Immediately after the demo, I had my practical class. Here is my tart soufflé with fruit gratin and coulis:
This is what I presented to Chef N for grading. The coulis (sauce) is to go with the tart soufflé.
This is the fruit gratin. Mixed berries topped with some diplomate cream (= pastry cream + chantilly cream), which was torched and then decorated with strawberry fans and a slice of lemon twist. The decoration was my own idea. Other students made tuiles to decorate theirs.
Here you can see a cross section of the tart soufflé. It has a pâte sucrée base, then filled with almond cream (which we learnt early in the term) and topped with a soufflé mixture (= pastry cream and a sort of meringue/egg white mixture).
Chef N said my soufflé was fine - it was the right texture and consistency. But he said I needed to dock the pâte sucrée (sweet dough) tart shell properly so that the bottom of the tart shell wouldn't lift off the tart mold when baking. Also, he said I had put too much diplomate cream into the fruit gratin. I think I was trying to use up the diplomate cream and ended up "drowning" the berries (raspberry, blackberry, strawberry) in it. :)
Apart from that, it was a good day for me. My coulis was perfect. But then it is not the first time I've made coulis. I guess experience is very important.
I'm not a big fan of the sweet, hot soufflé, but I don't mind a savoury version. I should ask my housemates (the cuisine students) for a nice cheese soufflé recipe.
