How I Learned to Make Souffle Almost as Good as Louise's !

So this past week's class was Eggs! poaching, scrambling, quicheing, frittattaing, crepeing, mayo-naiseing, eggs hollindaise,  just fab. Instead of going home to nap for six hours afterwards I went to the gym. Oy that was rough.

First, a couple of excellent egg-tricks and USEFUL factoids:

breaking them: use a flat surface, not the surface of the bowl. Gives you a cleaner crack and few shells. Separate using your hands, using 3 bowls: one for your already separated whites, one for yolks and onefor whites as you separate. That way, if you've cracked a dozen eggs and are on egg 12 and the yolk goes hurling into the bowl by accident, you don't have to start over. Huh, I thought.

Our intrepid instructor Christine noted a statistic that people far more often get salmonella from mishandling of raw chicken than eggs. Blame the adults. I like it.

Poaching: -- SLIDE The egg into the SIMMERING water. The fresher, the more the white will stay compact. leave them in for 3 to 4 minutes. That's it. They come out perfectly.

For a lot of eggs, put white vinegar in the water, and store them in ice water until ready to use, then slip them back into the warm water for a minute before use.

Second,  a useful bit of info:  most recipes call for large eggs, not extra large. so check! you could mess up the chemistry otherwise (this explains my flat but very rich tasting cake for lexa's baby shower -- skim milk and extra large eggs with butter cream frosting. oh well, it's all about the frosting, right?)

Third: random observation: mayonaise is super-easy! I'll post it another time. Everyone did theirs by hand. Exercise! (for my right bicep). I had visions of lemon and garlic and all kinds of madness. Then I remembered: I really haven't eaten mayo in about 5 years.  It is one cup of oil infused into lemon juice and eggs. One. Cup.

You can save egg whites in the fridge for up to a week and they still respect the whisk or the egg-white omlette preparation! Or you can freeze them. Who knew?

AND NOW, THE SOUFFLE:

First, a word on the personal goal thing of this: I have never ever been able to make a good souffle. Ever. Not once.  My friend Louise is the Goddess of  Souffles. She visited once and she and my pal Janelle took over my kitchen and made the most amazing souffle I've ever had. J and I still talk about it. I still think about it at random moments unexpectedly, it was that good.  *pause*. Oh, I'm sorry, did you say something?

Anyway.

Louise, also the goddess of all things cheese (she is tied with my friend LoriJeane for this), does this thing with parchment paper that basically looks like a chef's hat around the rim of the dish, causing anything souffle like to come out spectacularly perfect. I was determined to do half as well and learn my flaw.

You may be shocked, shocked  to discover that it turns out I don't have the patience. 

The easy recipe:

You need:
3 egg yolks
4 egg whites 
2 tbsp butter, softened
2 tbsp grated parm

1/2 cup grated cheese.  My cooking partner and I used 1/4 smoked mozerella and 1/4 fontina

for the bechemel
3 tbsp unsalted butter
3 tbsp flour
1 cup milk, warm
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground white pepper
nutmeg
cayenne pepper. Recipe says pinch.  that ended up being about a teaspoon for what we did. yum.

Preheat the oven to 350. An oven thermometer is handy, depending on the ferocity of your oven.
*THE KEY* do not, and i repeat do not,  open it, think about opening it consider opening it, think you can fool it by distracting the oven and opening it, before 23 minutes. It is MAGIC.

Butter a 4 cup souffle dish (ours was I think a 6 cup, thus, no hat)
roll the parmesean around on the buttered dish to coat.  don't start calculating calories.

To make the bechamel:

in a saucepan, make a roux by melting the butter. when the foam subside,s remove from heat and add the flour, mixing well with a whisk. Put the pot back on the heat and cook for about 2 minutes while whisking. add the mil in two parts, whisking after each. Bring to a boil. This is confusing, since it will be slightly globbish. just wait for it to resemble something in Ghostbusters, about 90 seconds or less. Reduce until it's thickened, turn the heat off, pour the spices in. Taste. it should taste a little TOO spicy. Remember, there's gonna be lots of air added to this, so you need it to be a bit too strong so that it spreads out over all that air.

The base:
To the bechemel: add the egg yolks, one at a time so they don't scramble, mixing WELL after each addition. mix in the cheese. Only eat one or two pinches of it, okay?

In a copper bowl, or a mixer which is way easier, whisk the egg whites until stiff and glossy. if you're using an electric mixer, throw in 1/2 to 1/4 tsp of cream of tartar.  If not, don't.

Stir in 1/4 of the egg whites to the bechamel mixture to lighten it. Yes, you are sacrificing egg whites. They are there to throw themselves on the altar of food chemistry for you so the mixture can take in the rest.

with a rubber spatula of questionable size, fold in the remaining egg whites. Here's how the instructor showed us to fold: draw the spatula down the middle of the bowl, in one motion, fold the whites over once. Give the bowl a quarter turn, repeat. GENTLY.

Once done, Immediately spoon the soufle mixture into the dish to about 1/2 an inch from the top.

Bake on the bottom rack for about 30 minutes OR LONGER IF YOUR OVEN ISN'T FIERCE!
When we looked at 23 minutes, because that's what I saw as the end time, bummer. No souffle. This was, of course, as everyone was plating their lovely dishes, including the marscapone-filled crepes with amazing carmelized brandy and orange reduction. 

I had secretly sprinkled the remaining parmasean on the top. I am a bad person. I ruined such well-tended optimism in my lovely partner, who confessed that she could barely boil water at the begining of this class. This was her Mt. Everest. Of Egg Whites. And my goofy thought of yummy parm topping was about to crush her budding confidence back into the vault from where it came.

But fear not, humiliation did not await us.

Here's the thing: the souffle wasn't brown. It wasn't close to done, even: we left it in for another 20 minutes! And it came out super-yummy and light and perfectly seasoned.

Phew.