One French word: navet, one French recipe: pétales de légumes

navet, masculine noun (un navet, le navet, des navets) = turnip (pronounced nah-vey).

Not most people’s favourite vegetable, but when they are young and fresh in spring their flavour is delicate and not overpowering as it often is in autumn and winter, and they can easily be eaten raw. Or used to accompany a meat dish, boiled briefly then glazed in a sugar and butter mixture.

Un navet is also currently used to denote a flop, when talking of a bad film, theatre performance or book.

My recipe today is a little different to the taste buds: pétales de légumes = vegetable petals.

Main ingredients – looks a bit like a still life, doesn’t it…

For each person you will need:

• One small raw spring turnip
• One small raw beetroot
• One ripe tomato (I used a beef tomato)
• One small courgette (zuccchini)
• and any other vegetables you may feel like that can be cut into fine slices (radishes?), or fruits (oranges, strawberries?)
• salt
• chili flakes
• olive oil
• raspberry vinegar

Preparation:

Wash and trim all the vegetables. Peel the beetroot but do not peel either the turnip or the courgette.

Slice the courgette into as many thin lengthways strips as possible, discarding the first slice, which is just skin (simply for aethetic reasons), and place around the edge of each person’s plate in wavy, curly shapes.

Peel and slice the beetroot into very fine slices and being careful not to taint the courgette with beetroot juice (again for the aesthetics), place an overlapping circle of beetroot slices inside the ring of courgettes.

Wash your hands, the knife and the chopping board. Finely slice the turnip and place another ring inside the beetroot ring. Do not season.

Core and skin the tomato (plunge it into boiling water for a minute or so, the skin will come off easily). Cut into small cubes, place in a bowl with the equivalent of one smallish dried chili (outside and seeds), flaked. Quite a lot of salt (tomatoes need salt), but you can rectify later. One tbs raspberry vinegar. 2 tbs olive oil (if you are several at table increase the oil and vinegar). Mix to a smooth paste with a soup mixer. It makes a sort of rather thick gazpacho-like mixture. Taste and rectify seasoning. It should be fairly chili hot, vinegary, with a good strong flavour of olive oil.  Place a spoonful of this mixture in a tiny bowl in the centre of your vegetable plate. Leave the rest of the tomato dressing in a larger bowl on the table, because it is more-ish and people can help themselves and drown their plates in it if they like. But it looks better to present only a small quantity.

This is an excellent starter, fresh and appetizing-looking, but you can also make a main course of it if you are feeling fragile and only want raw vegetables, maybe accompanied with crusty bread and butter, or viande des grisons (thin cured beef slices). Or parma ham.

Bon appétit!

One French word: moules, a French recipe: moules marinières

moule, feminine noun (une moule, la moule, des moules) = mussel (pronounced mool, never say the s in the plural).

I remember in 1965, arriving at my grandparents’ house in Bordeaux in south-western France with my younger brother on one of the hottest days in living memory. My diminutive grandmother, still then a fantastic cook, although she forgot how at the end of her life, trotted out to the fishmonger next door to get fresh mussels, and made us a big panful of moules marinières. Here’s how she did it:

Main ingredients for moules marinières

For 4 people as a main course you will need:

• 2-3 litres (or kilos, depending on how they are sold) of fresh mussels
• a bunch of fresh parsley
• 4 plump shallots
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 60gr butter
• a glass or two of dry white wine
• pepper (you shouldn’t need much salt)

Mussels cleaned and ready to cook

A word about buying mussels: there is a season for mussels, which varies depending where you are in the world. Mussels are best and plumpest when they are in season and should be firmly closed when you buy them. There are always a few that are not; these should be discarded. They should be cooked immediately and eaten the day they are bought, from a reputable fishmonger where the fish is fresh, well prepared and on lots of ice. Best not to buy them when it is too hot, best also to have a cold bag to bring them home in.

To prepare mussels, tip them all into the sink, and under running water and with a small sharp knife, check through each and every one. Any that are broken or that do not close promptly when you press them shut, throw in the bin. Debeard them by pulling on the bit of weed that comes out of one side of the shell with the knife. As you prepare them, put the clean ones into a colander. It doesn’t matter much if, after sorting them, any of the ones in the colander open up. They were closed a short while ago, and are about to be cooked. If any mussels have barnacles on the outside of their shells, scrape them off.

Peel and chop the shallot and garlic. Wash and chop the bunch of parsley.

