The whipping siphon is a perfect example of a modern tool I eschewed and deliberately didn’t learn to use because I thought it was a pretentious, unnecessary gimmick. I’m trying to actively address my many culinary prejudices, so I challenged myself to put a component made with a whipping siphon on my 2021 fall menu.

I was keen to do a take on beet salad with goat cheese, and for the first few iterations I was just crumbling fresh goat cheese onto roasted, sliced beets. However because I had the salad components laid out and not tossed together, it was a little difficult to get the small pieces of cheese onto a fork and into your mouth. There seemed to be a potential solution in the Goat Cheese Mousse in the Eleven Madison Park cookbook. A semi-fluid foam like this would make it easy for the diner to combine it with the beets and get it all on the fork.

I adapted the following recipe from the Goat Cheese Mousse that is a component of the Beet Salad with Chèvre Frais and Caraway in Eleven Madison Park: The Cookbook (pg. 175). I made several changes:

• Volume measures were converted to weights for consistency.
• The recipe was re-scaled to yield about 500 mL, which is the ideal volume for the siphons we have in our kitchen.
• The skim milk called for in the recipe has been changed to whole milk simply because that is what we stock regularly.
• The lime juice called for in the original has been omitted as I was happy with the tanginess and acidity without it.
• I found that mixing the ingredients with an immersion blender then passing the mixture through a tamis was faster and more consistent than simply whisking.

Despite being diluted with so much other dairy, the goat cheese flavour carries very well. I used this mousse on a beet salad with endive, pear, hazelnut, and tarragon that I’ll be posting about shortly.

Goat Cheese Mousse with Whipping Siphon

Ingredients

• 240 g whole milk
• 120 g heavy cream
• 105 g yogurt (I used Liberté Greek Yogurt)
• 170 g goat cheese
• 4 tsp kosher salt

Procedure

1. Combine all ingredients. Blend briefly with an immersion blender until smooth. Pass through a tamis to ensure there are not lumps.
2. Transfer mixture to a clean siphon. Close and charge with 1 x 8 g N₂O cartridge. Let stand 30 minutes.
3. Shake very well for 30 seconds before expelling.

Trouble-Shooting Goat Cheese Mousse with Whipping Siphon

If the siphon is shaken too much the mixture inside will churn! When this happens the expelled foam does not hold its shape and will slough or run on the plate. If you release the pressure and open the siphon you will see that your dairy mixture has started to churn, with small clumps of fat throughout. I don’t know of a way to save the mixture if this happens…

Another Note.

I wanted to have a perfectly round dollop of mousse. Our siphon only came with star and tulip tips, both of which by design leave artful creases in the expelled product. I cut the end off the star tip to produce a straight tip.