How To Make A Real Tasty French Fish Soup

Welcome back everyone, welcome back to the French Cooking Academy. Today we're looking at how to make a real french soup in the bouillabaisse style. Now let me warn you it is not an easy recipe, it's a bit long-winded but if you have the time it is just absolutely worth it. Look at all of these ingredients on the side, I'm gonna go through this but without further ado let's get started and let's learn how to make a real french fish soup. Now a lot of time people ask me is there really one dish that stands out for you? Is there really like that one dish that you love cooking? What is your favorite french dish? Well if I'm looking at this I can tell you that I'm getting super excited because this or the french fish soup in the bouillabaisse style has to be one of my all-time favorites. Now the first thing in order to make a real fresh french fish soup you need to have rockfish. Look at this, this is australian fish, this is a red gurnard, bottom feeder, school wading and I even have a fillet of rockling. Now if you live in America or other countries make sure that you get the fish that are bottom feeders or live on rocks. You don't want to use this kind of ocean fish because you won't get the same flavor. Now for the ingredients it is just an explosion of flavors, three different types of fish. I've got the full Monty, onion, garlic, shallots, tomato paste, paprika, saffron threads, star anise, thyme, parsley, fennel, celery, carrot, I mean leeks, olive oil and we're even gonna make an aioli or a roux sauce with toasted bread. This is the full Monty guys, let's go for it and let's see how we make that beautiful dish. All right guys so little reminder like always you have to cut your vegetables and aromatic herbs and cut your fish meats before you start cooking and this is what I've done here. Now the french fish soup goes in two parts. First part you have to make a fish stock from scratch. You don't have to if you don't have time you can buy from the shop like a good quality fish stock but for my recipe I'm gonna make everything from scratch. So this is what you see here so basically on that side this is all dedicated to make my fish stock. I've got the fish bones and I've got a mirepoix of carrots, onion, shallots and a homemade bouquet garni. A mirepoix if you forget where it was it's basically a rough cut from one centimeter by one centimeter in size. On the other side these are all the aromatic herbs I'm going to use to make the actual soup once the stock has been made. So I'm not going to show you how to make the stock because there is a video already on there. I will put the link in the video description because that's easy and we're going to start the recipe straight off at the soup stage. So let's get started. Okay guys so let's start that fish soup. So as you can see here I've got everything set again. In the background here I've got that fish stock I've made you can't see it on the camera but it's ready and it's ready to go. Now first thing we're going to have we take the pan we put this on a medium to high heat and I'm going to use some olive oil actually you know a decent amount and make sure it's nice and heated up. You don't need to have it too too strong and I'm going to start by basically putting all my aromatic mix in there. Okay bouquet garni. Now that's another style bouquet garni you can get. You can make it from scratch. This is the type you get from a supermarket. And I'm going to add some lovely star anise. That's always really good. A pinch really a pinch of paprika. A bit of salt and pepper maybe two pinches is good. And I'm going to start to have this vegetable mix sweat in my pan for approximately five minutes. So I'm just going to stir everything and let it sweat for five minutes. Perfect so four minutes later I've been stirring my mix it looks more or less the same and now it's time to add your fish. Take all of your fish. It's very simple. So this is remember the meaty part of the fish. Now so make sure oh sorry something went flying over there. Make sure it's nice and blended and you got a nice combination of colors. Always colors are important. Okay you got the bouquet garni in there and you got everything. When this is done you can basically add your stock. I'm using just one liter of homemade stock. Maybe you can see. Let's see it in the camera that I've made earlier because I'm only making a soup for four people. You can multiply the amounts if you want to make more. Okay so I've got my fish stock in and this is not finished. When we're here we're gonna put some garlic which is the crushed garlic. I've removed the germ in the middle. So all my garlic there's four cloves. I'm gonna add a good spoon of tomato paste or tomato puree and of course the vital ingredient this. This is saffron threads. It's actually coming from a flower and it's gonna give you that amazing amazing taste. So a good amount of saffron. Okay when this is done you make sure you mix everything well. Okay and everything is mixed. Basically you're just gonna leave it on a high heat until it boils and let it cook for around 30 minutes. So while the soup is cooking we're gonna prepare a sauce that goes with the soup and it's gonna be spread over the toasted bread. It's called an sauce rouille or aioli in a rouille fashion. This is what we're gonna do. It's a kind of a mayonnaise that's very a bit tricky to make. So I don't expect anyone to make this. You can replace it. Just buy some stock mayonnaise in a shop. Good quality mayonnaise and you can add some crushed garlic. A little bit of cayenne pepper and maybe a bit of paprika to give it some color and that will do as well. If you want to go through this I'm just gonna quickly