Rhubarb Souffle: aesthetic #fail

Before and After

It was a lovely idea. I had some rhubarb and I had a halibut dish to follow and thought 'hmmmm a rhubarb fool is a bit of a cliche, and I have some eggs to use up. I wonder how the fibrous rhubarb would cope with the texture of a souffle?' One google stop later and I found that Gordon Ramsay had a recipe from the F word that I could try. Looked like a piece of cake.

So the basic idea with a souffle, in my limited experience is:

1. make flavoursome sauce, based on a basic roux sauce (savoury) or custard (sweet)

2. mix this with whisked egg whites

3. DON"T OPEN THE OVEN DOOR WHILE IT"S STILL COOKING. I REPEAT, KEEP THE OVEN DOOR CLOSED.

Clearly, number 3 was the equivalent of placing the proverbial big red button in front of me. The one that said 'don't press me'. I had scaled up from the 15 minutes in Gordon's recipe to 23 minutes for a twice-the size one, when I took a quick peek and immediately shut the door. The thing about electric, fanless ovens, is that while they don't misbehave on some items (cakes, bread), they are not so forgiving for impatient idiots who refuse to obey the basic instruction for cooking a souffle, that the temperature must be consistent throughout the cooking process.

Anyway if you (joyfully) have an oven door that you can see through, do try this because it tastes really good, but make sure you cook it for someone with a good sense of humour as it could look like this, not like the infuriatingly perfect version that Gordon R's food stylist created.

here is my quick recipe, for full detailed instructions, and indeed the actual quantities, I refer you to Monsieur Le Ramsay.

1. make rhubarb sauce. Rhubarb is one of a small number of food items that have specifically evolved the quality of being perfect for microwave cookery (the other main one being spinach, oh the washing up saved as it wilts in the plastic packet). Chop up your rhubarb into small pieces, pour over some lemon juice and sugar and nuke until it collapses, stirring every 30 seconds or so. This won't take long, 2-3 minutes probably. make too much and save the rest in your freezer. Anyway, put the rhubarb sauce in the fridge while you make the custard.

2. Make custard. Whisk together 2 egg yolks, a teaspoon of cornflour and some sugar. Separately, heat in a pan the milk/cream combo. When it is scalded, i.e. when it is just about to boil (watch carefully. This is generally about the same time period as a pear being ripe, ie 0.22 seconds), pour this slowly onto the egg yolk mixture, whisking rapidly.

Return to the heat and heat-and-whisk over a very low heat until it thickens. For a thicker custard, add more cornflour.

3. Mix the custard and rhubarb to make one rhubarby custard.

4. Whisk the egg whites. Strangely, older egg whites work better so its a good way to use them up. When they are stiff enough (can you create a cool mountain of foam and it stays?), fold in the rhubarby custard.

5. put in a suitable container, grease the inside with butter and ground almonds or sugar if you like - it will make life easier when the washing up comes.

6. pour in the egg mixture

7. STEP AWAY FROM THE OVEN DOOR! mine needed 30 minutes at least - a 3 person size.

Please share your success secrets if you can do this better - thanks! Z