Gruyère, cheddar and bacon soufflé

I’ve always been a bit scared of soufflés. I adore eating them, but would sooner leave the manufacture to someone else. The process always seems to me way too fraught to be a satisfying one, with that mad sprint finish over the last yards from the degree-perfect oven to the table. Scoping out options for supper last week and finding two rashers of bacon, a few eggs and two lumps of cheese left I suggested to the BSG that I might try making one and he said ‘why not?’ Why not, indeed? So I did.

I love nothing more than cruising the pages of all our beautiful cookbooks, but when I am all at sea and in need of the recipe equivalent of a stern lecture (or that fun instructive part of Blue Peter) I go to the most unsightly of the lot: Leith’s Cookery Bible. Stripped of its dust-jacket, its pages stuck together and occasionally brittle with goodness-knows-what, the spine and boards rebound with parcel tape of the muddiest brown, this beloved manual has been with the BSG for 12 years, since he did a course at Leith’s. Aside from a few breaks of colour photos (and BSG biro-scribblings), it is nearly 700 pages of pure instruction, and has been so relied upon and loved over the years that if it were a toy it would be the Velveteen Rabbit.

So, with Prue’s expert help, I made my first soufflé*. And it felt a lot like a magic spell; it never ceases to delight me how the lowly egg creates such towering spectacle.

*(I don’t think I have ever followed a recipe to the letter and this was no exception; I put chopped fried bacon bits into the bottom of the dishes).

Serves 2 apparently (but easily 6 as a starter)

Ingredients

40g butter
Dried white breadcrumbs
30g plain flour
½ teaspoon dry English mustard
a pinch of Cayenne pepper
290ml milk
3 oz sharp Cheddar or Gruyere cheese, grated (I used both)
4 eggs, separated
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 200ºC/400º F gas mark 6.

Melt a knob of the butter and brush a 15cm/6in soufflé dish (or 6 ramekins) with it. Dust lightly with the breadcrumbs.

Melt the remaining butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour, mustard and cayenne with a wooden spoon. Cook for 45 seconds. Add the milk and cook, stirring vigorously, for 2 minutes. The mixture will get very thick and leave the sides of the pan. Remove from the heat.

Cool slightly and add the cheese, egg yolks, salt and pepper. Taste; the mixture should be well seasoned.
Whisk the egg whites until stiff but not dry, mix a spoonful into the cheese mixture. Then fold in the remainder until just combined. Pour into the dish(es), which should be two-thirds full. Run your finger around the top of the mixture. This gives a ‘top hat’ appearance to the cooked soufflé.

Bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes (13-20 minutes for small versions) and serve immediately. (Do not test to see if the soufflé is done for at least 20 minutes - less for smaller dishes. Then open the oven just wide enough to get your hand in and give the soufflé a slight shove. If it wobbles alarmingly, cook for a further 5 minutes.)

      

Fennel Gratin

I haven’t transformed this blog into a cookbook review, but seeing as February’s one of those months when people choose to dine in* more often than out, I thought I would tell you about this one. No doubt the best cookbook we’ve been given in the last year (thanks Mum), the Balthazar cookbook presents the very best of Franco-NY-bistro fare as expertly executed in the establishments of Keith McNally across the pond. I have to warn you that you will salivate whilst perusing its pages. Wear a bib.

The below is a recipe from the book which we can’t leave alone. It is such a simple vegetable dish, it makes you wonder how you’d ever managed without it. Velvety and comforting, it warms one’s very core with its fragrant creaminess, going very well alongside roast meat and dark green vegetables, with baked fish and counterbalancing the salt on a crispy roast pork belly…with anything, really - or perhaps, on a duvet night, all on its own.

I feel a little guilty about how I’ve neglected the cauliflower cheese combo since meeting this one, but it is ever so slightly more sophisticated whilst remaining as simple. It employs another champion of the vegetable patch that withstands this chilly side of the year: fennel.

