When Marseille fishermen cooked soup in the evening from the remains of their unsold catch, they had no idea that in the future this dish would become a delicacy that would be served in the best French restaurants. The first Marseille bouillabaisse was made from pieces of dry bread, small fish, shrimp, squid and shellfish, and now lobster and expensive fish are added to this soup, so the cost of a plate of soup sometimes reaches 200 euros. If you believe the French legend, the goddess of love and beauty Aphrodite was preparing bouillabaisse and feeding it to her husband Hephaestus, because she was born from sea foam and the sea element was almost native to her. However, let's get down from Olympus and go to the kitchen to understand how to prepare bouillabaisse at home.
How to make bouillabaisse soup - 15 varieties
- Classic buaibes
- Boisbès recipe with a minimum set of ingredients
- Instant Buaybes
- Buaybes with potatoes
- Buaybes by Jimmy Oliver
- Normandy bouybes
- Alexandre Dumas recipe
- Buaybes with oranges and tomatoes
- Royal Buaybes
- Bouillabaisse in Norwegian
- Buaybes at the cinema
- Japanese buaibes
- Buaybes in the style of "Fusion"
- Boisbes in Parisian style from master of French cuisine Auguste Escoffier
- Homemade buaibes
Classic buaibes
This is a recipe for bouaibes, which today is recognized as a classic version of this fish soup.
Ingredients:
- Various types (minimum 4 types) of small sea fish – 2 kilograms
- Fennel – 1 bulb
- Tomatoes – 3 pieces
- Garlic – 3 cloves
- Leeks – 2 pieces
- Onions – 2 pieces
- Celery – 3 stalks
- Sea salt - to taste
- Olive oil – 7 tablespoons
- Bouquet garni mixture – 2 tablespoons
- Parsley – 1 bunch.
Preparation:
Leek, parsley, 1 onion, 1 clove of garlic, finely chop celery, fry in olive oil.
Clean the fish, remove tails, heads, fins and place in fried vegetables. Add water to cover the fish and simmer over low heat for 2 minutes.
Blanch the tomatoes, remove the skin and puree.
Finely chop fennel, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 onion, fry in a small amount of vegetable oil and add pureed tomatoes to them.
Remove the fish from the fish broth, strain the broth and rub the vegetable grounds through a sieve.
Mix the cooled fish broth with fried and pureed vegetables. Add pieces of large fish and cook until soft. Then place the fish on a separate plate.
The soup is served with toasted baguette and rouille sauce. Each person adds fish individually.
Roui sauce (goes great with any fish dish)
Ingredients:
- Garlic – 5 large cloves
- Saffron – ½ teaspoon
- Salt – ½ teaspoon
- Cayenne pepper – a pinch
- Raw yolks – 4 pieces
- Olive oil – ½ liter
Preparation:
Garlic, salt, and spices are ground in a mortar. Add the yolks to the resulting garlic paste, and stirring thoroughly, add olive oil very slowly. When the sauce reaches the consistency of mayonnaise, it can be used.
Some French chefs add lemon juice to rouille sauce.
How to serve bouillabaisse
It is interesting that real Marseille bouillabaisse is served not with dried bread, but with stale bread - in Marseille it is called marette, and this bread is baked especially for bouillabaisse. Sometimes, in addition to fish, boiled potatoes are also served separately if they are not in the soup. In some French restaurants, they separately serve a sea scorpion - a predatory fish, the same one that Sasha Cherny describes in his story, which has “a spiky muzzle, bulging eyes, red-gray scales, red fins and a tail.” It’s very tasty to dip a dry baguette in the broth or coat it with bright yellow sauce, watching how the chef with skillful movements frees the meat from the bones of the “sea dragon”. Bouillabaisse is served with pastis, a traditional aperitif - a very diluted anise liqueur, which the French are very fond of.
After tasting bouillabaisse, you understand why the French are such gourmets. They simply love life very much, and nothing is too small for them, especially when it comes to cooking!
Boisbès recipe with a minimum set of ingredients
This recipe will appeal to those housewives who want to please their loved ones with an exotic dish at minimal cost.
Ingredients:
- Small sea fish (capelin, sardines, etc.) – 1.5 kilograms
- Large sea fish fillet (cod, perch) – 0.5 kilograms
- Garlic – 4 cloves
- Small tomatoes - 4 pieces
- White wine – ½ glass
- Mussels – 0.1 kilograms
- Shrimp – 0.1 kilograms
- Olive oil – 4 tablespoons
- Onion – 1 piece
- Chili powder – ½ teaspoon
- Bay leaf – 1 piece.
Preparation:
Clean the fish, place in a pan and add water until it covers the fish. Simmer for 60 minutes, then strain into another pan.
