A Fishy Ode to Joy

Taken from the CD “An Ode to Joy: Christmas, 2005”
as read by Peter Hartjens

A few weeks ago, Sherry Thomas, the wonderful town manager here in St. Michaels was in our store. As people seem to have a wont to do, Sherry asked me for a recipe. “Peter,” she said, “do you have a nice Bouillabaisse recipe? You know, one that I could do?” I promised her one. Here it is, Sherry.

There are a million variations on bouillabaisse. The original does not have shellfish in it. It was just a fish stew based on what was left over from the market. Most today are a bit more gussied up.

What you are getting here is the base recipe I use all year, and even it varies depending on what I have around. Ready?

The first step is to never throw out any leftover fish, crab, or shrimp – especially bones and shells. Toss them into baggies and chuck them in the freezer. I also cheat and throw in chicken backs and other pieces that give the broth a bit of body. When the freezer fills up and you need room for something else, make some fish soup base. Here’s how.

First, cut up some onions. Don’t throw out the skins; they add color.

Put some olive oil in a pot and heat it. Put in the onion pieces for a few minutes until they soften, but don’t brown.

Cut up a head of garlic – a whole head. Throw it in. Let it stew for a few minutes, also.

Add some Herbes de Provence or whatever fresh or dried herbs you have around that you like. Bay, thyme, oregano, are pretty standard. I always add some chopped tomato or tomato paste – not too much. I also throw in a piece of orange or lemon peel. Stir this a few minutes. Add some white wine and cook for a few minutes longer.

While that is cooking, go to the freezer and pull out all of those baggies. Cut them open and dump them into the pot. Add any fresh fish scraps or bones and shrimp or other shells. Stir this around until things are thawed and take on a bit of color. Don’t add salt or pepper.

Cover the whole mess with cold water and bring to a simmer. Cook gently for no more than an hour or until the kitchen smells wonderfully fishy. Skim as necessary. If you don’t want the kitchen to smell fishy, you are making the wrong soup. Fishy is good; bland is bad.

Strain the broth through a sieve or colander lined with cheesecloth or paper towels into a bowl. Wash the pot. Return the broth to the pot.

At this point the bones and stuff are out of the picture so you can increase the heat. Boil the broth until it tastes rich and the kitchen smells even fishier. Now you can add some salt and a bit of pepper.

Taste it. Is it divine? If not, either boil it down a bit more or add some fish or chicken stock. My basic rule is that if I can smell it 50 feet away, it is getting there.

I read somewhere that saffron does not like to be boiled, so I don’t add it to my base until after I am really happy with its flavor and richness.

And don’t be cheap with the saffron. I know it’s expensive, but buy the biggest jar or tin you can afford. It is much cheaper that way. If you can, buy the threads, not the powder. With a whole bunch on hand, you can feel more extravagant and not think “God, I just put $5 worth of saffron into this soup!” Put in at least a teaspoon. Let it steep for a few minutes and taste it. Save some saffron to add at the last minute later on.

Now, I make this stock whenever I have the stuff and the inclination. I often reduce the broth way down (before adding the saffron) and then freeze the concentrate. It takes up much less space that way. Then, when I want to make bouillabaisse, all I have to do is reconstitute some of the concentrate and add fish and other goodies.

Hang on, Sherry, we’re almost done.

You now have the basic broth. That’s the hard part.

A Quick Aside: While you have just made the base for a veddy French Bouillabaisse, you can play riffs on this to your heart’s content. For example, when we were just in Jamaica, I made a Caribbean Bouillabaisse. To the basic broth, I just added some sliced ginger, a few allspice berries, a sliced Scotch Bonnet pepper and a cinnamon stick. You can make a Thai version by adding Kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, a bit of fish sauce and galangal. It’s easy.

Okay, back to the French version

To make the final soup, we start over from the top.

Cut up a couple of onions (no skins). Sauté in olive oil and then toss in a couple of tablespoons of chopped garlic. Stir around a bit and then add your soup base. Bring to a simmer and let steep for a few minutes. Taste. Died and gone to heaven? Good. Turn off heat and keep warm on stove while you prepare the fish and shellfish.

First, this is basically a fish soup. So get two or three kinds of white fleshed fish – like rockfish and snapper. Cut into bite-sized cubes.

If you are using mussels or clams, go ahead and steam these. Strain the liquid in the steamer pot and add to your broth on the stove. Set mussels and/or clams aside.

Now you have to make a choice. You can either sauté your shrimp and/or lobster pieces until golden or you can just set them into your broth to poach. I prefer the former as I find most of today’s freshwater shrimp rather dull. Sautéeing them in oil just makes them taste better. Scientists say this is a function of something called the Maillard reaction.

The same is true of your fish. These I tend to poach directly in the broth, but if they are boring (or have been frozen), I might fry them up a bit also.

Now it is simple. You just heat your broth. Add you fish pieces. After a couple of minutes, add the shrimp, then the crab, mussels, or clams. That’s all.

Ladle into bowls and top with a slice of toasted baguette spread with spicy mayonnaise – what the French call rouille.

Here’s one recipe for rouillel

Put two egg yolks into your food processor with a tablespoon of lemon juice and ½ teaspoon salt and a piece of hot pepper or a few drops of hot sauce (you can always add more at the table). Whirl around until pale. Very slowly, drizzle in a cup or so of olive oil. My Cuisinart has a hole in the bottom of the feed tube thingamajig so I just pour the oil into the top and let it drip in. When the rouille is thick and the oil is incorporated, add 1 tablespoon of warm water to set the emulsion. That’s it. If the sauce “breaks,” put in another egg yolk in a clean bowl and then beat in the broken sauce drop by drop with a whisk until it comes together again.

Then eat it.

Now making bouillabaisse requires the right kind of music to get you into the mood. On NPR, I recently heard a cut from a CD by Richard Galliano, on which he took a traditional French café music called musette and combined it with some classic jazz tunes. The CD is called Ruby My Dear (from Thelonius Monk. Try it. Great music to make bouillabaisse by.

Huh, you know it’s funny. Right here is where I was going to end this section. But, when I went back to read over the recipe, I realized that I spent an awful lot of time talking about making the broth and very little about the things that most people think of when they eat bouillabaisse – the shellfish, the lobster, the varieties of fish.

There’s a lesson here. Soup and people have a lot in common. It’s their broth that’s really important, isn’t it? Sure, the cars and clothes are nice, but without a solid broth to provide a backbone, both soups and people can be shallow and dull. Personally, I’d rather go with gutsy.

I just saw an ad on the back of a magazine for Seiko watches. It shows a beautiful, half-clad woman. The text says, “It’s your watch that tells most about who you are.” Wrong sweetie, it’s your broth.