Ultimate Bouillabaisse | All of the detail - Adam Byatt *

I'll be getting a chair. Okay. Ready? So today we're going to make a stew, but a stew with a big difference. This is bouillabaisse. One of my absolute favourite things to cook. It's got process, it takes time, you've got to get involved, you've got to connect with it. But it is a fantastic thing once you've finished it. The sharing value of this is incredible. Stick around. This is bouillabaisse done properly. So this dish does require rather a large amount of ingredients, but stay with me on this. This is essentially just a mixed box of fish. You can ask your fishmonger for a box of fish that's going to be suitable for bouillabaisse. So second grade fish really. These are little whiting. We've got some red mullet, second grade here, a few mussels, a few clams, and that's some smaller monkfish tails, and a few oysters from Mersey. A bit of saffron, spices are the usual trinity here. The coriander, the fennel seed, and the star anise. We've got some lovely seasonal greens to finish with, and this is agretti, or monk's beard, to finish with. Vegetables wise, we've got some potatoes to turn, we've got some fennel, some carrots, some celery, a bit of orange, a bit of tomato, and lovely tarragon and chervil that both fit into the lovely stock. Passata. We've got perno, we've got white wine, and we've got a little bit of brandy. And that essentially, with a little bit of water for the stock, is the essence of bouillabaisse. Okay, so for a bouillabaisse, you're basically making an elongated fish stew. Making a fish soup, and then we're going to use that soup in which to cook the fish. So what I tend to do is ask my trusty fishmonger, in this regard it was the wonderful guys at Flying Fish. So thanks, Jodie, for this fish. But this isn't first rate fish, this is almost like second grade fish that you wouldn't be serving normally as a filleted fillet of fish. What you need to do is just fillet it off, and then what you're really after, what's super important, is the bones and the frames of this fish, because that's what's going to make our fantastic soup. So just pull off all the fillets first, and this is the stuff that's going to give us our incredible soup. I'm just going to get this pan warming up over here. That's a couple of monkfish tails, just have to take that black skin off, like so. This is not supposed to be a sort of fish filleting class, but ultimately you're getting a bit of a two for one here. That I'm not going to use for my soup, because it's kind of bitter and leathery. I'm going to cut those in two, like tronchons of monkfish. That's a nice way to do that. Use my scissors to cut these fins off the top. Use that I will keep, that I'll cut into two, and it'll make sense later. So cut those into small pieces, because we want chunks of fish that are going to take a little bit of time to cook in our stock, and give us a nice robust finish. But we need them big enough that they've got enough time in the stock to cook properly, if that kind of makes sense. That's a bit of whiting, and one fillet of that will probably be enough, and the rest of this I will chop up for our soup. A bit of whiting in there, and we're going to start with a whole load of olive oil. So this is sort of just normal cooking olive oil, not extra virgin olive oil, just Evo we call it. We've got all this bones and frames and everything going on here, that's what's going to make our soup. Careful when you put it in, because it will splash back, and that goes in like that, and this will make you the most incredible soup. Just get that in there, and then I'll let that go, and I'm basically going to finish all this, all the rest of it's going to come into play in a bit. Have you got some fish pliers for me lads? So anything goes in there, all the fish trimmings goes in there nicely. I'm going to colour that up, nice big pieces like that, and then we just need to take the pin bones out of this fish as well, so I want big pieces like that, and I'll get all the pin bones taken out of that, and I'll wash this fish as well, and just rest it in the fridge. It's starting to come together now, we're starting to get a bit of a pile of nice fish now, we can give all this fish a little wash, and then Adam will very kindly take all the pin bones out, because that's how nice he is, so we'll give all this a little wash, and there we go, there's our pieces of fish now, it starts to look a bit more presentable, it's all a messy job that fish filleting business, but you know, it's got to be done, that's how it rolls. Let's get in here Sam and have a quick look at what's going on, look what's going to happen here is, the fish is going to stick to the bottom of the pan, and that's actually absolutely fine, I'm okay with that, because it's going to create a kind of caramelisation and a browning that we want, so watch this all cooking down, keep the temperature high, there's a lot of moisture in that fish, and it will bleed out, but you