20 July 2009

Broccoli Souffle with Tapenade Sauce

This wonderful recipe from one of my favourite cookbooks, The Impoverished Gastronome by David Chater, was our dinner last night.  I’m pretty sure I’ve made this before, as broccoli is one of my favourite foods, but I think I made the mistake of leaving out the sauce last time.  The soufflé is very mild tasting on its own (milk, butter, eggs, flour, cheese, almonds), so the tapenade really makes the difference.  Interestingly, the tapenade itself is slightly different from the usual, as it includes mustard.

I won’t give the full recipe here, as it’s probably not that hard to find a recipe for a broccoli soufflé.  The main things that make this dish are the combination of the soufflé with the tapenade, and the inclusion of mustard in the tapenade.  I tweaked the recipe a little too, as I couldn’t bring myself to boil the broccoli (just seems like a travesty to treat broccoli that way!) and instead I sautéed it in a little butter, then added a dash of water, covered the pan and steamed it until soft.  If you do this just right, the broccoli keeps its bright green color.

For the cheese I used finely grated Romano, but I toyed briefly with the idea of putting in some blue cheese for a stronger flavour.  I left it out because David doesn’t like blue cheese, but it’s probably worth trying.  Also I wondered if some fresh herbs (tarragon? coriander?) might be tasty.

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