How to make the perfect soufflé

Soufflés were one of the (relatively) first things I learned to make - after pastry, and crème patissière, I think. And certainly, I can remember about thirty years ago happily churning them out without a moment's thought, and often, when we were entertaining in the kitchen at Bankside, getting up from table mid-supper and getting on with soufflé production, without missing a beat in the general conversation. As with much else in those days, I learned from the late great Julia, in Mastering the Art...and, as with everything else that came from her instruction, the technique worked perfectly. (I've never been entirely clear how much that was Julia, and how much was Simone Beck, but at the end of the day, who cares?).

And then, over time, somehow I lost the knack. I'm not quite sure when...but I suppose I got hi-jacked by other people's methods and recipes (different temperatures, different base recipes, whether or not to use a bain marie, different ways of recognising the correct consistency of the mixture, different - but confident - opinions about everything...), and at a certain point I recognised that soufflés had become, for me, rather hit-and-miss. Which meant that I produced them less often, which meant that when I did they became even more hit and miss. Which was deeply frustrating, and basically kind of stupid....since I knew I used to be able to do it with my eyes shut. The final straw was the Larousse Book of Soufflés, which was one of the things under the tree for me this Christmas. Packed with wonderful-sounding things....except that when I tried the first of them, somehow instinctively I knew it didn't feel right, and when the end-result rose too high and then toppled over messily inside the oven, it was clearly time to take action. Following the time-honoured dictum that 'When all else fails, read the instructions', I decided to do just that, and crack open Julia once more.Which I did. January was significantly - and remarkably successfully - devoted to re-learning soufflés, and by the end of the period I felt as though I'd emerged from a bout of rehab, and all was once more well with the world.

The following method is for sweet soufflé (the method for savoury is different, and I'll post on that some other time), and is a basic recipe for Vanilla Soufflé, with variations thereafter for a number of different alternatives.

For two individual soufflés, in circular moulds 9cm diameter x 4 cm depth.

Ingredients: 11g plain Flour; 70 ml Milk (2.5 fl oz, if you're working in imperial - I switch between the two, all the time); 28g Sugar, plus 1 spoonful; 2 medium Eggs + one extra egg-white (if adding the extra white from whites you'e saved otherwise, and therefore need to measure a quantity, then one egg-white is approximately 30 ml); 1 tablespoon Vanilla Essence; a pinch of Salt; Icing Sugar.

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 200 degrees C.

2. Grease the inside of your two soufflé moulds.

3. Into a bain marie over medium heat, place the Flour, and add a couple of tablespoons  of the milk, to allow you to make a lump-free paste. Once the Flour has been properly incorporated, add the rest of the Milk, and mix together thoroughly with a hand whisk. Add the 28g of  Sugar, and cook for a few minutes, stirring from time to time, until the mixture has cooked and thickened. 

4. Remove the mixture from the heat, and beat in the egg yolks, one at a time. Allow the mixtrure to cool slightly, then mix in the Vanilla Essence.

5. In separate bowl, whisk the egg whites with a pinch of Salt, and when the whites start to stiffen, sprinkle a spoonful of sugar over hte surface; continue beating until the whites are stiff.

6. Mix a quarter of the stiff whites into the base mixture, then carefully fold in the remainder.

7. Fill the prepared moulds above the rim, and then run the side of a palette knife across the top of the mould, to scrape away excess mixture and to fill the moulds perfectly.

8. Run your thumb right round the edge of each mould, to create a small channel round the surface of each soufflé - this will stop the mixture from sticking to the mould, and allows the sides to rise vertically. Using a template (a piece of card or papaer, from which you've cut a circle about a cm in diamater less than the top of the soufflé) sprinkle icing sugar over the top of the mixture, to make a crisp skin on the surface of the finished product.

9. Place the soufflés in the oven, and as soon as you've closed the door, reduce the tempertaure setting to 180 degrees C.

10. Bake for eleven minutes. (This may take slight experimentation in practice, as no two ovens are identical, and ten seconds more or less can make all the difference with the finished consistency - you might find with your own oven that the best result is given by 10 and a half minutes, or by eleven and a quarter; for me, it's eleven.)