want it to kind of catch a little bit, which sounds an odd thing to say, but it's important, and all that is just bundles of flavour, and I'm getting really big smells of roasted fish bones and red mullet, and all those lovely oils that come out of things like red mullet and gurnard and stuff like that, so gurnard is a really good fish for this too, this is the perfect, interesting family sharing meal, or perhaps something for a dinner party, but equally, that's exactly what we've served at the restaurant, many, many, many times over the years, and I'd still continue to serve it because I love it. So, let's have a little recap where we got to, we started with this kind of mixed box of fish, and we've ended up with all the bones being cooked down in a lovely pan of olive oil, nice big robust pan like this Hestan pan here, so we've got the heat retention in the pan, super important, do you know why I love these pans Sam, the rivets, can you see the rivets on these pans, can you zoom in on these rivets, where they're completely closed off, so absolutely no gunk or food stuff can be hidden behind the rivets, and that is the rarity with these pans, I love that about these pans. So in here we've got, ended up with the fish cut into really decent sized portions that are all going to cook at the same time, they've got a few bones in there but Ad's going to take those out because you don't want to see me do that. Over here we've got some clams, we've got some mussels and we've got some oysters. Let's keep cooking this sauce down, beautiful, look at that, that's stuck on the bottom, that's exactly, oddly enough, that is exactly what I'm looking for. Okay, what's going to happen next is to get some veggies sorted, let's turn that off now, just turn the heat off and leave that right there. We've got an orange, odd but an orange, we've got a head of garlic, we've got a bit of fennel, very important, we've got an onion, we've got some carrot, a bit of celery, nice and simple. So, what's important here, we're just cutting a standard mirepoix, this is only going to cook for about 40 minutes, so you've got to think about that when you're cutting the mirepoix, if you start cutting this veg huge, it just won't cook in 40 minutes and you'll be left with a kind of a raw veg feeling. So just cut this veg in sensible pieces that are going to cook in that time. Cut that garlic head in half, cut the fennel, probably half of that fennel is enough actually, so I just like to, and all this veg will get blended with everything else at the other end, so the whole thing actually has got a really vegetal feeling to it, the whole soup, it's really nice. So in goes the celery, I love making this at home, it's really quick and easy and we've always made it in the restaurant as well. That goes in there now. Right, in goes a couple of peels from an orange as well, about 4 peels from an orange goes in there now. Right, we've got a couple of other real fun bits to go in there, the trinity of spices, so we've got star anise, coriander and fennel seed and a few black peppercorns, that's 4 I know, but black peppercorns are standard. They all go in there now. We've got some saffron that goes in there too. Saffron is optional, it's really expensive and I understand if you don't want to use it at home, I use it because we can at work and you should use it in there, I think it's really important but if you don't use it, it's not going to be the end of the world. Ok, get everything in there now, it's all sat there beautifully, remember it's stuck on the bottom, give it a really good mix and then just do yourself a favour, stick a lid on this, leave that for 5 minutes, what's really important that's going to happen now, veggies are going to bleed out, steam is going to happen and all that sediment on the bottom that we really need for this soup to become layered and deep and delicious, that's all going to come off the bottom of the pan and we can re-roast again. Ok, so that's had a good 5 minutes now with a nice sealed lid on there, so what should happen is all that sediment on the bottom should now effectively start to come off, so if you just give it a good stir and you see that Sam, all that sediment there, that's the stuff I'm talking about, that's the flavour there, so look, if you just give it a little bit of movement now, it all just comes off, A, because the pan's great but B, because that method of cooking, just popping the lid on, popping the veggies in, popping the lid on and then just leaving it for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it takes, doesn't matter but if you can get that sediment off, you want to end up pouring this soup out of here with a clean base of the pan, then you know you've maximised the flavour, it's a small detail but you know, as we know, all good things are made up of good small details. So, let's go back on now, get some serious heat in there because we need to roast the veggies and we need to roast those spices and we need to get the saffron