In a very large pan, over moderate to high heat, put the butter, the shallot and garlic and a little pepper. Add the glass of wine and boil briskly to reduce a little and soften the shallot and garlic. (You can also use good quality wine vinegar instead of wine if you wish, they are very good that way too and in fact that is how I usually cook them.) Add the mussels all in one go, put the lid on the pan, and shake quite vigorously. Cook for a minute or two, raising the lid to see if the mussels are opening, stir to bring the bottom mussels up to the top and distribute the shallot evenly.  Add the parsley and a couple of grinds of the pepper mill. You should not need to add salt. Put the lid back on, stir again, and as soon as all the mussels are open, serve without delay. There is NOTHING worse than an overcooked, shrivelled mussel. They should be just steamed in their own liquid, just open, and very moist. Ladle into large individual bowls with some of the liquid, and keep the unserved ones warm.

Don’t use forks to eat mussels, choose a largish shell, remove and eat the mussel, and then use that shell as an eating iron, pinching and grabbing successive mussels with it. And to save space, don’t just chuck your shells into a bowl, pile them up neatly as in the photo below.

Don’t forget to spoon up the juice or to pump it up with pieces of fresh bread. Serve the mussels with chips (French fries) as the Belgians do (the French copy them more and more). Moules frites, you will see that on menus all over France.

Bon appétit!

One French word: olive, a French recipe: tapenade

Olive, feminine noun (une olive, l’olive, des olives) = olive (pronounced oh-leave)

Olive verte = green olive, olive noire = black olive, de l’huile d’olive = olive oil, de l’huile d’olive vierge = virgin olive oil, des olives dénoyautées = stoned (pitted) olives, un olivier = an olive tree, une branche (or un rameau) d’olivier = an olive branch, du bois d’olivier = olive wood, une oliveraie = an olive grove.

It is also a colour: vert olive = olive green,

and a (very out of fashion) female first name, Olive; but a quite fashionable and inter-generational male first name, Olivier.

Olive oil is of course widely used in Mediterranean, and therefore French, cuisine, as are olives. My recipe for today is tapenade, a paste made with black olives and used to spread on bread, toast, biscuits, blinis, etc. as apéritif nibbles. Recipes for tapenade vary, ingredients sometimes trade green olives for the black, and it is used widely also as an ingredient in other recipes such as lamb or rabbit stew, pasties, etc.

Main ingredients for tapenade

For a cupful you will need:

• 100gr stoned black olives
• 25gr capers
• 25gr anchovy fillets
• 1/2 clove garlic
• about 15cl olive oil
• a little lemon juice

The anchovy fillets can be the very salty, thin, deep red kind, or the less salty, fatter silvery kind. Do not re-salt your mixture.  I also added a few dashes of tabasco, but this is not traditional.

Drain the olives and the anchovies and put all the roughly chopped ingredients plus a tbs or two of olive oil into a mini blender and pulse to obtain a smooth paste. No recognizable bits should remain. If the paste is not smooth enough, add a tiny bit more olive oil, until you get it to the right consistency. It should be like jam that does not fall off your piece of toast, not sloppy.  A bit more liquid than peanut butter? Difficult to say really. It is a little bitter and should be moderately salty.

Spread it onto biscuits, blinis, or squares of toast, or slices of baguette cut at an angle. You may garnish these with chopped chives, half a cherry tomato, or any other embellishment that comes to mind (but you don’t have to, it’s nice just by itself, but not very exciting looking). Try it with a glass of wine before a meal.

Tapenade will keep in a jar, covered, for a few days in the fridge. Do cover it or it will garlic up your whole fridge.

Not brilliant presentation, but never mind...

Bon appétit!

One French word: petit pois, a French recipe: cake à la feta et aux petits pois

Petit pois  (un petit pois, des petits pois) = garden pea (pronounced peuh-tee pwah).

We’ve had pois cassés = split peas, but these are the nice tender variety that we shall have on our plates in a month or so (I used frozen I have to admit).

Just as a noix (= walnut) is used to indicate a tablespoon sized portion, often of butter, so petit pois denotes a pea-sized portion, of a cream from a tube for instance.

Petits pois à la française are peas cooked with silverskin onions, a little fried bacon (lardons) and the braised heart of a lettuce. It always seems strange to me, but then I was at one time anglo-saxon, that the French really prefer their peas from tins (cans) and not fresh or frozen. We like them bright green, they prefer khaki. Same with “French” beans (haricots verts). One gets used to them, but I could never prefer them.

When you see on a menu “à la Clamart“, it means the meat is served with peas.

