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Mariniere Garnish
This is a fish garnish composed of mussels, crayfish, truffles and fish quenelles, as follows: Blanch some mussels and trim them; boil some truffles and crayfish, removing the tails and keeping them whole; prepare some fish quenelles highly seasoned with cayenne. Put some veloute sauce into a fryingpan with a little of the liquor in which the mussels were blanched; let it thicken over the fire, then add the mussels, etc., and stir until hot.
A composed garnish rather than a dish in itself: it is spooned over or around a poached white fish at the moment of service. Everything in it is cooked separately and only warmed through in the sauce at the end.
- The hinge: warm, do not cookThe mussels, crayfish tails and quenelles are all already cooked before they meet the sauce. Stir them in over low heat only until hot, a minute or two; mussels held in simmering sauce shrink and turn to rubber.
- VeloutéVeluté -- A blond roux slackened with stock (a fish stock suits a fish garnish) and simmered until it coats a spoon. The recipe gives no quantities; expect the mussel liquor to thin it, hence the instruction to let it thicken over the fire before the garnish goes in.
- Mussel liquorStrain it through a cloth or a coffee filter before use. Even farmed rope-grown mussels throw grit and shell fragments, and this sauce has nothing to hide them in. Add it a spoonful at a time and taste, as it is salty enough to season the whole pan.
- "Blanch some mussels and trim them"Steam them in a covered pan with a splash of wine until they open, three to five minutes, then pull them from the shells and cut away the dark rubbery band and any beard. Discard any that stay shut.
- CrayfishBoil live crayfish until just done, about three to five minutes, then peel the tails and remove the dark intestinal vein. A dozen or so will give enough tails for a few plates. Frozen cooked tails are the practical substitute; thaw and add them at the very end.
- Fish quenellesPike, sole or whiting pounded or processed with egg white and cream, seasoned with cayenne, then shaped in two teaspoons and poached in barely trembling salted water until they float and firm, about five minutes. Make them small, no larger than an olive, or they overwhelm the garnish.
- TrufflesFresh black truffle is no longer a casual ingredient. Preserved truffle in its own juice, sliced thin, is the honest stand-in; truffle oil is not, as it carries none of the texture the garnish is built on.
- "Fryingpan"A wide sauté pan, used here for surface area and quick reduction rather than for frying. Any shallow pan that will hold the sauce and the garnish in a single layer does the job.
Marinière is the feminine of marinier, mariner or bargeman, and in French kitchen usage it attaches to almost anything built on mussels and their cooking liquor, the familiar moules marinière being the plainest form. What Oscar records here is the grand-restaurant version, codified in the classical repertoire of the late nineteenth century: a named garnish held ready in components so that a cook could dress a poached turbot or sole to order in seconds. Books of this period list dozens of such garnishes by name alone on the menu, on the assumption that the reader already knew roughly what marinière implied, though the composition varied between kitchens and codifications. The presence of truffles and crayfish in a garnish that borrows a fisherman's name is a fair picture of what the Waldorf's kitchen was doing in the book's year of publication, 1896: taking the vocabulary of French provincial cooking and rebuilding it in luxury materials for an American hotel dining room.