Erica De Mane

My light-as-air soufflé, just about ready to pull from the oven.

Recipes:
Fontina and Piave Cheese Souffle
Baby Spinach Salad with Radishes and Chive Vinaigrette

A soufflé is for me the ultimate diet food. You might find that strange, but think about it. It’s light and fluffy, gorgeous, romantic, and smells amazing while cooking. Okay, it’s full of eggs, but mostly the whites. It’s low-carb, so it fits into my diet philosophy nicely. And I serve it as a main course, not a side. But is a soufflé Italian? The word, which comes from the French verb souffler, meaning to blow, obviously isn’t. The technique, as far as I can determine, is traditionally French, but the true lineage of many French and Italian dishes can be a sore subject, since many Italians believe that everything culinarily worthwhile was originally Italian. Italians certainly use the term on menus, and chefs there make some fine soufflés using, for instance, porcini, Parmigiano, ricotta, and zucca. How beautiful is the idea of a soufflé made with Italian flavors?

Sformato is a word you’ll find on Italian menus as well. It means a delicate, eggy, baked mold, firmer than a traditional soufflé, more a custard than a puff. A sformato is always set with eggs, but it may or may not have beaten egg whites folded in at the end. I love a sformata, but it’s not particularly diet-friendly. I make one with cauliflower that has the texture of a tender custard. I’ve also made a chicken liver sformata that’s firm, with a rich flavor heightened by sage and Parmigiano. Neither is meant to rise very much, and both contain cream, making them dense and rich, packing a lot of calories into a very small lump of food (and they’re generally thought of as first courses, so they’re just the start of the meal).

To fit with my Skinny Guinea format, I knew I wanted to go with a real soufflé, which, because of all the volume, gives you the feeling of eating a lot when you’re mostly consuming extremely delicious air. I longed for a soufflé flavored with great Italian cheese. I experimented with various types and found that what I liked best in a soufflé was a mix of Fontina Valle d’ Aosta and Piave, a cow’s milk cheese from the Veneto with a texture similar to Grana Padano and a taste that mixes Grana Padano with the sweetness of Gruyère.

To make a soufflé the centerpiece of a complete dinner that is still healthy and light, you might precede it, as I did, with a few breadsticks wrapped in prosciutto di Parma, and then serve the soufflé with this springtime salad of baby spinach and chives. If you can find chives with their soft purple blossoms attached, they will make the salad especially tasty and pretty.

(Both recipes serve 2 as a main course)

Fontina and Piave Cheese Soufflé

For the soufflé dish:

1 tablespoon softened butter
2 tablespoons grated Piave cheese

For the soufflé:

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup 2-percent-fat milk
A few scrapings of nutmeg
A generous pinch of allspice
Salt
A generous pinch of piment d’espelette (sweet Spanish paprika), or use Hungarian paprika and a touch of cayenne
4 large egg yolks
1/2 cup grated Piave cheese
3/4 cup grated Fontina Valle d’Aosta cheese
6 egg whites

Smear the softened butter all over the inside of a 8-inch-wide, 3-inch-deep soufflé dish. Dust the inside with the 2 tablespoons of Piave cheese.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

In a large saucepan, heat the 3 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Add the flour, whisking it until well blended into the butter. Let cook for about a minute, and then add the milk. Whisk over medium heat until the milk becomes thick and smooth, about 2 to 3 minutes. Add the nutmeg, allspice, a generous amount of salt, and the piment d’espelette (or mix of paprika and a little cayenne). Pull the pan off the heat, and add the egg yolks, whisking them in one at a time. Mix in the Piave and the Fontina.

Beat the egg whites until shiny and stiff. With a spatula, fold about ¼ of the egg whites into the soufflé mixture to lighten it. Now lightly fold the remaining whites into the mixture. You don’t need to work them in completely evenly; a little streakiness is okay and better than over-mixing and deflating the whites. Pour the mixture into the prepared soufflé dish.

Turn the oven down to 375 degrees, and bake the soufflé for 30 minutes. It should be browned and puffy and fairly firm when you touch the center. Ideally, you want only a tiny bit of runniness in the middle when you open it up. Serve immediately, with the salad if you like.

Baby Spinach Salad with Radishes and Chive Vinaigrette

A handful of baby spinach leaves, stemmed
1 small head frisée lettuce, torn into small pieces
6 French breakfast radishes (the little torpedo-shaped ones that are often white with red pointy tips), cut in half lengthwise
A dozen chives, lightly chopped, with their blossoms left whole
1 teaspoon champagne vinegar
1 ½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
A few scrapings of fresh nutmeg

Place the spinach, frisée, radishes, and chive blossoms in a small salad bowl.

In another small bowl, combine the chives, vinegar, olive oil, a pinch of salt, black pepper, and the nutmeg, and give it all a quick whisk. Toss the salad, and serve it alongside the soufflé.