Bouillabaisse — Frenchy fish stew with croutons and rouille

This bouillabaisse recipe is sponsored by Squarespace. It's a rainy day. Let's make some fish stew, roughly in the style of Provence. 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'm gonna use this pepper to make the roux-y, 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 roux-y, 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 gonna do that because I'm not making a standalone fish stock. Every recipe 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. That's 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 the 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 I'll finish with some lemon juice or vinegar to taste. That's beautiful. But look at it 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 number two. Gotta wash the inside. They grow 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 for flavoring the broth. All of those outer leaves I'm just 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 that hairy choke all over it. Those little hairs get stuck in your throat. Now dice up the heart and put that in. I'm gonna do some more fresh garlic, and then when everything in the pan 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, bony little whitefish 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 the meat off 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'm gonna jam into some cheesecloth, or this was sold as a soup sock. With the fish, I'll put some bay leaves, and the artichoke trimmings, and all of the other veg trimmings that I can fit in. Tie that 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 saute the tomatoes up front with the onions and everything else, but I prefer to add them like halfway through. Wanna 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 kinda gritty. About a half hour later, this is looking like soup. I'll fish out my fish ball, drain 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 from the bones and skin and everything 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 from 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. 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 whitefish 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 would do the whole traditional array of some kind of crab and some kind of cephalopod and some kind of 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. When the mussels have opened, it's time to eat. Traditionally, you fish the fish out again and serve them on a separate platter, but whatever. Get a bit of that fillet. Again, to me, the main event is the veg and the broth, which you can soak up with your toast smeared in spicy garlicky mayo. Some people even put that at the bottom of the bowl and then spoon the broth over top. If you're new to mussels, I think the best way to eat them is to just pop off the top shell, scoop up some broth, and slurp it down with the meat. Unbelievably delicious and pretty easy, though not nearly as easy as Squarespace. I could have easily built a whole website in just the time when that soup was simmering. It's easier now than ever because everything is drag-and-drop. You can reposition elements in the template around that grid, and separately for the mobile version. And if you have any kind of hospitality business, you gotta think about TOC from Squarespace. Reservations, event tickets, to-go sales — all in one solution that integrates right into your Squarespace site. If you need to let your people register for general admissions events or normal restaurant reservations, takeout orders, even wine sales, TOC has a way to do it, and it's all from Squarespace, so it slides right into your Squarespace site. But Squarespace can help you sell anything at all, including physical products like my custom chef knife, which should be going back on sale on my Squarespace site very soon. Stay tuned. Mess around with your own site for free, but when it's time to pay Squarespace to publish and host your site, or to buy a custom domain name, save yourself 10% with my code RAGUSEA at checkout. Thank you, Squarespace. And thank you, Bouillabaisse. I am missing the sun and the sea, and you taste like both.