FISH ENTREES

Instead of giving recipes for cooking fish whole, for which excellent directions are to be found in several modern cookery books, recipes for fish entrees will be substituted. They are now frequently served at the fish course, and by their convenience and economy, as well as the variety they afford, are likely to grow in favor. Another point for them is that they can often be made hours before, and simply heated when needed, thus relieving the cook of the most critical part of her work at the time when she needs her attention free.

Some of these entrees will be more suited for breakfast, luncheon, or supper dishes than to precede a heavy dinner, such, for instance, as the preparations of oysters when they have been also served before soup; but the recipes are included here for their intrinsic worth.

Fillets of Cod a la Normande. Butter a tin dish, lay on it three slices of cod moderately thick (an inch to an inch and a half), pour over them one wineglass of white wine, place a buttered paper over them, and bake in a moderate oven fifteen minutes. Reduce another glass of wine in a stewpan by simmering, add to it half a pint of white sauce, twelve small oysters, bearded and blanched, twelve small quenelles,[62-] and twelve button mushrooms. Season with pepper and salt. Simmer one minute only, or the oysters will harden. Place the slices of fish on a hot dish, pour the sauce over them, place the oysters, mushrooms, and quenelles in groups in the corners of the dish.

Lobster Soufflees. Cut up the meat of a boiled hen lobster into neat dice, showing as much of the red as possible. Prepare as many small ramekin or soufflee cases as may be required by pinning bands of writing-paper round them two to three inches higher than the case. Take three tablespoonfuls of mayonnaise, half a pint of stiff aspic jelly, and a gill of tomato sauce in which a teaspoonful of gelatine has been dissolved. Every utensil used must be ice-cold, the jelly must be quite cold, but not set. Put the tomato sauce, the jelly, and the mayonnaise (which should be left on the ice till the last thing) into a bowl set in another bowl of pounded ice; whisk them together until they begin to look white; then stir the lobster in it, with a teaspoonful of very finely chopped chervil and tarragon; fill the soufflee cases, piling the dressing high; put them on a dish on ice. When they are “set,” carefully remove the paper bands, sprinkle a little dried and sifted lobster coral over the tops, and serve.

Coquilles of Prawns. Pick the shells from four dozen prawns; mix with one third the quantity of mushrooms slightly stewed in a tablespoonful of butter and a saltspoonful of salt (the mushrooms must not be brown); add four tablespoonfuls of Allemande sauce;[64-] fill the shells, which must be well buttered, dress each over with fine bread crumbs which have been carefully fried a golden brown; put them in a cool oven twenty minutes, only get thoroughly hot, but not to cook.

Coquilles of Salmon or Halibut. Take one pound of cold halibut or salmon; break it into small pieces; put it in a stewpan with half a saltspoonful of salt and a tiny pinch of pepper, and half a pint of white sauce, a tablespoonful of very thick cream, and a teaspoonful of anchovy sauce; stir well, and let all get hot. Butter some shells, sprinkle over with a few fried crumbs, fill with the mixture, cover with the fried crumbs, and put them in the oven to get thoroughly hot. Serve on a napkin.

Salmon en Papillotes. Cut some slices of salmon into cutlets the right size for serving, make paper cases to fit them, then cover each slice with the following mixture: two tablespoonfuls of salad oil beaten with the yolk of an egg, one teaspoonful of parsley chopped, one shallot chopped, and one anchovy (all these must be chopped as finely as possible), a half-saltspoonful of salt, and a grain of cayenne; mix, spread on the fish, envelop each piece in a well-buttered case, fasten up (by pinching the paper well), and bake half an hour. Serve in the papers.

Fillet of Sole a la Normande. In speaking of sole, one of course means the flounder, which is coming to be called the American sole, and when filleted does make a fair substitute for the real thing, and it is suitable for cooking in every way that the English sole can be used, except whole. A boiled flounder without filleting, or a flounder fried whole, as is so often done with sole, would be very coarse. Fillet two flounders (in cities this will be done by the fishmonger, but in the country it may have to be done in the kitchen, therefore directions for doing it will be appended), lay the fillets, neatly trimmed and shaped, into a thickly buttered pan or dish either fire-proof porcelain or any other that can go to table pour over them a glass of sherry and four tablespoonfuls of consomme; cover with oiled paper, and bake ten minutes in a moderate oven; take out the pan, pour over the fillets half a pint of sauce Normande; return to the oven for five minutes, and serve in the pan.

Sole a l’Horly. Make a frying batter thus: mix one tablespoonful of milk with two ounces of flour and a tablespoonful of salad oil to a smooth paste; then add two yolks of eggs, and the whites whipped firm, with a quarter of a saltspoonful of salt; mix with an upward movement of the spoon, so as not to deaden the whites of eggs. Set it aside while you prepare the sole. Mix a tablespoonful of salad oil, a teaspoonful of Chili vinegar, a teaspoonful of tarragon vinegar, a teaspoonful of parsley and one of onion chopped exceedingly fine, a scant saltspoonful of salt, and a quarter one of pepper. Mix all together, then cut the fillets in half, trimming away all ragged appearance, and lay them for fifteen minutes in the mixture (called a marinade); take them out, drain them on a sieve, and then dip each fillet in the batter. This batter should be just thick enough to coat the fish and run slowly off, not cling in a thick paste round it. A French rule for testing the thickness of frying batter is to dip a spoon in it and then let a drop run off the end on a plate; if it drops freely, yet keeps a beadlike form, it is right. Fry each fillet in a wire basket three minutes in very hot deep fat. Serve with fried parsley.

Turbans of Sole a la Rouennaise. As these require a little of the same mixture as would be used for lobster cutlets or croquettes, it is good management to have them when lobster is required for something else. The mixture for the cutlets is made as follows (less than a fourth of it would be required for the turbans): remove all the flesh from a boiled hen lobster; chop it small; wash, dry, and pound the coral, with an ounce of butter; take one gill of white sauce, mix the lobster coral and a tablespoonful of cream with it, and boil five minutes; mix in the lobster with a little salt (unless the lobster is salt enough) and a grain of cayenne. This made into cutlets, egged, crumbed, and fried, is excellent, but our purpose now is to use it for stuffing. Take as many fillets of sole as required, spread the lobster mixture on each, roll them up, run a toothpick through them to keep them in shape; trim till each will stand; put them on a buttered baking-sheet, cover with buttered paper, and bake ten minutes. Chop up two truffles, two hard-boiled yolks of eggs, and a tablespoonful of parsley, each chopped separately. Take up the turbans, pour over them half a pint of cardinal sauce, and ornament the turbans, one with the truffles, one with the yolk of egg, and one with parsley; so on alternately.

Directions for Filleting Flounders. Take a sharp knife, cut away the fins all round the fish, and split the flounder right down the middle of the back, then run the knife carefully between the flesh and bones, going towards the edge. You have now detached one quarter of the flesh from the bone; do the other half in the same way, and when the back is thus entirely loose from the bone, turn the fish over and do the same with the other side. You will now find you can remove the bone whole from the fish, detaching, as you do so, any flesh still retaining the bone. Then you have two halves of the fish, and you have four quarters of solid fish. To remove the skin, take the tail end firmly between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, hold the skin side downward on the board, and with your knife make an incision across the flesh, then, keeping the skin firmly between your thumb and finger, push the knife between it and the flesh, slightly humoring it to prevent tearing the flesh. The skin parts quite easily, but no attempt must be made to cut the fish from it.