Salmon en Papillote and Gougères

For this “Sweetheart Sunday” my sweetheart did “Salmon en Papillote with Tarragon” from Kitchen Simple: Essential Recipes for Everyday Cooking while I attempted gluten free “Cumin and parsley-flavored cheese gougères” from La Tartine Gourmande: Recipes for an Inspired Life . Both of these books I have home from the library.

I say “attempted” gougères, since we haven’t finished this week’s grocery shopping yet – haven’t made it to our natural foods store – and therefore I was missing the quinoa flour that  Béatrice Peltre uses in her gougère recipe. I googled about a bit and used the flour blend that Erin Swing at “The Sensitive Epicurean” recommends in her gougère recipe. Worth checking out, as she’s quite thorough in her instructions; here’s a link to that post. Other than the flour sub, I followed the recipe in the book. Oh, and I was out of cumin seeds so I subbed ground cumin, just reduced the amount and added it into the flour rather than topping the gougères with the seeds.

Both authors recommended working quickly once the process started, so I had my complete mise done. Also weighed ingredients, as gougères are fussy, especially gluten free gougères.



Milk, salt, pepper, and butter are brought to a boil, then the flours are added and the mixture stirred vigorously until it pulls away from the side of the pan:




Then eggs are incorporated one by one, at which point the dough is pliable:




The cheese and parsley (and I also did the cumin here) is stirred in. It is piped onto parchment paper (I used silicone sheets) and topped with more cheese (I used gruyère throughout):



And into the oven. The problem with gluten-free gougères is that they want to puff in the oven then deflate, and mine were no exception. Fortunately, they still taste delicious, even if they resemble cheese cookies on the plate!

Meanwhile, the Patriarch was busy with some fancy fish work. After cleaning and patting the salmon steaks with sea salt and pepper, he used twine to tie them into medallions, then topped each with fresh tarragon and pieces of butter. He then sprinkled the top of each with white wine:




Then painted the parchment with egg whites:

 
The individual steaks were each wrapped into their parchment packages and done in the oven for 20 minutes. They were very, very moist and the flavor was just excellent. Quite a delicious meal.