Souffle!

Tonight, I made my first souffle - here's a picture of it in the oven about five minutes from done. 

The basic recipe is from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters, an absolutely fantastic book that my brother gave me for Christmas. Click here for a full review... I made a few changes based on some research (I used eggs and milk at room temperature and cooked it for the first 10 min. at 400, then down to 350 for the remaining 25 min), but I didn't stray too much beyond that.

So, like I said, I'd never made a souffle before but after reading a bit, it sounded a great deal like making chocolate mousse cake, what with the gentle folding of the egg whites into a heavy base. I've made chocolate mousse cake with some pretty nice results, so I decided to be audacious and give it a try. 

Following the basic principals that Waters outlines in The Art of Simple Food, I whipped together a butter and garlic puree for the inside of what I hoped would turn out to be 

a tasty gruyer-parmesan-garlic souffle. While the puree was cooling, I pulled together a basic béchamel sauce with butter, all-purpose flour and 1 cup of whole milk. 

Photon helped me with that - here's a picture of him in action.

It took about ten minutes for the béchamel to cook. Once it had cooled a bit, I whisked in 1/4 cup of garlic puree, 3/4 grated gruyer cheese and 1/4 grated parm. Once the cheese had incorporated, four egg yolks went in while the whites where beaten to stiff peaks in the stand mixer (I used a pinch of cream of tartar to help stabilize the whites). 

Then is was all a matter of folding the whites into the béchamel. This is the part that made me nervous. So, being the research geek that I am, I did some research and found out from several sources that the trick is not to fold the whites in aggressively. Rather, you should fold them in "casually" so as not to deflate them (it's the air bubbles in the beaten whites that make the souffle rise like a big ol' souffle). So, I folded casually - maybe a little too casually because the souffle rose a bit unevenly, but it *did* rise like a demon, so I think the principal of casualness holds. I just need some practice. Then, it went into the oven for a half an hour until the souffle was just turning golden brown and "jiggly" in the center when shaken, as Ms. Waters puts it.

Et voila! Souffle!

And thank you to James for being Johnny-on-the-Spot with the camera for this event. Souffles start to fall as soon as they leave the oven, but thanks to his swift moves and keen eye,

we even got a picture of it on the table before it fully deflated.

Ingredients:

5 tbs. unsalted butter

3 tbs. unbleached all purpose flour

1 cup milk, room temp. (I used whole, but 2% works too. Not sure about skim).

Salt (I used kosher sea salt, but table salt is fine)

Black pepper

A pinch of cayenne (I omitted for this version and replaced with dill)

4 eggs, separated. Room temp.

3/4 cup grated Gruyer cheese

1/4 grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 garlic puree (can be omitted)

1 tbs. soft butter to butter souffle dish with.

Process:

1. Melt 5 tbs. butter in heavy saucepan over med. heat

2. Stir in 3 tbs. flour. Cook for 2 min.

3. Whisk in, little by little, 1 cup of milk, whisking thoroughly between additions

4. Season the béchamel with a pinch of salt, pepper and dill (if using)

5. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally for 8-10 min. until sauce is thick. Remove from heat and cool slightly.

6. Separate eggs. Whites into mixing bowl or bowl of stand mixer, yolks left whole in small bowl.

7. Once béchamel is cooled slightly, add the egg yolks, stirring vigorously so as to avoid scrambling the eggs in the warm sauce (ew).

8. Add various cheeses and puree (if using) stirring with whisk until incorporated.

9. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Prep lowest rack.

10. Add a pinch of cream of tartar to the 4 egg whites and whip, starting at low speed and building to med.high/high, until they have formed moist, firm peaks. 

11. Transfer béchamel to a large non-reactive mixing bowl (glass is awesome). Stir in 1/3 of beaten whites with a whisk until fully incorporated.

12. Add rest of whites to beschamel, folding casually no more than 8-10 times. There should still be streaks of white visible.

13. Decant mixture into a well-buttered souffle dish (you can really use any sort of dish you like as long as it has tallish sides and holds 1 quart) and resist the urge to mess about with it. Just put it into the oven. IMPORTANT: Also resist the urge to open the oven door and look at it in the first 20 min. This is when most of the inflating happens. Opening the door will cause it to collapse like a flan in a cupboard, as Eddie Izzard would say.

14. Bake on lowest rack at 400 for first 10 min. Then reduce heat to 350 and continue to bake until the souffle is golden brown, "but still soft in the center and jiggly when shaken gently". About 25-30 more minutes.

15. Remove from oven and serve immediately!