Avoir un petit pois dans la tête (= literally to have a pea in your head) means to be stupid, to have a pea-sized brain.

My recipe is for a cake à la feta et aux petits pois = a loaf-shaped cake with feta cheese and peas. This is really useful as an apéritif nibble recipe, you can put it in mini molds to make bite-sized portions (but do reduce the cooking time accordingly). It is also good for picnics or taking to the office. It makes neat slices that don’t make too many crumbs. It contains protein and vitamins.  It is good cold, with mayonnaise, or hot with a homemade tomato sauce. Very versatile, and ridiculously easy to do.

Main ingredients

For four people you will need:

• 150gr flour
• a heaped tsp baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 10cl vegetable oil
• 10cl milk
• 130gr frozen peas
• 130gr feta
• 1/2 tsp salt, 4 grinds of the pepper mill
• a handful of chopped fresh mint
• a handful of grated cheese

Preparation:

1. Heat the oven to 180°C.
2. Grease a loaf tin.
3. In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, the salt (but taste your feta first to make sure it is not too salty, in which case reduce the amount), the oil and the milk. I used virgin organic rapeseed oil, which is bright yellow and has a delicate flavour. You can use olive oil just as well.
4. Add the flour and the baking powder and beat thoroughly so that there are no remaining lumps.
5. Bring a very small amount of water to the boil (do not salt it) and put the peas to boil for 3 minutes.
6. Cut the feta into small squares.
7. Chop the mint.
8. Add the drained peas, the feta and the mint to the egg and flour mixture and pour into the mold. Make sure you are using real Greek feta and not some imitation. Not at all the same thing.
9. Put a handful of grated cheese (pale yellow cheese NOT orange cheese, this will spoil the aesthetics of the dish) in a stripe down the centre of the cake.
10. Bake for 40 minutes – it may need 50 but watch it after 40.
11. Unmold and allow to cool slightly if you are serving it hot, cut into slices (slicing is a little tricky when hot as the feta is far from firm). Allow to cool completely if you are serving cold and chill in the fridge.

Any left over cake should be wrapped in tin foil or cling wrap and kept in the fridge. Try not to slice more than you are going to use, it keeps better in one piece.

The colours of this cake are delicate and springlike (printanier, we just had that word). Very appetizing.

Bon appétit!

One French word: anis, a French recipe: saumon en papillote à l’anis

Anis, masculine noun (l’anis) = aniseed (pronounced a-neesse, or sometimes a-neee), but you never say un anis or des anis. If you want to say one aniseed, or lots of aniseed, you say une graine d’anis, or des graines d’anis (one aniseed seed, or lots of aniseed seeds).

Anisé = aniseed flavoured, such as all the Mediterranean apéritifs, pastis in the south of France, ouzo, raki, arak… each Mediterranean country has its version.

A nostalgic parenthesis: do the British among you remember aniseed balls? Do they still exist? The size of a small marble, deep rusty red, but when you sucked them they became white and your tongue went rusty red instead? And when you got right to the middle after hours of work, there was the prize: a single aniseed to crunch between two incisors! My favourites when I was little.

I bought some organic aniseed the other day, not for any particular purpose, but I have since been using it for making tisane (herbal tea), lovely, a teaspoonful with boiling water over it and a bit (or not) of honey. And you can eat the seeds when you’ve drunk the tea!

Aniseed is very different from fennel, or dill, or cumin, or caraway. I use it in this recipe for salmon: saumon en papillote à l’anis and it complements the fish perfectly.

You will need a piece of salmon per person. I prefer slices across the fillet (called filet in French), not through the whole fish with the bones (called a darne). A teaspoonful of aniseed per portion, and a little butter or cream.

Heat the oven to 180°. Prepare large squares of aluminium foil or greaseproof paper, and place a piece of salmon on each.  Salt and pepper each portion and add the aniseed. Place a teaspoonful of butter or cream on top of the lot and close the papillote. Cook in the oven for about 12 minutes for a small portion, 15 minutes for a larger. Don’t overcook salmon, it must be moist.

Serve with new potatoes and some fresh crunchy celery. Salmon always looks so lovely with something pale green like celery or cucumber.

Bon appétit!

One French word: vin, a French recipe: fraises au vin

A variation on a previous recipe of strawberries with limoncello liqueur: since it is the strawberry season, we should have a whole stock of recipes at our fingertips!

Fraises au vin

Vin = wine of course. Probably the word that the world over is most connected with France.  The French cook a lot with wine, and often the wine is as good as that served at table.