Serve. Immediately. And with pride. Best to put each soufflé dish on top of a folded napkin on each plate, as this stops the dishes from skidding around as the plates are taken to table.

The variations: For Coffee Soufflé, replace half of the Vanilla Essence with two teaspoons of Coffee Essence,  or better still, mocha paste;  for Praline soufflé, replace half of the Vanilla with two tsp of Praline Paste; for Orange soufflé, replace half of the Vanilla with the finely grated rind of one orange, plus 2 tbs of cointreau; for Almond soufflé, add to the Vanilla mixture a quarter tsp of almond extract, plus 90g of toasted ground almonds (you might need an extra egg white in this version, as the base mixture is thicker than with the other recipes, and so needs more beaten egg-white to lighten it.)

The Big Chill...

The lily-pond has been a sheet of ice for the past three days, although we haven't been having noticeable frosts - so I suppose the temperature must be all to do with the famous 'windchill factor'. It's enough for even the junior four-footed (who's choice normally would be to live outdoors, if he could) to come back inside, after only about three minutes' commmuning with nature - while his senior compadre merely peers doubtfully at 'outside', before politely looking up to indicate that No, he doesn't really think so, thank you.

I agree, and gardening has been put on hold for the time being. The locals, whipped by the media into a frenzy of concern, have been wrapping plants and shrubs in fleecy shrouds...and although I pondered doing it for some of the more tender plants, in the end I decided not to, since there were far more than I could wrap up that would be vulnerable if it got really cold (so, how to choose?)...and I wasn't entirely convinced about the threat, anyway. And in the end, I don't think it's been any colder than it normally is at this time of year, and already all those alarmingly low 'minus' figures have largely evaporated from the forecast - as I suspected they would - so it looks as though the panic should be over. The fleece-sellers will have done well from it, though!

The one thing we did decide to protect was the Madagascan Traveller's Palm in the courtyard - which isn't supposed to be this far north, at all - and the Technical Dept constructed an enormous bobble hat for it out of bubble wrap, inside which he rigged up a garden light , to keep the air slightly warm. And because the light is on 24/7, it washes upwards and casts a ghostly glow at night over the facade of the church behind, and catches the sculptural lines of the gothic windows. Rather splendid and mysterious...

Tonight's Dinner:

Courgette Soufflés.

Lasagne of Green Pasta & Guinea Fowl Ragu.

Apple and Orange crumble.

It was Brazilian Night...

...at the V&A, on Friday. One of their 'last Friday of the month' events, when - in theory - the entire place is given over to party crowds, and carnival dress and exuberance amongst the artefacts is the order of the day. Or so it had been the last time we'd encountered one of these evenings (pretty much  by accident) a year or so ago, and had found the Cast Halls full of people conga-ing along in day-glo costumes, and en route to the third floor of the Medieval Gallery, had stumbled across some strange kind of musical event in play.  Buzzy and all rather wonderful.
So, you'd have thought that an evening arranged in collaboration with the Brazilian Embassy would have been Mardi Gras in small, since spontaneous partying is surely what Brazilians are supposed to do best. Maybe that was what was wrong, though - not enough Brazilians, and, in their absence,  too much reliance on spontaneity (which wasn't really happening). There were loads of people - loads - and the place was generally heaving; all waiting for something to happen, that they could stand and happily watch. But, in  practice, the much vaunted Samba Flash Mob turned out to be three blokes with drums, wearing brightly coloured t-shirts and banging away with great enthusiasm, but actually looking as though they'd just wandered in from Esher Rugby Club! And all the while the DJ in the opposite corner of the Hall was churning out, at high volume, what sounded like Stevie Wonder interspersed with early Michael Jackson. Which, I suppose, given that the V&A is a museum, wasn't entirely inappropriate...

I endured the war zone that surrounded the bar in the Central Hall not once but twice - having lost heart after ten minutes, the first time around, and given up; only to realise that my taste buds had been warned to expect something heartening, and I was just going to get bad-tempered if expectations weren't met. So, I tried again, and succeeded in returning with a couple of caparinhas.  Which turned out to be a glass of very expensive crushed ice, at the bottom of which was sloshing around a generous squirt of lemon juice, and some colourless and flavourless alcohol. A bit like a Pisco Sour, but without the kick.

However, it wasn't all disappointing. With an unerring nose for these things, the Technical Dept had noticed in passing that, tucked away in the direction of the Sackler Centre,  there was a new display of things recently woven from Madagascan golden spider silk  - a cope and a shawl - which is not only extremely strong, but is naturally golden in colour. Having disposed of our glasses of slush, we made our way there, and weren't disappointed. Beautiful things. And fascinating. Definitely worth the journey.

And then, on the way out, just as I mentioned that I'd be interested to see Rodin's bust of Eve Fairfax (having just read Michael Holroyd's latest book, in which it features prominently), but that it would probably be in some obscure corner of an upper gallery....suddenly, quite serendipitously, there it was, right in front of us. Which was splendid!

But not enough to keep us for long from heading out and home, and in search of a decent drink!

Tonight's Dinner:

Rotolo of Green Pasta, filled with Spinach and Pancetta.

Rabbit braised in White Wine; Fennel, breaded and fried.

Orange bavarois.

Making Marmalade

The citrus trees in the garden are dripping with fruit - perhaps 500 lemons, in all, spread between the two or three most prolific fruiters; and the sweet orange which climbs up to the office terrace is producing almost as generously. The newly-planted mandarin is showing willing with a token offering (which bodes well for future years) ...and the bitter oranges are going great guns, with many kilos of fruit hidden away amongst the rich dense foliage. From the sweet oranges, we have freshly squeezed juice each morning; the lemons will all find a good home over the next few months (Lemon Tart; Lemon & Sage Risotto; Pasta with Hazelnut & Lemon; Guinea Fowl with Lemon & Garlic...as well as salads, and fish, and apple pies, and cake...) and, this week,  the bitter oranges are being put to excellent use for marmalade.

I've circled warily round the marmalade process for some time, as I'd always understood it was quite complicated. Which it isn't, in the least.... and so now regret all that useless circling. It requires very little watching as it cooks, and so takes only the time needed for the hands-on preparation stages. Before trying it for the first time, I researched widely, and came up with a method that is essentially 'Colonel Gore's Recipe' - which came from the family archives of Rosemary Hume - combined with Prue Leith. As follows:

For three and a half kilos of Marmalade.

Ingredients: 2 kilos of fruit (I use entirely bitter oranges - the ones we grow are very bitter indeed, so need no help from any additional lemon juice and pith; if using seville oranges, though, it might be better to substitute a couple of large lemons for the equal weight of oranges, to give you still a total of 2 kilos); 10 pints of water; 3 kilos of sugar.

Method:

1. Cut the fruit in half, and squeeze into a ceramic or glass bowl large enough eventually to hold all of the fruit and the water. (I use an electric citrus press for this stage, and to do all of the fruit takes about ten minutes). 

2. Collect all of the pips, and tie them in a piece of muslin (or, failing that, a new j-cloth). Add the bag of pips to the juice.

3. Finely slice the fruit husks - using the slicer disc in the food processor means this job takes about two minutes in total. Add the sliced fruit husks to the bowl with juice and pips, and add to it all of the water. Cover, and let stand for 24 hours.

4. After 24 hours, transfer the contents of the bowl to a preserving pan. Bring to a simmer over low heat, and allow to simmer for two hours.

5. About an hour and forty minutes into the simmering time, warm the sugar in an oven set at around 60 degrees C (I pour it into a couple of glass roasting dishes for this purpose). At the end of the simmering time, carefully add the warmed sugar to the preserving pan, and raise the temperature to a slow boil. Keep boiling , stirring from time to time, and at the end of about forty minutes - at which point the mixture visibly thickens - begin to check the temperature using a jam thermometer. When it reaches 106 degrees C, it's done. 

6. Allow to cool for ten minutes, and then transfer to sterilised jam jars. Cover each jar with a circle of greaseproof paper - and if you have tops that can be screwed in place, do so, tightly,  before the marmalade has cooled.

An excellent sauce for fish...

This was the sauce we had with the first course at dinner on Christmas Day. A classic technique, but none the worse for that! As with all good sauces, the secret is to reduce, and reduce, and reduce - so all those wonderful flavours end up concentrated in a spoonful of something which is so luxuriously delicious that it practically defies description.

On this occasion, we were eight for dinner, and I had a couple of gloriously meaty Dover Sole, the fillets from which were 'poached' over chopped shallots and white wine in a gentle oven, and then served with a light coating of sauce. In practice, the sauce will work with  any white-fleshed fish....and if you don't want to faff around with the filleting and making the stock from scratch, then substitute a quarter cup of ready made (good) fish stock, add to it the same quantity of white wine, and then reduce by a half before  proceeding with step two of the recipe.

You can make the sauce in advance, but if you do, then be very careful when reheating, and only do it slowly, and over the gentlest of flames.

Makes sufficient sauce for 6-8 servings (2 tbs each)

Ingredients: 2 fish carcasses;1 bottle dry white wine;1 pint of creme fraiche* - preferably home made**;1 stick celery;parsley stalks and/or fennel stalk;1 onion, roughly chopped.

Method: 

1. Poach the vegetables and the fish carcases in the wine for an hour. Strain, discard the carcases and vegetables, and reduce the stock to next to nothing - ¼ cup say. 

2. Add the cream and reduce until you have 250ml or 2 tablespoons per serving. Season before serving.

* Creme fraiche is acid and produces a completely difference sauce to, say, double cream. You can use double cream and add lemon juice, but the flavour will not be the same. I also find double cream has a greater tendency to 'split' than creme fraiche. 

**To make creme fraiche at home, you will need to buy a small amount of creme fraiche the first time in order to start the process (and then use the tail-end of the first batch when it comes to making the next lot).  

Heat a litre of whipping cream to 40°C - I buy screw top paper cartons and put the carton in the warming drawer. As when making yoghurt, mix a couple of tablespoons of existing creme fraiche with some of the cream from the carton. Mix very well and return the liquid to the carton. Turn the carton upside down a couple of times to amalgamate and leave in a warm place(22-24°C say) for 24 hours. Turn the carton upside down occasionally to mix the contents.  I sit the container on top of the gas central heating boiler. Refrigerate for a day before using. It will keep 10 days or more.

First-rate Art...

and third-rate scholarship. We were in Florence on Wednesday, with the Belfortes, for an exhibition at the Strozzi which was supposed to explore the relationship - accommodation, maybe? - between commerce and religion in the fifteenth century, as manifested in florentine works of art from the period. It's a valid thesis, and the works of art advertised were reason enough on their own to make it worth seeing. (The title of the exhibition was 'Botticelli, Bankers, and the Bonfires of the Vanities' , and although I've no great liking for Botticelli, there was enough on offer otherwise to whet the appetite.)

Many of the pictures were excellent: at the very least, a couple of beautiful Fra Angelico's, a wonderful Jacopo del Sellaio, and three panels of a predella by Pesellino that I would quite happily have pocketed had nobody been looking.  All-in-all, it was a morning well spent. As long as it remained  possible to ignore the banalities on the accompanying narrative panels, that is. The 'art' occasionally had to struggle quite hard to rise above the inadequacies of the text, for which joint responsibility (or do I mean blame?) was presumably shared between the two curators,  Ludovica Sebregondi and Tim Parks. La Sebregondi is apparently an art historian - although anybody reading her contributions to the signage of the exhibition could be forgiven for not having realised it - and so perhaps has less excuse than Mr Parks, who is, when all's said and done, a popular novelist. Ok, he has one light-ish weight work of Medici-related social history to his name, as well - but I'm not sure that really qualified him for the position of joint curator of this event. Who knows what struggles between these two went into the labour pangs of the enterprise, but as a scholarly exploration of a complicated - but not too complicated - subject, the end result read as though it was aimed at an audience of eight-year-olds, and was quite frankly pitiful.  

Oh, and there was a further highly-ignorable dimension to the event which, fortunately, I managed to tune out fairly comprehensively. Throughout the exhibition,  an undertone of distaste was discernible with the whole subject of banking and commerce, and wealth and luxury that could quite easily have come from one of the great-unwashed who were so recently camping on the pavement outside St Paul's, and clogging up Wall Street. Tiresome, witless, and childish. The subject deserved better.

