Kreyol Kitchen

Recipe: Mousse de Poisson

If you’ve been following along with The 256 Project for a while now, then you know that part of the story behind this blog is my attempt to recreate my Haitian grandmother’s recipes that she wrote down in beautiful script when she spent one summer with us when I was a child. Every recipe I have made (all tagged Kreyol Kitchen on this blog for easy searching) has somehow been a comedy of errors that, remarkably, has still come out tasty even if the dish didn’t come out tasting or looking as it’s supposed to. This week’s Haitian dish is mousse de poisson. My dad said it was really good and that it should be one of the next I make. It was really good. But is this what he had in mind? I don’t know because I was too lazy to ask him!

Mousse de Poisson recipe via my grandmother.

Mousse de Poisson Ingredients:

Flour
Milk
Salt
Pepper
Three eggs, separate yolks from whites and keep both
Vinegar (I used red wine vinegar as my grandmother didn’t specify and I remember my dad saying white vinegar is for cleaning, not eating, but now that I write this, I think he would have used apple cider vinegar. Whoops!)
Onion (I went with one yellow onion. Just felt right.)
Parsley
1/2 lb. grated cheese
Butter (I used a whole stick because she didn’t specify and why wouldn’t you use a whole stick of butter if given the opportunity?!)
Mustard
Fish (again, grandmother didn’t specify but I went the cheapo route with tilapia)
Breadcrumbs

Directions:

1. Thin three spoonfuls of flour in milk. I ended up using 3/4 cup milk. A whole cup with three tablespoons of flour seemed too thin.
2. Salt and pepper.
3. Put on the fire to get a thick sauce. (This is a direct translation. You can figure out what she meant, right?)
4. Remove from the fire.
5. Add three egg yolks, vinegar, onion (I chopped up one whole yellow onion), chopped parsley, half pound of grated cheese, good butter (I feel like this says something about the state of butter in Haiti back in the day), mustard and the fish chopped.
6. Add spices to taste.
7. Beat the egg whites until firm and then add them to the mixture.
8. Mix it all up (she didn’t say this but, like, duh).
9. Butter a mold or baking dish (I used a springform pan) and cover in breadcrumbs.
10. Add the mixture to the dish and cook for around 30 minutes.