Fraises au vin, main ingredients

This recipe is very simple, but no less good for that. Strawberries, nice and ripe, cut in four, sprinkled with a little sugar and the grated or zested rind of one or two oranges, depending on the quantity of strawberries, with a glass or two of red wine poured over them. Stir delicately, leave to infuse for an hour, or overnight. If you don’t want to use alcohol, use the juice of the same oranges.

Bon appétit!

One French word: lait, a French recipe: crème caramel

Lait, masculine noun (le lait, du lait, les laits) = milk (pronounced lay, you don’t hear the t).

The Milkmaid by Vermeer, in French : La laitière

Lait de vache = cow’s milk, lait de brebis = ewe’s milk, lait de chèvre = goat’s milk, lait d’anesse = asses milk, lait de jument = mare’s milk.

Lait entier = full cream milk, lait demi-écrémé = half cream milk, lait écrémé = milk with all cream removed, lait cru = raw milk, straight from the cow. Lait caillé = curdled milk. Lait condensé = condensed milk.

Cochon de lait = sucking pig, dent de lait = baby (milk) tooth,

Un produit laitier = a dairy product, un élevage laitier = a dairy farm.

Allaiter = to breast feed, allaitement = breast feeding. Lait maternel = mother’s milk.

Expressions include être une vache à lait = (literally to be a milk cow) to be exploited (usually financially); être soupe au lait = (literally to be like milk soup) to be quick to anger (like boiling milk rising rapidly in the pan).

One can see from all the different words and expressions how important milk is in everyday life all over the world. Milk is the main ingredient of my recipe today: crème caramel, which, without the caramel, is called œufs au lait (eggs with milk).

Crème caramel is a staple of French cuisine. Simple, easy to mess up, quite delicious when done properly.

For 4 people you will need:

• 150ml of milk (full cream is best, you will get the best flavour, but since you are going to add cream, it is not crucial).
• 275ml of thick liquid cream, known in Britain as double cream, thicker than whipping cream.
• A vanilla pod
• 4 large eggs
• 40gr of sugar
• and for the caramel another 100gr sugar.

Heating the milk and the cream with the vanilla seeds

Preparation:

Making the caramel

1. Make the caramel with 100gr of sugar and a scant tbs of water. The method is described in detail here. Pour quickly into four large ramekins or one oven-proof dish of the same or slightly greater volume.
2. Pre-heat the oven to 150°.
3. Beat the eggs with the sugar until they are pale yellow.
4. Boil a kettle full of water.
5. Heat the milk and the cream together with the scraped inside of the vanilla pod but remove from the heat before they boil.
6. Add this mixture to the beaten eggs, stirring vigourously all the time so that the milk does not cook your eggs. This is where mistakes are made. If your milk is too hot or you don’t stir enough, you will end up with scrambled eggs.
7. Sieve this mixture into a jug. This step is important too, it gets rid of any bits that shouldn’t be there (nasty bits of egg white for instance).
8. Pour from the jug into the ramekins or larger dish on top of the caramel.
9. Place the ramekins in a roasting pan and pour water from the kettle so that it reaches half way up the sides, no more, and put into the oven for about an hour. Be careful when putting into the oven, the hot water slops easily, and should you get it over your wrists, you are likely to drop the lot, such a waste of time. Be especially careful when removing the pan from the oven.  A golden skin will form on top, the finished crème should be firm.
10. Leave to cool then place in the fridge. These may be eaten cold or at room temperature, straight from the ramekins, or unmolded on invididual serving plates. Unmolding is delicate and you get some surprises. Run a knife around the edge of the ramekin, place a small plate on top, turn it over briskly and shake a couple of times to loosen.
11. Should you wish to make œufs au lait instead of crème caramel, add a little more sugar when beating the eggs.

Beaten eggs with hot milk added

Ready in the ramekins

Ready to go into the oven, bathing in boiling water

Ready to come out of the oven, nice and golden and well risen

Ready to eat out of the little bowl...

This is not crème brûlée, I’ll give you the recipe for that another day. It is simple and wholesome, and one of  the best basic French family desserts.

or, if you dare, unmolded and sitting in a pool of caramel

Bon appétit!

One French word: grenouille, a French recipe: cuisses de grenouille à l’ail et au gingembre

Well we couldn’t miss this word out, could we!

Grenouille, feminine noun (une grenouille, la grenouille, des grenouilles) = frog (pronounced grrr-nou-y)

Une grenouillère is a baby’s sleep pyjama, which fits like the skin of a frog.

Une grenouille de bénitier (literally a church font frog) is said of someone who spends their time in church.

