Ms. Khoo is a beautiful, young British celebrity chef living in Paris (she is part-Asian and part-Gaia, the mythological Greek goddess of earth's harvest and floral elements). Having spent the holidays there and returning to New York feeling post-vacation blues, watching her show my first night back, her cooking this dish - a salmon roe benedict made with crème fraîche hollandaise dill served with toasted baguette cut into strips and buttered on the side - I was infatuated again, with Paris-with her-food. (I hear that she has gathered an adoring fan base in Paris because of how effortless her style is around the kitchen, artistically precise, simple but evocative, imagining a caviar for breakfast.) I did exactly as she mused: the crème, nutmeg powder, the egg, the roe, the dill, salt and pepper - and baking it in a water bath 3/4 the height of the ramekin like making flan, but its resulting flavor has layers of salt of beluga and quiche without the crust. The bread is not the regaled crust but the spoon. And this is a very sexy French table manner using it to sop up the plate clean of sauce. So, I got rid of the demitasse spoon and remembered the bread, breaking a piece and sopping up an exquisite late lunch meal at one of the 11th arr. bistros, like Chez Mamy and Le Paul Bert. For woe, I deliciously left my heart in Paris! And wished had stayed, with her-food.
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