CHEESE SOUFFLE | 2 MARCH 2010

I tend to be very sceptical of expiration dates.  When it comes to meat, they are too long, butter and eggs, too short.  Ibuprofen and film? Not sure what they mean but I usually ignore them.  Pascal, on the other hand, is a purist.  If it says March 1st on the package then you can only safely eat it up to February 28th and even that might be pushing it.  This means that every now and again I need to come up with a recipe that gets rid of nearly expiring items (see Bread Pudding).  Soufflé is the end all be all of kitchen sink dishes.  You can put pretty much anything in it and it will still turn out great and be impressive to your fellow diners  (mine was a total disaster and still got a wow).  The word soufflé comes from the French souffler or to puff or to blow, which is basically what happens to this dish made mostly from egg whites and a custardy béchamel.  Usually the reason for a soufflé in my house is a surplus of cheese in this instance it happened to be eggs; really nice farmers market eggs that I bought way too many of when the farmer wooed me with his stories of happy chickens;  eggs that just so happen to be approaching their expiry date.  No matter how many times I demonstrate the ‘how to tell an egg is not bad’ trick to Pascal, the date on the box always supersedes, thus cheese soufflé for dinner.