Cheese Souflee

 'It's not posh I promise'

ok I know its a soufflé and mostly you see them made by extremely high strung cartoon chefs and deflated by loud noises. and I know French food is often seen as fussy and intricate. My experience of French food is quite different.  My mum traveled to France as a young woman and waiting at a ferry terminal for a bus to Dijon looked for a cookbook for French foods to cook at her friends farm house. she had the good fortune to pick up an unfussy volume of what was mostly French peasant cuisine.  We still eat meals from it (including our now traditional Christmas eve boeuf bourguignon).  growing up we used to have cheese soufflé to use up odds and ends of cheese or to 'tart up a salad' mom makes it now with absolutely no measurements of any kind. serve this with French salads (we have a remoulade, a cucumber crème fresh salad, and a grated carrot, cumin and parsley salad here)

This is based on the recipe that is in moms cook book, I've basically converted it to metric and included notes for how we have modified it over the years. 

Have everything else you are serving ready before you put this in the oven. the one truth in the prima donna reputation of the soufflé is that you have to serve it immediately, it will fall if made to wait. 

90g butter (and extra for buttering)

60g  plain flour 

1/2 pint of milk  

30g parmesan cheese (or any other hard cheese, pecorino would be nice)

90g gruyere cheese (sub out for any cheese you have available)

Mustard (the official recipe says one teaspoon of Dijon, I like more than that and I prefer wholemeal mustard)

3 large eggs 

1. Pre-heat your oven to 190c, butter whatever you are making your soufflé in (2 pint soufflé dish)
2. Make a roux by melting the butter and stirring in the flour. you then need to cook off the raw taste of the flour, (I cook it for as long as it takes to sing row, row, row your boat twice).  
3. Stir in your milk slowly (it is better but not necessary to heat your milk before adding it in) then bring it to a simmer stirring constantly. It will thicken and you will stir, whisk and sieve until it is smooth.  
4. Take off the heat, stir in your, cheese, egg yolks, mustard and seasonings. (the residual heat will melt the cheese) 
5. Whisk the egg whites into stiff peaks (the book assumes you are doing this by hand, if you're not give the mixture a little extra time to cool down). 
6. Fold the egg whites into your cheese mixture. (do this carefully, tenderly, lovingly). 
7. cook in the oven for about 45 minutes, or until it is well risen and slightly crusty on top. (don't open the oven) 
8. Serve immediately (and it will absolutely still taste delicious if it doesn't rise, the big poufy rise is mostly just for flexing)

Serve with good bread and some salad, you will want something fresh and light  to go with this because it is very rich.