A healthier (but just as delicious) cheese souffle

Are souffles just a lot of hot air or really rather fabulous? At the moment I'm inclining to the latter view. You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I made raspberry souffles, which wowed me because they were quite easy, impressive and still fairly low in fat.

So my eyes have been opened to the potential of a couple of eggs and an electric whisk. I've been thinking about ways to make them a bit healthier, too. Traditionally, savoury souffles have a roux of butter and flour as their base, possibly with the addition of milk to make more of a bechamel sauce - you then stir in some in the egg yolks and whatever flavourings you are using, followed by the beaten egg whites. So the butter obviously ups the saturated content a lot. And as I found with my raspberry souffles, you don't necessarily need that.

For a savoury souffle, though, I felt like I might still need some kind of base: partly to make it more substantial, partly to help me melt the cheese and therefore distribute it more evenly, and also because you want some moisture in the recipe, because the evaporation process helps the souffle to rise. I'd recently been making proper custard for my trifle. Now custard is thickened with cornflour and egg yolks, and has a similar texture to bechamel sauce, but with much less fat. This gave me an idea - why not use a savoury "custard" as the base?

My cheese souffles are still never going to be a health food, because of all the cheese, but at least the fat in there is contributing flavour. This was also the first time I'd used star anise or clove in something like this - you don't want to be too heavy-handed, but I thought it gave a beautifully subtle background note to the finished dish.

You can vary this recipe with different cheeses - blue cheese would work well, or Gruyere instead of the cheddar. The main thing is that you pick one with plenty of flavour.

Ingredients

285 ml (1/2 pint) milk
2 heaped teaspoons cornflour
4 eggs, separated
55g/ 2oz parmesan, grated
55g/ 2oz mature Cheddar, grated
1 star anise
2 cloves
Pinch paprika
1/2 tsp mustard (either English or French is fine)


Method
Heat the milk with the star anise and cloves. If you've got time, it's best to leave it to infuse for half an hour before removing the spices.
Mix the cornflour to a paste with a little extra milk and stir it into the hot milk. Add the egg yolks and continue to heat very gently, stirring, until you have quite a thick sauce.
Add the paprika and mustard and season to taste (go easy on the salt, though, because cheese is salty). Remove from the heat and stir in the grated cheese. 
Whisk the egg whites until stiff but not dry, and fold a tablespoon of egg white into the sauce. Then, using a metal spoon, gently fold in the rest of the egg white.
Put the mixture into ramekin dishes - it should fill eight small ones. You don't want to fill them to the top, but about two-thirds to three-quarters full (the latter will hopefully make a towering souffle) is about right.
Bake at 200C/ gas mark 6 for about 15 minutes. Try not to open the oven door before they are done. They should be browned on top and soft and moist in the middle. Serve immediately.