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Quenelles of Fish, Clamart
Remove skin and bones from a two-pound piece fresh halibut, cut it in small pieces, and place in a mortar with an egg and the yolks of two others. Season with teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne, and saltspoon grated nutmeg. Thoroughly pound until a smooth force, then press it through a wire sieve into a bowl, set bowl on ice, sharply stir with a spoon for five minutes, then pour in little by little one gill cold, thick cream, sharply stirring while adding it.
Lightly butter a small tin pan, take a teaspoon of the preparation and smooth surface with blade of a buttered knife, then with another teaspoon dipped in melted butter scoop out paste from spoon, drop in tin, and continue doing so until finished. Pour lukewarm water in pan to cover quenelles, season with a teaspoon salt, cover with a lightly buttered paper and let simmer for five minutes; take them up with a skimmer and place in a sautoir, with a half pint cooked green peas, add one-half gill white wine, half ounce butter, the juice of half a lemon, half teaspoon salt, saltspoon cayenne, saltspoon grated nutmeg, gently shuffle pan, place lid on and let reduce till nearly dry. Prepare and pour in half the quantity of cream sauce, gently mix, dress on a deep hot dish and serve.
A classic Escoffier-era fish forcemeat, poached in shallow water rather than boiled. The whole dish depends on keeping the fish paste cold enough to hold the cream in suspension.
- The hinge: everything stays coldThe pounded fish, the bowl, the cream and the beating spoon should all be refrigerator-cold or colder, and the bowl stays on ice while the cream goes in. If the mixture warms, the emulsion breaks and the quenelles poach into grainy curds.
- Mortar means food processorPound-and-sieve was the standard route to a smooth force in a kitchen without electric machines. A food processor with the fish, egg and yolks will do it in under a minute; pulse rather than run, and still pass the puree through a sieve if you want the texture the recipe intends.
- Old measuresA gill is 1/2 cup, so the cream is 1/2 cup and the white wine 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, which makes the cayenne roughly 1/2 teaspoon in the forcemeat "if you prefer less heat, start at 1/4." Half an ounce of butter is one tablespoon.
- SautoirA straight-sided shallow sauté pan wide enough to hold the quenelles in one layer. A 10-inch skillet with a lid works.
- Poaching liquid must not boilThe recipe starts the quenelles in lukewarm water and says to simmer; in practice hold it at a bare shiver, roughly 175-180F, rather than a true boil. A rolling boil swells the quenelles and then collapses them. Five minutes suits teaspoon-sized dumplings; they are done when firm and opaque all through.
- Cream sauce"Half the quantity" is ambiguous; read as half the volume of the peas it comes to about 1/2 cup of a thin bechamel finished with cream. Make it before you start poaching, since the reduction stage moves quickly.
- Fish choiceHalibut is lean and firm, which is why it was specified. Cod, pollock or hake behave much the same; oily fish will not.
- YieldTwo pounds of fish makes a generous quantity "count on four to six servings as a first course, fewer as a main."
In French kitchen shorthand, a la Clamart means green peas, after the market gardens of Clamart southwest of Paris that supplied the city with young petits pois; the tag appears on everything from tournedos to omelettes in period menus. The quenelle itself is generally traced to the German Knodel by way of Alsace and Lyon, refined in nineteenth-century French practice into the light egg-and-cream forcemeat dumpling shaped between two spoons -- a technique this recipe describes with unusual patience, down to dipping the second spoon in melted butter.