This weekend I achieved the next level in culinary creation.  Um, not.  But I did manage to make a souffle, which I've always thought of as a near impossible task.
 
Again, my hats off to Alton Brown of Good Eats.  The man quite simply is a genious.  I could sit here and yammer until I'm blue in the face about how good a cook I am.  The fact of the matter is:  I'm not.  I am however good at following instructions, and Alton gives you plenty of them to create a souffle that can withstand my best attempts at destroying it.
 
What do I mean?  Well, Mr. Brown understands the chemical reactions of cooking, so he understands the "why's" better than any other television chef I've seen.  More importantly, he does his best to impart his knowledge in a creative and entertaining fashion that fits within my 5 minute attention span.
 
Voila! My masterpiece! 
For example, he recommends using just a bid of an acidic compount (Cream of Tartar) when whipping all that air into the egg whites.  Why?  Because it helps the proteins hold together while they are stretching to their limits, which makes it easier to achieve our cooking goals for those of us with less than stellar talent for this task.  Talent may be on Wolfgang Puck's side, but chemistry is on mine!
 
Lessons learned for the next souffle:
 
1.  Must acquire a big ole giant spatula.  I'm talking huge.  When folding the base with the whipped egg whites, the bigger the spatula the better.  I could see that I was losing more bubbles than I wanted to in the egg whites because I had to mix more because of the smaller spatula I used (and it wasn't all that small).  I actually think this is the key to making this souffle perfectly.
 
2.  I should have left the souffle in the oven a couple of minutes longer.  Just a bit longer.  It was a bit too runny in the middle.  I think that this was a direct result of not having a big enough spatula and losing some of the bubble in the mixing process, which resulted in a runny middle (not by much though).