However...lunch afterwards at Cammillo (just for a change!) was even more delicious than usual, with the stracotto I had being about as close to a work of art on a plate as you could hope to get. And as we subsequently headed off to Santa Maria Novella for our train, we waved the Belfortes off and into the Armani shop, where they had every intention of wallowing in luxury, encouraging commerce, and flouting every sumptuary law they could think of! Plus ca change...

Tonight's Dinner

Phyllo Shells, filled with Fegatini and Mushrooms, in a Marsala Cream.

Prawn Curry. 

Pineapple Soufflés Glacés

Passing on Recipes...

In the early sixties, Kira Petrovskaya talked about the time she'd asked an aged bubushka how it was that she made such memorably excellent piroshki. "Well," the old lady replied, after a long pause for thought, "first of all I wash my hands...and then.....well, then, I tie a clean kerchief around my head." This was followed by another and longer pause..."And, then?" she was prompted. "Ah, yes. And then....then, I make sure to put on a very clean apron, and tie it tightly." At which point, the explanation required another prompt, and the babushka folded her hands together, and with a smile of apple-cheeked sweetness, concluded with an understated flourish 'And then...well, then, I cook the piroshki!".  Petrovskaya was entirely convinced by the innocence of the delivery that she was in the presence of a natural cook, who couldn't conceive that any recipe could require explanation...someone for whom cooking was, after all, something that just happened  when one was in the kitchen. Never being entirely persuaded by apple-cheeked innocence,  however, I have my own view of  what was what was going on here, and take a more cynical view of the babushka's inability to communicate...

We were in Belforte for the weekend, for a birthday. For a starter at dinner on Friday, we were served a dish of wonderfully succulent courgettes, gently sautéed to a melting softness, the flavour rich, but with an undertone of tanginess. "How have you done these?" I asked, and got a vague response, that it was an adaptation over many years of something that had originally come from Hazan. "Yes, but what's the recipe?" I persisted. To be met with an explanation that it was necessary first to cut up and salt the courgettes...which led to a discussion of whether or not this was actually necessary, since I never bother with this step, any more "Ah, but unless they're absolutely garden fresh, you have to..."  which I think is nonsense, since no water ever comes out of the things, I find, even if I do salt them and leave them to sit for an hour, and so it's a complete waste of time. And by this stage we were on the second glass of grappa -  the local production of which in Belforte is absolutely lethal, and is shortly followed by collapse of stout parties - and so that was the end of that particular conversation.

"You never actually explained how you cooked the courgettes," I reminded her, over coffee, the next morning. "Ah.....didn't I?" And the evasive tone might have existed only in my imagination. "Yes, we did that bit..." I said, as a repetition of cutting and salting your courgettes seemed about to start. And this time we got as far as heating olive oil in a sauté pan...."But, it must only be very good oil, and Olive  oil, not sunflower, or peanut, or any of those other things they suggest in recipes...". 

And then the phone rang. And although there might not actually have been an element of 'saved by the bell' about it all, it was with a raised eyebrow that the TD and I exchanged a glance across the kitchen table, as the explanation trailed off in the direction of the trilling machine.

"About those courgettes," I tried again, sometime later, over a rising pile of chopped carrots and leeks, as a couple of lamb shoulders were being prepped for lunch (Belforte lamb is melt-in-the-mouth wonderful!). "Hmmm?" Difficult to concentrate on lamb and a recipe explanation all at the same time, of course, but slowly, step by painful step (of which there are only about three, anyway) we finally managed to get there. Finally. Almost twelve hours after having first posed the question. Talk about pulling teeth!

And, I would pass it on here, so we can all enjoy the perfection of the end result....but I can hear the phone ringing....and then I have to wash my hands ....so...perhaps another time! (Perhaps)

Tonight's Dinner:

Tagliatelle 'fata in casa', with a mussel and cream sauce.

Scaloppine alla milanese, with a cheese and prosciutto stuffing; fagiolini, with tomato and onion.

Apricot Cream 'Crimean style'.