Peel the garlic, onion, chop finely. Heat oil in a thick bottom pan and fry until soft.
Blanch the tomatoes, remove the skin, cut into cubes. Add to the garlic and onions along with the wine. Cook until the wine has evaporated. Add saffron, bay leaf, chili. Add 0.6 liters of water and bring to a boil.
Peel shrimp and mussels. Cut the fish fillet into large pieces. Place ingredients in soup. Cook for 20 minutes.
Serve with garlic bread croutons.
Toulon bouillabaisse for a fun company
This soup resembles Russian soup and seems more familiar and understandable to us. So, wash and cut 3 kg of large sea fish, leaving the heads and tails for the broth. Thinly slice 5 carrots, 2 fennel roots, 5 shallots and 3 sweet white onions, and quarter 10 raw mushrooms. Fry the vegetables and mushrooms over high heat in a large, wide, thick-bottomed pan, then add 2 potatoes and 8 tomatoes, cutting the vegetables into cubes first. Next, add 100 g of rice, 3 chopped celery stalks, 3 chopped thyme sprigs, a pinch of hot pepper, and then fry it all for 7-8 minutes.
Wash 4 kg of small fish of several types, throw them into the pan with the vegetables along with the heads and tails and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Pour a bottle of dry white wine into the contents and add a little pastis or a couple of spoons of aniseed vodka, after 15 minutes add 100 g of tomato paste, simmer a little more and pour 6 liters of cold water over the vegetables and fish. Add thinly sliced lemon, a bunch of basil and ½ tsp to the soup. saffron, then cook the bouillabaisse for another half hour, and then add salt and pepper to taste.
Cut large fish fillets into pieces, place them in a deep baking tray, top with lemon slices (2 pieces are enough), salt, and garnish with saffron and basil. Strain the broth through a sieve, strain the vegetables and rice, and then cook 5 sliced potatoes in the strained broth until half cooked. Place the potatoes on the fish in a baking sheet, pour boiling broth over them and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 180 °C - the fish should “cook” after a while, and the soup can be poured into plates. Yes, this recipe is complicated, but the bouillabaisse is worth it!
Instant Buaybes
This recipe makes 6 servings.
Ingredients:
- Olive oil – 3 tablespoons
- Garlic – 5 cloves
- Mayonnaise – 0.15 kilograms
- Shrimp – 0.3 kilograms
- Mussels – 0.3 kilograms
- Bay leaf – 2 pieces
- Saffron – portioned culinary sachet
- Chili powder – ½ teaspoon
- Thyme sprig – 2 pieces
- Onion – 1 piece
- Fillet of 4 types of sea fish – 1 kilogram
- Tomatoes – 1 kilogram.
Preparation:
Chop the peeled garlic and onion. Thyme - finely chopped.
Heat oil (2 tablespoons) in a thick-bottomed saucepan and fry the garlic and onion until soft. Add chili powder.
Blanch the tomatoes, remove the skin and cut into small cubes.
Add tomatoes, saffron, bay leaves to the onions and garlic, add 0.6 liters of water and bring to a boil, add salt and cook for twenty-five minutes over medium heat.
Remove shells from shrimp. Cut the fish into equal pieces. Place these products in a pan and cook for 15 minutes without stirring, then remove the seafood from the pan. Rub the contents of the pan through a sieve and pour back. Pour in the remaining oil, bring to a boil and return the seafood, simmer for 5 minutes and remove from heat.
For the sauce:
Peel 2 cloves of garlic, chop, mix with 0.1 kg. mayonnaise, red pepper to taste and 1 tablespoon of tomato paste.
Buaybes with potatoes
This is a recipe for one of the Normandy versions of bouaibes.
Ingredients:
- Seabass – 0.3 kilograms
- Trout – 0.350 kilograms
- Cod – 0.4 kilograms
- Tiger prawns – 0.150 kilograms
- Onion - 1 piece
- Potatoes – 0.250 kilograms
- Leek - 1 piece
- Carrots - 1 piece
- Celery root – 0.2 kilograms
- Thyme - 2-3 sprigs
- Tomatoes in their own juice - 1 can
- Garlic - 6 cloves
- Star anise - 3 stars
- Saffron - 2 tablespoons
- Mayonnaise – 0.2 kilograms
- Salt - to taste.
Preparation:
Broth is prepared from fish fillets over low heat for 40 minutes.
Vegetables are cut coarsely, placed in a saucepan (except potatoes) with a thick bottom and simmered for seven minutes.
Stewed vegetables are poured with broth and boiled until soft, adding star anise, thyme, and saffron. When the vegetables become soft, add coarsely chopped potatoes and cook until soft. Then add fish cut into medium pieces and cook for about 10 minutes until the fish is ready.
