Paper Palate

This week’s Chronicle is all about eggs. Check out the recipes for Bitter Melon Omelet, Spring Asparagus and Crab Quiche, Lupa Frittata with Goat Cheese and Vegetables, Potato Tortilla, and Gruyere Omelet with Mushrooms and Shallot Confit.

As the Chronicle demonstrates, eggs are the perfect vehicle for experimentation with new flavors and cooking methods. It’s pretty hard to mess up the recipe so much that you make eggs taste bad.

Except for the soufflé. This week’s Chronicle casually includes a recipe for Speedy Cheese Soufflé.

Honestly, I’ve always been terrified of soufflés – the whipping of the temperamental egg whites, the folding in of the base (how much stirring is too much?), the prohibitions against opening the oven door or stomping around the house – who has time for such high maintenance cooking? I was wrong.

This week, we made soufflés in culinary school and I learned that they’re not so scary after all. IF you have an electric mixer. If you don’t have a mixer, you need Popeye arms because you’ll be beating egg whites and mixing pate a choux. It can be done, but you’ll need to lie down for a little nap afterwards.

Our chef shared with us his cheese soufflé recipe, and I’ll share it right here with you. By the way, Chef C says cheese soufflés are the hardest; the cheese wants to go one way, the soufflé the other. Only experimentation will lead to your perfect personal recipe, but here’s his:

Chef C’s Cheese Souffle Recipe
24 oz milk
3 oz butter
3 oz flour
6 oz pate a choux (cream puff dough – see below for instructions)
12 egg whites
2 oz grated parmesan
thinly sliced gruyere to line soufflé dishes
extra butter for soufflé dishes

Prepare your soufflé dishes by buttering the sides and lining them with 1/8” slices of gruyere cheese. If this doesn’t work out, you can also grate the gruyere very finely and just stick it to the butter lining the sides of the dishes. Preheat your oven to approximately 400 degrees.

Melt butter in a small saucepan, add flour and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until flour is cooked slightly and fully incorporated. Add 1/3 of the milk, whisking constantly, until fully incorporated. Add the remaining milk in two stages, each time incorporating fully before adding more. The milk mixture should have a thick, sauce like consistency. (If it seems too thin, just turn up the heat and whisk vigorously for a minute or two.) Incorporate the pate a choux and the grated parmesan into the milk mixture, remove from heat and set aside. This flavor base can be made hours in advance.

Whip egg whites into medium soft peaks. For egg whites to whip properly, they need to be completely free of yolk, and must be whipped in a clean bowl. A mixer REALLY helps things along at this stage.

Fold the whites, 1/3 at a time, into the flavor base mixture. No need to be too gentle with the first third, but increase your caution with the second and last third. They do need to be fully incorporated, just don’t stir like crazy. The result should be fluffy and pillowy looking.

Spoon mixture into soufflé dishes, filling them all the way up, bang them on the table to get out excess air, and clean the rims of the dishes so the soufflé doesn’t get snagged on any batter or cheese on its way up. Put the soufflés on a sheet tray covered with parchment paper and MAKE SURE there are no oven racks inches above them – they will double in size. Like this…

We clomped around the classroom and opened the oven doors constantly to check our soufflés – they seemed entirely unruffled by the experience. Cook them till they look done, and serve immediately.

Pate a choux - can be made in advance and chilled
4 oz milk
2 oz butter
3 oz flour
5 oz egg

Bring the milk and butter to a boil in a small saucepan, stir in the flour. Stirring constantly, cook the flour over medium heat until a thick skin of cooked flour forms over the bottom and sides of the pot (about 5 minutes). Put the cooked flour mixture into a stand mixer and mix on medium speed to cool. When mixture has cooled (steam stops rising), add eggs one at a time until fully incorporated. Viola – pate a choux. You can pipe this mixture onto parchment and bake it to make cream puffs or éclairs, but be sure to save 6 oz for your soufflé.