze.)

Bake at 450 degrees 30 minutes. Turn oven off and prop door open with wooden spoon. Leave choux in oven about 30 minutes to dry out. If not to be used immediately, puffs will keep 2 to 3 days stored tightly covered after cooling completely. Puffs can also be frozen.

*

PASTRY BUTTERCREAM

4 egg yolks

1/3 cup sugar

3 tablespoons potato starch

1 1/2 cups milk

1 cup butter

Combine egg yolks, sugar and potato starch in bowl and mix until well blended and smooth, about 1 minute. Bring milk to boil in saucepan and add to mixture, stirring.

Bring mixture to strong boil, whisking constantly. Be sure to get whisk around edges of pot, where mixture will tend to stick. Boil few seconds, remove from stove, cover with plastic wrap to prevent skin from forming and set aside to cool. Or, to cool more quickly, place pan in bowl of ice and water. Set aside 1 tablespoon of mixture for decoration.

Whip butter in mixer until light and fluffy, texture of pastry buttercream, about 2 minutes. When pastry cream is at room temperature or slightly tepid, add to whipped butter and whip together over medium-high heat about 45 seconds to 1 minute, until well-combined and fluffy.

*

CHOCOLATE SAUCE

1/2 pound bittersweet or semisweet chocolate

2 cups milk

3 tablespoons sugar

3 egg yolks

Bring chocolate, milk and sugar to boil in saucepan. Beat egg yolks in bowl and when chocolate mixture is boiling, pour in steady stream into egg yolks, mixing constantly with whisk. Hot chocolate will cook egg yolks. Strain sauce through fine strainer and cool.

*

ASSEMBLY

1 tablespoon milk

Powdered sugar

Cut off tops of profiteroles about 1/3 way down. Fill pastry bag with all but 1 tablespoon Pastry Buttercream and fit end with fluted tip. Pipe about 1 to 2 tablespoons Pastry Buttercream into each profiterole.

Using small cookie cutter, cut lids of profiteroles to make uniformly round circles and put back on top of buttercream.

Combine reserved tablespoon pastry buttercream with milk (mixture should have consistency of heavy syrup). Using piece of wax paper, make cornet or pastry horn (See Kitchen Tip). Place cornet in wide-mouthed glass so it stands upright, pour in cream-milk mixture, and fold or twist at top to enclose filling. Cut corner at tip just enough to create small opening.

Place about 3 tablespoons chocolate sauce on each dessert plate and dot with Pastry Cream-milk decorating mixture around edge.

Drag point of knife through each dot slightly to create white “tail” or “heart” in chocolate.

Dust profiteroles with powdered sugar and place 3 in middle of chocolate sauce for each serving. Serve immediately.

Makes 36 profiteroles, 12 servings.

Each serving contains about:

442 calories; 289 mg sodium; 303 mg cholesterol; 33 grams fat; 32 grams carbohydrates; 10 grams protein; 0.37 gram fiber.