Vivi swans around Menu 11

Sunday was the Super Bowl. Curiously, the three adult women watched the game. The Brother stuck his head in the room occasionally; Boy-child got excited and bored and ran outside to play his own game of football; and Girl-child, somewhat predictably, preferred her Princess video game to the Match of Champions.

We all participated in the Nacho pig-out, however. No Cordon Bleu that night.

I made the vegetables on Saturday, actually. They weren't that difficult (although did use every pan in the house). I only made the leeks, and carrots, and green beans instead than cauliflower. I used canned rather than fresh winter tomatoes, and halved the marinade recipe. The leeks were surprisingly good, and of them all, those are the ones I'd happily make again.

The sole was excellent, as I expected it to be. I have made something like it before, without the extra butter-lemon sauce. I have not completely mastered sauteing at high heat without burning the butter, however. Had to go through two butter melts, and filled the main floor with burnt greasy smoke.

My swans. I don't know why, but they did not puff in cooking -- the pastries in the photo are all about 1.5 inches long (you can see how long and graceful the swan's neck is -- the recipe called for an S shape 2 inches long). Not only were they almost too small to manipulate, they were heavy in texture. I'm sad about this, because the gruyère puffs cooked perfectly, and I had really been looking forward to the playful form of the dish.

My chantilly cream was stiff peaks when I beat it, but it softened before I got to the assembly, and the whole thing was a sweet but soupy mess. But the swans, delicate and tiny, were pretty.

So I made two swans only, and turned the rest into éclairs. Because the pastry didn't puff, there was no air holes to squeeze cream into, so I just spread it between pastries and hoped the chocolate would camouflage the mess.

Here are the possible reasons the pastry didn't puff: I could not get the dough to the point described: "shiny and the dough slowly drips off the spoon in a point". I added almost the full 4 eggs called for, and finally gave up when it was shiny and the dough slowly dripped off the spoon in a sort of roughly pointy thick glop.

So: too much egg? Not beaten hard enough? Too dry (needed more egg?) Cooked too fast on the stove? (Perhaps the element was too hot.) Or was it that I used insulated cookie sheets, so the heat distributed evenly, when it shouldn't have? Is pàte a choux trickier than I realized, and hard to make on a rainy day with high humidity? Or am I just a bad pastry chef -- I certainly have had some disasters this last month or so.