Goat Cheese Soufflé

Dramatic, puffy, and feather-light, with quivering, gilded caps, soufflés are surrounded by an aura of culinary mystery. Surprisingly, beneath the mystery lies a rather simple, but ingenious, dish. In a basic soufflé, a simple white sauce made of flour, butter, and milk is enriched with egg yolks; a flavoring element such as cheese (or fruit or liqueur for a dessert soufflé) is added; and the mixture is lightened with egg whites beaten to many times their original volume. The air trapped in the egg whites expands in the heat of the oven, puffing up the soufflé even more. The only critical point is that a soufflé should be sped to the table the moment it’s finished baking. Out of the oven, a steaming soufflé cools quickly and loses its triumphant height. Here is a basic method to follow to make savory soufflés. Start by making a white sauce, or béchamel: Melt butter in a heavy saucepan. Stir in flour, cook for a minute or two (this mixture is called a roux), and whisk in milk, a little at a time, whisking thoroughly after each addition before adding another. The flour and butter will bind up and then slowly loosen as more milk is added. If you add all the milk at once you are almost guaranteed lumps in the sauce. (If the sauce does get lumpy, push it through a strainer to smooth it.) After the milk is whisked in, bring the sauce to a boil, stirring all the while. This cooks the flour into the milk and fully thickens the sauce. Turn the heat down as low as possible, and simmer for at least 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, to cook out the taste of raw flour. Season the sauce to taste with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne. Let it cool slightly. Separate the eggs, stirring the yolks into the béchamel one by one and putting the whites into a large bowl in which they will be beaten later. Take care not to break the yolks: egg whites containing even a tiny bit of yolk refuse to be whipped into a foam as high, stiff, and stable as those without. If there are visible traces of broken yolk in your egg white, you may be able to scoop them out with an eggshell half; if you can’t, you may have to separate another egg and save the broken one for some other use. Eggs that are many weeks old have watery whites and fragile yolks, which makes them more difficult to separate than very fresh eggs, with their thick whites and stand-up yolks. To the béchamel and egg yolks, add grated cheese or other flavoring elements such as a vegetable purée (of leeks, asparagus, or garlic, for example), chopped shellfish, or a few herbs. This mixture is called the base of the soufflé. It can be prepared ahead of time and refrigerated, but be sure to take both the base and the egg whites out of the refrigerator at least an hour before baking to come to room temperature. When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 375°F (or to 400°F if you decide to make individual soufflés rather than one big one). The soufflé needs to bake in the center of the oven. Rearrange the racks, if necessary, to allow plenty of headroom for the soufflé to rise. Butter a baking dish liberally with soft butter. A soufflé can be baked in a traditional soufflé dish, in a shallow gratin dish or other baking dish, or in individual ovenproof cups or porcelain ramekins. Even a fl at sheet pan with sides will work; the soufflé won’t puff as high, but it will have more surface area to brown. Beat the egg whites vigorously with a wire whisk until they form peaks that are stiff, but still moist and smooth. It’s easy to overwhip egg whites with an electric mixer, so pay close attention when the whites start to thicken, and stop and check them frequently. (Overwhipped whites have a chunky granular look to them.) Stir about one third of the whites into the soufflé base, to lighten it. With a rubber spatula, scrape the rest of the beaten eg...