soufflé

Or cheesy egg-foam, if you like.

Step One: Prepare a straight-sided baking dish with butter and a grated hard cheese like Parmigiano Reggiano. This provides the foamy egg mixture a rough texture to climb. It also forms a very tasty cheese-flavored baked crust.

Don't tell anybody but at one time this was my Belgian Sheepdog's water dish. Oh shut up. That was a long time ago and the dish has been run through the dishwasher at least a dozen times since then. She was a very classy dog.

Step Two: Make a sauce and determine what you wish to include suspended in your cheesy egg foam.  Usually a regular roux sauce with milk is used, but alas, for I am presently milkless. I am also brothless, except for about one cup of chicken both and I did find one old can of Campbell's beef broth in the pantry so I used that. I would have vastly preferred broth in a carton, but hey, sometimes one must roll with what one has.  So I made a velouté. If I had used a cream sauce or a béchamel made with milk, then I would have included nutmeg among the spices, but since I'm using a second rate canned beef broth, why,  that called for me to go wild with the herbs and spices to disguise its second rate-ness. Therefore, bay leaf, strong Greek oregano, strong dry sage, not fresh, but a new bottle and it sure is strong, Italian mixed spices, garlic powder, a dash of Thai curry (because the bottle was in the way) and my own mixed chile pepper flakes. Ta daaaaaaa. Sauce.

See? roux + broth = velouté,  roux + milk =béchamel.

These accented És are starting to piss me off.

It doesn't make a difference to the soufflé which sauce is used. It's all the same idea. Here, finely chopped broccoli is added to the sauce, but it could be anything -- bacon is good, or prosciutto, salmon is nice, and so is crab, onions or leeks, spinach, come to think of it, a mild flavorful chile would be su-poib.


The sauce is not shown because it's just sauce in a pan and because it's a mess and because I forgot to photograph it, but mostly because I forgot to photograph it.

Step Three: Separate egg yolks from whites. Beat the whites and blend the yolks into the sauce. Here five jumbo eggs were separated. If I had wanted the souflé to rise above the baking dish then I would have used six jumbo eggs or seven regular eggs, but I have to eat all this and I didn't want that many eggs. It is foam and so it is light, yes, but it is still five jumbo eggs.  The whites are beaten until the peaks stand and not beyond, the yolks are incorporated into the sauce. The yolks do not have to be tempered. At this point, it is perfectly fine for the sauce to be cool and the yolks uncooked. Otherwise you can go ahead and temper them into the sauce, but in that case the egg yolks will be already fixed before being mixed with the egg white foam and they will not have the chance to assist in fixing the white foam as it bakes.

So however you do it, the whites are treated differently from the yolks, and then the two are reunited -- the yolks incorporated with the sauce and the whites sturdied with cream of tartar.

Step Four: Unite sauce and cheese and foam. One third of the beaten egg whites is lifted into the pot or the bowl containing the sauce with egg yolks. The idea is to use a portion of the beaten egg foam to lighten the sauce. The sauce is thick and it will not mix very well with the fluffy foam, therefore the cook helps it by bringing them closer together. Again, 1/3 of the foam goes directly into the sauce and fairly thoroughly mixed. One does not have to be careful here. It won't matter if the added foam deflates. Just don't beat the hell out of it, there would be no point in that. 

It is good to have additional cheese grated and ready for inclusion as the lightened sauce and the remaining egg white foam are folded together. No more stirring, that will not do. Gentle folding is the way to go here -- kindness toward your egg white foam to help keep it inflated.  This is a different cheese than the hard cheese used to prepare the baking dish. It will be sprinkled throughout at the same time the sauce is folded into the beaten egg white. Gentle folding is the way to go here -- kindness toward your egg white foam to help keep the foam inflated. Using a broad spoon, cut to the bottom of the bowl and lift upward to redistribute the contents without vigorous stirring. Then gently lift the foam into the baking dish. Sure, you can pour it if you're an oaf who is in a hurry and who doesn't care about technique. 

Jesus Christ, this seems complicated innit.  But it is not complicated. Although it does mess up two bowls, a baking dish, and a sauce pot. This is where a kitchen helper would be handy. 

Step Five: Bake, and don't go banging about or opening the oven door to check progress, just trust your intuition and your sense of smell.  35 minutes at 400℉ / 200℃  ← That was a guess. I honestly do not know what the official temperature and timing is, if there is such a thing, and if there is, I would of course question it.