Lox and Parmigiano soufflé

Traditionally cheese does not go with fish. That is a rule people live by. Why? The best reasoning I've heard has to do with a deep appreciation for fresh ingredients. Fish is such an ingredient that is best intensely fresh. Fresh fresh fresh. Like one minute out of the water is best, and everything after that is worse worse worse.

Cheese is the opposite of that, even the best cheese is usually a case of aging and it is a carefully processed  food. Another area for pride, yes, but not with fish. 

Lox is salmon that is processed and somewhat aged when compared to seafood that is rushed from the water to the kitchen with as little intervening time and handling as possible.   

A dish is prepared with butter and some of that fantastic grated cheese. This coating is a big part of the result. It gives the whipped egg a rough wall to crawl up as the air bubbles inside the foam expand by heat, and it produces a cheese crust that is very appealing. It's always the first thing I go for. 

This was a meal for one person. I am not sharing with anybody. 

* Four jumbo eggs are separated, whites into a large bowl that is not plastic and the egg yolks into a small pot. The elements for about 3/4 cup sauce go directly into the pot, 

* butter

* milk 

* teaspoon flour along with a few flavors, 

* mustard powder,

* salt and pepper and then whisked until boiling then removed from the heat. 

The egg whites are whipped with cream of tartar powder. The sauce is folded into egg whites and the layered with lox and shavings of Parmigiano Reggiano. 

The sauce sinks to the bottom. Using a rubber spatula or a broad spoon, the sauce is lifted up through egg white foam and released. That lifting and spreading movement is repeated a few times until the two are combined.

A portion of the egg white foam can be mixed into the sauce first to bring the texture of the sauce closer to the texture of the foam but I skipped doing that that here. So the mustard flavored sauce sank immediately to the bottom, mostly out of sight. Sauce and foam are combined incompletely to protect the foam. They are not whipped together.