Crab and Artichoke Soufflé

Now we're cooking! This is what I signed up for the Daring Kitchen for. Technically challenging, classic dishes that everyone used to know how to do, but are rarely seen outside of stuffy French restaurants anymore. Of all the dishes I've been wanting to make, soufflés have always loomed as the most challenging. Let's see if they've earned their lofty reputation.

Dave and Linda from Monkeyshines in the Kitchen chose Soufflés as our November 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge! Dave and Linda provided two of their own delicious recipes plus a sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe found at the BBC Good Food website.

About Soufflés

For all the hype, this was really not that hard! I hope no one is ever turned away from trying to make this some day. Granted, mine did not turn out perfect, but with a few tweaks, this could be a delicious meal that actually doesn't take nearly as much work as its reputation would suggest. 

Savory soufflés consist of two parts - the base, and the egg whites

• Base - a roux of butter, flour, milk, plus egg yolks and any flavoring (here that was the crab, artichokes and g
• ruyère
)
• Whites - beaten separately to incorporate bubbles

The whites are then folded into the base, spooned into the soufflé dish, and baked. That's it! Melt some butter, flour, milk, cheese and anything you want to flavor it, add the beaten egg whites, and bake it. What's so hard about that? 


Other tips for making soufflés 

• Savory soufflés don't rise as much as the sweet ones, so it's important to use flavoring ingredients with low water content. 
• Use fresh eggs at room temperature. Cold eggs don't whip as well.
• The cleanest equipment is essential to maintaining a fluffy soufflé - the slightest bit of oil, detergent, egg yolk, anything, will destroy the bubbles. Just think about when you have a pint of foamy beer, and when you touch the bubbles, the oils on your fingertips weigh the bubbles down and pop them.
• It's important to "temper" the egg yolks - slowly bring them to the temperature of the base before adding them in, otherwise they'll scramble. To do this, mix some of the base into the yolk, stirring quickly before the heat cooks the eggs. Once the eggs are warmed up, they can be added to the rest of the base. Another way to temper the yolks is to beat them over a warm water bath, which Dave and Linda say work the best. I think I'll try it this way, as I really want to give this soufflé every opportunity to not fail.
• The oven has to be completely pre-heated before putting the soufflé in, and, I'm sure if you know nothing else about soufflés you know this, don't keep the door open too long when putting it in, and don't open the door once it's in.
• You can add a collar to the dish to give it more height if you want a taller soufflé. 

Equipment

• One 2-quart (US)/1.9 litre soufflé dish or six 1-cup/240 ml soufflé dishes, or a deep baking dish with relatively straight sides. You can also use small ramekin dishes (or oven-proof coffee cups); these will cook significantly faster.
• Whisk (an electric mixer will make it a lot easier, but hand whisking is great exercise)
• Various measuring spoons (¼, ½ and 1 teaspoon; tablespoon) and/or kitchen scale
• Miscellaneous mixing bowls and pans, including a large bowl for beating the egg whites.

Ingredients

• 1 cup (250 ml, 4 oz, 120g) Crab meat, flaked and lightly-packed
• ½ cup (125 ml, 2 oz/60 g) Artichoke hearts, cooked, finely chopped (frozen, fresh or from a jar is OK, but marinated-in-oil style is not. Again with the oil and the bubbles).
• 2 large Egg yolks
• 3 large Egg whites
• ½ tsp. (2½ ml, 3 gm, .1 oz) Salt
• ¼ tsp. (1¼ ml) (1½ gm) (0.05 oz) Cream of tartar. If you can’t find cream of tartar, a dash (~ ½ tsp) of lemon juice can be substituted
• 1 cup (250 ml, 2 ½ oz, 75g) Gruyère cheese, shredded
• ½ tsp. (2½ ml, 2 gm, 0.07 oz) White pepper - I'm not sure why black pepper won't work here, but white pepper is very fine, so maybe the thicker grain of black pepper weighs down the soufflé? I've also heard that some chefs absolutely despise white pepper and refuse to use it. Not sure why that is either.
• 1 tbsp. (15 ml, 14 gm, ½ oz) Butter
• 1 tbsp. (15 ml, 9 gm, 1/3 oz) Flour
• 1 tsp. (5 ml, 3 gm, .1 oz) Dried chives or tarragon (definitely going with the chives here - I'm not a huge fan of tarragon)
• 1 cup 8 fl.oz (250ml) Milk
• To taste, Salt and Pepper 
• Additional butter and bread crumbs for preparing the dishes