Served with croutons and rouille sauce.
General principles for preparing bouillabaisse
Bouillabaisse is a traditional Marseille soup that was originally distributed among fishermen. It was prepared as a stew from various seafood that could not be sold during the day at the local market. The Marseille version is made only from fish. In the Norman version, potatoes are also added to the dish. Both of these methods are classic.
The differences between this dish and other fish soups are as follows:
- very rich, rich fish broth (from at least 3 varieties of fish);
- use of other seafood (squid, lobsters, shrimp);
- pre-stewed vegetables;
- adding saffron and anise, giving the dish a unique aroma.
Buaybes by Jimmy Oliver
This bouaibes recipe comes from one of the most popular television cooking show hosts, Jimmy Oliver. The highlight of this soup is that the author suggests using cheap varieties of sea fish and combining them with freshwater species. The soup has a strong garlic flavor.
Ingredients:
- Tomatoes in their own juice – 2 cans of 400 grams
- Fish broth – 1 liter
- Saffron - a pinch
- Corn - a pinch
- Hake, bream – 2 kilograms
- Fennel – 1 piece
- Onion – 3 heads
- Celery root – 1 piece
- Fennel seeds – 1 teaspoon
- Bay leaf – 2 pieces
- Salt, pepper - to taste
- Garlic – 1 head
- Carrots – 2 pieces
- Parsley – 1 handful
- Ciabatta – 1 loaf
- Butter – 1 small piece.
Preparation:
Chop the vegetables coarsely, fry with parsley and crushed fennel seeds, bay leaves in olive oil in a thick-bottomed saucepan over low heat. Cover the pan with a parchment cartouche and cook until the vegetables soften.
When the vegetables soften, remove the cartouche, turn up the heat and cook until the vegetables are caramelized. Then add broth, tomatoes, saffron, and turmeric and after the soup boils, reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour.
Pour the finished soup into a blender and grind. Then pour into a saucepan and heat until bubbles appear - add fish, cut into portions and cook over low heat for 15 minutes.
Serve with toasted ciabatta rings and aioli sauce.
Aioli sauce is a Provençal sauce. In a bowl, grind the garlic, yolk and salt, adding Provençal oil. When the sauce reaches the consistency of mayonnaise. Amount of ingredients - to taste.
Useful tips and tricks
When preparing this dish, use the following tricks:
- the taste can be changed at your discretion by adding different types of fish and spices;
- the optimal ratio of water and fish is 1:1, since the dish should be thick and satisfying;
- during the cooking process, the fish may fall apart - this is not a problem, it is its flesh that gives the necessary thickness;
- rare and especially tasty varieties of sea fish can be boiled or fried separately and placed in pieces in the finished dish;
- Orange zest is added to give it a more piquant, fresh taste.
Fragrant bouillabaisse, prepared according to a classic recipe, has a colorful and rich taste. The more seafood used, the better. Despite its apparent complexity, the step-by-step recipes outlined above will help you quickly prepare it from available ingredients. It is served hot, with sauce and fried baguette.
Normandy bouybes
The French claim that Aphrodite fed her husband Hephaestus with this soup.
Ingredients:
- Potatoes – 0.3 kilograms
- Salmon – 1 small carcass
- White sea fish fillet – 1.5 kilograms
- Garlic – 1 clove
- Onion – 1 piece
- Celery root – 1 piece
- Saffron – 1 packet
- Fennel – 1 root
- Parsley - bunch
- Mayonnaise – 60 grams
- Olive oil
- Mussels – 0.2 kilograms
- Squid – 0.2 kilograms
- Shrimp – 0.2 kilograms
- Tomatoes in their own juice
- Salt - to taste
- Bay leaf - a couple of leaves.
Preparation:
Boil the potatoes. Cook fish broth from salmon. Dilute saffron with warm water.
Peel the garlic, grate it on a fine grater and add to the potatoes. Add mayonnaise and saffron tincture. Grind into puree.
Peel the fennel and remove the core. Finely chop the walls. Mix diced garlic, onion, celery with fennel and heat the mixture in a frying pan heated with olive oil. Add chopped tomatoes, bay leaves, salt and fish broth to the combined vegetable mixture.
Then add mussels, shrimp, squid cut into rings, chopped white fish fillets and cook until tender.
