“We just want it to be light”

Paul Pairet divides his time between his experimental three-star restaurant Ultraviolet, in Shanghai, and his retro brasserie Nonos & Comestibles, in Paris. We will find him on the jury of “Top Chef”, the M6 ​​culinary show, whose fifteenth season begins on March 13.

“In cooking, many people talk about creation without actually doing it. Creation is not about copying something I have seen elsewhere, but preparing something that the client does not know. If we claim to have a form of novelty in the dishes, it is not enough to make original flavor combinations: putting mackerel with raspberries is not creative. Creation requires research.

What is interesting when we do tests are the mishaps. It allows you to keep a fresh, newborn eye. In the Ultraviolet lab, I try not to be influenced by the knowledge I have of a product. Tell me, for example, that we treat mozzarella like cheese, but that it could also make a dessert. Or question the soufflé technique, which everyone prepares in the same way, as if the recipe was immutable. There is always something new to bring!

The soufflé has always fascinated me because of the way it rises straight up in the oven. For around ten years, I toyed around the idea of ​​a hyper-instant siphoned soufflé where all you had to do was give a “pschitt”, put it in the oven, and bam! the thing would go up. It never worked, and I never understood why… But hey, we still achieved something interesting by reversing the principle of soufflé which requires us to lighten a relatively heavy camera with whites of egg.

Technical prowess

We start with a very light device of milk and gruyere, mounted in a siphon which aerates it. And we incorporate egg whites which are heavier than the device to remove excess air. This allows us to do without flour and egg yolk. We add milk, cheese, egg whites, salt, pepper, and that’s it.

Flour-based soufflés are often a little overcooked, so that they can hold together. We don’t push them much, four and a half minutes at 210 degrees, we just want them to be light. And they are perfectly flat, without the cracked crust like a profiterole that you often see. This is the other technical feat of this soufflé. Well, no one cares, it’s only me who cares, but that doesn’t matter!

Originally, my soufflé searches were intended for Ultraviolet, but ultimately I didn’t use it there, because it didn’t work with the rest of the card. Every year, I work on a hundred ideas, thirty of them come to fruition, and we keep twenty of them. A menu is like a football team: the goal is not to have the best elements, but those that work best together. Ultraviolet also allows me to discover more interesting techniques for doing simple things, like making a soufflé.

And the soufflé really fits with the spirit of the slightly retro grill that defines Nonos. It’s actually one of the most sold dishes. People who like cheese like soufflé. They tell me he’s good, and that’s enough for me. Despite all my big talk, in the end I just cooked a cheese soufflé. I’m not starting a revolution. »