International gourmets have been known to plan their travels so that they will be in the right spot at the right time—in Paris when the fresh truffles come to the restaurants, in country houses in Scotland when the first grouse arc shot on the moors, in the fine restaurants of our own East Coast when the Delaware Rivet shad tome in. During the short time these gastronomic jewels, and others of the same sort, are in season, they are regarded with an appreciation that approaches reverence. And well they might be, because in their proper setting of an appropriate meal, the regional and temporal specialties of a country can lift its cookery to new and savory heights.
Since these esoterica are most often consumed locally, their preparation is likely to be something of a mystery to outsiders who happen to find them available. Nothing could be more happy than the solution to such a culinary mystery, for a treat is surely in store for the adventurous cook.
Morilles, called morels in this country, are such a rare and precious delicacy. The preparation of these fungi, when May's sunshine starts coaxing them through the spongy soil they love. is bound to puzzle many a hungry gourmet. Although they are indigenous to France, morels do grow in the United States and have been found in such diverse locations as Montana, Missouri, and Connecticut. They would undoubtedly be as popular here as they are abroad if they were only better known.
Morilles are found all over France but they flourish in greatest abundance where the terrain is rolling and hilly and the low-lying valleys are patterned with meadows made fertile by leaf mold which ages of rains have washed down from the hills. It is along the edges of these meadows, shaded a bit by en croaching woodlands, or along the hedgerows which divide the fields that morilles are found. When violets are sending forth their fragrance and lily-of-the-valley spikeleyts tremble in the soft spring breeze, when the hedges arc laced with the pink and white of sweet-smelling hawthorne, then is the time to poke among the leaves and brambles to uncover the mushrooms of the spring, morilles.
In Alsace, where the best and probably the greatest number of morilles are found, every farmer eagerly watches for the first to appear, aware that he has a short season for business, although a lucrative one while it lasts. All the youngsters of the family, as well as the farm helpers, search for them and pack the baskets that are shipped daily to Faris. Those at the other end of the line, the chefs in Paris, for instance, watch for the first morilles to appear with the same eagerness. And these chefs make careful purchases, buying only as many as they are sure will be used that day, because the good chefs believe that stale morilles arc worse than none.
Morilles resemble mushrooms but come in the spring instead of the fall and are the only wild fungus that grows in the spring. Unlike fall mushrooms, which should never be picked by any but an expert, morilles have no poisonous varieties. They look different from mushrooms, lacking the flat cap and having instead one that is cone-shaped. And the surface is covered with tiny pockets like an empty honeycomb. There are two kinds of morilles, noire and blonde. Les morilles noires arc not actually black but rather a very dark brown, and les morilles blondes are not actually blond but more of a café au lait color. The argument about which kind is better never seems to be settled, some gourmets preferring the darker ones, others insisting that the lighter variety are more delectable—just as some gentlemen prefer brunettes, other blondes! Although all people do not recognize it, there is a distinct difference in flavor between the two kinds of morilles. The darker variety is more full-flavored, the lighter kind subtler and more delicate. But all connoisseurs agree that morilles are the finest of all the fine mushrooms found in France.
Morilles have always been considered a perfect means of enhancing the flavor of fine fish. They are often used with fresh-water fish, many of which are at their best in the spring when the streams have opened after an ice-choked winter—just when morilles are in season, too. I was reading the other day that fish cookery was selected as the subject for the annual Prix Culinaire Prosper Montagné, the prize established some years ago to encourage young chefs to keep up and bring new glory to the high standards of French cuisine. It was interesting to note that one of the ten prize-winning dishes was truite farcie au brocbet el morilles, boned trout stuffed with a mixture of pike and morels. The judges called it “a real triumph of our Provincial cooking,” and I could almost taste its savoriness as I read about it.