The sound frogs make in French is croasser = to croak.

La Grenouille qui voulait se faire aussi grosse que le boeuf (literally The Frog who wanted to be as big as the steer (cow)) is a famous Fable de la Fontaine, the frog in question, trying to be so much greater than he was meant to be, finished up by bursting…

Un tétard = a tadpole

This is what the French are famous for, isn’t it? Eating frogs. And yet in actual fact a lot of French people have never eaten frogs’ legs, and those that do, don’t do so that often.  They can be found on restaurant menus, fried with garlic and parsley, but less and less it seems to me. It used to be a pastime for those living in the country with a pond, lake or river nearby, to catch frogs to eat. I’m sure some people still do, though they are in fact protected, or the large ones that supply the best legs are. I used to be able to buy skewers of large French frogs legs on the market thirty years ago. No longer. The only ones I can find are frozen farmed ones, quite small, from Thailand or Vietnam. They are still very good and worth doing from time to time. I think these are the ones you are likely to find wherever you live.

So my recipe today is not the usual frogs’ legs with parsley and garlic butter, but cuisses de grenouille à l’ail et au gingembre = frogs’ legs with garlic and ginger. This version gives you crispier and tastier frogs’ legs, and if really you don’t feel like doing the real thing, or can’t find them, strips of chicken fillet (the strip which is on the inside of a chicken breast) would do instead.

Une cuisse, by the way, is not a leg (= une jambe), but a thigh (une cuisse de poulet = a chicken thigh), and gives rise to some interesting expressions:

Le droit de cuissage was the right of a lord to the virginity of a serf or servant before she got married, and un lit trois cuisses is a bed measuring 120cm wide, larger than a single bed (90cm), but not as big as a small double (140cm).

What a lot of culture you are getting for your money today.

A bit blurry as usual

For 4 people you will need:

• About 40 frogs’ legs, unfrozen and patted dry
• a three-inch piece of ginger, grated
• 4 cloves of garlic, grated
• 2tbs oriental sesame oil
• 1tsp salt
• 4tbs sesame seeds, toasted or not
• cornflour to coat
• corn oil to fry
• a bunch of fresh coriander leaves
• rice to accompany

No, don't say eeuw, chicken thighs look just the same...

Preparation:

Marinating

1. Place the frogs’ legs in a dish and add the sesame oil, garlic, ginger, salt and half the bunch of coriander, chopped. Stir and leave to marinate, turning occasionally, for from 10 minutes, to half a day (in the fridge).
2. Add the sesame seeds and stir. They should stick to the meat.
3. Add the cornflour, enough to coat.
4. Heat the corn oil in a large heavy frying pan, and tip the whole dish of legs into the pan (there should be no liquid left, the sesame seeds and cornflour should have absorbed everything). If you are cooking for more than two people, you will need two large pans.
5. With tongs, separate the legs so that a maximum of their surface area is in contact with the pan. This is important is you want them crispy. Fry on fairly high heat for about 4 minutes, checking to see they are not burning.
6. Turn each pair of legs and fry for 2 or 3 more minutes. They should be very brown and crisp.
7. Serve with plain rice and a green salad with the remaining coriander chopped and sprinkled over them.

This is a very delicate and tasty dish, so do get rid of any prejudices you might have and try it.

To be eaten with the fingers, of course. Bon appétit!

One French word: potage, a French recipe: potage poireaux/lentilles corail au colombo

Potage, masculine noun (le potage, un potage, des potages) = thick soup (pronounced paw-ta-j)

Lots of different words for soup: la soupe, le bouillon, le potage, le consommé, crème de… (cream of… for creamy soups), le bisque, le velouté, le brouet…

Mange ta soupe, ça te fera grandir is a favourite French expression (eat your soup to grow big and strong).

La Soupe (1865) by William Adolphe Bougereau

La soupe populaire = a soup kitchen

Potage comes from potager = the vegetable garden.

It was cold this morning here, very cold, there was a ground frost during the night, so I thought I’d make soup. I have no old potatoes left, new potatoes are already on the market stalls, so I used orange lentils instead to make a potage poireaux/lentilles corail.

You will need for 4 people:

• One really large leek plus the tops off some smaller ones, or one large and one medium leek
• 1tbs butter to sweat the leeks
• 100gr orange lentils
• 2 bouillon cubes and a litre of water, or a litre of home made stock if you have it
• 1 scant level tsp of colombo powder or curry powder (colombo is a Jamaican mix of ground herbs and spices: chili pepper, mustard seeds, sweet chili,  coriander, garlic and curcuma. It is quite powerful but more aromatic than bought curry powder. Do not be tempted to put more. Its purpose is just to give a hint of “something else”, not be overpowering.

