I love grils
don’t you mean girls
what about us grils…..
…this piece of remembered wisdom, scratched and biroed onto the lavatory wall of a Covent Garden bar, achieved a new and apposite meaning in our kitchen last night. Welsh rarebit was my intended dish for supper and I had spent time carefully melting chunks of comté, cantal and goat cheese in a pan with some milk, mustard and Lea & Perrins. The melted goodness had been transferred to a white bowl in which it would cool so that it could be spread thickly on toast before it went under the grill to bubble and singe its way to gloriousness. I had mentioned to Jenny earlier that I was intending to make Welsh rarebit for supper, a plan which she fully endorsed, and it was her perspicacity that brought the project to its knees with the simple phrase “…I thought the grill was broken”. The fucking grill is indeed broken as, it appears from time to time, is my memory. So, leaving aside any lateral thinking which is my wont, I started to google “Ways to make Welsh rarebit without a grill?” to which question there is no answer save for the one that Jenny called out..”Have you thought of making a soufflé?”…….
In common parlance, soufflé is an abbreviation for ” a lot of trouble for very little return” which left me searching for a way of politely rejecting this very good suggestion when a chink of blinding light shone through the darkness of memory reminding me that I had once made a miraculously simple cheese soufflé and, if that blinding light could just hold steady for a while, I might remember where I found the recipe. The light held and I can now share with you the simplest and completely foolproof method for this dish.
Preheat oven to 200C
5 large eggs
250gms of mixed cheeses(I used comté,cantal), especially goat cheeses, at room temperature.
some chopped fresh herbs, such as parsley, chervil, marjoram, thyme and/or chives
Mix in food processor, or mixer, the eggs, cheeses, herbs and salt and pepper. Pour into a gratin dish.
Bake for 30-40 minutes, until golden on top. Allow to cool 5 minutes and serve.
This recipe is adapted from Patricia Wells’ Goat Cheese Soufflé in “The Provence Cookbook”
Food, Photography & France 
Shame about the girl, but this looks like a perfect alternative!
….definitely a good alternative:)
Grils can be trouble!
Lovely looking soufflé though 😉
Definitely worth a go, MD. I should mention that I just added the welsh rarebit mixture, that I had already made, to the 5 whole eggs in the Magimix, and whizzed the lot until smooth. The difference with doing it that way is that it doesn’t collapse in the way of beaten egg white soufflés and so it a much more useful entertaining dish as you haven’t got to worry about timing. I just had a bit of leftover soufflé that was in the fridge and it’s still very, very good. I also had the added bonus of my neighbour giving me 6 eggs this morning, as payment for the stale bread I give for her rabbits, to replace the 5 eggs I used in the soufflé.
It’s very tempting – I’ve been called a cheese dog as well as Mad Dog and the egg lady at the market gives me all her cracked eggs for omelettes and the like…
So right with souffles being a lot of work for a small result but this looks delicious.
I love Welsh Rarebit and I love soufflé too…I don’t make either often enough though. We too we’re given some fabulous eggs today…poached some very simply this evening and we ate them with broad beans and Serrano ham and I did a little happy dance when one was a double yolker…little things that bring great joy!
….I found this soufflé when we were doing our own food photography courses in 2008….as we were giving a dinner party for clients every night we had a lot of left over cheese and Patricia Wells’ recipe is based on this situation…using up the left over cheese in the fridge:)
Excellent idea!
🙂
Isn’t necessity the mother of all inventions?? And especially in the kitchen?? That cheese soufflé sounds like a wonderful supper!
Glad you like the soufflé idea….and I so agree about that Mother…..:)