show you. I'm taking four cloves of garlic. It has to be really pressed in a very thin way. I'm going to use two egg yolks like a mayonnaise and I'm going to just start mixing everything. The garlic is going to add as the agent that's going to kind of bind everything together. Okay from here I'm gonna add a bit of salt and pepper. A hint of cayenne pepper or pepper sorry. And this is lemon juice if infused with saffron threads. The equivalent of half a half a lemon. So from here you're gonna start stirring. You get like a mayonnaise. You get your base going exactly the same way. And the exception is now that you're gonna add olive oil which is never never used in a mayonnaise. But this is the only exception. This is the only sauce you basically make. So you're gonna be making this like a mayonnaise. I've put also a link in the video description on how to make the standard mayonnaise. It's exactly the same process. So you keep on stirring basically until you're gonna get a nice and thick mix. So when it's done this is what you're supposed to get. It's very thick. It's like a mayonnaise. It's a bit yellowish. If you want to have it with a bit more color what you can do is add a little bit of paprika powder. Not too much because it's dry. It's fine. Now let me tell you that an aioli is not a mayonnaise. Okay. And it will not be to the taste of many many people. It's very garlicky. It's got a bitterness to it because garlic is a little bit bitter. Olive oil is a bit bitter. And it's very very strong in terms of garlic. So big warning over there. But this is how it looks like. It's a very nice typical French sauce. Okay. So our aioli sauce is done. By the way you have to reserve it in the fridge. Don't leave it outside. And my soup is now ready. I'm going to turn off the heat. It's been more than 30 minutes. And this is the result. Let's have a look. Nice color. Look at this. This is nice and rusty. And this is the color that you want to have in that theme. And that bouillabaisse is a rusty color. Now from here guys we're almost done. We're gonna basically take out the bouquet garni and all the hard bits. Meaning just these two little things. The star anise. Now some of you may wonder why did we use twice the fish. You know why the fish head and why this kind of meaty part of the fish. Now the reason is because now the next step is that we're gonna have to blend all of that soup with a hand blender and then pass it through a sieve and put it back in the pan. And because there's no hard bone it's gonna be a very easy process. I'm gonna do that in the back in the background and come back when it's all done. Everything has been filtered and this is the result. Look at this nice color. And of course if you wonder French soups are usually quite liquid. People are not used to that in other countries. They won't like this thick soup. This is normal. Like a watery kind of soup. But trust me the taste is just amazing. I'm just gonna taste it again. Whoa this is really really good. Well last step we're gonna use now this rockling fillet that I had. Because I know still it is called a fish soup. So what we're gonna do. We're gonna put some nice fresh fish fillet with no bones because this is the modern version of the soup. And we're not gonna use this whole fish with a lot of bones. So basically the last step consists of putting all of your fish all of this fillet in the soup and wait until the fish is cooked. And then it will be ready to serve. While this is cooking it's going to take another 15 minutes. I've cut some bread here and that I'm going to put in the oven on the tray. And I'm going to dry the bread. You're not going to roast it. I'm going to leave it in the oven for 10 minutes to make it nice and crispy. You're also going to need to grate some cheese. Usually like a cheddar cheese or anything like that. And we're going to be finally ready to serve. And that's it guys. After all this time and all the preparation we're finally ready to serve our fish soup. So as you can see I've got my bowl. My bread is ready. This is the aioli sauce we made before. And I've got some grated cheese on there. So basically you would have to have this like in the south of France somewhere on a terrace. It's nice and hot. And you're going to really enjoy that you know fish soup by the sea. Because this is usually where you have this kind of soups you know. It's really by the sea. The Mediterranean Sea and everything like that. So I'm just going to add Look at these pieces of rockling. Nicely done. And that's it for the soup. But what makes that soup so interesting. It is basically you have to eat it with these little pieces of bread. And the way you eat it. Once you get this soup. You take a bit of your aioli. And you're going to spread it on one of the breads. Like that. And you make a little toast. And then on top of that you take a little bit of grated cheese. And you're going to make a little layer. And then plunge it. And let it float on your soup. And you can repeat the process. Just have the aioli. Have a little bit of the cheese. And you just have this kind of croutons that are floating around in your soup. And it's absolutely gorgeous. Now let me show you exactly how I'm going to taste it. Because after all this work. Basically we'll dip it in. Like that. You can even take a piece of the fish on your bread. And off the camera you're going to go. So that's it guys. To finish I'm just going to add a little bit of that. Make it look nice and presentable. But this is basically a kind of a fish soup. Bouillabaisse style. The same way as you would get it in France. Now I'm off for the day. I hope you enjoyed the video. It was a bit long-winded. And I'll see you next time on the next show. Goodbye.