Pâte à Choux

This cream-puff paste has nothing whatever to do with the very difficult puff paste (pâté feuilletée). It is simple to make and is useful to know because the panade is the basis of other nonsweet dishes (various meat or vegetable fritters, gnocchi and quenelles, for instance). The puffs are usually filled with a plain but rich-tasting pastry cream, sometimes with whipped cream or ice cream (I don’t really care for the ice-cream idea—it makes the puffs terribly he