GOUGÈRES GO CARBONARA.

Crisp, airy pockets of choux pastry with cheese and bacon? Party dynamite.

The famous cheese puffs of Burgundy are called gougères, but they should be called gorgeous. Crisp outside, and buttery-soft inside, they smell divinely cheesy:  the perfect snack to pass around with a drink in hand.

When you break one open, it’s almost hollow, cooked-through but soft and steamy, because as they bake, the heat causes the liquid in the dough to turn to steam, which forces it to puff into crisp, airy pockets. Think of how a chocolate éclair is crisp outside, yet soft and hollow inside – that’s the same pastry, without the cheese.

Gougères are traditionally flavoured with Gruyère, and can be as big as the palm of your hand (as done by the local bakeries of the region on a Sunday morning), or classy little two-bite canape size, or this sort-of-medium size that’s perfect for anything from scoffing to filling to dunking into soup.

If you haven’t made choux pastry before, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Just bring water, butter and salt to the boil, dump in the flour, and beat like hell with a wooden spoon. Before you know it, the whole thing is as smooth and glossy as mashed potato.

You can stay at the stove and beat in the eggs, but I move to the food processor at this point, to whiz in the eggs, then the cheese.

My little twist here is to add a couple of tablespoons of crisped, diced bacon, which combines with the lovely internal egginess to taste just like carbonara (if you close your eyes and think of Rome). I also swapped out the Gruyère for carbonara’s pecorino and parmesan, which made them even more darn-tootin’ gorgeous.

Gorgeous gougères

Makes 18 medium, 24 small

• 2 rashers streaky bacon, diced (around 75g)

• 250 ml water

• 100 g butter

• half tsp sea salt

• 150 g plain flour, sifted

• 3 large eggs (65 g, from pack labelled 800 g for 12)

• 70 g grated pecorino

• 30 g grated parmesan, plus extra for serving

Heat the oven to 220C (conventional). Line two baking trays with baking paper.

Fry the bacon in a small pan until it renders its fat and just starts to crisp but not get too hard. Drain and set aside.

Combine the water, butter and salt in a heavy bottomed saucepan and bring to the boil.

As soon as it boils, remove from the heat and add the sifted flour all at once, beating strongly with a wooden spoon until the dough leaves the sides of the pan.

Return the pan to a gentle heat and keep beating for a minute or two until the dough is as smooth as mashed potato.

Transfer the dough to a food processor and leave it to cool for a minute or two, then whizz it for 10 seconds.

Add the eggs one at a time, whizzing for 10 seconds after each one until incorporated. The first egg will break up and go all slimy, don’t worry, it’s not you. Just keep going.

Add the two grated cheeses and whiz for 10 seconds to incorporate.

Add the bacon and pulse once or twice until distributed, you don’t want to blend it.

Drop dessertspoonsful of the mixture onto the oven trays, leaving room for spreading.

Bake for 20 mins at 220C, without opening the oven door.

Drop the heat to 200C and bake for a further 5 to 10 mins until crisp and golden brown.

Leave on the tray for 10 minutes to help them crisp up outside and dry out inside, then shower with extra grated parmesan and serve.

Do ahead: You can make the mixture ahead of time, get it onto the baking trays and refrigerate for a couple of hours before baking. Or you can bake them during the day, cool, then reheat for 5 minutes at 180C when you need them.

Do way ahead: Once baked and cooled, pack into an air-tight container and store for up to a week. Yep, you can also freeze them. Reheat as above.

# For glossy gougères, brush with egg wash (1 egg yolk beaten with a dash of milk or water) before baking.

# For extra-cheesy gougères, sprinkle with extra grated parmesan before baking as well as after baking. Nothing wrong with a bit of over-kill.

Wine-lovers: You will already know this, but gougères are magnificent when within reach of a glass of Pinot Noir, Chablis or Kir Royale - Champagne with a dash of Crème de Cassis.

Go fancy! If you make a classic pâte à choux with just the cheese and not the bacon, you could spoon it into a piping bag and pipe out the puffs, for a lovely smooth finish. Once baked, lift their crisp little tops up and squeeze in a fold of smoked salmon and a cheeky little sauce.  (The French would do a bechamel; I used up the last of my green tahini salsa from last week’s recipe post). It’s good for showing-off ( I can pipe!), but I still think the craggy made-by-human roughness of the tablespoon method is more appealing.

I reckon the incredible and unstoppable Jacques Reymond would have been the first to introduce me to gougères, when he came from Burgundy to Mietta’s in 1983 to revolutionise French cooking in Melbourne. But these, above, were pretty good, taken on a Sunday morning in Vezelay in Burgundy some time in the late 1980s, just prior to lunch at Marc Menau’s three Michelin star L’Esperance. Much gratitude to Anne Willan, whose famous La Varenne cookery school I attended at the Chateau du Fey on the same trip, and who taught the two of us so much.

A trip on which I also learnt how to make croissants, in a thirteenth century stable turned bakery. But really, I only put this pic in for the hair. The hair!

Thanks for dropping by! And as always, thanks for your comments and opinionated thoughts. Special thanks to Terry for grating the cheese, much appreciated.

I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I fully support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and for recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution.