Soufflé

I should have photographed this at the oven. Because it's so moist and only just barely gently cooked, it collapses as it's brought to the table. Which is fine because otherwise it'd be like eating flavored air.


Four eggs makes three of these.

Preheat oven to 375℉ to 400℉

Ingredients

* 4 eggs
* 2 tablespoons butter (two 1 Tbs. portions)
* 1 crushed and diced garlic clove.
* 1 Tbsp. flour
* 1 Cup of milk
* 2 rings of white onion, diced
* 1 Cup diced mushrooms
* (keep the option open for any meat and vegetable your heart desires)
* 3 strips bacon, cooked in microwave and diced
* 1 level Tbs. Dijon mustard
* ¼ tsp. salt
* 1 heavy grind pepper
* ⅓ Cup whatever cheese or combination of cheese you want to get rid of like.
* ¼ tsp Cream of Tartar

What to do

* Prepare three bowls by coating all three with 1 Tbsp. of the butter and enough grated hard cheese to fully coat the inside. This will help the soufflé lift out of the bowl as it bakes. Set aside.
* Separate the eggs, Whites into an impeccably clean large bowl, and the yolks into a small bowl. Set aside and allow to come to room temperature. Do not allow any yolk to contaminate the whites or they won't beat properly. You have now used 5 bowls -- three that will be baked and two to hold separated eggs. You could cook it all in one soufflé bowl, but what fun is that? Meanwhile...
* Prepare roux with the remaining Tbsp. butter and Tbsp. flour and heat vegetables so they shrink now and not later when they're baking. Garlic first, if you're using that, After the flour cooks for a minute or so and the vegetables are allowed to blanch ...
* Add cold milk and stand there and stir it until if forms a medium-thick sauce. Adjust as necessary. Will thicken slightly when you add cheese. Remove from heat and ...

*Add grated or sliced cheese. Stir until melted off the heat. Because cheese is already processed, it'll separate if you do this over heat. Now you have everything in one pot except the eggs which are in separate bowls, one large and one small.

Now comes the fun part.

*Beat eggs whites until firm. Add Cream of Tartar to strengthen them. Set aside. Or perhaps have a friend do this while you're making the sauce. Guests like to stay busy and feel useful. Guide them in the right technique. Use a whisk to really make them feel useful, or an electric blender if you don't mind messing with electrical implements unnecessarily.

*Add a few tablespoons of the sauce mixture into the small bowl with the egg yolks and quickly stir them to temper the eggs. This prevents them from cooking immediately. Must avoid cooked scrambled eggs at this point. Add a little more to really temper the yolks. Add all the prepared sauce with all the egg yolks. Now there's only two things left to combine -- the egg whites which are presently beaten and separate from everything else in either the pot or the bowl whichever worked out for you.

*The trick now is to get the exceedingly thick sauce mixture containing all the cheese, goodies, and flavor into the fluffy beaten egg whites without collapsing the foam you've created. Spill the sauce around the egg whites, then gently fold it together. Avoid vigorous stirring, rather lift the substance from the bottom up and over the top. Rotate the bowl as you do this until it's nearly completely but not entirely combined. This should take several folding motions.

*Unceremoniously dump the mixture into your prepared dishes. Preferably straight sided, but not necessarily.

*Bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Longer, if you make one big one instead of 3 small ones.

Because it's mostly foam, you can eat quite a lot of this and not really feel full. Therefore, have a big fat steak or something like a McDonald's quarter pounder at the ready lest you feel cheated and still hungry. I ate all three of these at once and still didn't feel like a pig.

Try to get somebody else to clean up the mess, which can be considerable.

meatballs with carrot


The idea is to increase moisture by including excessive eggs, grain in the form of bread and crackers, and vegetable in the form of carrots. The result is a very pleasant texture and utterly delicious.

* 2 frozen pre-formed hamburger patties weighing 7¼ oz. each. A total of less than a pound of hamburger meat. That comprises approximately ⅓ total mass. All other ingredients are approximate.

