Last weekend, for some reason I decided that I wanted to make souffles for my family.  I’ve never had a souffle or even seen one in person, but my desire to cook was strong, so I lugged out my copy of Joy of Cooking and found a recipe for Mushroom Souffle.  I’m going to try to break down the instructions as best I can without actually re-printing/-typing the recipe.

Mushroom Souffles

I started on Saturday by making a simple Béchamel (white) sauce.  Make a light roux by melting butter and then add an equal amount of flour.  Stir constantly over medium high heat for about a minute and slowly whisk in milk.  Simmer and stir often until thick. Since I was making mine the day before, I transferred the sauce to a bowl for refrigeration and put a layer of plastic wrap directly over the top to keep a skin from forming.  It is definitely not required to make the sauce ahead, but I wanted to do so to keep my stress level down.

The next day, after searching the city for 8-oz ramekins to make individual servings (and still having to settle for Pyrex dishes), I prepared to make my souffles.  I started by reheating my white sauce over a double boiler.  I then tempered an egg yolk/Gruyère cheese mixture with the sauce (tempering: mix in a little yolk with the sauce, then that entire mixture with the rest of the yolk to avoid scrambling the eggs).  Next came some spices (nutmeg, rosemary, salt, pepper) and my mushroom mixture–I went “exotic” with a mix of sautéed oyster, shiitake, portobello, and button mushrooms.

Finally, the most important part of a souffle–the egg whites.  I remember how excited I was the first day I learned to separate eggs years ago, but you would’ve thought I needed a refresher course last weekend!  I think it may have been the nerves, but I eventually got everything nicely separated.  I don’t have the arm strength of a seasoned chef, so I beat my egg whites with an electric mixer and not a whisk.  Unfortunately, I’m about 99% positive that I underbeat the egg whites.  Joy of Cooking’s direction to “beat whites until stiff, but not dry” had me second-guessing my point of doneness.  I carefully folded my sorta-stiff whites into the rest of the batter, extra carefully poured them into my buttered and bread crumbed dishes, and extra EXTRA carefully put them into a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes.

I crept into the kitchen every few minutes to check if they were rising.  No.  No.  Still no.  With about 3 minutes left on the oven, I could see that there wasn’t much crust on the edges of the dishes anyway, so I decided to leave them for an extra 5 minutes.  And then…success!  The picture above is about as high as they rose, considering my underdone egg whites, but I was excited nonetheless.

Tasting my first souffle, I was surprised to discover that it was basically a super light mushroom omelette.  But then again, since the only souffle I’ve had is the one I made, who knows if that’s actually how it should have tasted?