Classic bouillabaisse soup: recipe with photos
First of all, let's look at the ingredients. It is better to take small fish and some delicacy (salmon, shrimp, other seafood). The quantity must be substantial. After all, for two liters of bouillabaisse soup you need to take a kilogram and three hundred grams of various sea inhabitants. We gut small assorted fish. Cut off the tail of the salmon and select large bones. If the shrimp have a shell, clean them. Place bones, skin, and small fish in a saucepan of cold water (two liters). We also put shrimp shells there. Place the pan on high heat and cover with a lid. Note that from the fish stocks we still have a salmon carcass (or other elite fish) and peeled shrimp. The recipe calls for adding them to bouillabaisse soup later. Cook the broth until ready. Based on the amount of fish, we will get it very strong, with a rich taste. After the broth is ready, you need to strain it. All solid particles can be thrown away, to the delight of the cats.
Alexandre Dumas recipe
The recipe for this bouaibes was told to the great novelist by the owner of a popular tavern in Marseille.
Ingredients:
- Water – 1.6 liters
- Assorted flounder, sea ruffe, cod, sea bass – 2 kilograms
- Onion – 2 pieces
- Parsley – 1 bunch
- Olive oil – 0.2 liters
- Garlic – 3 cloves
- Chopped tomatoes – 1 cup
- Caraway
- Saffron – 1 teaspoon
- Bay leaf – 1 piece.
- A mixture of seasonings from rosemary, thyme, basil, cayenne pepper taken in equal quantities - 1 tablespoon
- Black pepper, peas – 1 teaspoon
- Orange zest – ½ orange
- Black bread – 8 slices.
Preparation:
Clean the fish, remove gills and membranes. Cut into pieces.
Chop parsley and garlic.
Heat oil in a saucepan and add seasonings and vegetables, lightly fry.
Add fish and pour boiling water over it.
Cook over low heat for forty minutes. Then remove the fish.
Dry the bread slices in the oven.
Place a slice of bread on each plate and top with soup.
Serve the fish on a separate plate.
Buaybes with oranges and tomatoes
The recipe provides a layout for two servings.
Ingredients:
- Sea bass – 0.6 kilograms
- Onion – 60 grams
- Cloves – 6 grams
- Celery root – 50 grams
- Celery stalk – 80 grams
- Carrots – 50 grams
- Busho mussels – 200 grams
- Squid – 100 grams
- Tiger prawns – 100 grams
- Tuna – 80 grams
- Octopus – 100 grams
- Olive oil – 100 grams
- Fennel – 100 grams
- Tomatoes in their own juice – 200 grams
- White wine – 30 milliliters
- Garlic - to taste
- Orange – 100 grams
- Pepperoni, sugar, salt - to taste.
- Sun-dried tomatoes – 30 grams.
Preparation:
Place the fish in a saucepan, add water so that it covers the fish to the thickness of a finger and cook the broth for an hour. Add the octopus and cook for another forty minutes.
Chop the vegetables coarsely.
Fry the onion with a couple of cloves until soft. Add the remaining coarsely chopped vegetables and simmer until soft. Add wine and simmer until the smell of alcohol disappears. Then add chopped garlic.
Pour the broth into the prepared vegetables and add the octopuses.
Peel and chop squid, mussels, shrimp. Chop the tuna meat. Place the octopuses into the soup when ready.
Squid, mussels, shrimp, like tuna meat cannot be overcooked - they become tough.
In a frying pan, fry sun-dried tomatoes, sliced oranges, fennel and celery, and garlic. Puree the tomatoes and place in a frying pan. Simmer and pour in broth. Boil and add prepared fish and seafood. Cook for a couple of minutes.
Bouillabaisse: classic recipe
The secret to the success of this fish soup lies in the use of several types of Mediterranean fish. There should be at least six (and preferably ten) varieties in the pan. Unlike fish soup, which is prepared by boiling, the bouillabaisse recipe suggests making it in several stages. The fish is cooked separately to create a rich broth. And vegetables for soup are pre-fried and stewed. Nowadays a bouquet garni or Calvados is added to bouillabaisse for flavor. But the poor Marseilles fishermen did not know about such delights. They used orange zest, saffron, fennel, garlic, onions and tomatoes. Potatoes were sometimes included in bouillabaisse. But this is a Toulon version of a popular Provençal dish. And in Brittany, fish soup is usually acidified with vinegar. We ate the bouillabaisse hot. The Marseille fish soup was always served with lightly toasted crispy baguettes and rouille garlic sauce.
Royal Buaybes
The soup owes its name not to the fact that it was served to the table of French kings, but to the extraordinary taste of both the soup itself and the sauce for it.
Ingredients:
- Fish trimmings – fins, heads, tails – 0.5 kilograms
- Bay leaf – 6 pieces
- Black pepper, peas – 6 pieces
- Carrots – 2 pieces
- Onions – 2 pieces
- black peppercorns – 12 pieces.
