double baked french onion souffle

I am so grateful for good friends – it’s easy to be mates when everything is jolly, but when things get tough it is amazing to have people you can rely on 🙂 Last night I had two of my most lovely friends for dinner. As usual we started with a wee whiskey and some nibbles before sitting down to dinner with a good bottle of red. I had been really enjoying playing around with this recipe – a double baked French onion souffle, and for dinner I served it with a beautiful piece of eye fillet topped with garlic herb butter and a bitter green salad. I have always been a sucker for double-baked souffles as there is no angst involved with timing and possible souffle deflation – they do deflate as they cool, and that is just fine, because once inverted and re-heated they are ‘re-inflated’, soft and luscious and bathed in creamy gruyere. The size of these souffles makes them ideal to serve with a salad for lunch, as a starter before a light main (such as fish), or as I did, as a one course meal with a beautiful steak. The French onion flavours would also match beautifully with lamb or chicken. We finished with another recipe of mine that I recently created for Cuisine magazine (that you will see in the future), a beautiful tart and ice cream combination that rounded the meal out perfectly. After dinner we chilled out watching The Perks of Being a Wallflower, an old favourite – a very different kind of coming-of-age movie. I think I was so keen to watch it as it always makes me think of the boys (it’s one of Rich’s favourites), and it does have a lot of lovely 80s references I can relate to! Hoob is now safely back at uni, settling back in for re-O week (!) and on the part-time job hunt, while Henry is about to start his Interior Design course in Melbourne any minute. It was such a treat to see Rich, he is such a darling, big ole intelligent deep-thinker, and I am hanging out to see Pog when he comes over for his 21st…can’t wait! In the meantime I have tucked one of these souffles in the freezer for him…

The reason I started playing with the idea of this souffle in the first place was because I had been approached by the good people at Fisher & Paykel and invited to participate in a little experiment/challenge. They asked me to complete their What’s Your Cooking Style quiz, which you can do here to see what kind of cook I am, and then to come up with three recipes which embody that cooking style. I’m always up for a challenge so got straight to it – and it will come as absolutely no surprise to my friends (and anyone who has every worked with me), that my style is The Perfectionist. The result is no fluke, back in the day when watching Friends and assigning characters, I was only ever allowed to be Monica…kind of apt given that she was a perfectionist caterer! Anyhoo, the very first recipe I thought of was this souffle, as it is the kind of recipe that can seem scary, but if you follow the instructions exactly, (and they are not difficult), you are guaranteed a perfect result. Extra good bits – you can make them completely the day before and just re-heat, so there is no last-minute panic, and it also means the kitchen stays nice and tidy during the evening when guests are hovering around, and if you’re lucky enough to be preparing the soufflés on a Fisher & Paykel induction cooktop, you’ll know how extra handy it is to have such instant, precise temperature control, not to mention the easy clean surface – I might be a perfectionist, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a bit (lot) messy sometimes!