Fish Croquettes

August 1, 2007

Mushroom Recipes

Countess Morphy

1954

In an attempt to uncover some information about Countess Morphy I discovered that everything that has been written about her starts with the same sentence (and I mean the EXACT same sentence), “Very little is known about the mysterious Countess Morphy…blah blah.” How annoying and clichéd is that? What IS known is culled from her own book jacket bios which no editors ever felt the need to verify during the thirty-odd years that she wrote her cookbooks. She claims to have been born in New Orleans, taught to cook by professional chefs and Creole maids, then moved to England in the early 1930’s and married a man named Ellert Forbes. Also, according to the Countess, her aristocratic title is an ancient Spanish one. None of this can be confirmed because an article about the Countess on a Louisiana genealogy website says that there is no record of her being born in that state. We know that Elizabeth David sites the Countess as one of her influences, particularly the Countess’s 1935 book Recipes of All Nations which was, by all accounts, extremely ahead of its time in its depth and scope. She wrote dozens of other cookbooks that engendered multiple printings and which people who write about such things describe as “brilliant and expertly researched.” This copy of Mushroom Recipes belonged to my mother and I have no idea if she ever cooked anything from it but I stole it off her shelf about ten years ago.

Fish Croquettes is one of those recipes that has very high expectations for its readers. Before the croquettes are cooked themselves it is necessary to prepare the following supplementary recipes: poached fish, mushroom duxelles (cooked, puréed mushrooms and shallots), béchamel, and a non-specified sauce of the reader’s choice for serving. Countess Morphy appears to have been the Charlie Trotter of her time. Because it was a busy week and I had limited babysitting, it literally took me two days to make this. The directions are so sparse so as to be almost stingy. Did she actually want people to make these recipes? It seems no. Even the introduction, written by the chef of the New York Mycological Society (cool!), alludes to this:

 

“This book is for the artistic, creative cook, not for those who are slaves to the measuring cup, meat thermometer, teaspoons and tablespoons…Of course the measurements are accurate but in any recipe they should be incidental to the total concept of the dish in question.”

 

Can you even imagine such a thing being published today? Sorry people, no exact measurements here, but some really good recipe concepts. It’s insane.

The poached fish and duxelles were easy enough as was the béchamel, which I prepared with equal amounts of milk and the water used to cook the mushrooms. As an accompaniment I opted out of making a white or brown mushroom sauce (overkill) and went with the Countess’s third choice of “another appropriate sauce”. I used my Larousse and made a traditional French rouille (garlic and saffron mayonnaise with olive oil) which felt like it would be right with the fish/mushroom combination. Other steps that I took that are not mentioned: draining the fish well and letting it air dry a little bit, squeezing out every last drop of liquid from the duxelles so the croquettes wouldn’t fall apart and chilling the duxelles as well as the béchamel in order to thicken them both. Eventually, the duxelles gets mashed with the poached fish and the béchamel and you form the croquettes (I chilled them again at this point). They are breaded à L’Anglaise (flour, egg, breadcrumbs) and fried. Frankly, they were fantastic, divine, possibly the best thing I’ve made so far. The croquettes were light and soft on the inside (from the béchamel) with a pure and intense mushroom flavor. I might even add a greater quantity of béchamel next time. The rouille, used sparingly, was perfect. Despite the long process I would absolutely make these again and serve them with a raw fennel salad.