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Bouillabaisse
Posted By Kerri
I had some really good bouillabaisse at my local pub recently and wanted to try making it myself. Stephen found a recipe and after we’d bought some fish (gurnard, sea bass, clams and langoustines) we started to put it all together.
Firstly I made the rouille which is garlic, salt, chilli, bread and oil. This is served on toasted French bread with the bouillabaisse. It was very garlicky but good nonetheless.
We made the bouillabaisse by sweating off some onions, leek, garlic and tomatoes. Next we added tomatoes, fish stock, tomato puree, bouquet garni and saffron. Once this had cooked for a while we added the fish and cooked it through. The fish is then removed and the seasoning adjusted to taste.
It’s a relatively quick dish to make and doesn’t require much preparation, the end dish though was sadly lacking in flavour and quite watery. I think I’d like to try it again, perhaps with a different recipe and a different selection of fish.
Mar 9th, 2008
Bouillabaisse is one of those French peasant dishes that has risen to become well known and is often refined far beyond its humble beginnings. And, like other such dishes (e.g. Cassoulet), everyone has their own “authentic” recipe for it.
According to the recipe that we first looked at, the essential ingredient for all bouillabaisse that attempts to be even remotely authentic, is rascasse, aka scorpion fish. Not being able to get any of this, we were immediately freed from any pressure to make our version “authentic”.
With this in mind, we were initially prepared to play fast and loose with our selection of sea creatures, but when we arrived at the fishmonger, we remembered that there were only two of us and our eyes were being very much larger than our stomachs. So we bought the gurnard, which is apparently a common ingredient. We had hoped to get monkfish for the same reason, but there was none in stock. Also unavailable were conger eel and john dory, but we hadn’t been getting our hopes up for those. So we settled for the sea bass. The clams are mentioned in a few recipes, however the langoustine was just a random (but tasty) Stephen and Kerri addition.
As Kerri said, this is definitely something to try again because it can be really good when it works out well; we just need to figure out how to make it do so.
This looks delicious! Bookmarking this one.
Wow you made this at home.
I love this especially with roulie and french bread.
Never made them, only have bought from fish shop readymade
Fabulous! What a stunning bowl of ‘baisse!
Oh – looks fabulous. This has been on my list for the longest time.
Love the new look site btw!
Thanks everyone 🙂 I think this actually looks better than it tasted so if you do get round to making it I’d suggest doing some research first…then come back and let me know how it went!