Fennel Gratin (Serves 6)

6 fennel bulbs, outer layer removed, cut into slices 5mm thick
½ teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper (black will do)
125ml double cream
60g Gruyère cheese, grated

Preheat the oven to 180˚C/Gas Mark 4.
Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and blanch the sliced fennel for 5 minutes. Drain, toss with the salt and pepper and spread into a buttered 15x25cm casserole or gratin dish. Pour in the cream, toss to coat, then settle the fennel into an even layer. Cover the dish with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil, sprinkle the grated Gruyère over the top and slip the dish under the grill until the cheese browns to a crisp coating, about 3 minutes.



* You may notice that the pictures this week do not do the fennel justice (above was nicked from the book – hence grainier than the real thing). I could have sworn I took some but I can’t immediately find them. You will probably get them with a recipe for pavlova, in July. Instead, scattered are some pics of the magnificent Hansen & Lydersen smoked salmon (more about that soon) and some other bits that the BSG and I ate on Feb 14th. We dined in, handsomely.

Bistrot Bruno Loubet or The Last Date

For the BSG and me, seminal moments and special occasions are unquestionably commemorated with food. Our first date - back in 2005 - was on an internet meal-deal at Sugar Hut near Fulham Broadway. It wasn’t awful, especially if you like crispy-fried-sweet battered things with neon dipping sauces and feel like more of that for afters. Since 2005, things have gone uphill (and - largely - further east); our dining excursions and dates carry more purpose: there is always somewhere exciting atop our must-visit list.

Our last date before I became Mrs BSG was no exception; where better to go for this landmark scoff than Bruno Loubet’s new gaffe at the Zetter. His hugely successful comeback had been sparklingly Corened, Gilled, Twittered and blogged about, so we had to pay a visit, it being mere minutes away from our front door.

We arrived in timely fashion for our table which, due to a disastrous hiccup with the online booking system(read human error) I had booked for seven o’clock. Seven? Anywhere else in London and the place might have been full of pre-theatre deals and dribbling toddlers hurling plastic at the echoing walls, but to our relief we arrived to find the place three-quarters full with a fairly normal-looking bunch of diners already enjoying themselves. In the high-glassed modern shell of the Zetter hotel, the Bistrot awaited us, unprepossessing and rustic, flooded with the green sunshine and good humour of early summer.

There had to be champagne, and anywhere that serves it in coupes is my kinda place. Makes me think of Frank, Bing, Gene and Grace. There has, in the past, been some disdain for these BSG-side due to the fact that the bubbles have a better chance of escape, but just this once I spied a flicker of High Society in his eyes: he was enjoying it, further buoyed by the introduction of a warm loaf baked in a small terracotta pot with pale French butter. Its stay on the table was very brief – and another gratuitous pluck at our happy strings.

In this sunny corner of Paris (in Clerkenwell) the BSG tucked into a starter of snails and meatballs: a classic dish with a mushroom concoction apparently inspired by the chef’s mum. I’d never before tried snails out of their ubiquitous garlic/butter guise, but these were fine specimens, standing up to the meatballs, in deep red orbit of a magnificently rich mushroomy star. Merci, Maman Loubet. I had the revised Lyonnais salad, predominantly salty and crisp, from the crunchy crumbed fingers of unidentified pork bits to the electric frisée leaves, brittle bacon shards and crackly rind. Like a firework display of porkiness, it all exploded around a perfect soft-poached egg, reclining gracefully like a delicate debutante on leaves of soft emerald mache. I must admit that, usually, if somebody tells me I’m to eat ‘other’ parts of an animal I’m a bit of a wimp so the crispy sticks, two meaty golden dance partners for the yolk were the perfect disguise. Wherever the meat came from, I loved every bite.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, my confit of lamb shoulder arrived. The dark, sticky golfball of meat on a white bean and preserved lemon puree with green harissa - which I thought at first to be a little on the mean side - turned out to punch way above its weight in the flavour sense, the richness of the meat perfectly cut by the souk-inspired notes. My mouth was on the Marrakesh Express and not wanting to get off. It was all I could do to stop myself leaping over the pass and taking Monsieur Loubet in my arms – I could tell that the BSG felt the same: his daube of beef was so soft it needed to be eaten with a spoon, and as far as I remember he didn’t once proffer the mousseline potatoes…

Pudding was superfluous and sublime, a dusty bitter chocolate tart with salted caramel and butter ice-cream just to threaten the arteries and a rice-pudding pannacotta with marmalade. The wedding diet had the night off.