Preparation:

1. Wash and chop the leeks and sweat gently in the butter.
2. Add the rinsed lentils and stir until the leeks have softened.
3. Add the colombo powder, the bouillon cubes and the water (or home made stock) and simmer for 20 minutes.
4. Whizz to a smooth consistency.
5. Serve with a dash of cream and a little chopped parsley or any other herb of your choice (in other words, whatever you have on hand – I used pourpier = purslane).

Soups are simple, quick to prepare and endlessly wholesome and comforting.

Bon appétit!

Day 77 – a French word: soufflé, a French recipe: soufflé au fromage

soufflé, adjective (soufflé (m.), soufflée (f.), soufflés (m.pl.), soufflées (f.pl.) = blown up, expanded, risen …

or a masculine noun: un soufflé

Well everyone knows what a soufflé is, don’t they?

The word comes from the verb souffler = to blow (le vent souffle = the wind blows, je souffle mes bougies = I blow out my candles) and from the noun souffle (without an accent on the e) = breath (un souffle de vent = a breath of wind).

The expression souffler quelque chose can mean to whip away, to steal something, and laisse-moi souffler means give me breathing space, time to breathe.

Soufflés rise because they are made of thousands of tiny bubbles of air. No bubbles, no soufflé. They are not complicated to make; there are just one or two golden rules: firm egg whites, and a hot oven that you do NOT open during the cooking time. Hot soufflés must be served very rapidly, because they sink down again. So people must be disciplined and be at table when the soufflé is removed from the oven. It is very impolite to the cook not to be.

Soufflé au fromage

My recipe is for a basic soufflé au fromage = cheese soufflé, in my opinion the best one. It is a very spectacular meal to prepare when one has virtually nothing in the fridge. All you need is a few eggs, some grated cheese and some milk.

For four people you will need :

• 3 eggs
• 125ml milk (1/4 pint)
• 30gr flour
• 30gr butter
• 90gr grated cheese
• salt, pepper

The basis of a soufflé is a béchamel (in my recipe index, but I will go through it again here), to which you add egg yolks and cheese. Followed by the stiffly beaten whites.

Preparation:

1. Heat the oven to 180°.
2. Grease a soufflé dish.
3. Put the milk to warm (it doesn’t have to boil, just warm it).
4. In a saucepan, put a heaped tbs of flour (which is about 30gr) and 30gr butter. As the butter melts, incorporate the flour gradually and let it cook for a minute, stirring.
5. Whisk in the warmed milk, little by little ( a whisk will avoid lumps). When the mixture is smooth, leave to cook for a minute or two, gently.
6. Add the grated cheese (good quality gruyère or emmenthal), stir to melt and mix well. Add four grinds of the pepper mill and half a teaspoon of salt.
7. Off the heat, add the egg yolks, one at a time, stirring briskly.
8. Leave this mixture off the heat while you beat the egg whites, with a pinch of salt, to stiff peak. Make sure the bowl you are using is scrupulously clean, no trace of grease, and that there is no yolk in the whites, or they will not whip up well. You should be able to turn the bowl upside down and the whites will stay in the bowl if they are beaten enough.
9. Fold half of the whites into the béchamel mixture, stirring delicately with a metal spoon, so as not to break them. But at the same time, the mixture must be homogenous. Lift from the bottom to make sure all the mixture is being incorporated.
10. Transfer the remaining whites to the soufflé dish, and fold the mixture in the saucepan into them gently. The mixture should only reach three quarters of the way up the soufflé dish. Place into the middle of a hot oven with no bars above to stop the soufflé rising.
11. Cook for about 30 minutes, without opening the oven. When the soufflé is golden, remove it and serve it from the dish immediately, but only after everyone at table has admired the way it has risen. It doesn’t matter much if it is still a bit goopy right in the middle.

The béchamel mixture

Cheese added

Cheese stirred in

Adding the egg

Eggs added

Folding in the whites

Ready for the oven

My mother used to do a mean cheese soufflé, one of our favourites. But just after the war, when cheese was rationed, she also did a version where she mashed up a tin of sardines and added it to the béchamel in place of the cheese. I preferred the cheese, but this one was ‘interesting’. You can also, instead of the cheese, add some finely chopped ham, some flaked haddock or just lots of chopped fresh herbs.

Bon appétit.