- Cod fillet – 0.25 kilograms
- Salmon fillet – 0.25 kilograms
- Flounder -0.3 kilograms
- Shrimp – 0.2 kilograms
- Mussels – 0.2 kilograms
- Leek – 1 piece
- Fennel – 1 piece
- Potatoes – 4 pieces
- Canned tomatoes – 1 can
- Parsley – 1 bunch
- Bay leaf – 3 pieces
- Dry white wine – ½ glass
- Saffron – 8 teaspoons
- Sea salt - to taste
- Garlic – 5 cloves
- Fresh thyme – bunch
- Egg yolks – 1 piece
- Fresh thyme.
- Chili pepper – 1 piece
- Bell pepper – 2 pieces
- Olive oil – 64 milliliters
- Sea salt - to taste
- Lemon juice - to taste
- Milk for soaking the bread.
Preparation:
Soak saffron in 2 tablespoons of boiling water.
From fish trimmings, bay leaf, one carrot, 6 peppercorns, one onion, cook a steep broth. Strain.
Heat olive oil in a saucepan and fry chopped fennel, onions and leeks. Cut the potatoes into cubes and add to the pan. Add tomatoes, pressed garlic and chopped thyme. Simmer over low heat for five minutes. Pour half a glass of wine. Evaporate until the smell of alcohol disappears, pour in fish broth and add steamed saffron, remaining peppercorns, sea salt and simmer for 5 minutes.
Then place the chopped fish and seafood into the pan in the following order - cod, flounder, salmon, shrimp. Bring to a boil over medium heat, reduce heat and add parsley. Close the lid and cook until the fish is cooked.
Preparing the sauce:
Roast red bell peppers. It's better to do this in a baking bag. Remove skins and seeds. Chop coarsely. Finely chop the hot pepper (spiciness to taste).
In a mixer, beat the yolk, pouring in little by little, as in the case of making mayonnaise, olive oil and lemon juice.
In a blender, grind together the pulp of the peppers, the crumb of white bread soaked in milk, and garlic.
Combine both prepared masses and beat until the structure of mayonnaise is obtained.
The soup and sauce are served with toasted baguette rings.
Marseille Bouillabaisse (La vraie Bouillabaisse des Marseillais)
Origin story
Bouillabaisse
is a French dish, fish soup typical of the Mediterranean coast of France.
Bouillabaisse appeared in the port of Marseille on the French Mediterranean coast; back then it was food prepared by fishermen and fishermen when they returned home. Provençal, a dialect of Occitan, is the language used by most Marseille fishermen, and in Provençal bouillabaisse is Boiabaïsso. The origin of the Provençal/Occitan word is similar to French; in French, bouillard means to boil, and the word abaisser means to reduce, and voila, we have bouillabaisse. Saffron, the most expensive herb in the dish, has always been very expensive, but it was, and some saffrons, like all other herbs and spices, are grown locally.
Historically, bouillabaisse was a traditional dish of Marseille fishermen and was made from the fish left over from being sold in the evening, so it was a cheap soup. However, thanks to its fame, as well as the development of tourism on the Mediterranean coast of France, the restaurant cuisine of Marseille has created several very expensive varieties of it using lobsters and other expensive seafood. Soups prepared this way can cost up to 150-200 euros per plate in some Provençal restaurants.
There is an old French legend according to which the ancient Greek goddess Aphrodite fed her husband Hephaestus daily with bouillabaisse.
It differs from most other fish soups, mainly prepared by boiling, by pre-frying and stewing vegetables. It is a broth cooked from several types of sea fish (about a dozen types, including sea scorpion, sunfish, sea rooster) at the rate of more than a kilogram of live weight per serving of the finished product, sometimes with the addition of seafood, seasoned with vegetables (tomatoes, onions, garlic, fennel, etc.), orange zest, saffron, spices and other ingredients.
Bouillabaisse is served hot, with toasted baguettes and rouille garlic sauce.
In regional varieties, calvados and nuts are added to bouillabaisse (Normandy), acidified with vinegar (Brittany), bouquet garni is used as spices, and potatoes are added to Toulon bouillabaisse.
A real bouillabaisse is a big dish.
In proper restaurants that serve bouillabaisse, a thick roulette sauce, grated Gruyère or Parmesan cheese, and garlic toast or croutons will be served next to each guest's plate. The “Rulle” sauce itself is made from the famous garlic mayonnaise “aioli”, to which chili pepper and sometimes mustard are added.
Rouille sauce accompanies many other French fish soups. and each chef adds one or another ingredient depending on the soup.
Restaurants that have sufficiently trained staff will put on a real show where they will serve bouillabaisse, divided into two parts. The soup is served first, usually with an additional bowl placed in the center of the table; have an extra bowl on hand for second and third servings. And all the fish and seafood that were boiled in the soup are brought out on a large plate, and the waiter masterfully cuts them in front of you and puts them on plates.