working before we start adding the liquids and the alcohols. So we need to go in with the strongest liquid first, that's obviously brandy, so let me go in with that brandy, I don't need to flame the brandy, it's not a lot of brandy, it just goes in, it's going to cook out really quickly. The next strongest alcohol, which is important, you go in this order, will be Pernod. I think Pernod is absolutely critical to this dish. So in goes the Pernod, cook that down. Only once the Pernod's cooked down, do we go with the white wine. So in goes some white wine now. The white wine is adding layering and it's adding acidity and it's adding a little bit of depth and it's giving us some liquid. In goes some orange, now only half the orange, the other half I'm going to save for the end to almost freshen up my soup. So just half the orange at this stage because it gives us that real nice freshness and citrusy feeling. Let's save the other half for the other end of the soup. It's such an exciting thing to cook because it's got, you have to stay with it, you have to stay present, you have to stay in the moment, you have to stay connected to the dish, there's always something else to do. It's not like three hours to cook, so it means that you're always with it and you're always adding something else and feeling it and smelling it and being a part of it. I think it's such a joyous thing to cook. I'm going to add a little bit of salt at this point because this ultimately is a finished soup at the end. So we've got to have enough salt in here now that the whole thing doesn't want seasoning at the end because it will just, it's just got that raw salt feeling, you don't want that. So get that salt embedded in. Okay, this is feeling, why does it look, you know, it's got to look for a radio right now this thing. However, this will turn into something absolutely delicious. This here is passata, not too much, we don't want this to turn into tomato soup. So a little bit of passata and then all I add to that now is water. For me there's enough flavour in all those bones to make ourselves the most delicious soup. So that's it, a little bit of water, how much water, kind of you want it to be thin enough. You have to remember that when you blend this it's going to thicken. There's also going to be a little bit of reduction happens as we simmer now for 40 minutes, maximum simmering is 40 minutes now, just to cook those veggies out, get all the flavours out of the bones and then we're going to just blend the whole thing. So a good thing to do is have a little taste now because you feel it like that now, I'm getting slightly raw vegetables, I can feel the wine, I can feel the tomato, I can feel the orange juice, I can feel it's quite watery. Feel it now, then you, when you taste it after 40 minutes you will really know the impact that those 40 minutes of amalgamation have had and you will understand it and you'll know when to stop cooking the bouillabaisse. Okay so there's two fantastic garnishes that go with this dish as well and it's really important we get those done now while the soup's cooking, fish is resting before the next stage starts. We're going to make some lovely turned potatoes, we're going to cook them in a saffron water. So that's just seasoned water with saffron being cooked in and I'm going to poach the potatoes in that, they're going to finish in the soup at the end. The other thing is a little crouton with some roux. I'm not going to do that in the video now because it's just going to take the whole timing too far, but ultimately a nice piece of crouton bread with a nice potato saffron garlic roux. But I will do the potatoes for you. So all I'm going to do for that is just top and tail these large potatoes, cut them into four. I'm going to turn these potatoes but ultimately you could just make balls of potatoes or you can just use simple small new potatoes if you want, but if you want to do it properly then you want to turn potatoes. I guess I'm doing it because I can rather than because I need to. So all I'm going to do for that is just trying to create some little potatoes that are all going to have a sort of similar barrel shape size to them. It's going to add to the aesthetic of that overall bouillabaisse at the other end and they're all going to cook at the same time and that's really cute and nice. A nice potato cooked in a fish soup is an absolutely beautiful thing. So remember it's called a turned potato because you turn the potato as you're cutting it. So I'm basically turning the potato not the knife and that's how we're ending up with this sort of barrel shape. You either have a desire to want to do these or you think I'm absolutely bonkers and I don't mind either way. I'm always just going to do me. While I'm doing this and I've got your attention, I'm sure I haven't, I hope you've got a nice cup of tea to hand. There's only one thing I ever want from these videos from you guys. I hope you get tons out of it. I hope you cook them. I hope you love the