Cheese Soufflé, Trout, Cherry Flan : Lesson 15 : Le Cordon Bleu at Home

It's a lazy week so only one posting about the dinner.

On Wednesday it was:

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Soufflé au Comté : Cheese Souffle

Truite de Mer, Sauce Verte : Whole Poached Salmon Trout with Herbed Mayonnaise

Clafoutis aux Cherises : Cherry Flan

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This one requires equipment: a fish poacher (pan) would be useful and a souffle dish would help. Alternatives: a roasting pan instead of a fish poacher and an angel food cake pan instead of a souffle dish. But both these specialty items were acquired and the project carried on.

It turned out that Comté cheese is hard to come by (it's a great, delicious, tangy French cheese) but Gruyere is a viable substitute. Alas, the cheese shop wrapped a Havarti piece instead of the gruyere (I have know idea how that confusion happened) so neither Comté nor Gruyere were used - - luckily Havarti works fine too (hey... so would cheddar).

And the Salmon-Trout was difficult to get in the required size (limited by the size of the fish poacher pan). Real Salmon would be too big and there were to be 8 people at dinner (eventually turned out to be 10) so a fair amount of fish was needed. I bought 3 trouts at a kilo (2 lb) apiece.

Soufflé au Comté : Cheese Souffle

It assembles easily. It's a béchamel sauce with egg yolks and cheese in it then folded with beaten egg whites. Simple, really. It rose very well. Since it's fragile (and deflates) once out of the oven the picture is of it while still in there.

Shockingly tall. Excellent. It held up quite well once removed from the oven and did not collapse immediately (it took a full 3 or 4 minutes). As for flavour... very light and tasty.

The top is rather too brown, just short of being burnt, because it was left on the "convection" setting accidentally and the swirling air over-browned the thing. No harm done except that people were inclined to ask if it was a Chocolate soufflé.

Truite de Mer, Sauce Verte : Whole Poached Salmon Trout with Herbed Mayonnaise

This we called the "Fish Disguised as a Fish".

Wrapped in cheesecloth, poached in a "Court Boullion", a little over-poached in fact (the head was too loose and fell off) - - cooled, the skin peeled off and replaced with decorative cucumbers - using a herb mayonnaise as the glue for the cucumber scales.

Court Boullion is a herbed wine & vinegar mixture; much more flavourful than poaching in water.

The Herbed Mayonnaise came off without a hitch (I often mess up when making mayo - don't know why). I used 2 egg yolks, light olive oil for a more delicate flavour. Then you add chopped spinach and watercress to make it green. Very nice taste and it looked good with the cucumbers.

Clafoutis aux Cherises : Cherry Flan

Then, dessert, simple as well... cherries (pitted, fresh, whole) covered with what amounts to Crépe batter and baked in individual little dishes.

No tricks here, no trouble, just plain tasty. Luckily it happens to be cherry season.