French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [234]
Heat a 10-inch omelette pan and have hot plates and a hot omelette dish in readiness. Put a nut of butter into the hot omelette pan. Quickly pour in the egg mixture and give the pan a shake. The outer surface next to the pan will brown at once and the rest puff up, and it will be cooked in about 1 minute, but to get it a little hotter the omelette pan may be placed in a hot oven for about half a minute. Then take your omelette pan in one hand and the hot dish in the other, and holding the pan close to the dish, slide the omelette out, folding it over once as you do so.
This is an omelette for two people; do not attempt to make more than this in one pan. For four people double the quantities and make two omelettes.
SOUFFLÉ À LA VANILLE
VANILLA SOUFFLÉ
Make a basic soufflé mixture with 1 oz. butter, 2 level tablespoons of flour and pint of milk which has been heated with a vanilla pod and 3 oz. of soft white sugar; cook the sauce until it is very smooth and a little reduced. Remove the vanilla pod. Add the very well beaten yolks of 4 eggs, and remove the sauce from the fire. When the time comes to make the soufflé, whip the whites of 5 eggs until they stand in peaks. Fold them into the main mixture, turn into a 2-pint soufflé dish, make deep cross-cuts in the soufflé so that it is divided into four, place on a baking sheet and cook in a preheated moderate oven, Gas No. 4, 355 deg. F., for approximately 25 to 30 minutes. The places where the cuts were made should by this time have burst open. If they have not the soufflé is not yet ready. Shut the oven door gently and wait a few minutes before looking again.
This is quite a delicate soufflé in its own right, but the mixture can also be used as a basis for other flavours such as grated orange or lemon peel, or a sherry glass of liqueur substituted for an equal quantity of the milk and which should be added to the mixture at the same time as the egg yolks. This quantity makes enough for four.
For the beating and folding in of egg whites for a soufflé see pages 199 and 200.
SOUFFLÉ AUX ABRICOTS
APRICOT SOUFFLÉ
Dried apricots are used for this soufflé, which is made with no basic soufflé mixture and with a large proportion of egg whites. A flour and milk mixture falsifies the taste of the apricots, and as the prepared apricot purée is very thick it takes the extra whites to aerate it.
Put lb. of the best dried apricots to soak in water to cover them: 2 hours is enough but, if more convenient, they can be left overnight. Cook them uncovered in a very slow oven for about an hour until they are soft enough to put through a food mill. The improvement in the flavour of the apricots when they are oven-cooked rather than stewed is considerable. Drain off all the liquid before sieving them, as it will not be required. Into the warm purée stir 2 tablespoons of caster sugar, the well-beaten yolks of 2 eggs and 2 tablespoons of thick cream. When the mixture is cold, beat the whites of 5 eggs until they stand in peaks. Fold them into the apricot mixture very thoroughly but as lightly and quickly as possible. Turn into a 1-pint size soufflé dish, which should be put on a baking sheet in the centre of a preheated oven at Gas No. 4, 355 deg. F.: 25 minutes is approximately the right cooking time but, as everybody who has ever cooked a soufflé will know, it is scarcely possible to give exact timing to the minute.
You can, if you like, serve fresh cream with this soufflé, which, although not a large one, should be enough for four.
SOUFFLÉ AU CHOCOLAT
CHOCOLATE SOUFFLÉ
A chocolate soufflé is made on a somewhat different system from other soufflés, the melted chocolate itself being so thick that no other basic mixture is required. Also it cooks very quickly and equally quickly becomes dry, so careful timing is necessary, for to be good a chocolate soufflé must be creamy in the middle.