soufflé with raspberry foam

So begins again with the joke “saw-fall”

An ever so light combination of egg whites and the setting agent of yolk and small amount of flour. Add some flavour like chocolate or pistachio or passion fruit or cheese or anything you want. But it’s difficult to make an airy-wonder, rise up clear of the ramekin and hold itself up modestly from the torture of gravity after it’s cooled. The air in the meringue expands with heat, pushing the mixture up. The heat also sets the protein of the egg yolk and stiffens the flour – producing a scaffold that holds the expanded air mass. By this analogy, soufflé are bound to collapse as it cools. The trapped air bubbles will decreased in volume as it cools, shrinking the souffé. But just how much can the cooked egg and flour mixture compensate and keep some of the volume? Who has a good explanation of what a soufflé does when it sits in the oven? And what settings on the oven should I have? Pure air convection or some above and below heating as well?

this one had a bit more lift!

Here is a second attempt at a pistachio soufflé. Still in trial and error phase. This time I grounded up the pistachio with the Barmix spice grinder. The pistachio meal was then added to the milk-sugar-vanilla mixture to infuse. After 8-10 min of gentle warming, the mixture was passed through a fine sieve to remove the gritty texture of the ground pistachio. A slightly thick, green milk speckled with vanilla remained in the pot.

milk, pistachio, sugar and vanilla

I made some raspberry foam to go with the soufflé – though a thick, cold coulis might have been better.