This is the simplest of all my soufflé recipes. If you omit the lemon sauce, this is a fat-free dessert. In fact, if you use a sugar-free jam, you’ve got a fat-free AND sugar-free dessert!
Here’s what you’ve been waiting for! Remember to use the very best ingredients for the very best results with this soufflé. Never compromise when it comes to chocolate!!
Here’s your weekday night soufflé recipe. With this soufflé you can really practice your technique. Good luck!
With crab being a relatively expensive ingredient, this soufflé is one that you’ll want to make for a dinner party, rather than a weekday meal. The individual ramekins make table presentation easy - you don’t have to cut into the soufflé to serve it, so that everyone gets a puffed up and impressive meal.
My father emailed me one day and asked me for advice (any) on making soufflés. He had decided that part of his weekend would consist of conquering this culinary quest that drives panic into the hearts of so many cooks. My father doesn’t cook very often, but when he does … I feel for my mother. It’s not that Dad’s a bad cook. On the contrary, he’s quite a good cook when he wants to be. In fact, he’s good at most of the things he wants to do (except mowing a lawn, but that’s another story.. and he’s promised never to mow another lawn - ever!). The challenge with my father cooking is that he’s the kind of cook that needs a sous chef, and since he and my mother are the only ones at home these days, she’s the only one who can fill those shoes. On receiving my father’s email, I decided that the only fair thing to do, in order for my father to be as successful as he would want to be, and for my mother to have an enjoyable weekend, was to provide Dad with as much information on soufflé-making as I could muster up from my soufflé knowledge base.
I like making soufflés. Actually, what I really like is teaching others to make soufflés. I think it has something to do with the fact that the making of this dish is grounded in science, but there is always a point where the cook must relinquish control and just watch and see what happens.
Here’s the science of it…
Many of us have made pot roasts before, but so often they end up dry and tasteless, while the braising liquid is delicious. The secret is not to add too much liquid and to braise at a low enough temperature so that the liquid doesn’t bubble, but just steams. In this recipe, I used a delicious spice rub from Palette Fine Foods to add more flavour to the roast. While I used their Porcini Wild Mushroom Rub, I think their Cinnamon Chili Spice Rub would be excellent. Give it a whirl!
You’d never expect to be able to do this dessert in a slow cooker, but you can. The nice thing about that is that you can get dessert out of the way before you even start thinking about dinner!
Some of the usual things that are well suited to a slow cooker are stews, soups and chilies. You can make these dishes more intesting, however by changing some of the ingredients and going with an ethnic theme. Here we made a Moroccan lamb stew by using a regional spice blend of cinnamon, turmeric, coriander, cumin and cayenne, adding raisins and dried apricots, and using chickpeas and sweet potatoes rather than another bean or regular potato. The fruity ale added a nice component, and if you’re in the United States, Magic Hat #9 is a perfect choice. Enjoy!
I appeared on CN8’s Your Morning this morning, talking about what to do in your slow cooker. We filled four electric pots with some delicious foods - a Morrocan Stew, Individual Lemon Pudding Cakes, a Perfect Pot Roast (which I enjoyed for dinner!), and Caramel for coating apples. The posibilities are endless with slow cookers, so deciding what to make is your biggest problem.
Look for the recipes above, or clink on the links below.
Classic Pot Roast
Individual Lemon Sponge Puddings
Morrocan Lamb Stew
Here’s a photo from our latest cook event at QVC. This past Saturday, QVC had a cooking or food show every hour of the day. It’s an exhausting day, but we all had a lot of fun.
My mother claims that Coquilles St. Jacques is one of her favourite meals. She’ll never eat it again. That doesn’t make a lot of sense at first, but give it some thought. It turns out that once, when she was much younger than today, she was in France on holiday and had Coquilles St. Jacques in a restaurant. It was delicious. Though she has had it a few times since then, nothing has been able to live up to her expectations and memory of that experience. Consequently, in order to preserve the memory of the perfect meal, she has sworn off all scallops in the manner of Jack!
My brother has a thing for lemons. I’m thirty five years old. My brother is seven years older than me. Still, only just this morning have I’ve realized that I think Kevin has a thing for lemons. I’m sure it’s not really that unusual. I think the lemon is actually a remarkable fruit, and I’m sure many people are somewhat enamored with it. Beautiful in appearance, yet sour in taste. It’s used in so many ways, from zesting the peel, to squeezing the juice, to preserving the fruit whole. A lemon can change the flavor of other foods, brighten up a dish, counteract saltiness, or add its own flavor prominently; it can take center stage or play a great supporting role. It can even just look good on the side of your plate!
