HungryForever

Gratin of Creamed Salmon or Other Fish

A quick and delicious main-course dish can be made by combining a good cream sauce with canned salmon, tuna, or clams, or leftover cooked fish or shellfish. If you are using a baking dish, all may be prepared ahead, then set in the oven shortly before serving, but a pastry shell should not be filled until just before it goes into the oven. The following recipe is for salmon, but other fish may be substituted:

Ingredients

cup ¼finely minced onions
3 Tb butter
A heavy-bottomed2-quart saucepan
3 Tb flour
1cup boiling milk
cup ¼dry white wine or dry white vermouth
Juice from salmon canif any
tsp ¼salt
Pinch of pepper
tsp ¼oregano
4 to 6 Tb whipping cream
1cups ½cooked or canned salmon
Optional: sautéed mushrooms; sliced hard-boiled eggs
inches An 8-inchshallow, baking dish 1½ to 2deep, or a cooked pastry shell
cup ¼grated Swiss cheese
1 Tb butter

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Cook the onions in butter in the saucepan over low heat for 5 minutes or so, until onions are tender but not browned.
Stir in the flour, and cook slowly for 2 minutes without coloring.
Off heat, beat in the boiling milk, then the wine, salmon juice, and the seasonings. Now bring this sauce to boil over moderately high heat, stirring. Boil several minutes to evaporate the alcohol in the wine, and allow the sauce to thicken considerably. Then thin it out to a medium consistency with tablespoons of cream. Taste carefully for seasoning.
Fold the salmon and optional ingredients into the sauce, and check seasoning again. Spread in baking dish or pastry shell. Sprinkle on the cheese, and distribute the butter in pea-sized dots. Bake in upper third of preheated oven for about 15 minutes, or until top is nicely browned.