Soufflé Claytonia

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A fancy way to hide a simple green (Rcp# 61, with Ingredient Special on Miner’s Lettuce/Claytonia)

Ingredients for ‘Soufflé Claytonia’ (per 4 small Souffle Forms)

  • 1 very big handful of Miner’s Lettuce (20g), coarsely chopped (you will need to dry wet salad leaves with a clean, water-absorbent cloth before chopping)
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons cleaned pistachios (about 21 whole peeled nuts without shells, about 16-18 g)
  • 3 tablespoons pumpkin seeds (about 35-37 g)
  • 4 + 2 tablespoons cashew nuts (about 60 g)
  • 5 tablespoons chickpea flour (about 50g)
  • 6 tablespoons oat yogurt (equivalent to 6 x 15 ml = about 90 – 100 ml)
  • 7 tablespoons cold parsley tea (7 x 15 ml = about 105 – 110 ml, see Side Notes below for preparation instructions)
  • ½ teaspoon bear’s garlic in oil (for alternatives see [Ingredient Special on Bear’s Garlic plus Recipe Phantom Bearlings])
  • ¼ teaspoon smoked sea salt (or less, if smoke flavor is very strong)
  • 1 knife tip ground caraway
  • Pinch of freshly ground nutmeg
  • Canola oil for greasing the molds
  • 12 – 15 fresh chives, chopped (or 2 teaspoons chopped, frozen chives)
  • A flour mix made up of 1 tablespoon brown millet flour and 1 tablespoon chestnut flour
  • 4 teaspoons cream cheese (plant-based, such as almond)
  • You’ll also need: a strong blender (suitable for grinding nuts), a small fine sieve, and four small round stoneware forms (about 5 cm high and 8 cm wide).

Baking Instructions and Preparations for ‘Soufflé Claytonia’

  1. Blend cleaned pistachios, pumpkin seeds and 4 tablespoons cashews in a powerful blender (must be labeled as suitable for nut grinding).
  2. Mix the resulting nut flour well with the chickpea flour, then mix 4 tablespoons of oat yogurt with the cold parsley tea and carefully mix the liquid with the flours. Let the mixture rest in a cold place for about 30 minutes.
  3. Break and crush the extra 2 tablespoons of cashews (I use a simple mortar and pestle to do this). Sauté in a saucepan (not a frying pan, it gets too hot). When it starts to smell baked, turn off the heat, remove the pot from the heat, remove the browned cashews and set aside on a plate to cool. Be careful, it will burn quickly!
  4. After resting, add the olive oil, the remaining two tablespoons of oat yogurt, the bear’s garlic in oil, the smoked sea salt, and the ground caraway and nutmeg. Stir gently.
  5. Grease the forms and place 1 teaspoon of cream cheese in the bottom of each form. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of chopped miner’s lettuce and a fourth of both the browned cashew crumble and the chopped chives onto the bottom of each form and over the cream cheese dollops in each form.
  6. Shovel the dough loosely onto the top of cream cheese and chopped greens. Carefully flatten the surface with a knife or spoon (do not spread the dough on the edge or it will burn).
  7. Preheat the oven to 125°C plus top and bottom heat. Remove the baking rack from the oven before increasing the heat (usually earthenware or stoneware molds do not like to be placed on a hot surface when still cool).
  8. Cover the soufflés in their forms with a very thin layer of the brown millet flour and chestnut flour mixture. Use a small sieve with the same diameter as the forms for that. Remove any residue from the edges of the pans. They will burn and make it difficult to remove the soufflé from the baking dish.
  9. Once heated, place the forms on a cool rack in the oven (mid-height) and bake for 35 minutes. The surface of the soufflé should be visibly hardened and risen. Turn off the oven and leave the pans in the oven for another 5-8 minutes.
  10. Remove the soufflé forms from the oven (use a baking glove, these dishes get really HOT) and place them on a heat-resistant surface. Let them cool enough to handle, then carefully brush off any dusty residue from the millet flour on top (you can leave a little, but it’s best to have a solid, only lightly dusted base before turning the forms). Using a normal breakfast knife, carefully cut the sides of the souffles loose from the mold. Use a tablespoon to lift the souffles slightly in the pan. Turn the souffles out of the pans and onto a plate.
    Serve with a bed of mixed greens on the side.

Makes 4 servings (for appetizers).

Side Notes:

  • As you may have guessed: This is a special version of last fall’s Soufflé Verde. But with a little extra kick.
  • Funny thing: Normally Miner’s Lettuce would be available in town these days, but it got unexpectedly cold a week ago. So there is no Claytonia perfoliata around as I am posting this. Well, the weather is the weather. Fortunately, there are plenty of other options: If you don’t have Miner’s Lettuce, or want to make it later in the year, you can use young spinach leaves or even salad rocket/arugula instead.

Please note: For all my recipes (text) on this blog (By MagS, Parsley-Lane Blog) I grant a CC license under the terms of BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike). For further explanations, please see the Legal Notice or visit creativecommons.org.