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Fish En Coquilles
1 cup left-over fish 8 mussels or clams 1/2 cup bread-crums 10 tablespoons milk 1 clove garlic 1 teaspoon chopped parsley 1 chopped onion Salt and pepper 3 tablespoons butter Buttered crums Chop the fish with the mussels or clams. Add the crums which have been soaked in two tablespoons of milk and the garlic, parsley, onions, salt and pepper. Melt the butter or other fat, and when hot add the mixture and cook several minutes. Stir in one-half cup of milk and fill small ramekins or scallop shells. Cover with buttered crums and bake about fifteen minutes. Serve the dishes on a platter or on individual plates.
A tidy way to stretch a cup of cooked fish into a first course for four, and one of the few places in this book where raw shellfish is chopped straight into the mixture. The milk is split between two jobs, which the ingredient list obscures.
- The milk, dividedThe 10 tablespoons are not added at once: 2 tablespoons soak the crumbs, and the remaining 8 (a half cup) go in at the end to loosen the mixture. Add that half cup gradually until the filling mounds softly rather than runs.
- En coquillesThe name simply means "in shells." Deep scallop shells, if you have them, hold roughly a third of a cup each; small ramekins or gratin dishes are the direct substitute. The recipe does not say how many it fills -- expect four small shells or two larger dishes.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A moderately hot oven, around 400F, suits the fifteen minutes specified, which chiefly heat the filling through and colour the crumb topping.
- The shellfishEight mussels or clams means eight shucked ones, chopped fine. Buy them live and closed, or use canned chopped clams, drained, in the same volume. Discard any that will not close before shucking.
- Buttered crumsFresh breadcrumbs tossed with melted butter until every crumb is coated, roughly a third of a cup of crumbs to a tablespoon of butter.
- Garlic and onionOne clove and one onion is assertive for a cup of fish. Mince both very fine and let them soften in the butter before the fish goes in; the several minutes of cooking specified will not otherwise take the raw edge off them.
- Which fishAny firm cooked white fish, salmon or smoked haddock works. Flake it and check for bones and skin before chopping, since the mixture is too fine for anyone to pick them out at the table.
- ServingServe hot, with lemon. As written this is a light lunch dish for two or a starter for four.
Coquilles -- scallop shells -- give the dish its name, and recipes of this kind commonly specify them alongside china ramekins. The dish belongs to the tradition of *coquilles de poisson*, a bound, browned filling served in its own vessel, of which coquilles Saint-Jacques is the best-known survivor. The recipe opens with "left-over fish," and the shell, the garlic and the French title are what turn thrift into a course worth announcing. The binding here is soaked crumb rather than a flour-thickened sauce.