Truth be told I’ve never eaten a soufflé. In terms of food trends, it’s hard to tell which comes first, restaurant owner, chef, or patron; but for some reason restaurants stopped serving them and people stopped eating them. They’ve always been considered a luxurious item for the diner and an intimidating recipe for the home cook. Not a great recipe for longevity.
And yet, there’s not reason not to make one, or at least give it a shot. We own an extremely fancy three-set cookbook series called simply Egg, Vegetables, and Potatoes. It’s French, a fact that’s apparent from page 1. In Vegetables, a bunch of chefs pick a vegetable and come up with a dish featuring said veggie. The dishes range from Red Rhubarb Tart (sounds good), to Swiss Chard Pie (sounds good), to Spider Crabs in Cherry Belle Radish Jello, with a Pistou of Radish Tops (sounds not so good).
I was most struck by the recipe for celery root soufflé. As is usually the case with dishes that catch my eye, it’s simple and true yet creative. Not an easy feat. In this case, I was most impressed that the guy baked it in its own shell, a gutsy move for a Frenchman, I thought.
At heart, a soufflé is puffed egg whites with some sort of flavoring: spinach, chocolate, cheese, and so on. But the legend is founded more on the puffing, rather than the flavoring, which is why it makes sense to cook it (when possible) inside its original setting (a hollowed lemon, turnip, or celery root). If you’re going to the trouble and trying to impress, why not go the extra mile and bring over a steaming celery root soufflé, arising like a nuclear cloud FROM ITSELF.
And so here’s the recipe for celery root soufflé served inside a celery root. A caveat: the book is fancy, I mean really fancy, as in I doubt they stooped to do a lot of recipe testing. This I figured out after the first try. It makes a lot of extra filling, which, logically, I poured into ramekins for a few extra soufflés. They didn’t rise, which was either the fault of the recipe, or something I did wrong, technically or morally.
Either way, the result is quite good and maybe worth buying an extra celery root, scooping out the flesh for another purpose and filling it up with soufflé base. The result is dramatic-a puffed symbol of luxury mushrooming from the insides of the humble, knobby celery root. And how can you dislike a plateful of irony?
(NOTE: as I said above, this makes a ton of filling, but you should buy an extra celery root, hollow it out, use the filling for something else, and spoon in the excess.)
Celery Root Soufflé (from Vegetables, by 40 Great French Chefs)
Serves 2
1 large celery root (about a pound)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
pinch freshly grated nutmeg
6 egg whites
salt
1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. Cut off the bottom of the celery root to make a base and then slice off the top third. Using a spoon (you may need the assistance of a paring knife), scoop out the flesh from removed top and bottom, leaving about ½ inch on the sides and bottom. Steam the flesh.
3. Puree the steamed celery root in a food processor, adding the butter a little at a time, along with the egg yolks, mustard, nutmeg, and salt. Pour into a bowl.
4. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold into the celery root puree
gently.
5. Spoon the mixture into the celery root (you’ll have extra-see NOTE), and bake on a tray for 40 minutes.