While it's a dramatic delight when bouillabaisse is served in stages, truly excellent bouillabaisse can be found in smaller restaurants. Restaurants that don't have single serving staff may have a great chef in the kitchen, and single servings have never been part of the origin of the dish. For the original fishermen and fish stews, the waiters didn't have any around.
Bouillabaisse or Le Vrai Bouillabaisse is a real bouillabaisse. If a restaurant has it on the menu, expect the real thing. If in doubt, ask the locals which restaurant makes real bouillabaisse.
Bouillabaisse de Pécheur - Bouillabaisse . You'll see it on menus along tourist routes in the south of France. The fine print on many of these menus indicates that only one to three different fish will be included; All options come with different prices. Different types of fish affect the price as well as the taste. Just as there is no free lunch, there are no cheap versions of real bouillabaisse. Take a close look at menus outside of restaurants that appear to offer bouillabaisse; if there is fine print, read it. These variations are often far from the original and are usually much smaller; however, when a whole bouillabaisse is too much, say at lunchtime, consider these offerings like fish soup and enjoy.
Bouillabaisse du Nord is a soup made from sea fish and seafood from the north of France. These are often excellent fish soups, but with fish different from those found in Mediterranean bouillabaisse.
Bouillabaisse Marseillaise – The Mediterranean port city of Marseille claims the original recipe for Bouillabaisse Marseillaise, dating back to the 1800s. Many menus in the south of France offer bouillabaisse; however, Marcel owns the trademark. The statutes of Marseillaise Bouillabaisse were written much later, in 1980. The Charter sets the rules for a genuine Bouillabaisse Marseillaise.
With or without a statute, the tradition of bouillabaisse still varies among chefs who specialize in this dish. Each of these cooks will be faithful to tradition, this may be the tradition of his mentor or a recipe inherited from his or her great-grandmother or great-grandfather.
Bouillabaisse Royale - Bouillabaisse served with half or a whole lobster or lobster placed on top of a fish plate; sometimes crab. Bouillabaisse Royale is a dish created to impress tourists, including French ones. Lobster tails make an excellent meal, as do French crabs
What is the most important ingredient in bouillabaisse?
Chefs and Maître D's in Marseille will tell you that cheese, fish stock and saffron are the most important ingredients. However, this taste depends on certain types of fish, such as those specified in the Charter of the Marseillaise Bouillabaisse.
Bouillabaisse is far from home.
Having enjoyed many excellent bouillabaisses in authentic French restaurants far removed from France, I tend to lean towards the smoke, fish stock and saffron being the most important part of the recipe. The fish stock used is made from vegetables, garlic, herbs, spices, white wine and white wine vinegar, as well as fish heads and bones. Fish stock is the real secret to a perfect bouillabaisse.
Original bouillabaisse
As a worker's and fisherman's food, the original bouillabaisse used fish that sold poorly; The fish and shellfish that were quickly sold were never intended for fishermen, fishermen or their families. Fish such as John Dory or monkfish, as well as shellfish such as lobster and even mussels, would have been sold. Only members of the highly tasty but poisonous sea robin, a family of scorpion fish, remained, along with the fish, sea eel cigar sauce , lobster.
Today, bouillabaisse often includes much more expensive fish, as well as clams and mussels that were never in the original recipe; we can enjoy the additions despite the implied disrespect to the original recipe. Even the searchcobine, the scorpion fish, is no longer an inexpensive fish now that it is supplied to fish markets and restaurants without spikes.
I
enjoyed bouillabaisse on the East Coast at an exclusive restaurant in Manhattan, New York, USA, and it wasn't traditional bouillabaisse either; and at the same time he did not pretend. The double claw lobster, shrimp and fish in the dish I was served would never be part of any traditional stew. The taste of the soup, obviously down to the perfect fish broth, together with the wonderful fish, was very close to the best I had in Provence, even the roulade was excellent; overall it was a wonderful bouillabaisse. Who am I to criticize a truly excellent bouillabaisse that has retained its essence; even if it has deviated from its home port.
You can buy a lot of fish in New York.
Charter of bouillabaisse Marseillaise.
At the Marseille tourist office I received a copy of La Marseillaise, the Charter of the Marseille Bouillon. The charter was written in 1980 by a group of three Marseillaises restaurateurs and was dedicated to preserving the traditional bouillabaisse recipe. The original three have since been joined by many others from France and other countries. They may not be able to ensure that every cook uses the same fish, but if they keep the flavor that's enough. While the Marseillaise Bouillabaisse charter insists on using the original fish where possible, it allows for the use of a number of different and more expensive fish and shellfish when the originals are not available.
