Week Four, Day Five: Feb. 8th

Goat Cheese and Parmesan 

Herb Soufflé

Common wisdom holds that soufflés are notoriously difficult to make, but today I thought, how hard can they really be? I decided to try it.  The answer, luckily, is: not very. The secret seems to be a clean bowl and wisk and some arm stamina.

After looking around at a few recipes online, including this absolutely terrifying one that all but guarantees no one will who reads it will ever try to make a soufflé (so many musts, always, and nevers! To that I say, no recipe is the boss of me!), I determined that a soufflé really only has two parts: a base and beaten egg whites. Investigating further, I saw that the base for a savory soufflé is often a simple cheese sauce.  Investigating the contents of my fridge, I found that I still had a bit of that lovely Lively Run goat cheese left and some fresh thyme and decided that I would make a Goat Cheese and Parmesan Herb Soufflé.  I did hunt around in the cupboard for dried apricots, which I think would have been amazing in this, but sadly could only find dried cranberries. I used some mini (too mini, as it turned out) 1/2 c. ramekins to make baby individual servings.

Here's how I made it:

Goat Cheese and Parmesan Herb Soufflé

Serves 4 (in individual ramekins or one larger dish)

3 eggs
2 tbl butter (+ a little extra for greasing the baking dish(es))
2 tbl flour (+ extra for flouring the baking dish(es))
1 c. soy milk
1/2 c. shredded parmesan cheese
1/4 c. goat cheese
1 tsp. fresh thyme
salt and pepper

First, preheat oven to 375 degrees F, placing a rack and baking sheet on very bottom and removing other racks. The oven should be fully preheated before doing anything else. Then you can butter and flour your baking dishes and set aside.

Second, make your base in a sauce pan.  This base = a roux + soy milk (which makes it a béchamel sauce) + cheese (which makes it a cheese sauce) + egg yolk (which makes it a souffle base).  Here's how that works: Heat up the soy milk (microwave is fine) and set aside. Melt the 2 tbl butter in a sauce pan, then add the flour and wisk together until smooth, cooking for a few minutes on med. heat until the mixture starts to brown (but be careful not to let it stick or burn). This is your roux. Add the milk a little at a time until it's incorporated, wisking all the while to keep the mixture smooth and creamy (it should coat the back of a spoon when you're done). If you add too much milk and the mixture is watery, just let it reduce (keep cooking it) until it thickens. This is now a béchamel sauce. Next, add the cheese and stir until melted, salt and pepper to taste. This is now a cheese sauce.  Easy! Set this sauce aside to cool, pressing plastic wrap directly on its surface.  I eventually moved this to a separate bowl because I wanted it to cool faster and wanted a bigger area to fold everything together in.  You could also make it ahead of time and stick it in the fridge, then bring it to room temperature before the next step.

Once the sauce is no longer hot (about 15 min.), you can begin to work with the eggs. If the base is still hot, it will do bad things to your eggs.  First, make sure the bowl (metal) and wisk (also metal) are scrupulously clean and free from any grease.  You can wipe both down with vinegar and rinse to make sure. Egg whites will not whip if there is any hint of fat in them--including any bit of yolk.  Yolk is fat and fat is bad news (in your egg whites that is, it's perfectly delicious news elsewhere). Once all your utensils and such are ready, separate the eggs. Place the whites into the very clean metal bowl and check to make sure no yolk snuck in (fish it out if so). Mix the yolks with the sauce and stir in the thyme. Now beat the egg whites within an inch of their life. Start slowly in a figure-8 to mix them up a bit, then use a vigorous circular motion. The idea is to incorporate lots of air into the whites. Beat until firm peaks form and the mixture is very white and batter-like. It took me about 4 minutes, which is about 3 minutes longer than my arm wanted to wisk anything. I could've used my mixer (or another set of arms), but I like a little more control over my whites.

Moving quickly, stir a little bit of the whites into the base to loosen it up a bit (otherwise the weight of it will smoosh your whites when you fold them in). Put the whites on top of the base and fold into the mixture.  To fold, draw a spatula through the middle of the bowl and use it to scoop up the mixture at the bottom and place it over the whites. Rotate the bowl and continue folding until the whites are mostly incorporated. It's okay if streaks of white show. If you overmix, the whites will deflate and the soufflé won't rise.

Pour the mix into the waiting containers and pop in the oven. Bake about 15 min for small containers; 25 or so for large. It's done when the top rises and browns and a skewer stuck in the middle comes out moist, but not wet. Soufflés wait for no woman, so it's important to serve these immediately when they come out of the oven. If you wait, they'll just cool and fall and not taste very good. This means plating everything else (side salad, etc.) while they're cooking, so you're ready to go.  I sliced up some apple and dressed it with a balsamic vinaigrette while I was waiting.

Pre-Baking

Here's what mine looked like out of the oven.  As you can see, I overfilled them a bit, which you ideally want to avoid, but I didn't mind the slight muffin top. They were like monstrous ramekin-eating soufflés, and what's not to like about that? 

I dumped one of these out of the ramekin, wrapped it, and put it in the fridge, so I can turn it into a "twice-baked soufflé" tomorrow. This is apparently a thing.

These did begin to fall soon after they were out of the oven, as is their way, but I had mostly eaten them at that point so it didn't much matter. This is why immediate plating is important. They were light, airy, and savory. The thyme played nicely with the goat cheese and parm. Final Verdict: Very Tasty.