La Bouillabaisse

Photo: flickr user jwalsh

Ingredients

900 grams (2 lb) mixed fish and shellfish, e.g. monkfish,

Few saffron strands

60 mls (4 tbsp) olive oil

3 mediums onions, skinned and sliced

1 celery stick, trimmed and chopped

225 grams (8 oz) tomatoes, skinned and sliced

2 clvs garlic, skinned and crushed

1 bay leaf

ml (0.5 level tsp) fennel

Few fresh parsley sprigs

Finely shredded rind of 0.5 an orange

Salt and pepper

French bread, to serve

Preparation

Bouillabaisse is a legendary seafood dish that is time consuming and labour intensive to prepare. A true bouillabaisse requires a lot of expensive fresh fish from Mediterranean that yields an ever diminishing catch. The name comes from the French words bouillir, meaning to boil, and abaisser, meaning to lower or, to wit, to boil on a low flame. An authentic bouillabaisse is a combination of two dishes: a saffron-tinted fish soup followed by various fish poached in the soup, then filleted. The last dish is eaten with lashings of rouille, basically a sauce of red chillies, egg yolk, garlic, cayenne, and olive oil. The legend has it th

To make a real bouillabaisse, you have to cook for a minimum of six people and you need at least a kilo of poissons de roche per person." Poissons de roche is a collection of catch-of-the-day from the local fish market.

Minguella believed the most important of them is the small, bony rascasse, both white and red, because it gives a deep flavour to the bouillabaisse.

(Rascasse is also known as scorpionfish and is sometimes used in both the first and second courses.) Depending on the catch of the day, other good rockfish for the dish include conger eel, anglerfish, red or tub gurnard, and weever. After all the ingredients are prepared, you brown onions, garlic, and tomatoes in olive oil, then add the clean and cut up rockfish and let it cook for fifteen minutes until it becomes a sort of paste. This is the heart of bouillabaisse. Then add boiling water, fennel, parsley, salt, and pepper and let it boil for an hour before passing it through a food mill. Make fish stock by simmering 1 to 2 pounds h