On our Gourmet Academy website you can always find a classic recipe for any dish. Just like this recipe for the dish “Marseille Bouillabaisse (La vraie Bouillabaisse des Marseillais)” you can find with photographs. We have a video recipe, history, list of ingredients, Wikipedia, reviews and other useful information for each recipe. Learn how to make “Marseille Bouillabaisse (La vraie Bouillabaisse des Marseillais)” yourself at home, easily and simply.
Bouillabaisse in Norwegian
The peculiarity of this buaibes is that it is prepared with the addition of crab meat. Recipe layout - for 2 persons.
Ingredients:
- Sea fish fillet – 0.4 kilograms
- Carrots – 50 grams
- Fennel – 50 grams
- Crab meat – 0.1 kilograms
- Celery – 50 grams
- Onion – 50 grams
- Tomatoes – 50 grams
- Tomato sauce - one and a half glasses
- Olive oil – half a glass
- Salt, pepper - to taste.
Preparation:
Clean the fish and fillet it. Make broth from the leftover fish. Finely chop the celery, onion, fennel and tomatoes and fry over high heat. Add tomato sauce and simmer. Pour fish broth over cooked vegetables and simmer for 20 minutes.
Then add a fish stock cube, portioned pieces of fish and cook for 3 minutes.
Garnish the finished soup with pieces of crab meat.
Buaybes at the cinema
The creators of the TV series “Kitchen” once let it slip that it was according to this recipe that buaibes was prepared, which they liked so much that they introduced this soup into the script of the film and made it a hit for chef Viktor Barinov. For six servings you will need the following ingredients.
Ingredients:
- Egg yolks – 1 piece
- Saffron – 1 pinch
- Cayenne pepper – 1 pinch
- Wig 2 pinches
- Garlic – 3 cloves
- Olive oil – 100 milliliters
- Onion – 1 head
- Celery – 3 stalks
- Ramson – ½ bunch
- Carrots – 1 piece
- Parsley – ½ bunch
- Fish bones – 0.5 kilograms
- Peppercorns – 6 pieces
- Seabass – 0.6 kilograms
- Salmon – 0.5 kilograms
- Shrimp – 0.3 kilograms
- Shallots – 2 pieces
- Tomatoes in their own juice - ½ can
- Medium sized squid – 1 piece
- Baguette – ½ loaf.
Preparation:
Clean and fillet the fish. Clean the shrimp and squid.
Place bones, fish heads without eyes and gills, tails, fins, shells and heads of shrimp in a saucepan, pour 2 liters of boiling water and start cooking the broth.
When the water boils, add a peeled, uncut onion, chopped 2 stalks of celery, 1 carrot, wild garlic and parsley, peppercorns and cook for 40 minutes over medium heat.
Prepare vegetables. Cut the remaining celery, shallots and garlic into cubes. Heat the olive oil in a thick-bottomed saucepan, add the prepared vegetables and heat until the onion is translucent. Add tomatoes in their own juice and, stirring, cook for 2 minutes. Then strain the finished broth directly into the pan. Continue cooking over low heat for 15 minutes.
Cut the fish fillet into pieces, squid into half rings. Gradually add to the broth with vegetables. First salmon, then after 2 minutes - white fish, after 3 minutes - add shrimp, squid, cook for a couple of minutes and turn off the heat. Let the soup brew for 10-15 minutes in a warm place.
Preparing the sauce for the bread:
In a bowl, mix the yolk, cayenne pepper, paprika, saffron, and salt to taste. While whisking with a pastry whisk, add olive oil until it reaches the consistency of mayonnaise.
The baguette is cut into thin rings, sprinkled with olive oil and dried in an oven preheated to 200˚C.
Basil is used as decoration.
Rouille sauce
JK Rowling's Harry Potter book also mentions bouillabaisse. The recipe for its preparation was known to the house elves who set the table on the occasion of the three-mage tournament. However, they served the famous Provençal dish incorrectly. The magical bouillabaisse resembled “a bowl full of a stew of shrimp, oysters, clams and crab.” “Where is the rui?” – any Marseillean would ask. This sauce is reminiscent of the popular aioli, but even more delicious. Grind one yolk in a bowl with the following ingredients (a pinch of each): salt, paprika, cayenne pepper, saffron. Without stopping whisking, pour in half a glass of olive oil. Add it carefully, as in homemade mayonnaise, so that the sauce does not separate. The mass should lighten. You may need less oil - look at it. The consistency of the roux should resemble mayonnaise. In restaurant cuisine, this sauce is prepared with saffron threads, which are soaked in a spoon of white wine, lemon juice and Dijon mustard (1 tsp each).