channel and what we're trying to do here. I love doing them so I think it's great. There's only one thing I do really want is a little like and a little subscribe. If you're not subscribed to the channel there is some fantastic stuff coming up this year. Some of the recipes I've got organised, some of the podcasts that are coming up are off the charts and there is a couple of recipes coming up in the spring that are going to be absolutely incredible. There's also the launch of a brand new restaurant that I've told no one about and that's going to be launched on the channel here. So if you want to see all that happen, do yourself a favour, get subscribed, it costs nothing. Don't send you any notifications, it doesn't annoy you and really, really helps the channel. Thank you. Genuinely how this works, I just cook the stuff that I want to cook that I think works on the channel and gives us a really nice base. It's kind of my happy place. It gives the restaurants a kind of repertoire of food to refer back to and I think it also hopefully provides a little bit of safe haven and reference point for the younger industry to come in the industry now and see that this is how you cook food properly and where this sort of food comes from. So maybe in 25 years to come, when I'm gone doing something completely different, people will still be referring back to these videos of how you cook Weeabos. Or maybe they'll all be just in the bin, I don't know. Right, there's our potatoes, seasoned saffron water and I'm just going to give those a little simmer just to cook them. I'm going to cook them about 90%, not all the way, certainly don't want them soft. Az, would you do the honours? Thank you very much. And if you wouldn't mind making those lovely croutons, that would be fantastic. Okay, so that's about as, I'm going to turn that down, that's about as fast as I want that ever to go. Can you see this on the top there, this foam that's coming up? Essentially that is the blood and impurities. Don't be tempted to skim that off at this moment, it is tempting, but if you leave that in there, there's a moment we're going to get rid of that, but it's not now, because at the moment that's bringing flavour to the whole thing. So keep going with that right now, remember 40 minutes. Okay, that soup is 15 minutes away from being finished. I just need to add a little bit of fresh tomato. I don't add it in the beginning because I don't want the tomato to be completely sort of soft and draw out all of its richness, I want the tomato to bring freshness. So I'm at this stage, 15 minutes before the end, and they add a real level of acidity and balance some of that richness, I think is really important. So they go in there now, at that stage, and they're just going to cook, that's going to finish the last 15 minutes. This is going to be fantastic. If you want to be an absolute weapon about this, let's taste it again. Look, we're 15 minutes out now, I'm now getting rich roasted bones, fish, getting the saffron, I'm getting the orange, but the whole thing is harmonised in such a way that you can really feel it coming together. But there is still a rawness, there's still a I'm not quite cooked yet feeling to it. So let's keep going. I know I'm kind of fascinating over this soup and generally speaking in my day to day work life, I'm making this soup while I'm making nine other things at the same time and I'm popping back to it. But if you're making this at home, you've got the opportunity to really lean into it and absorb the detail, understand it, connect with it and when you make it again, it will become like second nature, you will understand it. Another thing I'm going to add to that is a little bit of chilli, just needs that warmth, needs that heat, I think it misses that. So I'm going to put a little bit of chilli in there as well, a little bit of red chilli. I can always take it out if it's too warm. We're going to pop that in there now. Okay, so this soup has had just over 40 minutes now. I'm going to just final taste, a little bit of salt. Other than that, everything is cooked, I can feel it. There's balance, there's harmony, I'm getting fish first, then I'm getting vegetable and spice and orange and water at the back. I know it sounds really technical but ultimately that's when I know how to stop and when to stop a sauce like that. So that's done. Best part comes next, all of this gets blended, the whole thing, all the bones, all the spices and the chilli. The side is going to go in there as well. The star anise, everything is going in, nothing is getting taken out. It's all getting blended. I'm going to make us the most fabulous soup. You need a flask blender like this because it does need a bit of robustness to it. You need a nice stop lid on and be careful because this is hot obviously. So we turn it down before we turn it on, remember? And then this is like a stick that basically moves everything around. Give that a really good blend. Okay, we then need to pass that through