Cheese Beignets Les Bouillidices
These cheese beignets were a great success, which boosted my Corsican pride, and the recipe has even improved somewhat with experience and the pressure of serving to a crowd! So here is V2. The recipe serves six (6) for an apero (cocktail hour) or just 2 people if you’re Corsican and are used to eating your weight in beignet batter!
Equipment
- 1 mixing bowl large
- 1 large spoon
- 1 Wok or deep frying pan
- 1 Stainless-steel spatula
Ingredients
Ingredients
- 2 Glasses of(250mL) Water
- 250 g Plain Flour Add an extra 50g if the mix is too runny.
- 1 large Egg
- 500 g Fresh Brocciu * See Notes
- Vegetable Oil
- Coarse Salt
Instructions
- Put the flour and glasses of water in a large bowl. Mix. If the batter is too runny, add a bit more flour.
- Mix in the egg and stir well.
- If you have time, let it rest for an hour or so, covered with a tea towel at room temperature.
- Coarsely crumble the brocciu between your fingers (the food critic Estérelle Payany almost collapsed when she saw me doing this amidst professional chefs), then mix into the batter gently, not insisting too much. There should be large crumbles of brocciu in the batter. Use a large spoon.
- Pour 0.5cm of oil into the bottom of a wok or deep-sided frying pan and heat over high. Once the oil is well heated, drop in small balls of batter. Immediately smash them with the back of a spoon, or even better, a stainless-steel spatula (some chef friends who helped me make 400 bouillidices a night decided that it wasn’t necessary to flatten the beignets that much. It’s another school of thought. I respect that).
- Flip the bouillidices as soon as possible and fry until the edges are lightly brown. Flip a few times in the pan and flatten them each time.
- Once they are fried, place your bouillidices on a paper towel, and if you like salt, salt the beignets. Eat them without delay; they are best hot.
- Optional: You can also serve them with Corsican or Portuguese honey or your local delicious one. Try also with some chilli, like from the Pimenteraie Plein Cagnard sprouting nearby Aubagne.
Notes
*Brocciu: Available between November and June, maximum. In Marseille, you can buy it at the U Moi Paese shop near Place Sebastopol or fresh sheep, even goat cheese. The cheese must have the texture of ricotta.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!