EGGS, BUTTER, FLOUR, DISASTER | April 24th 2008

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Making a soufflé is like a kiss on the first date: it's easy to get wrong, but getting it right really impresses women. Will Smith travels to Paris for a lesson in roux and béchamel. Luckily he is with a very patient chef ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, Spring 2008

A soufflé scares people.

It may be just eggs, flour and butter, but a soufflé can go oh so wrong. Open the oven door at the wrong moment and your delightful dish turns into an inedible cave-in of hot goo. Making one is the culinary equivalent of a kiss on a first date--go in too soon, or too late, and there's simply no salvaging things. But if you get it right, in both instances women are really impressed. It's one down from being in a band, but several up from being able to name the Bond films in chronological order.

So, hoping to discover how to wow people at dinner parties, I find myself trudging through Paris looking for chef Olivier Berté's "Cours de Cuisine" school. I'm on foot partly because getting to the front of the queue at the Gare du Nord taxi rank looked like it would take longer than the trip from London. Also, I'm aware that the space in my head that used to be taken up with A-level French has been replaced with tactics for playing Halo on the XBox. This renders me potent in an online firefight, but means I'm lacking when it comes to giving directions to a Parisian taxi driver.

I'm anxious. If my French isn't good enough to convey a two-line address, it certainly won't sustain a soufflé lesson. And straight away I'm in the rough--I mistake M. Berté's gesture that I hang my coat on a rail as an indication instead that I should put on one of the white chefs' jackets hanging there. I button myself in, then notice that Olivier looks apprehensive. I glance down: there is a name stitched on my breast pocket. Olivier Berté. This is like picking up Eric Clapton's guitar at a soundcheck and stumbling through "Layla" with my hands covered in chip grease.

Once I've replaced his jacket with an apron, I'm ready to go. First, I melt some butter, adding some flour to make what Olivier calls "roux". Then I boil some milk, and Olivier shows me how to mix it into the roux to make "béchamel". I take over. I start off pretty cocky, briskly whisking away--until my fluid turns to a paste and then into a heavy sort of glue. My whisking slows. My arm aches. I feel like Pete Doherty trying to run a marathon.

Egg yolks are added, then cheese, prawns or chocolate. Cheese is easy, I'm no stranger to the grater. But chocolate you have to melt over a pan of hot water--the main challenge being not to dive into it like Augustus Gloop in Willy Wonka's factory. Next comes beating the egg whites. I strongly recommend using an electric whisk for this. I tried it both ways, and manually beating egg whites in plain view of a power whisk is like making love to Barbara Windsor while Sienna Miller sulks in the corner.

Barbara/Sienna gets folded into the cheese, prawn and chocolate mixtures, which we then spoon separately into little pots and put in a hot oven. The rough cooking time should be "vingt minutes", Olivier claims. Yet, infuriatingly, he actually cooks them by sight: he looks through the oven door at the rising crusts, says "Encore, cinq secondes... Voilà, c'est prêt!" and then the soufflés were done. I barely understood the French, let alone how he knew they were ready.

Then came the fun part: the tasting. We'd cooked four portions each of cheese, prawn and chocolate soufflé, and that they were otherwise going to get thrown away is my excuse for falling upon them like David Hasselhof in a distillery. They were all very tasty, but naturally the chocolate one is everyone's favourite. If there's a chocolate option, there's only really one option.

I'm feeling pretty good, until a singer friend of mine texts me to say he's in London, and do I want to see Hawkwind? I text back that I'm learning how to make a soufflé in Paris. How un-rock'n'roll. Still, a perfectly risen pudding is likely to impress a bunch of thirty-something women--which I guess makes me at least the James Blunt of the kitchen.

Next issue: Will Smith joins the circus