French Fridays with Dorie: Gougères

Gourgeres on eatlivetravelwrite.comI know, I know – another cooking group?  But it’s Dorie!!!

I was thrilled when I saw Dorie Greenspan had a new cookbook coming out this fall – Around My French Table.  I was even more thrilled when I received a review copy from Thomas Allen & Son:

It’s always tricky to approach reviewing a cookbook because of course, cooking your way through it is the absolute best way to figure out if it’s the real deal or not.  Dorie’s latest is over 500 pages and nearly every recipe is one I want to make. Ok, then.  Enter French Fridays with Dorie – what better way to work your way though a book than with a group of like minded Dorie groupies?  I signed up immediately, loving the fact that you can post as much or as little as your life allows and I especially loved the fact that Dorie chose the recipes for the first month.

Our first assignment was gougères (pp 4-6). What’s a gougère, you ask?  Well think a cream puff/profiteroles but savoury and cheesy.  Its a savoury choux pastry with cheese.  A pre-dinner snack found all over France, the gougère is a specialty of Burgundy where  it’s often served with one of my favourite apéritifs of all time, a kir.

Now I’ve made profiteroles before with some success so I approached this fairly casually. In fact I made them after returning home from the Savour Stratford festival, so I was dead tired and they still worked out. Dorie’s recipe must be failproof if I managed it in that state…  She claims the recipe makes 36, I halved the recipe and it made 30 – and I used a piping bag to ensure my measures were even. No matter, 30 golden puffs of cheesiness using only a very few ingredients is definitely a good deal 🙂  I used half Gruyère, half blue cheese because that’s what we had in the fridge and they were perfect.

Problem is… they’re excellent warm but even if you try really hard, it’s difficult to finish 30 of them between two of you. I tucked them away in an airtight container and racked my brains for a use for day-old gougères.  Flipping through AMFT (as one is wont to do – it is a fascinating read with stories interspersed through the recipes), I happened upon Dorie’s onion soup recipe (pp 56-57).  I love a good French onion soup and wondered if I could substitute bread croutons for the day-old gougères??

I had some onions on hand so decided to go for it.  Dorie’s recipe calls for a long, long caramelisation of the onions over a very low heat (mine took nearly 2 hours and they still weren’t as dark as I am sure Dorie meant them to be but it was bedtime!!).  She also uses chicken stock – I normally use beef.  As you can see in the photo below, the soup is not as dark as you might expect a French onion soup to be but the flavour was spot on – you can tell that the onions cooked for a long time.  I placed some gougères in the soup and topped it with cheese (not the best choice – Parmesan – again, the only thing I had on hand) and popped it under the broiler (that’s the grill for you, mum) for about 5 minutes.

And it was cheesy perfection for dinner…

And how did it taste?  I really liked the flavour the gougères brought to the soup – for one thing it meant you could use less cheese – don’t you hate it when you order French onion soup and it’s just overloaded with cheese?  Well Dorie’s version isn’t but this was a most excellent use of leftovers, if I do say so myself…

What I really liked?  That it was so easy to remove each little gougère topped with cheese and pop it in your mouth. Sometimes large bread pieces can be cumbersome to eat (not to mention messy) – this was a slightly more elegant version in terms of ease of eating.

So we’re 2 for 2 right now!  I am excited to join French Fridays with Dorie when time permits and you can too – simply buy the book and register here!  Follow along on Twitter too!

94 thoughts on “French Fridays with Dorie: Gougères”

  1. I was really sorry I didn’t get to meet you in Toronto, but reading this post is like having a little visit with you. I absolutely love that you put the gougeres in the onion soup — I think I just might do the same when the weather gets colder.

    Welcome to FFwD!

    Reply
      • Hi Mardi 🙂
        Sadly I’m years late to this! Just now discovered this through you, whom I also have just discovered!
        I’m going to try to join in (even though I’m coming in part way) on the ‘Everyday Dorie’ cook your way through, but I’d love to know if you have a master list of the order you did all the recipes from ‘Around My French Table’. The site link takes me to a foreign site And I’d love to have a list of the order you worked your way through, so I too can have a go 🙂
        Happy Tuesday and hope you’re having a wonderful start to 2021

        Reply
  2. I love the way you used them for the soup. You’ve inspired me! I’ll be making these this weekend. Going to have to order that book too!

