I first made choux pastry last summer. I did a few shifts in a restaurant to learn some new skills, and it was quite the baptism of fire. “Recipes” were scant lists of ingredients, half methods, several things on the go at once – fine for the practised chef, but brand new to me. I worked it out, researching methods surreptitiously online, studying for hours after my shift. Then along came choux and I panicked. “I can’t do this,” I wailed. “It’s easy,” the head chef soothed. “Of course you can.” And I did. Because, in fact, it is easy.
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