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White Corn and Ginger Soufflé Recipe
April 23, 2003
I made a strong first attempt with this recipe. Like most Americans born in the 70's, I don't have much experience making soufflés. It has been pounded into my head since I was a kid: soufflés are difficult, soufflés fall, soufflés make you look like you can't cook.
I have been on a winning streak with great recipes from this Michael Bauer book, so I figured-let's go for it. The ingredient list is short here, making this recipe quick to pull together-butter, flour, milk, eggs, Gruyere cheese, white corn, ginger, and garlic.
I was a little worried because I don't own an 8-inch soufflé pan. Which apparently looks like this. My 8-inch cake pan seemed like the logical alternative, and didn't seem to be too much of a factor in the ultimate outcome of the soufflé.
I started off by making a simple bechamel-a flour, butter, and milk sauce sort-of base. Let that cool a bit, and then added the yolks. Pretty straight forward so far. Then came all the goodies: cheese, corn, ginger, and garlic. Here is the point where you get the feeling things could go south in a hurry. I whipped up the egg whites, the recipe call for soft peaks, I think technically I overdid it a bit, and my eggwhites ended up technically being stiff peaks (plus). But they did not turn into Styrofoam, thank god.
I folded them into the yolk mixture, and everything look nice and volumous. Gently poured everything into the buttered 'soufflé' pan, and into the oven it all went. Of course, I immediately turned on my little oven light and kept checking on the progress every 2 minutes or so--like Shrinky Dinks for adults. I realize now that my oven rack may have been one step too high (although it was a bit lower than center). The soufflé eventually came out of the oven tall, and beautiful, and golden, it really was an amazing sight to see. It is a bit sad to have to cut into a beautiful soufflé, but I did it anyway to see how I managed on the inside.
The jury is still out. My soufflé seemed to be a bit runny in the middle. I thought it was o.k. for them to be soft in the middle, but mine definitely classified as runny. I looked into it a bit, and apparently the French like the middle to be runny so they can spoon this sauce over other food or bread, which makes sense to me. The flavors were great, and everything else seemed to be in order.
For next time, I will try to track down a soufflé pan, or at the very least some sort of ceramic or glass baking dish, and then move the baking shelf down a level so the top doesn't brown up quite so quickly.
To feature an actual recipe taken from a cookbook, it is best to request permission from the publisher or author. In the early days on 101 Cookbooks, I would tell people where to find the recipe, but not feature the recipe itself. Eventually I began to request permission to run the actual recipes, but this wasn't one of them. The majority of entries on 101 Cookbooks will have the recipes attached, this just happens to be one of the ones that doesn't. My apologies!
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