Sunday I spent the evening at a barbecue… standing around the hot plate in the park with the blokes swatting flies and talking about beer – ah, you can’t get much more AUSTRALIAN and MANLY than that!
But Saturday found me in another of my occasional attempts at cooking dinner. Another attempt to provide for the family in a domestic mode, you know.
The goal: A puffy, light, delicate souffle.
The problem: I’m not even quite sure how to say"souffle", let alone make one.
The solution: Read and follow the cookbook religiously.
The other problem: I don’t know what half the stuff in the book means. And I’m too stubborn to ask advice. Beat the eggs until you see peaks? What, like the Himalayas? Aww hell, they look like they might be peaks.
The result: Well, not quite what I’d call a souffle. Not quite as bad as I’d been dreading (which was something that could quite reasonably be rejected by the patrons at the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen). Puffy? No. Light? No. Delicate? No. Souffle? Certainly not. More a kind of crustless egg pie, if there is such a thing. Edible? Yes, and frankly I’m glad, I didn’t want to wait another half hour for a pizza to be delivered.