Japanese buaibes
Although Japanese chefs are famous for their conservatism, they could not ignore the success of buaibes and offered their own recipe, taking into account national traditions.
Ingredients:
- Daikon – 35 grams
- Zucchini – 35 grams
- Chinese salad – 75 grams
- Onions – 75 grams
- Shitake mushrooms – 10 grams
- Shimiji mushrooms -7 grams
- Cilantro – 3 grams
- Miso broth – 400 milliliters
- Shichimi spices – 1 gram
- Tsuyu sauce – 50 milliliters
- Salmon – 50 grams
- Green onions – 3 grams
Preparation:
Cook a strong miso broth from dashi, tuna, kombu. Add red miso paste (4 tablespoons per 1 liter). Pour into a serving plate and add chopped vegetables and mushrooms. Season with spices and tsuyu sauce. Place a piece of salmon. Garnish with cilantro.
Buaybes in the style of "Fusion"
This is an original dish offered by modern French cuisine.
Ingredients:
- Lemon – 1/2
- Guinea rooster – 1 fish
- Sea scorpion – 1 fish
- Seabass – 1 fish
- Dorado – 1 fish
- Boramundi – 1 fish
- Large shrimps – 8 pieces
- Parsley, cilantro, basil for decoration
- Balsamic vinegar
Preparation:
Separate the cephalothorax from the shrimp and remove the shells. Clean the fish, removing the eyes and gills. Let it cook (up to 40 minutes). Bake the shrimp in the oven.
In a separate bowl, mix sliced and then finely chopped hard cheese, sour cream, and saffron.
Cut the baguette into thin slices and dry in the oven.
Place two large tomatoes, half a celery root, half an onion on a baking sheet, pour in olive oil and bake.
Place greens on a large plate. Then, starting from the edge of the dish, shrimp are successively laid on the greens, then boiled fish.
Place baked vegetables around the edges.
Drizzle with a little balsamic vinegar.
Sauce, broth, and bread are served in separate bowls.
Boisbes in Parisian style from master of French cuisine Auguste Escoffier
Gourmets and connoisseurs of buaibes consider this version of the famous soup to be one of the best. A recipe for 10 people is given from O. Escoffier’s bestseller “The Culinary Guide”.
Ingredients:
- Sea fish in equal proportions sea rooster, red mullet, flounder, whiting, conger eel - 2.5 kilograms
- Mussels, lobsters - as an auxiliary element
- Leek, white part – 50 grams
- Onion – 150 grams
- Olive oil – 300 milliliters
- Wine – 60 milliliters
- Pressed tomatoes, peeled and seeded – 300 grams
- Pressed garlic – 30 grams
- Butter – 40 grams
- Flour – 15 grams
- Pepper – 3 grams
Preparation:
Sauté coarsely chopped onions and leeks in olive oil in half the vegetable oil. Add 1 liter of water and wine. Season: 16 grams of salt, a pinch of saffron, a pinch of a mixture of Provencal herbs, add crushed tomatoes and garlic, pepper and cook after boiling over medium heat for 20 minutes. You can add fins, tails and fish heads, cleared of eyes and gills, to the broth.
Place pieces of fish, lobsters, and peeled mussels in a saucepan in layers. Pour in the broth, pour in the other half of the oil and cook over high heat for 15 minutes.
Before finishing cooking, thicken the buaibes with butter and flour.
Serve with Joko bread, previously soaked in broth and grilled. Just before serving, rub the bread with garlic. It is not cut, but broken by hand.
History of French bouillabaisse soup
The history of the famous French bouillabaisse soup has been known since the times of the Marseille sailors. At that time, the recipe for bouillabaisse soup was extremely simple. They prepared it in the most ordinary way, namely, the components of the fish soup were ordinary leftovers from their catch. Leftover shrimp, small fish, shellfish, etc.
An analogue of the well-known fish soup. But over time, the recipe for French fish soup went through a stage of modernization. From an ordinary soup for the poor, the dish turned into an expensive and exquisite culinary masterpiece. Ingredients such as lobster, scallops and other expensive delicacies were added to the composition. Initially, the first Marseille soup was prepared with pieces of bread, which is not typical today.
What is the secret of a delicious fish dish? In order to experience the true taste benefits of French bouillabaisse soup, you first need to have high-quality and fresh ingredients. The fish and all other ingredients must be very fresh. Moreover, one type of fish is not enough here.
For such a dish you need 5 varieties of different fish and seafood. This could be a conger eel, a sea rooster, or other representatives of marine life. In fact, there are many recipes for French fish soup. But what is the classic recipe for Marseille bouillabaisse soup?
Recipe information
- Cuisine:French
- Type of dish: hot entrée
- Cooking method: on the stove
- Servings:4
- 1.5 h
