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By Root 2207 0

a couple of dozen of the very small spider crabs they call favouilles. In your earthenware or copper soup-pot you heat a few tablespoons of olive oil, and in this you melt the sliced white part of 2 leeks or an onion, adding a couple of chopped, large, ripe tomatoes, 2 cloves of garlic, a sprig or two of fennel and of parsley. Then you put in all your fish and let them take colour before adding a good 3 pints of water, a seasoning of salt and pepper, and a good pinch of saffron. Let all this cook together about 15 minutes, then put the whole thing through a fine sieve lined with a muslin or cheese-cloth, so that none of the little bones can get through into the broth. Pound the fish a little with a wooden pestle so that the very essence gets through into the broth. Return the broth to the saucepan, see that the seasoning is right (the soup should be rather highly spiced) and in it cook some short, chunky pasta, about lb.

As soon as the pasta is cooked, serve your soup very hot, with grated Parmesan or Gruyère cheese separately if you like.

POTAGE DE POISSONS À LA NÎMOISE

NÎMOIS FISH SOUP

Durand, the famous Nîmois chef, gives the formula for this soup in his book Le Cuisinier Durand, published in 1830. It is enriched with eggs and, at the last minute, with a mixture of aïoli, the garlic mayonnaise of Provence—in fact it is a Languedoc version of the Provençal bourride.

Ask your fishmonger for 2 or 3 cod or halibut heads; he will probably sell them for quite a small sum, and they are good value, containing plenty of white flesh, and their gelatinous quality gives body to the broth. Other ingredients are an onion, a carrot, and a couple of large leeks, 2 large tomatoes, a clove of garlic, parsley and whatever other herbs you happen to have available—tarragon, fennel, lemon thyme, plus olive oil and seasonings. For the thickening of the soup you need egg yolks, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil.

Slice the cleaned vegetables and melt them in 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large soup-pot. When all the vegetables, including the tomatoes, have softened, put in the fish heads, and the herbs tied together in a bunch. Cover with 3 to 5 pints of water. Add a tablespoon of salt. Bring slowly to the boil, and thereafter simmer for 30 to 40 minutes. Strain the broth, and separate as much flesh from the heads and bones as possible. There will be about 2 good cupfuls, and this is set aside for another dish.

For 3 pints of broth, which will amply serve six people, beat 6 egg yolks—these are Durand’s quantities; I find 3 or 4 quite sufficient—with a little lemon juice and a ladle of the hot broth. Add this mixture to the broth in the saucepan and stir until the soup is quite hot and has thickened, but do not let it actually boil. Off the fire, stir in 3 or 4 tablespoons of aïoli, which is prepared by pounding a clove or two of garlic in a mortar, stirring an egg yolk with it, and then adding 4 or 5 tablespoons of olive oil, exactly as for a mayonnaise. Serve your soup as soon as the aïoli is added.

I commend this soup without reservation to anyone who likes garlic. For those who do not, the alternative is to cook 2 or 3 tablespoons of rice in the strained broth, then add the egg yolks as above, and a good deal of extra lemon juice. This makes a soup similar to the well-known Greek avgolémono (egg and lemon), usually made on a basis of chicken broth.

LA SOUPE AUX MOULES

MUSSEL SOUP

Having scraped and cleaned about 4 pints of mussels, put them in a saucepan with a couple of chopped shallots, a little garlic and chopped parsley and pint of water or pint each of white wine and water. As soon as the mussels have opened take them out, shell them, and filter the liquid which comes from them, together with that left in the saucepan, through a cloth.

Heat a little olive oil or butter in your soup saucepan and in this melt the white part of 2 leeks, a couple of skinned tomatoes and a little piece of garlic, all finely chopped. Make up the filtered mussel liquid to 1 pints with water. Add this to the vegetables in the saucepan.