Its getting cheesy around here

French week continues and last night I faced one of my fears souffle. To my surprise it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. The souffle recipe came to me last week in the special French edition of Food&Wine magazine. I knew it was a sign that I had to make this recipe because the magazine arrived the Friday before I was to start my French week challenge.
If you love cheese, like I love cheese then I highly suggest you make a cheese souffle!
Any recipe that starts with buttering a dish and then sprinkling it with Parmesan cheese is a winner in my book!

Next I had to grate the cheese oooh the wonderful yummy cheese! For this recipe I needed Parmesan and a french Comte cheese. Both are reach and nutty with a little tang to them. P.S. get the good quality cheese it makes a huge difference!

Oh and good butter as you can see in the picture, you can't make anything french without butter and this recipe calls for plenty of it. Good think I bought a big block at the beginning of the week. This is only the second recipe and I've used up most of it.
Once I grated the cheese, it was time to separate the eggs.

That's four egg yolks and four egg whites. The next steps are pretty simple. Melt the butter in the pan, then add one clove of garlic whole and six tablespoons of flour and whisk to get out all the lumps.

Now its time to add one cup of milk and whisk until the sauce thickens about 2 mins give or take

Now here is that part that had me a little nervous. Once the sauce is thick you pull it off the heat take out the garlic and add the cheese. You put the whole thing in a the food processor. Blend until smooth then add the egg yolks. The reason this freaked me out is, the sauce is extremely hot and I just knew that if I added the yolks I was going to make cheese scrambled eggs.

To my delight I did not make cheesy scrambled eggs! Woo hoo so far so good this souffle was starting to come together. The thing I had to do was beat the egg whits to soft peaks. Once they were beaten add egg whites to the cheese mixture and fold in gently. The key is gentle because you don't want the egg whites to break down, you want the batter to be nice and fluffy so it will rise and puff when it cooks!

Once the egg whites are Incorporated add the mixture to the prepared baking dish and put in the oven for 30 minutes. This is where I crossed my fingers and prayed that my souffle would rise! I had to hold my self back from peeking in too much I was so excited. Oh and the house smelled like wonderful cheesy goodness. 

After 30 minutes of anticipation this is what I got!

It was beautiful!!! Puffy, brown and light I could not have been happier! At this point I could not wait to eat. Per Food&Wine I paired the souffle with an nice Sparkling wine. Oh and I made a salad just to balance out all that glorious cheese!

Notice that the glass is half full, I may or may not have had some champagne while I was cooking. I made sure to save some to have with dinner. This was a really great meal the souffle for being such a rich cheese dish was light and very easy to eat. I would say it tasted like the best cheezit of your life!

French week is almost at an end I have one more recipe to go. I will miss the food but I am sure my jeans will thank me when I am done loading up on cheese and butter. My next dish is cheese free and I am really excited about it! :)

Bonjour!