Prep

• Preheat oven to 375˚F
• Flake crab meat, if necessary
• Cook and chop artichokes finely (¼”/0.5cm dice). Frozen or from a jar don't need to be cooked. Fresh need to be steamed gently until soft, about 5 minutes. 
• Separate eggs and bring them to room temperature 

• Shred Gruyère

• Prepare dishes by buttering the dish, then coating with bread crumbs. You may have some left over soufflé mixture if you go with the smaller soufflé dishes.

Make the Base

• In a medium saucepan, melt the butter

• Stir in the flour to make a roux
• Get the flour evenly blended to a paste, do not cook the roux for any length of time
• Gradually stir in the milk, mixing all the time

• Add herbs

• Add the cheese

• Stir until the cheese is melted and you have a thick sauce
• Remove from heat.

Temper Yolks

• In a large pan, bring water to a gentle simmer
• Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl set just over this water until pale and slightly foamy – about 6 minutes 

I love my tiny little whisk. It's so great for tasks like this! And it's freaking adorable. Also the recipe said to use a large pan, but to put a bowl over a large pan requires a large bowl, and since there are only 2 egg yolks, whisking them in a large bowl just seemed silly. So instead I used a small saucepan and a small bowl. Don't use glass unless you know for sure that it's tempered. I made that mistake once and cracked one of my favorite bowls.


Combine Base and Eggs

• Gradually stir the egg yolks into the cheese sauce until well blended
• Add the artichoke and flaked crab meat to the cheese sauce. Set aside.

aaaaand this is where my camera battery died. I'm still looking for the charger, but the battery is so good that I've only had to charge it once since I got it 8 months ago, so I can't remember what I did with it the last time I used it :(   I didn't think to use the camera on my phone until the end, so I don't have any more pictures until it comes out of the oven.

• In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until at the stiff peak stage. I'd never done this before, and certainly never by hand, but I was shocked that it actually worked! It took about 5 minutes of constant, rapid whisking, but the egg whites actually foamed, puffed up and stiffened just like they're supposed to. I've heard that you know they're good when you lift the whisk up and the whites form a peak off the tip of the whisk, which is exactly what they did, much to my surprise!
• Fold the whites in thirds into the sauce
• Spoon the mixture into your baking dish and level the tops using a spatula
• Be sure to wipe up any spills and make sure the edge is clean

Bake

• Bake for 40 min if you’re using a large soufflé dish or 25 min if using smaller dishes – the soufflé should be richly browned

I have no idea what a soufflé is supposed to look or taste like, but I think it's not as pretty because I used a 2.5-quart dish instead of a 2-quart dish, so it didn't get to puff up over the edge. Still, it did rise quite nicely, which I was surprised about. It pulled away perfectly from the sides of the dish, so no sticking. The inside was like a lighter, moister quiche, but I have no idea if that was the idea or not. Overall it tasted pretty good, although the crab that I got was seriously fishy, and overpowered the entire dish. I'm not sure if it was because it was canned, or if it was supposed to be like that, but I think I'll halve the crab meat next time. 

Still, this was such a fun experiment. I hope I can inspire people to try this dish, since it's really not as hard as it seems. If I can manage to not completely mess it up on the first go, I know anyone can. And the possibilities for fillings are endless - I think I'll try a chocolate soufflé next time, as the sweet ones are supposed to be less delicate and fussy.