Cook book, and Souffle bowl
One of the products that I bought, the other day, was a souffle bowl. I had wandered all over Chef Works, looking for one, but didn’t realize that it was supposed to be glass, as I had only seen the dessert kind. After walking through the whole shop, I finally had to ask for one. I brought it home, and set it, and the Julia Child cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking down together. I guess I thought I wanted them to know each other better.Perhaps if the dish hung out with the book long enough it would pick up some tips and work right when I cooked it.
I hadn’t cooked anything from that book, but it seemed to have the clearest directions, of my cook books, on how to make a souffle, so I knew I would have to plunge in at some point.
The recipe is on page 163 of the book. I only changed a few things, and made note of what I changed.
I studied the cookbook, reading through what I needed to do, or so I thought. I mean, I knew I need to separate out the eggs, and that the dish had to rise in the oven, so I figured I had it all covered.
I grated out the Vegetarian Parmesan cheese that I had bought for the polenta bake and set it aside. I took the eggs out and preheated the oven. I was doing everything right.
yogurt and flour mixture
I set out the sauce pan to make the sauce. I put in the 3 tb of butter, and grabbed my gluten free flour, but then noticed that I was to add a cup of boiling milk. I had no milk, having used it up the other day to make more yogurt. I did have soy milk, though and figured it would work, which is what Cartoonist also thought would work. I told her it did not, because one of the things the milk was supposed to do was thicken, and the soy milk wouldn’t thicken. I had to toss the whole thing out, and start again, but still not having milk, I put in a cup of boiled yogurt. That seemed to work fine, though it looked funny going in. I could not find any Cayenne pepper, so left that out.
Souffle before cooking
The next bit was a bit confusing, as it wasn’t clear if I was supposed to keep the mix in the pan, or move it to a bowl. There were instructions about taking it on and off the stove, which I did, but at one point it looked as though I was supposed to bold and mix things, and it didn’t seem quite right to keep doing it in the pan. After a while, I moved it to a bowl, when I had to fold in the whipped eggs.
I separated out the eggs, and after all we went through with the merange, this wasn’t as hard as it had been, because I made sure not to get my skin oils on it, and keep everything clean and not over whip. Wow.
finished souffle
I took the souffle out after 30 minutes, and it turned out fine, though cheesy, as I told Cartoonist. Well, which recipe did you use? she asked. Souffle Fromage (which of course means cheese souffle.) She laughed. Of course it is going to be cheesy.
But now that I’ve got the hange of it, I’m going to see about the other ones. Not so scary now that I have done it. In face, when I bought the souffle dish at Chef Works the woman who checked me out said she had had no trouble making her first one, which made me feel a little better that this one turned out fine.
If I had any advice I would say have three whisks around, because there are three points you will have to whisk something, and it gets old having to wash the whisk off each time.
Using so many eggs (five) makes me, more than ever, to start raising chickens. I will have to talk to a friend that does so, and see how hard it will be. As of now, I’m still buying them at the Farmer’s Market, and getting duck eggs from my CSA. I did not use the duck eggs in this.
