In Dearest Love, Arabella proves her cordon bleuishness by making a cheese souffle. I have never been to cooking school (unless you count 3 weeks worth of cooking in my 8th grade Home Economics class - wherein I learned to make tuna noodle casserole). Yesterday I made a cheese souffle - and it turned out looking just how I imagined a cheese souffle should look. If you take a look at my kitchen sink, you can see just how many dishes I dirtied to make this dish. A lot. A heck of a lot. Arabella must have had a remarkably large kitchen in her little flatlet to have been able to whip up one of these puppies. And a lot of pots and pans left over from the old homestead.I found a recipe on Food Network for cheese souffle - made by Alton Brown. I usually like his stuff, he's pretty dependable, so I decided to give it a go. The difficulty level was: difficult. The recipe was a little finicky, but I didn't find it beyond my skill set...then again, I've been cooking for more than 40 ye
ars - it was bound to pay off sooner or later.Structurally I think I did well - I followed the recipe, but I sort of wish I had felt confident enough to do a little more improvising with the seasonings. This cheese souffle recipe has basically the same ingredients as scrambled eggs with cheese on top. That was pretty much the flavor profile I ended up with - and for all that effort, I found it fairly bland. If I'm going to fill an entire sink with the pots, bowls, measuring cups, whisks, beaters, etc...I want more bang for my buck. Fortunately I had also cooked up some bacon from a package I had opened the day before. I found that the souffle, mixed with bacon, was not half bad.
I too learned how to make tuna noodle casserole in 8th grade Home Ec.--that and how to sew a wind sock.
ReplyDeleteI haven't made tuna casserole in decades...literally. I wish I liked it - since it's so easy to make.
ReplyDeleteWind sock. Wow. How useful. I remember the sewing section of the class - we probably spent days "getting to know the machine" - how to thread it, make it go forward, reverse, check the tension, etc...If I remember correctly, I made a bib front skirt. It was very 1973 of me.
Keira has a pretty rockin' recipe for a casserole that is like tuna but with chicken and more cheese.
ReplyDeleteI am so impressed with your mad skills. Now try a chocolate souffle. That would be one I can get behind.
But... you hate scrambled eggs.
ReplyDeleteyeah, I am not a fan of scrambled eggs...but at least the souffle doesn't have the texture - and that's half (or more) of my problem with eggs.
ReplyDeleteOkay, here's where I test our newly-forged friendship.
ReplyDeleteI learned to make a chocolate souffle when I was 7.
Yes, I'm one of "those" people. The "oh you drive me crazy when you can do Martha Stewarty things and still talk to your guests at the same time" people.
But look here (as my British grandmother would have said) -- I don't count any of those as real accomplishments. I'm trying to write a romance novel; if I can get that published, that *will* be an accomplishment! Also quilting is hard for me, so every quilt I make is a challenge of lowering my expectations and accepting my own mediocrity. Cooking is just cooking.
Anyway, back to the cheese souffle: try ground ham (like what you'd use for ham salad) in with the cheese before you fold in the egg whites -- it makes a less dramatic souffle, but it's much yummier.
I'll try the ham next time...
ReplyDeleteDon't worry about intimidating us with your mad cooking skills. We are "uncrushable".
I think most people start out learning what their parents are familiar with. In our case, we were probably the only kids in Oregon who regularly had grits for breakfast - thanks to our mother - who hailed from Mississippi.