We visited Provence this past summer with friends from home and the only complaint I have about that trip is my disappointment in bouillabaisse. Although it is not a surprise that this region would be represented by fish soup, I was not enthusiastic about making it.
Jen in my practical class had introduced the concept of “presales”, that being convincing someone in the school into receiving your cooked meal. As we sat in the demonstration, I complained to my Parisian classmate, Annick, about my disdain for bouillabaisse. She was aghast that I would dislike such a classic dish so I offered her my soup post practical. So, I sold it to her. I promised to cook it as best I could and then it would hers for the taking. She agreed and it was done deal.
I did briefly wonder if I was making a mistake. After all, perhaps the Cordon Bleu recipe would be outstanding and I would have slaved over fileting three of the ugliest fish in the ocean only to give away my soup.
Bouillabaisse must be made from fish from the Provence region or else it is not bouillabaisse it is just fish soup. When we arrived in the practical none of us could believe the size of the fish let alone the razor sharp fins. The first fish is called a scorpion fish and as the name suggests, scorpion fish have a type of “sting” in the form of sharp spines coated in venom. Lucky for us the fish monger cut off the long spines leaving only the rock hard dorsal fin to remove – which took some doing with the kitchen shears!
John Dory, also known as St. Pierre, is a coastal marine fish with olive-yellow body which has a large dark spot and long spines on the dorsal. The dark spot is used to flash an ‘evil eye’ if danger approaches the John Dory! Big and ugly – I’m surprised anything wants to eat it let alone humans.
The last fish is eel which Chef Ju warned might contain worms. At some point she strode over and began poking my eel with my fileting knife and then proclaimed to have found one. This is the point where all of the women began to scream in horror and refused to cut up their eel. I secretly think she was just having us on but not one of us was up for deworming the eel. “Leave it in or out” she said, “I won’t taste the eel anyway.”
Tales from my plate 