Skim off the white foam on the surface and pour off the clear yellow liquid, leaving behind the milky residue in the base. Swill the inside of a 20.5cm souffle dish with half the clarified butter and dust it with half the Parmesan cheese Chill the dish until this firms up. The lining of the souffle mould is a trick belonging to the chef David Chambers that I adopted many years ago when first reading of it. There is so much butter involved that the souffle just glides upwards with no resistance, without tearing or toppling over.For the mould:110g unsalted butter50g freshly grated ParmesanSouffle:50g unsalted butter50g plain flour275ml milk175g mature Cheddar, gratedsea salt, black pepperfreshly grated nutmeg4 large egg yolks7 large egg whitesTo line the mould, clarify the butter by melting it in a small saucepan. Buy the very freshest and best eggs you can find, and these should be at room temperature.

It’s got the foamy bit on top and that’s what counts.Cheddar cheese souffle, serves 4This is a great showplace for a really tangy, mature farmhouse Cheddar. I like to bake it with a layer of fruit underneath, loganberries in the summer and bramley apples in the winter. I have a suspicion this is what many people know by the name of lemon surprise pudding, although I have always called it lemon souffle pudding. For a chocolate souffle, however, I am prepared to sacrifice towering inches in favour of something that oozes melted chocolate when you spoon into it, as opposed to the textbook affairs made with cocoa.There is also a recipe this week for a souffled lemon pudding. Such a magical combination – it’s far too unctuous to even try to put into words, especially in these days of mature farmhouse Cheddar and organic eggs. Some of the most delicious souffles are far more relaxed and don’t conform at all to the perfection of a foamy mass risen a couple of inches above the rim.At the risk of seeming purist, a plain cheese souffle is possibly the finest of all savoury souffles. Or, rather, neat, straight-sided white china dishes, and sometimes individual ones But there’s really no reason why this should be the case.

It is designed for people without biceps and, as you turn its handle, it clacks away contentedly like a mother hen. And it always succeeds in turning egg whites into a frenzied white foam in a matter of seconds.Souffles have a habit of coming in straitjackets. I find I have to keep stopping for a rest, and that’s no good at all. With some embarrassment, I confess that my rotary whisk – a clumsy contraption with a red plastic handle that is about as uncool as kitchen equipment gets – is as important as my knives.

It’s probably only a matter of time before it joins the Dustbuster in the Oxfam shop.Serious cooks favour huge, voluminous balloon whisks to pump air into egg whites, but I am far too lazy. Mine has since been relegated to the occasional bowl of cream and all-in-one sponge cakes. By the time it came to whisking the egg whites, suspense had killed all conversation and I felt obliged to tip-toe round the kitchen.The freezing-water-in-the-sink bit isn’t technically necessary, as long as you can make a basic cheese sauce (which, of course, you can), the only thing you can possibly get wrong is the whisking of the egg whites, and this is even easier than making the souffle base.Those Delia-style, electric hand-held whisks to use while looking straight ahead are, sadly, hopeless for whisking egg whites. This he did with the speed with which you might catch a falling object. If only I’d known just how easy it was.
First he made his roux, a paste of flour and butter, into which he blended milk, and then rushed the pan into a sink of freezing water in order to beat the yolks in one at a time. It was some years before I could face making my first souffle, having watched a friend’s boyfriend nimbly performing what, in my eyes, were the steps to a ballet which culminated during the final act with the removal of a perfect cheese souffle from the oven.

Yet I cannot think of another dish shrouded in greater mystique than the rising of a souffle. That moment of opening the oven door and finding your souffle has risen into a precariously fragile dome sealed with a golden crust is one that never ceases to thrill. The pleasure is a childish one, where the sense of achievement is out of all proportion to the task of actually making it. In July, Thompson and Pimlott team up again with Phillip Schofield who will “Talk to the Animals” in the first ever staging of Doctor Dolittle Better than Talking Telephone Numbers.. but then, what isn’t?. It is designed by the mind-bogglingly busy Mark Thompson, whose year begins with another hotly anticipated play, Never Land by Phyllis Nagy, at the Royal Court, directed by Steven Pimlott and starring Pip Donaghy and Sheila Gish. The Almeida has also enticed Juliette Binoche to Islington for Pirandello’s Naked.The National premieres The Day I Stood Still later this month, Kevin Elyot’s first play since the exquisite My Night with Reg. Look out, too, for new plays from Timberlake Wertenbaker, Sebastian Barry and even Edward Albee, whose The Play About the Baby will be directed at the Almeida by Howard Davies, who is also reviving The Iceman Cometh with Kevin Spacey, Rupert Graves and Clarke Peters.