I'm thinking egg.
no, no poaching. no making pasta. the ultimate egg and cheese indulgence has to be cheese soufflé. with garlic.
having been unceremoniously disinvited from The Motorbikes, and not that I care in the slightest as I didn't even really want to go, *harrumph*, I was free to eschew conventional nutrition and eat decidedly odd things for dinner. actually in the interest of being fair, I was only thinking of going to Phillip Island for a change of scene until JG mentioned something about sleeping on the floor.
and a weekend alone is a weekend in which to make up for lost garlic time. (not that JG doesn't like garlic, not at all, it's just that I have a deep and insatiable garlic fetish which would render me a complete social hazard were it not tempered.) I was on a mission to eat as many bulbs as possible before he got back. he's still kind enough to kiss me, but predictably Nick Cave didn't leap off stage to pash me at the Grinderman gig the following night. (I must insert quote of the month here, gratuitous references, ahem - and not from me - "[Nick's looking pretty old] but I'd still let him fuck my tits"...)
I'm not a soufflé expert, but in essence, it can't be hard to lift a roux base with whipped egg whites. but I'd had a few glasses of sherry before moving onto neat scotch so Stephanie Alexander's recipe introduction "soufflés are not nearly as fraught with danger as some cookery books would have you believe" was a relief .
so then discarding the recipe almost entirely, here is cheese soufflé for one.
preheat the oven to 200°c.
have a buttered ramekin ready.
finely chop 3 cloves of garlic.
fry the garlic in 2 teaspoons of butter.
don't let them brown, you want the full garlic flavour.
once they've sweated a bit, stir in two heaped teaspoons of plain flour, mix and mash it about and turn the heat down.
once the flour is "cooked", add 1/3 cup milk, stirring well before any lumps form.
add salt and pepper.
cook this mixture for about 4 minutes without browning. this cooks the raw taste out of the flour.
it will seem stodgy. this is normal.
remove from heat and add too much cheese. I went for 3 tablespoons of grated parmigiano and one tablespoon of grated cheddar, however a red rinded cheese such as gruyere or comte would be the ideal choice.
separate an egg and put the white into a clean bowl ready for beating.
mix the yolk into the cheese mixture and beat well until smooth and creamy.
whip the egg white until firm, then fold half through the cheese mixture to lighten it, then gently fold in the remainder.
fill the ramekin and get it in the oven straight away.
they say not to open the oven door while a soufflé is cooking. I can only speculate that this must be referring to large soufflés which risk collapsing in the middle.
anyway bake it for about 9 minutes for a half-cup capacity ramekin or less for a wider, flatter soufflé.
(the astute observer will immediately notice that this mixture will not fit into a half-cup ramekin. either use a slightly bigger one or eat the leftover mixture while waiting for your soufflé to cook.)
it should be brown on top, puffed up and then allowed to deflate and cool for just a moment before you plunge a spoon into delicious cheese-and-egg flavoured air. with garlic.
