Savoury French lightning for a man with no shoes

I'm beginning to get the hang of this, I hope. The last few parties haven't felt micrometers from madness. I've been calm and collected (when else are you collected? It's always C&C isn't it, never just collected?). Possibly a little shouty just before people arrive but these things are said in the heat of the kitchen and shouldn't be taken too seriously (family).

Karen and Ben came for the second time, part of an ebullient party of six (including @karenpine and @jesschivers). Couldn't help noticing that one man arrived barefoot but I forgot to ask why.

Baked some mini savoury eclairs (French for 'lightning') just for fun. This was the logical extension of my recent gougere dalliance. I made some choux pastry with some roasted onion and thyme milk (milk in a bowl in the fridge with things added for a couple of days) and a pinch of smoked paprika.

I filled these with some cheese mousse, made from gruyere, parmy and whipping cream, dispensed from a syphon. It was a real trial getting the mousse out of the syphon. I think my mistake was using a hard cheese which when cold just sulked in the bottom of the syphon, refusing to come out and party, but when too warm just flopped out like... well, floppy cheese which is never good. Maybe goats cheese next time (and let's not have the debate about the apostrophe in goats cheese. I'm using the adjectival form here BTW).

The eclairs were topped with a rather delicious but ridiculously time consuming roast shallot puree.

Anyway, the end result looked like a sweet eclair (I'm such a wag, me) and was both fun to serve and to eat.

Wish I'd taken a photo now.