Springtime has long been the signal for the haul monde to descend upon Paris from all corners of the earth, to stay until the Grand Prix is run off at Longchumps. Then they all start packing their trunks for the exodus to mountains and seashore. But while these lucky ones are in Paris, they know what delicacies to look for. So it was in Paris. more than forty years ago, that I learned, while a young commit chef at the Hotel Bristol, how to prepare moriiles. And I sty prepare advisedly because, as I will explain, there is more to consider than the mere cooking. If morilles are not properly Cleaned, they are about as attractive as unwashed spinach. M. Jules Tissier, the chef at the Bristol-and incidentally one of the finest—was most meticulous about moriiles. He would use only the small, dark ones and insisted on having those with very pointed caps. He would never order them in advance. Each morning someone was sent to the rue St. Honoré to La Maison Loches, a house which carried the best quality of vegetables and fruits in Paris. Nor was the kitchen porter trusted with this errand. A commit chef would have to leave what he was doing to go after morilles—and how annoyed he was. But how many springs in more recent years have I wished there was a Maison Loches on Madison or Lexington Avenue where I could find a little basket of freshly picked morilles to bring back to the hotel … especially on mornings when my fish dealer sent in some unusually fine trout or other delicate spring fish.
When preparing morilles, remember that they are very sandy and very moist. I have heard gourmets of the theoretical type say that washing morilles is all wrong, that it leaches out the flavor. But I have never seen a month that could be served without thorough washing. The fact is that as they come through the ground, the alveolate parts, that is, the tiny pockets, are a perfect hiding place for sand. More than ordinary washing is called for to flush the water thoroughly into the pockets. I always waste one washed morille, as M. Tissier taught me to do, by biting into it to make sure that those I am going to cook arc not sandy. The sand also lodges in the bulbous end of the stem and it is practically impossible to clean it out. So the rule is to trim off the little ballshaped stem end.
After the morilles are washed, dry them thoroughly, shaking out the water that clings to them. Their spongy texture holds so much natural moisture that it is trouble enough to cook that out without having any additional liquid to cope with. Before further preparation, morilles are put in a saucepan with a little butter and a few drops of lemon juice and cooked Cor 7 or 8 minutes. This procedure helps to draw out the surplus moisture from the morilles.
Morilles can be used in any recipe calling for mushrooms. Sautéed in butter or oil, or mixed with cream, they go well with almost any entree. Or they can be used in an omelette, some placed in the center before the omelette is rolled and the remainder arranged around it. Sautéed morilles are also a tasty addition to scrambled eggs, But they are most popular with sole and turbut or lurbotin. Turbot is a large, halibut like fish from the English Channel. It weighs about seven to ten pounds and is cut into steaks, Chicken turbot, or turbotin, is smaller, weighs two to four pounds, and is cooked whole. A famous dish is called turbotin d'Offemont, and whenever the name d'Offemont appears on a menu, it guarantees that morilles are in the dish.
Morilles Sevilla (Morels with Ham)
Trim and discard the bulbous stem ends from I pound of morels, wash the morels well, and dry than thoroughly. Leave them whole or cut them in halves or quarters, according to size. Heat ¼ cup salad oil in a saucepan and add 1 ½ cups diced cooked ham. When the ham is golden-brown, lift it out and drain it. Add the morels to the hot oil in the pan. Add ¼ cup finely chopped onion and cook until it is golden-brown.
Drain as much of the oil as possible from the pan. Add the ham to the morels and onion, along with ½ cup sherry. Cook until the wine is reduced to about ¼ cup. Add ½ cup veal or chicken gravy or ½ cup Madeira sauce to thicken the mixture, 1 or 2 red pimientos, cut in julienne, and a little ad freshly ground white pepper to taste. Cook slowly for 20 to25 minutes and serve in a large croustae. Make the croustade by removing the crusts from a loaf of bread and hollowing out the center to form a cavity for the filling. Brush on all sides with butter and brown in the oven.