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  3. It’s a rainy, windy mess here, so seeing these pictures was so comforting. Mmmm, golden cheesy goodness. But a question: are there more days in your week than mine? I’ve got seven and can’t seem to get a fraction of what you do accomplished. DO you have a space/time generator I should know about?

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  4. Yes, the size was perfect for the soup – also they didn’t get quite as “soggy” as some bread does. Good all around.

    Trivia to add to the post for other KIR fans:

    The drink (cocktail seems too strong a descriptor) is actually named after a past Mayor of Dijon, Felix Kir. Traditionally, it should only be made with white Burgundy – but not a chardonnay, a white from the grape varietal aligote. He popularised it after WWII.

    (With apologies for lack of accents that cannot be added in comments.)

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  6. Love your idea to do Fridays with Dorie!! Good luck with that. I think you came up with a great use for your leftover gougeres 😉 French onion soup is one of my favorites!!

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  7. I’m sorry–did you say ‘cheesy’ and ‘choux’ in one sentence?? Yep…I’ll be making this one soon! 🙂 Yum yum YUM. This looks incredible.

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  8. Gougeres are one of my all time favourites — and I think you were inspired to find a “day-old” use for them. Looks delicious! Theresa

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  9. I don’t think there is ever too much cheese in this soup but I love the gougères idea, genius! How unusual to use chicken stock but I guess it makes it a bit lighter. Beautiful post Mardi, nicely done!

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  10. Beautiful Gougères Mardi! I loved the substitution in the french onion soup… YUM! (If only I had a savory blog…)

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  11. Mardi, I am so glad to see you are partaking in a Dorie event. I am such a huge fan of hers and am so excited to work my way through her new book. Your gougeres are lovely and I really like how you used them to top your soup. May have to use that idea!

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  12. Now I want to make the onion soup, just so I can use gougeres in it! Beautiful job, and what a great idea for the leftovers!

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  13. These little Gougeres look wonderful, but even more spectacular topped with cheese in that bowl of onion soup.

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  14. Mardi, I can’t believe this idea never crossed my mind! Brilliant! I love Gougeres, love French Onion Soup – together it is a match made in heaven, I’m sure 🙂 I’ll be tucking this away for the future!

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  15. Hi Mardi!

    Sorry to hear you have been sick :-(. I love making gougeres – it’s one of my “go to” fall/winter appetizers. However, I had never thought of using the leftovers as a “crouton’ for the soup – when it cools down here I am definitely going to have to try it!! Thank you for sharing such an delicious recipe and “inventive” use of leftovers!

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  16. What a fun idea to use them in French Onion Soup. They look fabulous! I don’t usually complain about too much cheese in the soup, it’s when I get too many onions and not enough broth that bugs me.

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  17. They’re so PUFFY. Puffy in a beautiful light airy delicious way, not in a hungover sleep-deprived eye way.

    Are you allowed to keep sticking more of the leftover ones in the soup until you run out of soup to soak up? Please say you are.

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  18. What a clever idea! I’ll have to try it, if the piranha (our teenager) ever leaves us with leftover gougeres. 🙂

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  19. Hm… I made FOS last week… drat! What a perfect pairing! Guess I’ll have to make both again – congrats on your FB #1! Beautiful gougeres!

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  20. Mardi, Your gougeres are gorgeous. And what a great idea to use them as croutons in the onion soup. I made the whole batch but only baked up 12. The rest are in the freezer – possible croutons!!??

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  21. Pingback: It was a Sign: Make Gougères | The Fit Traveler: Food, Travel and Fitness
  22. Hello! wow your soup looks amazing! I have been making this soup today and I can’t wait to try it! Although I had the same problem with the onions. I was nearing 2 hours of cooking and they were still not as brown as I imagined them to be :[ So I went on to the next step because it’s almost dinner time! I hope it turns out as delicious as yours!

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  23. These were super simple to make. And they even worked for me which is a miracle. Yours are beautiful. And loved how you used them.

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