I don’t think I had an appreciation for the lemon as early as did my brother. There are two particular food incidents involving lemons that recurred throughout our childhood, and these have been the clues to my revelation this morning.
That time of year is rapidly approaching. Soon the time of year will be here when I’ll be inundated with offers of the one food I cannot stand. It is autumn. The leaves are turning and mornings are cooler. Kids are back in school and night descends earlier. I love everything about the fall; everything except for one. For many, autumn is an end. It is the end of summer, the end of some plant life, the end of delicious fresh fruit. For others, it is a beginning. It can be the beginning of a new school year, a crisp fresh start to business after playing all summer long, a new menu of comfort meals. I think, no matter how you look at it, autumn is the one season that doesn’t really sneak up on you. We’re in the thick of winter before we’re ready for it. We wait for spring impatiently and yet ease into it slowly. Summer just seems to morph out of spring un-noticed. Autumn, on the other had, is suddenly here. It happened this morning, in fact. Today feels cooler. Even the noise of the cars outside sounds different today – more business like. Soon, very soon, everyone will be not only cooking with the one food I don’t like, but displaying it in front of their homes like a trophy: the pumpkin. I just don’t like pumpkin.
I have always loved food. Luckily for me, I’ve been able to turn this love of food into a career in cooking, and have spent the last ten years sharing this passion with friends, students, co-workers, and now television viewers.
I began my food career as a baker and caterer for a small independent bistro in Canada called Bistro Delight. This gave me a little taste of the industry, which was all I needed to realize that I truly wanted to pursue a culinary career. So, after graduating from university with a degree in English and History, I enrolled in culinary school. With formal training from the New England Culinary Institute, I began working in restaurant kitchens. I jumped straight into the deep end and started my kitchen experience in France, working at two Michelin-rated restaurants in Les-Baux-de-Provence – L’Ousteau de Beaumanière and La Cabro D’Or. As the only woman in the kitchen, this was more than a culinary encounter – it was a lesson in life. I recorded all my experiences there, both the good and the bad, in a journal. Working in France was a memorable start to my career in restaurants, but it also involved a steep learning curve, and I refer to that journal as a record of all of the lessons I learned in those two restaurant kitchens. After my time in France, I continued my restaurant experience in San Francisco at the Zuni Café, and in Berkeley at Café Rouge.
Three years later, recruited by my mentor chef from school, I made a career move towards teaching and returned to the New England Culinary Institute to help open their new restaurant in Burlington, Vermont – The Commons. While there, I taught culinary students on the hot line during lunch service, and held classes in basic culinary technique for adults in the evenings. I spent a year teaching at NECI, but couldn’t stay away from San Francisco, so I returned to California and put my love of teaching back to work, managing two HomeChef’s cooking schools and instructing cooking classes in many different genres. From there, I was asked to create and be featured in five one-hour cooking classes for live, nation-wide television on QVC. These cooking shows led to more live television work. I can now be found on QVC, cooking with a cookware line called Technique by cook’s essentials®, and I also host a half-hour cooking show called The Fretz Kitchen, which can be seen from Virginia through Maine on local cable channels.
In addition to my restaurant and teaching experience, I’ve also worked in the world of food product development. As the Test Kitchen Manager for the Center for Culinary Development, I spent some time consulting on food trends and helping clients home in on current trends to create exciting new food products. I’ve also had cookbook reviews published in the San Francisco Chronicle, am an active member of Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, have had two cookbooks published under my name and am currently working on publishing the journal, which describes my experience cooking in restaurants in France. In the meantime, I am enjoying the process of expanding my interest and involvement in the culinary world.
I’m a Blue Jean Chef. I am a professionally trained chef and I often wear a blue jean chef coat when I’m working. When I’m not working, you’ll usually find me in blue jeans. So, one way or another, I’m a Blue Jean Chef.
I have always loved food. Luckily for me, I’ve been able to turn this love of food into a career in cooking, and have spent the last ten years sharing this passion with friends, students, co-workers, and now television viewers.
I started my career working in restaurants, but instead of continuing behind the stovetop and behind the scenes, I’ve chosen to teach people how to cook both in person and on television, and to write about food, cooking, and dining.
I’d like to make others as comfortable in the kitchen as they are in their blue jeans. Here you’ll find my musings on food - memories from childhood, cooking tips and techniques, recipes, new culinary trends, and general writings on food. All of this will be down to earth, basic, casual and comfortable. I am, after all, in blue jeans.