Morilles Sautèe Bonne (Sautéed Morel with Diced Pork)
Trim and discard the bulbous Stem ends from 1 pound of morels, wash the morels well, and dry them thoroughly. Leave them whole or cut than in halves or quarters, according to size. Heat 1 tablespoon butter and 2 tablespoons salad oil in a saucepan, add the morels, and saute them over a hot fire for 8 to 10 minutes. In another pan heat tablespoon salad oil and add ¼ cup diced fat pork, fresh or salt. Sauté the pork dice until they are golden-brown, lift them out, and add them to the morels. Add 2 tablespoons chopped shallots and salt and a little freshly ground white pepper to taste. Cook together for 15 minutes. Add 2 teaspoons chopped parsley and serve immediately.
Morilles à la Crème (Creamed Morels)
Trim and discard the bulbous stem ends from 1 pound of morels, wash the morels well, and dry them thoroughly. Leave them whole or cut them into halves or quarters, according to size. Heat 3 tablespoons butter in a saucepan, add the morels, and sauté them for to minutes, or until they are a light golden-brown. Add 1 tablespoon flour or ¼ cup cream sauce and mix well. Add 1 cup hot light cream, mix well, cover the pan, and cook slowly for 10 to 15 minutes. Season with salt and a little freshly ground white pepper and serve with hot toast.
Morilles à l'Indrenne (Curried Morels)
Trim and discard the bulbous stem ends from 1 pound of morels, wash the morels well, and dry them thoroughly. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a saucepan and cook 1 tablespoon finely chopped onion until it is soft. Add the morels and cook for 8 to 10 minutes. Add 2 teaspoons curry powder, stir well, and finish with ½ cup thin cream sauce.
Morilles Hongroise (Morels with Paprika)
Follow the recipe for morilles à l'indrenne, substituting paprika for the curry powder.
Morels for Hors-d'Oeuvre
Trim and discard the bulbous stem ends from 1 pound of morels, wash the morelswell, and dry them thoroughly. Heat tablespoons salad oil and 1 teaspoon lemon juice in a saucepan' and in it cook the morels lor 7 to 8 minutes to remove the surplus moisture. Add 2 tablespoons vinegar, ¼ cup salad oil, 1 cup water, ¼ teaspoon salt, 12 peppercorns, 1 tablespoon finely chopped onion or shallot, 2 stalks celery, finely chopped, 1 or 2 stalks fennel, finely chopped, and a few coriander seeds. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 15 to 20 minutes. Cool and serve as an hors-d'oeuvre.
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.
Crystallized Violets (or Rose Petals)
Use only violets that have a very heavy perfume. Remove the stems from about 2 pounds. Make a sugar syrup by cooking 3 pounds of sugar in 1 quart water until it reaches 230° F. on a candy thermometer. Place a rack in the bottom of a candissoire, that is, a pan measuring about 10 by inches and about inches deep. Pour in enough syrup to make a layer ½ to 1 inch deep and cool it. Spread the violets on the rack in the syrup, making sure that they arc so well covered they swim in it. Cover the pan with a wet towel to prevent the sugar from crystallizing between the flowers and let stand for 5 hours. Add more cooled syrup to cover the flowers again. Cover the pan with the wet towel and let stand until the next day. Lift the rack from the pan and set it on a tray to drain and dry the flowers.
For crystallized rose petals, follow the same directions, using rose petals from highly perfumed roses.
These same strongly scented violets form the base of a violet extract for flavoring various confections. If you ever have occasion to use it, remember that it is unusually potent and must be used sparingly.
Violet (or Rose) Syrup
Use only violets that have a very heavy perfume. Discard the stems from about 2 pounds and put the flowers in an enamel, china, or glass container with 2 ½ quarts boiling water. Seal the container and let stand for 12 to 15 hours. Strain the liquid through a fine cloth, squeezing it well to capture all the flavor. Weigh this infusion. For 2 pounds infusion, use 3 ¾ pounds rock candy and put both in the container. Set in a pan of water and heat slowly just until the sugar is dissolved. Seal and cool. Pour into dry, clean bottles, cork well, and store in a dark, cool cupboard.
For ruse syrup, use petals from highly perfumed roses and if the color is too light, add a little vegetable coloring.