Fish stew roughly in the style of provence

This bouillabaisse recipe 

It's a rainy day — let's make one of the most delicious broths ever

And I think you can make it a little more reasonable for the modern kitchen if you reduce the amount of expensive and often not particularly sustainable seafood and really just focus on the vegetables. It's a good use of fresh tomatoes that have flaws in them. But you could certainly use canned tomatoes. First I'ma use this pepper to make the rouille, which is the spicy aioli traditionally slathered on the toast that you have with the stew. I have found so many radically different recipes for rouille — recipes from the south of France — so if anyone gets mad that what I'm doing isn't traditional, well, there is no one tradition. Some recipes call for roasted red pepper, like a romesco sauce, and I have one so that's what I'm doing. Just burn the outside black.

You can do that under the broiler. While that cools I'll prep some other stuff. Some recipes call for breadcrumbs in the sauce, so I'll try that. Some recipes tell you to put some hot fish stock in the sauce and the bread would serve as a thickener in that case. I'm not going to do that because I'm not making a standalone fish stock. Every recipes calls for some garlic. I'm using a lot. Now that I can handle it, I'll scrape as much burned skin off of the pepper flesh as possible.

This is a slightly spicy pepper. If it wasn't I would add some cayenne or something. And the reason I'm chopping stuff before it goes in the mortar and pestle is, A) to make it easier for me to grind, and B) it's tough to break down individual plant fibers when you grind, so it's good to cut the fibers short. A pinch of salt for flavor and abrasion. Some almonds because I have them and some recipes call for nuts, like a pesto. And you could certainly do this in a food processor. I just kinda enjoy bashing it. Time to start emulsifying in the olive oil, little by little.

Between the mucilage in the pepper and everything in the garlic there should be plenty of emulsifying power here. I'll just get in as much oil as it seems like it'll take until it's nice and creamy and then finish with some lemon juice or vinegar to taste. That's beautiful. But look at it like an hour later — totally broken. You can see why lots of recipes also call for egg yolk, the most powerful and stable emulsifier available in any traditional kitchen. You just gotta bash it really hard to build the emulsion over again from scratch but there it is and there it shall stay. Make yours however you want. I just wanted to give you some ideas.

The soup base will always have some form of onion. I'm using leeks today. I like leeks, but they tend to be filthy on the inside.

Cut them in half and then look

— tons of dirt between the layers up near the top.

I'll rinse those out inside before slicing. I'll stop when I get to the fibrous greens on top but. I will save those. Same deal with leek #2.

Gotta wash the inside – they grow up up through mud. I'll get those softening gently in some olive oil, and then work on the fennel. You could use celery instead of fennel or in addition to. Save the fronds for garnish at the end, cut the bulb in half and slice thin. It's very dense and hard — gotta get it thin. In with the leeks. Super not necessary but I'm gonna do an artichoke, mostly just for flavoring the broth. All of these outer leaves I'm gonna use for flavor and then remove later.

The only part I'm actually putting in the soup is the heart. Before I dice it I'm gonna wash off my board that has the hairy choke all over it. Those little hairs get stuck in your throat. Now dice up the heart and put that in. I'ma do some more fresh garlic, and when everything seems reasonably soft I'll dump in some water. If you have good fish stock, use that. I don't. But I'm gonna make my own right now with this very cheap, boney little white fish they had at the store.

I don't even remember what it was called. It's been gutted, but that's it. It still has its scales and its head and bones and that's what I want. I'll cut off the head. If I can fillet off some chunks of actual meat, I will. I don't care if. I do a pretty job, which I definitely won't. It's just gonna be chunks in the final stew, so cut that meat off of the skin.

That's fine, but it's not what I'm really here for. I'm here for all this good stuff which I'll jam into some cheese cloth, or this was sold as a "soup sock." With the fish I'll put some bay leaves and the artichoke trimmings and all the other veg trimmings that I can fit in. Tie it off and there is my stock bomb. Just enough water to submerge, simmer for like a half hour and we will have a fish soup with tons of flavor and body. Meanwhile I can prep my tomatoes.

You know I usually don't bother skinning them.

But it is traditional and we already

Have a boiling pot of liquid right here, which is all you need to skin tomatoes.

You just boil them for a minute until the skins split, take them out again, and the tissue right under the skins will have melted to the point where you can just slide the skins off.

Cut off any tough stem ends or other bad bits and then just hack at them a little bit to keep the final chunks small, and then in the soup. Some people sauté the tomatoes up front with the onions and everything but I prefer to add them like halfway through. I want to preserve some freshness, at least when I'm using fresh tomatoes. Oh some people use potatoes too, but I don't like what they do to the texture. They make it gritty. About a half hour later this is looking like soup. I'll fish out my fish ball, drain out out the goodness and discard. The deep seafood flavor from just that one little head and skeleton is incredible and the gelatin we boiled out of the bones and skin gives amazing texture.

Time for some final flavors. Lots of traditional recipes call for some dried orange peel in the stock. I don't ever have that so I'm just using the zest of a fresh orange and I don't see any reason to not also use the juice. I love the combination of orange and tomato and I need a little last minute brightening. I'm using this instead of some white wine. And because I have it, I'm throwing in some saffron, but that's totally unnecessary. You could just use a little paprika if you want a color boost. Throw in some salt, taste and adjust as necessary.

I've got a minute to slice up this baguette — on an angle looks prettier, if you care. Toast those under the broiler. And right before it's time to eat I'll cook the fish. In go my little white fish fillets, such as they are. Nestle those down and they'll be flaking apart in minutes. And the only other seafood I'm doing is a couple handfuls of mussels — super cheap, super sustainable, they contribute a ton of their own flavor to the broth, even if you had no fish stock at all. For a special occasion maybe I'd do the whole traditional array including some kind of crab, some kind of cephalopod, some sea urchin or whatever. But with one set of bony fish scraps, it's amazing how deeply this already tastes of the sea, so I'm good.