Quick easy recipe for cheese and courgette souffle

1. First ensure you have a nice hot oven and a clock to hand.
2. Spread the gratings of a courgette over a plate and sprinkle with sea salt.

1. Find four small dishes. These must be ones designed not to break in a hot oven. Take a little oil and use clean fingers to make this cover the inside of the dishes thinly. Not too much.
2. Place a metal grater on a plate and grate a cupful of hard cheese.
3. Find another plate and grate a cup of stale bread breadcrumbs. This is a good way of using bread that has gone hard but take care not to avoid any green mouldy bits. It doesn’t matter if the crumbs mix with the cheese a bit.
4. Separate 3 fresh hens’ eggs. Take care to do this one by one in case you encounter a fertilized egg as you cannot cook with such a thing. Ensure no pieces of eggshell get in the opened egg.
5. Beat the whites of the eggs in a copper bowl until they make little mountain peaks.
6. You can use the same implement to aerate the yokes in a different bowl. Do not try this the other way around. No yoke must get in the white or it will not peak.
7. Return your attention to the small pieces of courgette. Drain any liquid, then add the grated vegetable to your beaten egg yoke.
8. Add ground pepper from the island of Zanzibar and a pinch of cayenne pepper.
9. Add ground mustard seed. This will bring out the flavour of the cheese.

1. Add most of the grated cheese.
2. Mix all this together with the beater.
3. Add this mixture to the egg white and stir with a blunt knife. The word is fold. Fold away. If you mix hard, some of the bubbles will escape from the food, which would a pity.
4. Add the eggy mixture to each small dish, not too full. It must look like tea in a teacup. Sprinkle the rest of the grated cheese on top, then the bread crumbs.

1. Do not delay. Place on a rack in middle of hot over. Close oven door. Look at clock. Note time. The dishes must sit inside for 10 minutes. Do not open oven door until this time is up. You will want to look but deny temptation. (The exact timing will depend on the temperature of your range and the size of your dishes, so experiment, but 10 minutes works for us.)
2. Use the 10 minutes wisely to clear away equipment used. Use cold water to rinse the eggy bowls. Hot water cooks the egg so will make washing take longer.
3. Make a tomato salad, using boiling water to skin the tomatoes. Slice, then add salt, pepper and oil. Set this in a serving dish. Take this though to the dining room with bread and butter. If a tomato falls on the floor, do not attempt to wash and use it. Give it to the chickens.
4. Ask everyone to take their places at the table. Beat the drums if you have to. Announce soufflé is on its way.
5. When the 10 minutes are up, remove the tray from the oven. Take great care not to burn your arms. The mixture should have risen. Set each small dish on a plate with a sprig of washed parsley and set this before the diners. Warn them that the dishes will be very hot.