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
heads |
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and bones of white-fleshed fish only in 2 to 3 quarts
of water about 2 hours. Add water as needed. Strain
stock into large kettle. Add clam juice, beer, carrots,
celery, garlic, leek and saffron. Bring to boil, reduce
heat and simmer until carrots are crisp-tender. Combine
cornstarch with 1/2 cup wine and stir into simmering
sauce. Simmer 5 minutes, then season to taste with salt,
white pepper, hot pepper sauce. Once the soup is prepared,
you add slices of raw potato and the tender fish, which
are monkfish, loup, John Dory, chapon (a Provençal
term for red scorpionfish), and whatever shellfish you'd
like, maybe a few mussels, and cook another twenty minutes,
adding some saffron five minutes before you serve. Sometimes
adding a big shot of pastis just before serving can
juiced up the dish. |
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Add
lobster tails, shrimp (that have been split down back
and sand vein removed), scallops, clams and halibut.
Add remaining 1 1/2 cups wine. Bring to boil and boil
8 to 10 minutes or until lobster is done and clams open.
Serve in large bowls with generous amounts of liquid.
Serve garlic toast or hot crisp sourdough bread slices
with Bouillabaisse, if desired. The rarity of the dish
speaks of its elite status in the culinary world. |
ouillabaisse 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 that
bouillabaisse was originally made with seawater. Devised
by Marseilles fishermen, it was a way of consuming the
least desirable portion of their catch. Although there
are almost as many variations on the recipe for bouillabaisse
as there are on that for chilli. 
