The souffle was surprisingly easy to make - you just need to make sure you have appropriate oven-proof ramekins with oven-proof saucers to tip the souffles onto for the second baking. We used a recipe from the xxxxx cookbook (Ella, help) which was excellent. We greased the ramekins with butter and dusted with semolina, which made it very easy to tip out the souffles - in fact, they started coming away from the edges a little all by themselves. The timing is a bit fiddly as you have to time the first baking exactly, rest for half an hour, then tip out onto saucers and bake again for ten minutes. The best thing about it is you don't need very much cheese at all, we used 110g of goat's cheese and 70g blue cheese and had heaps left over from 8 small souffles. Because it puffs up heaps the mixture doesn't require much. They were perfect. I think they might possibly be improved if they were sitting in a thin layer of cheesy sauce, or if honey and more herbs were added at some point. I think both of these things are done to the cheese souffles served at The Larder in Miramar (amazing restaurant which is getting very good reviews), the best I have ever had.
The main course was asparagus risotto (Floridita's cookbook) with pan fried groper (which I messed up a bit due to wine consumption prior to main course), sprinkled with gremolata crumbs (which hid the messiness of the fish and looked beautiful). Dessert was a rum & raisin cheesecake. We slightly miscalculated the amount of setting agent required (we used white chocolate and a tiny amount of gelatine) so it was very soft, but the creaminess was delicious with mixed berries. The base was gingernut - all cheesecakes should have gingernut base, they are better than any other biscuit for the purpose. We also made cannellini bean & artichoke puree on sunflower crackers topped with crispy prosciutto, as a nibble to start.
Generally delicious.
As below, Ella will update with photographs and further thoughts