* 4 very large eggs
* ¾ cup bread crumbs. I used 2 pieces of very dense home made bread. plus about 8 saltine crackers. Mixed with the eggs makes a thick wet mixture.
* 2 oz. Parmesan grated
* 2 oz. Romano grated These two amount to a lot of grated hard cheese
* 2 large carrots shredded.
* 1 large bunch of cilantro chopped. That's what I had. Parsley is usually called for.

grind together
* 1 tsp. of pepper corns
* 1 tsp. of coriander seeds
* ¼ tsp. Caraway seed

* 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce.
* ½ tsp. Kosher salt
* pinch Habañero flake
* 2 Tbs. olive oil

Form into balls, bake 40 minutes @ 400°F makes 20 meatballs. These reheat well and are perfect for snacks.

Pickled salad

1/2 ton in a giant bowl, cooling down.


With fresh pineapple and fresh tomato



Vegetables
English cucumbers
Purple onions
Garlic
Carrots (blanched)
Orange and yellow peppers
Limes

Liquid
Water
Sugar
Salt
Pepper corns
Fennel seeds
Coriander seeds
Lime peel (grated)
Cardamon pods (opened up and the tiny black seeds removed)
Bay leaves
Ginger root (grated)
Dill

Fried bread sandwich


I rediscovered something already invented by every culture on Earth for the last million years.

Curry rice and beans with mint


Curry from a jar, mint grown in Aerogarden. Beans cooked in pressure cooker 30 minutes, no pre-soaking cooled the slow way. Rice cooked the way Suako taught me when I was ten, steam 25 minutes sit covered for additional 10 minutes.

Omelette


Made the classic gentile French way, as opposed to the fierce high-heat way.

With Summer Savory, although it's the first day of Spring

And some really yummy Hickory bacon.

Apple and brie


Anytime snack, totally within the zone.

Bratwurst


Bratwurst frozen solid, 30 minutes in pressure cooker, cooled down the slow way. Ew, Lordy, so tender you could eat twelve, I mean two.

Pineapple and beans also frozen solid, two minutes in microwave.
Isn't this an odd combination? Let me tell you, that basil on top of the pineapple is brilliant. It goes woof in your nose and changes everything.

Cucumber relish


sliced
*cucumber
*purple onion
*radish
*whatever other firm thing your heart desires
liquid
*water to cover
*vinegar
*sugar
*salt / crushed pepper corn
*crushed coriander seed
*grated ginger root
*whatever other flavorful thing your heart desires

Miso +chicken broth +meatballs


Homemade chicken broth. Two grocery store chickens roasted, the meat picked and frozen, the bones cracked and pressure cooked for two hours which extracts every molecule of chickeny goodness. Strained and cooked again in the same pot with chunky mire poix vegetables without pressure to within an inch of their lives then strained again through a much finer strainer resulting in thick gelatinous broth which, after chilled, formed a thin layer of fat that was removed. Ended up with two quarts exactly plus a bowl that was consumed immediately after cooking and before the fat was removed, a bit schmaltzy unctuous to say the least, slightly off putting but only at first. Hey, chicken schmaltz heals everything!

Meatballs made with lots of sourdough bread crumbs and lots of eggs. Heavily spiced, included fennel seed and cumin. The loose mixture was baked. Just under a pound of ground beef produced a boat-load of meatballs, odd tasting for sure but utterly delicious.

Cheese cake


Not really cheese cake.

*1 can Eagle Brand condensed milk
*grated lemon rind of 1 entire lemon soaked in Eagle brand milk overnight
*juice of two lemons because they weren't very juicy
*added 3 little triangles of Happy Cow creamed cheese (they're tiny individual portions)
*added 1/2 8oz tub of sour cream (that comes out to 4 oz.)
*2 jumbo eggs
*touch of salt
*Some heavy whipping cream I don't know how much, maybe a cup
The whole mixture whipped to within an inch of its life until it lightened up as much as it could

Graham cracker crust in the usual way, with cinnamon, clove and nutmeg and sugar

baked the whole thing for about 1hour, 30 minutes in bain marie, that means "water bath" in French, at 350℉ which is fairly low, no wait, that's medium.

Giant strawberries diced that were rather bitter so I added sugar plus a dash of salt, gave them a little crush to show who's boss.

Mint

Fettucini


Aero Garden


Exactly one month, and a short one at that, February. Basil already trimmed and used five times.

Pizza


I don't know what's wrong with me. I always get carried away.

Blog Archive