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Normandy Garnish
This consists of fish quenelles, mussels, oysters, crayfish tails, mushrooms and Normandy sauce, as follows: Prepare the required quantity of quenelles, moulded with teaspoons, made of any kind of fish forcemeat, also blanch as many mussels and oysters as are wanted; cut some cooked mushrooms in rather thick slices and have ready some boiled crayfish tails taken out of the shells. Put the whole of these into a fryingpan with sufficient thick Normandy sauce to moisten, and stir them over the fire until hot. The garnish is then ready for use.
This is a component, not a dish: a hot seafood garnish meant to be spooned over poached sole or turbot, or into vol-au-vent cases. Everything is cooked separately and then warmed together in the sauce, so the whole thing depends on the sauce never coming to a boil.
- Do not let it boilNormandy sauce is a fish velouté finished with egg yolks and cream. Once the garnish is in the pan, keep it below a simmer and stir until it is hot through, perhaps two minutes. At a boil the yolks curdle and the oysters and mussels seize into rubber.
- Normandy sauceIn this period it generally means a fish veloute enriched with mushroom and oyster or mussel liquor, thickened with egg yolks and cream. "Thick" here means it should coat the back of a spoon, not pour; the moisture from the shellfish will loosen it.
- Quenelles moulded with teaspoonsTwo wetted teaspoons are used to shape the forcemeat into small ovals, which are then poached gently in salted water or fish stock until just firm, about 5 to 8 minutes depending on size. They should be poached, drained and cooled before they go anywhere near the frying pan.
- Blanching the shellfishMussels are steamed in a covered pan with a splash of wine or cider only until they open, then pulled from the shells; the strained liquor belongs in the sauce. Oysters need no more than a brief poach in their own liquor until the edges ruffle, well under a minute. Both are finished before they join the garnish.
- Crayfish tailsThe recipe calls for crayfish boiled and the tails taken out of the shell. If you cannot get them, cooked langoustine tails or small shrimp are the nearest substitutes; the point is a firm, sweet contrast to the soft quenelles.
- Mushrooms"Cooked mushrooms" most likely means button mushrooms simmered in water with lemon juice and a little butter. The cooking liquor is worth saving for the sauce. Slice them thick, as instructed, or they disappear.
- Quantities and yieldThe original gives none, which is normal for a garnish in a hotel kitchen. For four servings over poached fish, reckon on roughly 8 quenelles, 12 mussels, 8 oysters, 12 crayfish tails, 4 oz mushrooms and about a cup of sauce.
- Pan choiceUse a wide sauté pan or shallow sauteuse rather than a deep pot, and fold with a spatula rather than stirring hard. The quenelles are fragile and will break up if pushed around.
In classical French cookery " o two two quite different ideas: apples, cider and cream on the one hand, and the shellfish of the Channel coast on the other. This garnish is the second sort, and it belongs to sole à la normande, the Paris restaurant showpiece generally traced to the 1830s and refined through the century into an assembly of poached sole ringed with quenelles, oysters, mussels, crayfish, mushrooms, truffle and fried croûtons under a cream-and-egg sauce. Oscar Tschirky's book, a compilation issued under the name of the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, belongs to a moment when American grand hotels cooked from the French repertoire almost unaltered, and that is why the entry reads like a note to a cook rather than a recipe for a household: the quenelles, the mushroom cooking liquor and the Normandy sauce were all standing preparations elsewhere in the kitchen, and the garnish was simply the act of bringing them together.