How To Make French Bouillabaisse, Part 1

Hi, I'm Tanya Steele, Editor-in-Chief of Epicurious.com, and you're watching Around the World in 80 Dishes. Today, we're exploring the cuisines of France, particularly southern France, and one of the most famous dishes from France, bouillabaisse. I'm here with my friend, Chef Lynn Deliati. Yes, very good. Yes, okay. From the Culinary Institute of America. And you're gonna show me how to make bouillabaisse, which is essentially fish stew. It is. Is that right? It's a fisherman's stew, and it was originated in Marseille, down in the south of France, and it's sort of an everyman's dish. So, and we're gonna show everybody out there that it really is an everyman's dish, and they can make it too. Because you can essentially use almost any fish that's local. Sure, whatever you find that's fresh. The key ingredient is fresh fish. Whatever you find is the freshest. We do have some lobster today that we're gonna throw in, just to be a little decadent. But- What kind of fish is here? We've got red snapper, we've got turbo, and we've got monkfish. Ah, and all of those are actually Mediterranean fish as well. So this is a very typical bouillabaisse. Yes. So the first thing we're gonna do with the bouillabaisse is we're gonna make a rouille. And we've got just crumbled breadcrumbs in here. And we're gonna take garlic cloves, and cayenne pepper. And then we're going to mash this up with the mortar and pestle. Now, if you don't wanna do it with a mortar and pestle, if you want, can you just use a immersion blender or a food processor? Food processor would probably be best. Food processor is good, but whatever you can find. But this is the traditional way. In Provence, they always use a mortar and pestle. Yes, and you can get a smaller one at home. You certainly don't need this giant beast. If you can just hold that for me, I'll work that around. And you'll see that the breadcrumbs start turning red from the cayenne. And everything, after it's broken down a little bit, then we're gonna put in some of the broth from the bouillabaisse and some olive oil. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put in some broth first, just to soften up the breadcrumbs. Gonna mash that about, let it sit for a little while. And the broth is from the fish stew that you've already made. A lot of people make this at the end. Yeah, a lot of people make the rouille at the end. We're just gonna do it now. Because we're doing it the traditional way, I want the breadcrumbs to soften up, and the longer it sits, the better it tastes. Can you see the French lady sitting on the dock doing this? I can, I want to show everyone at home how beautiful that is. It's kind of like that nice, red, chunky color. Now this is kind of soft, and what we're gonna do is we're just gonna drizzle a little bit of oil into it. A little bit at a time. Extra virgin olive oil? Extra virgin olive oil. And this is kind of adding it, making it emulsified to kind of bring it all together? just like you would a mayonnaise. But you have to make sure you do it nice and slow. So now I've got this nice, emulsified mixture. I'm gonna put a little salt in here. A little bit of pepper. And this is actually gonna thicken the soup. I'm gonna put the soup into the bowl. This rouille is actually gonna flavor the soup and thicken the soup. So if you can see what this looks like on the spoon. Oh, it's so beautiful. It's nice and thick. Yep. And it smells really good, too. It smells incredible. It smells really garlicky. Yeah, you have to like garlic. Who doesn't? Which I do. Who doesn't? So we're good, so. So we're gonna let that sit. We're gonna set this aside, and then we're gonna make our fish soup.