Ondines aux Crevettes Roses

Ondines aux Crevettes Roses (delicate trout mousses with pink prawns in clear jelly) teach one governing lesson: cold controls delicacy. The farce mousseline, a fine trout forcemeat enriched with cream, must stay cold enough to remain smooth, and the aspic must be barely melted when it touches the set mousses. Control those two temperatures and the dish gleams, pale trout and coral prawns held beneath perfectly clear jelly.

The classical kitchen assumed a garde-manger, the cold-kitchen cook, working beside a saucier, excellent jelly waiting from stock that never went cold, a tamis for the trout, and a bank of egg moulds ready for service. At home, a processor followed by a fine sieve replaces the mortar and tamis, while clear fish stock and measured gelatin provide the reliable set that a small household stockpot cannot. The brigade quantity becomes eight ondines for four people. The extra hands are scaffolding and may go; the cold mousse, gentle bain-marie, and gradual coating are the dish and must stay.

The finished dish should be generous rather than fussy: oval mousses in a deep serving dish, pink prawns tucked between them, chervil suspended here and there, and enough clear jelly to cover everything. The step that matters most comes at the end. Spoon the barely fluid jelly over the mousses in stages, anchoring them before you fill the dish; if you flood them at once, they float and their surfaces dull.