Thinking about this issue's food feature, I contemplated a main dish with more panache than the last, that ordinary fried sole, but a bit less than that boeuf in aspic dish, clearly a two day affair. Leafing once again through the two beautiful Proust cookbooks, I found myself fixated upon a glorious dish from the French Mediterranean, so good that it impressed the most pretentious Parisians in the Belle Epoque: bouillabaisse.
Bouillabaisse, pronounced somewhat like booy-uh-bess, is a rich broth swimming with a variety of seafood. It is a visual feast as well as a gustatory one, a riot of colors and shapes. The soup itself is made yellow with saffron, dotted with the bright red of tomato, and garnished with a sprinkle of bright green over shellfish of black, red-orange tinits, and pearly-gray, and of course, the fish which is predominantly white. Twiddling with the presentation, I rested salmon-colored shrimp upon the black mussels for a stunning effect.
Both cookbooks, Dining With Proust, and Dining With Marcel Proust, come from writers of another continent, one on which fishmongers are apt to have other wares. Some of the fish listed in their choices of ingredients are virtually impossible to find here, even in the exotic markets of Chinatown, like John Dory or conger eels. Fortunately, both recipes lists numerous choices in five or six different categories; I made the bouillabaise shown here, in the drawing by Dean Gustafson, with clams, mussels, scallops, prawns, crab, sole, red snapper and halibut. My own fishmonger took my order and shook his head. "You're going to have a nice dinner tonight," he said, and he was right.
According to both recipes, much of this process can be done well in advance, leaving the last bits of preparation right before serving. In retrospect, I wish I'd done it this way, but didn't; the total preparation time, including scrubbing the clams and mussels, deveining the prawns and washing and chopping the other fish was about an hour and a half, and I only made a half-recipe.
According to the directions in Dining With Marcel Proust: A Practical Guide to French Cooking of the Belle Epoque, you must get six types of fish: 1) firm white ones, or filets of sole or flounder, 2) eel, 3) squid, 4) red mullet or snapper and 5) and 6) two kinds of shellfish. I personally can't deal with cooking eel, because the dead, long things look too much like snakes, even though they taste great when someone else cooks them, so I didn't stress about not finding them. I also left out squid, even though it is possible to buy it conveniently stripped of its gross innards these days, but I'd already eaten squid twice that week. A foodie snob might have chided me for these omissions, but would have enjoyed this bouillabaisse anyway.
Clean the fish, scraping Clean the fish, scrubbing the shellfish free of external skudgewomp, and rinse it well. Cook the mussels and clams in a covered saucepan over medium heat for 5-10 minutes, until they open; lobster and crab should be boiled in salted water for 20 minutes, cooled and cut into pieces. Throw away any clams or mussels that didn't open, and reserve the cooking liquids.
To make the fish stock, add the wine, thyme, bay leaf and reserved liquids (or fish bones covered with water) to a pan; boil, then cover, simmering for 45 minutes.
Pour boiling water over the tomatoes and let them sit for a minute, then skin and seed them, and chop them into 1/2" chunks. Chop the whites of the leeks roughly, and the onions and fennel finely. Cut the remaining fish in 2" pieces.
Heat the butter and oil in a large pan, add onion and fry over medium heat without browning for 10 minutes. Add the leeks and garlic and cook for another 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes, fennel, citrus peels, wine and stock (strain stock well to get out all the sand, bones and other unsavory bits.) Season with salt, pepper, two pinches of cayenne and the saffron.
Bring the soup to a boil; add the fish, beginning with the kinds that need the most cooking. Boil for 2 minutes, during which the oil and water will amalgamate, then add the rest of the fish and cook for 10-15 minutes. I may have omitted squid from this dish, but I have cooked it often enough to know , if you decide to use it, that it should be among the last additions; it may have a rubbery quality, but less so if not overcooked. Serve in bowls garnished with a bit of chopped parsley, and French bread on the side.
This recipe says that the French bread can be fried in butter or rubbed
with garlic and toasted, two lovely ways to gild the lily, especially here
in San Francisco where the climate makes for perfect French bread. I have
heard that a superb Parisian restaurant has bread flown in from San
Francisco daily. This may be apochrypha, but well deserved.
It is advisable to use a good dry white wine in this recipe; only a small amount of it goes into the bouillabaisse, and the rest makes a fine beverage with your dinner. You can buy a cheap white swill for cooking wine, but unless you frequently cook with it, you will have a large unpotable remainder taking up space in the refrigerator.This half recipe makes four first course servings, in the European culinary style, or a hearty dinner for two Americans, best accompanied by a simple green salad with vinaigrette.