a fine sieve, that's important. While we're passing that through, we just get another batch going on. Just use a ladle to push that through. We'll end up with a kind of gubbins in here but that's done its job, remember? All that stuff left in there has given its flavour over, it's completely superfluous now and we're only interested in what's left in the bottom there which is basically flavour town. There's the last bit of that soup. This particular pan has an easy pour lip on it so we don't get any dripper over there, see that? Have you ever thought of that, where you make a pan that you can pour out of and don't get any drip back? Bloody clever, that's why I love these pans. Right, Sam, if you come in here, so that soup has been blended, passed, now put back on the heat and what's happening now, can you see all this? This is all the fat and the impurities coming up to the surface and we just use this lovely Hestan ladle which is rather nice and sexy and we just use that to push the ladle down into the soup so it comes to the surface and we can just lift off some of that foam. That foam is essentially just fat, impurities, blood from the fish, that kind of thing and we can lose that because we don't need that and we just want to bring this soup up, tidy it up, just the seasoning, reduce it slightly, not too much. I think this is honestly one of the most exciting things you can make as a chef, just going or as a home cook or in an environment. It's a difficult thing to replicate in a restaurant environment because you need to have the soup ready, you need to have all the fish portions and then you have to cook it all in. There's a lot of pre-prep that's got to happen with this. So there's our soup now, can you see that? It's got a kind of, what I would say is like a single cream consistency. That's kind of almost what I'm looking for. I'm just going to reduce it down for a bit of intensity. I'm just looking for it to be a little bit more intense than it is now, flavour wise I mean, not richness but that single cream consistency. The smells I'm getting from this are incredible. I've got my fish ready, I've got my potatoes ready, I've got my pam ready to build this in and we're looking like we're good to go. Let's have one final taste and remember that orange juice, that's got to come back in here. None of this is going to hurt you by the way, any of this skimmings. I just want to make this the best version of it I can. Right, let's have a taste. Sam, it's so balanced and gentle and soft and giving and elegant, which it shouldn't be considering how rustic that pan looks right? It's beautiful isn't it? Really, really delicious and elegant. The chilli's not too overpowering, the orange is there. So I am now going to add that little bit more orange juice in there. I'm going to add a tiny bit more salt, I'm going to add a little bit of olive oil. It's going to give us a nice kind of cloying-ness to it. And that's it. For me, it's finished. I would serve that now as a fish soup but I'm going to now use that to make our bouillabaisse. It tastes creamy and fatty and buttery. The richness and the fat from the fish has done that. That's what's brought that, the richness from the fish. Unbelievable. That is a beautiful thing and we literally haven't turned the camera off. There's been no camera hiding here. This has been a one-take thing. I've made this in the real time that you've seen it. We've cut out two or three minutes perhaps but literally it's in the time that you've seen now, I've gone from fish to something that would categorically give you the biggest food hug ever. Right, now I'm going to use this really big pan I've got, I've made rather dirty. So this is a big oven-proof pan, it could be a roasting tray. This is my favourite roasting tray, it's from Hestan and it just gives me enough opportunity to sort of present in a wide fashion, bake in the oven. It's really robust as well, so super useful. Okay, so into that pan first of all is going to go our bouillabaisse soup. This is how I do it, it's not classical but it's how I do it. Then we get to put all of our lovely fishes in there as well. They've all been pin boned remember as well, washed, cleaned, all nice, that pieces of monkfish in there. It's not going to take very long to cook at all. Let's do a bit of whiting. What's this feeding? Maybe four, four to six people maybe. To be fair on a good day I'll probably smash this myself. Right, those potatoes, remember 90% cooked, not all the way cooked through. They're going in, they're going to join the party. Look how yellow they are now, they've taken on all that flavour of the saffron. They're not the most perfect turn potatoes I've ever done but it's more for the look and feel. I wanted to create a dish that was kind of celebratory. The team have all come back from Christmas and New Year now, they're all busy prepping and cleaning and deep cleaning and sorting the restaurant out. This is the perfect day and I'm going to use this for the whole