It's okay to peek soufflé

I've made it my goal to conquer soufflés as of recently. Not glitzy dessert soufflés, but fluffy savory vegetable ones. My friend Gigi came over on Friday--I told her I would make her a spinach soufflé. Well she ended up making it to tell the truth or at least guiding and coaching me the whole way a long. For the spinach soufflé you need to make a roux first, a mixture of flour and butter or margarine. If I had heeded the directions for the recipe maybe things would have gone over better, but Gigi pointed out some things that the recipe didn't specify that ended up helping quite a bit.
1) You should have equal amounts of butter and flour. (The recipe said 2 TBS butter and 1/4 c. flour, but after my mess of lumps that happened the first time, I lessened it to 2 TBS flour as per Gigi's suggestion.)
2) You're supposed to whisk constantly as the flour and butter are melting to avoid lumps. It's alright if you can't find a hand held whisk, but make sure you really do stir constantly. Your wrist needs to be panting by the time you're down.
3) After you have a roux, you turn it into a white sauce by adding milk. The recipe didn't specify this, but Gigi pointed out that it's important to heat the milk up a bit before you add it to the melted butter and flour in order to prevent lumps. I put the 3/4 c. of skim milk in a mug in the microwave for about a minute.
And that's how the first soufflé was born.

This second recipe doesn't actually call for a white sauce, but I will be revisiting another white sauce soufflé recipe soon --have your wrists ready.
Getting to the yams... Gigi came over again last night when I was making a Yam, Leek, and Ricotta Soufflé. I roughly adapted the recipe from
here
.



Yam, Leek, and Ricotta Soufflé

3 medium sized yams

1 leek (with the gross dark green stems removed, rinsed to take off all the gunk, and thinly sliced)

4 TBS margarine (separated into two parts of 2 TBS each)

1 c. fat-free ricotta (I've only found this at Whole Foods)

3 egg yolks (next time I'll try it with 2)

4 egg whites (make sure no yolk gets in, you need peaks!)

Kosher Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1. First you need to roast your yams. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Wash and scrub the yams and pierce them all over to allow steam to escape at they bake. Line a baking sheet with foil to prevent a mess and bake the yams for about 50 minutes. Let them cool 5-10 minutes or so and carefully (you can really burn yourself) remove the skins and put the yam pulp in a medium sized mixing bowl. Mash them up with a potato masher and take out any remaining strains of skin.

2. Change the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Heat 2 TBS of the margarine in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add the sliced leeks and sauté until they fragrance. Gigi sautéed these leeks; she did a really good job making sure they were glistening and tender. Set the leeks aside.

3. Take the four egg whites and put them in a mixer bowl. Whisk them until peaks form; these should be pretty adamant peaks.

4. In the bowl with the yams, add the ricotta, egg yolks, the other 2 TBS of margarine, and salt and pepper to taste. Mash it up as much as you can, get your aggression out and such. Stir in the leeks. Then fold in the egg whites. Yam and clouds yum. Once there's no more cloud, but it into a butter/sprayed 8 by 8 inch glass pan. Bake for an hour. Check at 45 minutes to see if it's done.



Gigi doesn't even like yams or sweet potatoes and she liked this, so you should at least try it too. And like the post title says if you have to open the oven to take other things out, or put other things in, in the meantime you'll be fine.