cook: bouillabaisse

For my first holiday dinner, I decided to cook bouillabaisse. My guest Roseanne said she would go to Whole Foods and buy the fish and a baguette. I wanted to make a seafood stock with a fish head, fins, and bones, but I had to work this week and had no time really to make it. I resorted to a hearty base of chopped onions, garlic, fennel, celery, and a leek. I did have a little baggie of shrimp shells and box of seafood stock as well as good olive oil and Chardonnay. After work, I had gone to a seafood shop and bought an expensive piece of halibut, but Roseanne had brought me Atlantic cod. And there was no other seafood except salmon and halibut at that shop! I thought I had recognized the fishmonger from the farmers market and bought the fish even if he had no shellfish. I did go back to the supermarket after buying frozen scallops and shrimp and bought mussels and clams from the fresh seafood counter. That'll do. Once home, I chopped all the aromatics and vegetables, sautéed the shrimp shells in butter and olive oil and added water to make more seafood stock.

To play up the licorice flavor from the fresh fennel, I also added coarsely chopped fennel seed. I also added to that orange peel, fresh thyme, and generous pinches of saffron from the crocuses that Patrick grew. And I've been watching La Pitchoune: Cooking in France, where home cooks are taught to cook and play with lots of spice. I zoomed in on the hot smoked paprika in spice cupboard. I wonder what other spices I could have added to a-not-traditional-but-authentic bouillabaisse. Aleppo pepper might have been good too.

I drained the shrimp shells and reserved the broth. I put everything I had chopped into shimmering olive oil in my dutch oven. Tomatoes! I had forgotten that element. Luckily, I had tomato paste and diced tomatoes in my pantry. Tomato paste first into the vegetables.

  

And then half a bottle of the white wine followed by the can of tomatoes, which I boiled furiously and then decided was too chunky. I wanted my stew/soup a bit more refined and pureed most of the chunks before adding the fish.

 

This was no leisurely Saturday morning and afternoon cooking to dine afterward for a couple hours in the evening. I decided to cook haricots vert with butter and herbs. I boiled the green beans and then blanched them in cold water. I needed to have sautéed the chopped shallot (because I didn't have a red onion)first in the butter, but had oopsie chopped them with the fresh thyme, tarragon, and parsley. 

The green beans turned out fine.

I had also shopped for Belgian endive, which I chopped and tossed in dressing of olive oil, sherry vinegar, anchovy and garlic. Omg that salad was delicious. If I don’t eat that leftover salad in the raw, I might add it to leftover bouillabaisse. And I think I added the rest of a tube of anchovy paste from making that endive salad into the bouillabaisse.

And I never got to cutting rounds of baguette to toast and then rub with garlic and spread on a rouille. I just reheated the whole baguette in a 350 degree oven, which we then tore off hunks and slathered with Irish butter.

For lunch today, I sprinkled salt and then pan fried a small filet of halibut in olive oil and butter and then laid it atop leftover bouillabaisse reheated with some of the leftover haricot vert. 

 

The soup/stew tasted even better than when we ate it the first time for dinner.

The taste of the orange zest and the fennel was even more pronounced after the flavors had melded and added even more citrus with a generous squeeze of Meyer lemon. I aim to eat it again tomorrow for lunch. And just maybe there will be halibut for dinner to share with Patrick. I do wish he was a bit more fond of seafood.