Mushroom and Cheese Soufflé, with a note on what we've eaten up to now.

Friday 16 March
A soothing sooful, which as the blog shows we haven't had in a while. As you might guess, sooful is how we pronounce "soufflé" around these here parts, and a five-egg one is perfect for two hungry people.
So sauté some mushrooms sliced thin in butter with salt and thyme. Set aside.
Make a stiffish béchamel (see below), with about 2 TBSP butter, 2 TBSP flour for the roux. Dribble in a cup of milk, beating all the while. Add pinch of nutmeg (pretty much essential for any white sauce) and white pepper. I added about 2 oz. of goat cheese while the béchamel was still warmish to give it that yuppie touch.
Then pause to whip the whites in my Kitchen Aid mixer (Thanks, Barbara!). My only trick for a sooful is to slop the beaten egg whites into a batter bowl on the side and use the deep mixer bowl for blending. You have to dirty yet another bowl, but the one with only the puffy whites in it cleans up more easily.
Then the egg yolks get whisked into the béchamel, which by now won't cook them, with a cup or so (ca. 8 oz.) of grated Colby-jack cheese, plus the mushrooms and their lovely juices. Fold in the whites, then slurp it all into the buttered and floured soufflé dish. It goes into a 400º oven, which you then turn down to 375º. 35 minutes gives you a lovely, puffy, mushroomy, crusty but still moist sooful.

What we've eaten up to now:
Prompted by Andi's friend Susan's observation about the blog ("it sounds like you eat a lot of pork!!"), I got curious about how much we actually eat of what sort of things. It has been something over six months since we started blogging, so tonight's sooful seemed a good time for a half-year analysis. I went back through all the entries, assigned things by "main dish," and totted them up, though I left out restaurant meals and dinners that were made up of such varied things that you couldn't assign them to any particular category (e.g., antipasto - do three slices of genoa salami make it pork?).
Here are the results:
We had lamb 6 times.
Mainly vegetables (usually with cheese or egg, and not including pasta) 17 times.
Beef (and once veal) 23 times.
Pork, ham, sausages etc., 26 times.
Poultry (mainly chicken, but also duck, goose, turkey, dove, and pheasant) 28 times.
Fish/seafood 30 times.
Pasta 34 times.
This is a hell of a lot better balanced than I thought it would be, and I'm astounded that pork fell into fourth place. But then, it's almost Easter - in Porkopolis, that means it's time to buy a Schad's ham!