Morilles à la Bordelaise (Sautéed Morels)
Trim and discard the bulbous stem ends from pound of morels, wash themorels well, and dry them thoroughly. Heat 1 tablespoon butter in a saucepan, add ½ teaspoon lemon juice, and in this cook the morels for 7 to 8 minutes. Remove the morels. Cut off the stems and chop them. Heat ¼ cup salad oil in a saucepan and in it saute the caps of the morels until light brown. Season with salt and pepper. Lift out the morels, draining off the oil, and put them in a serving dish. Pour off the oil in the pan and replace it with 3 tablespoons butter. Add the chopped stems, 1 tablespoon chopped shallots, and 3 tablespoons fresh bread crumbs. Stir and cook until the mixture is golden-brown. Add 1 tablespoon chopped parsley and spread over the morels in the serving dish. Sprinkle with a few drops of lemon juice.
Morilles à la Provençale (Morels Provençal)
Follow the recipe for morilles à la bordelaise, adding 2 cloves of garlic, crushed.
Dried Morels
Trim and discard the bulbous stem aids from morels and with a large kitchen needle string the morels on a length of soft white string. Hang the siring in the sun for several days, then finish the drying indoors in a warm place or in a very slow oven. To use the dried morels, soak them in lukewarm water for a few hours, clean them well, and use them like fresh morels.
Here in America we have a rare food that delights those fortunate enough to know it. Fiddleheads are uniquely American. Or perhaps I should say that I never saw or heard of fiddleheads in France. They are a particular variety of succulent fern that is cut when not more than a couple of inches of the curled heads have pushed up through the ground, Fiddleheads are tender only when they are small and young, since they grow tough and stringy with age, and they are good only when fresh. The first I ever saw were sent to me from Maine by a friend, about twenty-five years ago. Our guests liked this novelty so well that I asked one of my produce dealers if he could get them for me. From then on we had them on the menu every year from May until about the middle of June, when the ferns grew too big. When World War II came along, no more fiddleheads appeared in the New York market, and I concluded that they were no longer profitable to handle or else that there was no labor available to gather them. Probably they can still be obtained locally, but in New York and in specialty shops in other big cities, they are now available only in cans.
Fiddleheads have a line, woodsy, springlike flavor, something like artichokes, something like the seeds of a young pumpkin. But like all low-growing plants, they are apt to be gritty with soil and require very thorough washing. The tender, curled shoots are both decorative and tasty served raw in a salad with French dressing sharpened with just a little mustard, or cooked and served as an hors-d'oeuvre with either French or ravigote dressing. To serve fiddleheads, cook them in salted water until tender, drain, and sauté them in butter. When they 3rc to be eaten with meat or poultry, season them with some of the good meal gravy.
Fiddleheads à la Grecque (For Hors-d'Oeuvre)
Trim and discard the stem ends from 2 quarts of fiddleheads and wash the ferns well. Put in a saucepan the juice of 1 lemon, 3 tablespoons vinegar, 3 cups water, ½ cupsalad oil. 1 teaspoon salt, I stalk fennel, chopped, 2 stalks celery, chopped, 5 coriander seeds, and a few peppercorns. Bring to a boil and add the fiddleheads. Cook slowly for 15 to 25 minutes. Serve cool as an hors-d'oeuvre.
Sautéed Fiddleheads
Trim and discard the stems from 1 quart of fiddleheads and wash the ferns well. Cook in boiling sailed water for 15 to 25 minutes, or until lender. Drain. Melt 3 tablespoons butter in a pan, add the fiddleheads, and saute them lightly for 5 to 6 minutes. Season with salt and a little freshly ground pepper.
Voilets, those great blue or white blossoms that cover the fields in May and announce their presence by a penetrating fragrance even before one sees them, are familiar to every French child. I would never have believed, when I was a youngster picking great bunches of them lor my mother and grandmother, that anyone would eat violets. That would have seemed silly in our country town. But not so in Paris and London. At the Bristol Hotel in Pars and at the Ritz in London, violets were frequently served in salads at elaborate dinners and were considered a truly sophisticated touch. The full-blown flowers, both blue and white, were served in a nest of lettuce, mixed with water cress and the liny. tender, inside leaves of chicory or with cooked artichoke bottoms. Another popular combination was diced celery and apple and violets. The flowers added quite a distinctive flavor to these salads. Only a light dressing was served, either a French dressing or a mayonnaise combined with twice its volume of whipped cream, seasoned with a little salt and lemon juice.
Glacéed volets are an inimitably dainty decoration for elegant frozen desserts. Cakes, chocolate candies, and bonbons may be dressed up with these sweet crystallized flowers, frequently used with spun sugar. These fragrant violets have a perfume like flavor. In France the violets are glacéed commercially and sent to this country carefully packed in little wooden boxes. They are found in very fancy food specially shops.
It occurred to me that GOURMET readers might find the directions for making Crystallized violets interesting. So I ran sacked through my old notebooks until I located the recipe that I remember writing down when I served my apprenticeship half a century ago. The pan we used was called a candissoire, a word derived from the verb Candir, which means to crystallize. It was a flat sort of pan, very much like a shallow, oblong cake pan.
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