team to have a little lunch feast. I mean it's not going to feed all of them but they're going to get a bit of a taste of it. So in goes the potatoes. Right, there's the potatoes, there's all my fish in there now, you can see all that happening. And then I'm going to put some oysters in there too now. They're going to go in there, like that. They're going to open in there and we'll open those up later and finish the dish. So I'm sort of cramming it in, cramming those oysters in. These shells have been washed by the way, that's really important, you don't want any grit in there because you're going to eat this soup at the end. So nice oysters, washed oyster shells in there. And then one more if we can, over here. Beautiful. Right then, the only things we've got left now, we've got these mussels and clams and the incredible agretti, that monk's beard. So these things here are going to go in at a later date. This is going to get about, I'm going to say about 10-12 minutes of full cooking. So after about 8 minutes, I'm going to come back to this in the oven, lift off the cartouche, turn over the fish, add in the rest of the bits and pieces, the clams, the mussels, the agretti and give it another 5 minutes just for this to cook as well. That's the kind of process. What a joyous thing to cook. Wow. Where is my, I've made a cartouche, obviously. Right, there, cartouche goes on. I'll pop a spoon on there because I've got very powerful fans in my ovens and the cartouches blow away otherwise. That's going to go in the oven now at 180 degrees, like I say, 10 minutes. I'm going to check it, do some turning over and then add the rest of my bits to it. Let's go get that in the oven. How's that? Cool. Sick. That's cool. Taste this soup. I made literally, literally 30 minutes, made soup and now I'm just going to cook all this stuff. Yeah. Creamy. Creamy. Nearly cooked. Perfect time to add the shellfish and make sure the shellfish is in the liquid. That's important. Jamie boy, what do you reckon? You know what it is? Bouillabaisse. Bouillabaisse, yeah. Very classic, traditional bouillabaisse. Oysters. Oysters in there, yeah. Right, back in. Thank you, sir. See you in five minutes. Thanks a lot, Eric. Thank you very much, Mr G. Okay. Right, there she is. What an absolute dream boat that is. So that goes, I mean, to be honest, you just put that in front of your friends, you step back, do one of these, then have a glass of wine, right? That's kind of how it works. That's an impressive thing. But what we can do is just plate one up and make it look really lovely and show you how we would do it in a restaurant because that's nice. Then the rest of this is just going to be a gift for my lovely team who've come back from Christmas and do things. So let's plate one up. Look, we just give a nice piece of monkfish on there. Beautiful. It's not a massive portion, this particular thing, but lovely piece of red mullet. Let's get a bit of the whiting. That'll be quite nice. Alex, could you just, you got an oyster knife there? Actually, I don't need one. I actually don't need one. I'll show you. Look, look at this, Sam, look. You can just lift the oysters out and they would have popped now, you see. You just lift the top off and that can sit there like that. Mussel. Probably best to make that on the half shell. We're going to do it. Same with a couple of clams. Make that on the half shell again. Ooh, don't like that. Let's find a piece of whiting. There we go. That's what I'm talking about. A little bit of potato there. Another potato and I think it's quite nice. They're nicely cooked now, the potatoes, which is good. A little bit of that lovely agretti as well. The monk's beard, quite saline and salty. What this needs over here, Sam, this is like a rouille. It's a garlic, potato-based garlic crouton. I'm just going to give that a little grate of fresh orange on there. I think that's really nice. If you were a chef in these days, you'd put some fennel pollen on there or something like that. That's what they all like. Me, not so much. Then this is obviously the key. There's the soup element and we're just going to finish that with a little olive oil and that there is my very tidy, absolutely delicious. I wonder if that's more enjoyable to make than it is to eat, but it is an incredible thing to eat. Listen, I've seen lots and lots of bouillabaisse on the internet, people making it very different ways and I get that and that's absolutely fine, but this has been the staple of how I've always made that in my Michelin-starred restaurant. For me, that is how you make a bouillabaisse. Come and have a little tuck in. This one's for you, chef. Thanks very much. This one's for you. Come and have a little eat. What are you going for? I think you will like it. Try it. Yeah, try it. Maybe take a small bowl if you want or just get involved. Come and have a go and happy new year and welcome back, boys. Here we go. Big, big 26 in front of us. Is it good? Old thing to eat for breakfast, isn't it?