I’ve just got back to Nassau from three months in the UK, where I took Mr. R&R for hurricane season. He’d been to London for work before, but I was happy to give him a crash course introduction from a native’s point of view, introducing him to the less salubrious parts of Limehouse, demonstrating the superiority of John Lewis above all shops and becoming joint members of the National Trust. We also covered English foods and although he’s quite an advanced learner by italian standards (obsessed with brussel sprouts and partial to Marmite), he still needed frequent and weary repetition of the difference between parsnips and celeriac. Rhubarb, gooseberries and damsons were all new to him too, but somehow the magic addition of a crumble topping made these particular lessons far, far more effective…
I may however, on the evidence of my pale, podgy London thighs, have somewhat overdone it on the comfort food front. (Curse you, online supermarket shopping for making sausage and mash far too easy to come by!) I’m now under Emergency Measures, which means Weightwatchers Online and counting points. It does work for me, as a greedy greens eater, because nearly all vegetables are zero points – it is harder than you’d think to eat an entire cauliflower, even when really quite hungry, and so on average I eat less. However, Weightwatchers does encourage you to eat everything in moderation, and so I was enormously cheered by working out that one of these sunshine-filled soufflés is only 3.5 points.
I know that when you look at the recipe it looks like a daft amount of steps, but I’ve just tried to split out the various bits involved so that they’re clear, at least to me. By doing the majority of preparation work well before you sit down to dinner (even hours before), all you have to do between main course and dessert is whip the egg whites, do a bit of gentle combining and put the ramekins in the oven.
Pineapple soufflés
Makes 3 soufflés. Enough for 2 well-acquainted people.
To do before supper:
Prepare 3 ramekins by coating with butter and then caster sugar. (Tip a good tablespoon of sugar into one ramekin and turn it around to coat the inside thoroughly, holding the next ramekin underneath to catch the sugar that falls out.) Arrange on a baking tray and set aside.
For the fruity surprise:
- 4 pineapple rings
- 1 heaped tablespoon icing sugar
- 1/4 tsp ground ginger
Chop the pineapple rings into little cubes, mix with the icing sugar and ginger and leave to macerate during dinner.
For the pineapple soufflé base:
- 75ml pineapple juice
- 2 eggs
- 2 tablespoons caster sugar
- 1 tablespoon cornflour
Find a large mixing bowl and a small saucepan (the saucepan should be impervious to your whisk, so use a silicone one for nonstick surfaces). Separate the eggs – put the whites in the large bowl, cover with clingfilm and leave until later. The yolks go in the saucepan with the sugar and flour – whisk until smooth and then beat in the pineapple juice.
Over a medium heat keep whisking this mixture until it thickens well, about 5 minutes or less. Remove with a spatula to a bowl and cover the surface with parchment to stop the skin forming.
For the rest of the preparation:
- 1 egg yolk
- 2 tablespoons caster sugar
Find a medium mixing bowl and put in two good tablespoons caster sugar. Leave the egg yolk at hand but not mixed with the sugar, otherwise it’ll go all hard.
Make sure your oven is at 200˚C, you have a clean, dry, whisk to beat the egg whites and a large metal spoon to fold them in. Put the ramekins on their baking tray, the macerated fruit mixture, the soufflé base, the large mixing bowl with the egg whites and the medium bowl with the sugar and the egg yolk all ready to go on a kitchen counter. Enjoy your main course, and afterwards…
Just after your main course:
Beat the egg whites until stiff.
Add the egg yolk to the 2 tablespoons of sugar and the soufflé base and incorporate using the same whisk. Add a dollop of egg whites and stir briskly with your large spoon to loosen, then carefully fold in the rest.
Divide the macerated fruit between the three ramekins and pile in the soufflé mixture on top. Run a finger around the edge of each ramekin just to ease the contents away from the border and help them rise up. Put them in the oven for 14 minutes at 200˚C and, if you’re anything like me, watch them for all that time with the oven light on as they rise up.
Serve dusted with icing sugar (in theory) or (more plausibly) ruin the presentation by dropping a fat ball of vanilla icecream in the centre of each soufflé. Let the spoon-feeding commence.
