Classic French cheese Souffle
This week we did a recipe almost straight out of Julia Child's "The Joy of French Cooking." This is one of the classics, a cheese soufflé! This is almost completely traditional, except that we use medium cheddar instead of the more traditional Gruyère or Comté (which are both excellent cheeses, BTW). This is a recipe with a reputation of being finicky, but honestly the difficulty frequently comes from people doing too much and over-mixing the egg whites into the enriched béchamel.
Funny thing about this video: Julia Child is VERY specific in her recipe that you need 5 egg whites and 4 egg yolks... but the first egg we had was a double yolk! We used it anyway, because the difference is pretty minimal. The two yolks were much smaller than a regular yolk, so the ratio is mostly preserved in this case. Also, a quick note about this recipe: If your soufflé sits around for any time at all after it leaves the oven, it will definitely start to fall, so make sure that these are served quick after you've taken them out of the oven.