Waddling happy and satisfied through the fading violet evening, the BSG and I smiled to ourselves that we were now in on this particular food secret, plotting as to which of our friends we most wanted to divulge it.

Mr and Mrs BSG will be back. You bet, Loubet.

Gasconomy

It’s January, it’s parky outside and nights are either spent (frantically shedding post-gorging-season guilt) in the gym, or rugged-up against the cold and cruising through the mountain of new cookery books. Inspirational – if you are very quiet, you can just about hear the cogs rotating in the food department of the BSG brain.

If there was ever a cookbook that said so much about the author, its Pascal Aussignac’s new book, Cuisinier Gascon. It focuses on the region in South West France from which he hails, its well-established, world-renowned cooking traditions and unrivalled produce – think Armagnac, duck and charcuterie – prunes, truffles, and…Fisherman’s Friend..(not French I know, but I kid you not.)

With regards to its creator, the work is the equivalent of that ubiquitous red book under Michael Aspel’s arm. From the photograph of the path through the woods in his native region you are led into Pierre Koffmann’s introduction, through the now-famous piggy treats, many of his signature dishes and other clever recipes – using honest, top-quality ingredients. There is a whole chapter dedicated to Foie Gras – you don’t see many of those around, do you?

 

Gascony is not an officially defined province in modern day France, being more of an area in which culture and tradition are strong. It exists perhaps most famously in stories of swashbuckling, mustachioed heroes, such as Cyrano de Bergerac and d’Artagnan and his Musketeers. A scene in C de B has the expert baker Ragueneau wrapping his marvels in patisserie in sheets of wonderful poetry. Turning to the extensive chapter on cakes and pastries evokes much the same delight in me as in the customers at the fictional bakery. A madeleine tin will be forthcoming.

Pascal’s ode to the tastes of his homeland reads like a memoir, telling the reader exactly who he is, and how he has grown, through food: it’s very clever really. If that isn’t enough, the book is also lovingly illustrated like a personal family album with evocative and beautiful photographs of the places to which he is so devoted - and no doubt thinks about when searching for culinary inspiration. Pascal’s expert, guiding hand is there throughout, as it is in each of his restaurants, from the food to the flowers (he does the arrangements in Club Gascon himself), and sometimes in both of the above combined – stuffed tulip, anyone?

I can’t wait to get down to the florist’s…

The BSG is away this week. Normally the contingency plan for this runs something like:

-Watch as many Gossip Girl and Sex and the City episodes as is humanly possible.

- Buy bag of frozen peas.

- Dine each night on aforementioned peas, with butter, salt and pepper and an illicit dollop of Salad Cream (can food get any faster, easier or, indeed, cheaper?)

However, this week I’ve taken on some extra work - dotting someone’s ‘i’s and crossing their ‘t’s - the grey asphalt of which stretches out before me. Alas, Blair and Serena will have to fight without me this time. The BSG, aware of my plight and being rather fond of cooking has made me a different meal for every night. They’re stacked and labelled, sitting neatly in our freezer – nothing, not even flowers (or a new madeleine tin) could be more gratefully received. Each morning I head to the freezer drawer to discover my feast, in its little Tupperware box, and leave it to defrost for the day; very much like opening a Christmas stocking. It’s a virtual, daily hug, BSG-style. As well as the mandatory cups of tea, these will keep me alert for those fiendish, misplaced semicolons.