Smuggling in Souffles

I am back in school. The break is over and I am back in the classroom. I thought that I might have a breakdown at noon. I dismissed my students and I eagerly anticipated what culinary delights were waiting for me. As I locked my classroom door, I remembered that I was at work and that I was heading down to the school cafeteria for my meal. The vegetable soup wasn't bad, but the afternoon was spent in deep contemplation on what I would prepare when I got home.

Jerry was home in between his work and visiting his mom, Lucille, who is still in the hospital. He had time to select the menu and get the ingredients ready and away we went. He had already made a bleu cheese salad dressing. It was tangy and not as thick, creamy as store-bought dressings. It was fresh and it had a lot of bleu cheese in it. We love bleu cheese and I wonder if Jerry added a bit more to the jar than the recipe called for. (*Just asked him, and he says that he used exactly what the recipe called for. Evidently, there was a vinegar option and he used red wine vinegar.) Loved it. The dressing was great on a spinach salad with red onion!

Jerry also had a small pot on the burner when I got home. It was fragrant and at a rolling boil. He was reducing something and it smelled like heaven. He was in the process of making "Saute of Fresh Louisiana Crawfish" This recipe was for a crawfish rice and then a sauce to put over it. The sauce needed more thickening. It was, gasp, maybe too buttery and not really saucy enough. Great flavor and really pretty with the crawfish tails. We used frozen tail meat from Spain. Crawfish are best when you can purchase them live and sort all of the dead ones out before you cook them. Sometimes the people who are processing them don't really care and you end up with some that are mushy or just rancid. This product, purchased at Whole Food Market, was frozen. Wonderful!!!

Jerry had me on the hook for making "Oysters a la Mariniere." I should have taken French. I don't know what I am cooking half of the time. Oysters I get. The rest, not so much. The recipe called for me to put the oysters in a saucepan with some of the liquor and some white wine. Bring to a boil and add the green onions and parsley. Then you make this paste of butter and flour called beurre manie, and stir it in. It created this clear, thickish sauce out of the wine. It was wild. I was thrilled. The dish tasted like, well, oysters and it tasted very fresh.

I also made, drum roll please, Chocolate Molten Souffle. There is nothing better than taking chocolate, sugar, eggs and flour and creating heaven in your food processor. Just so you all know, if any major disaster happens in my life (birthdays, whatever) please make this for me. It will make everything better. The proof is that after sneaking one to Lucille in the hospital last night, she called this morning to say she was in a real room and out of the Critical Care Unit. Chocolate Molten Souffle did that.