French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [173]
‘Already, a league out, Bauzan’s still piercing eyes had caught sight of the little indicator buoy. Stop! Sailor pulled towards the buoy. We dropped anchor. Now, round a pulley and across the boat the long rope was coiled in, two metres at a time, and the baskets came out of the waves. After we had drained off the water there was a gurgling inside—sometimes, however, there was nothing.
‘It was I who had the excitement of undoing the catch which closed the lid. And there, in the bottom of the boat, multicoloured and sparkling and smelling good, lay the bouillabaisse; rascasses and canadelles, red mullet and gurnard and muggions [grey mullet] and other rock-fish whose names I no longer remember, but not forgetting the exquisite little favouilles [crabs] nor the eels, those viscous and slippery sea-serpents which Bauzan had taught me to catch with three fingers.
‘We returned by sail, in ten minutes, for we were hungry. On the shore, in the wind, Madame Bauzan had lit a great wood fire upon which, in a huge cauldron, a litre of olive oil was coming to the boil, with four sliced onions, as many cloves of garlic with, of course, salt, pepper and saffron, with a few tomatoes in the season, and two or three potatoes, not forgetting, for Parisians, a handful of flour mixed with a glass of water.
‘The mob of little Bauzans and their mother wasted no time in jumping on board, cleaning the fish and throwing it, all fresh as it was, into the saucepan, where the poor eels, cut in slices, went on wriggling in the boiling liquid. No more than a quarter of an hour’s cooking and the divine golden yellow bouillon was poured through a strainer over a mountain of large slices of bread, and the fish served separately. And then, my children, our stomachs hollow from the sea-voyage, we stuffed ourselves up to the neck!
‘Nowadays, I still feast sometimes on bouillabaisse—Parisian bouillabaisse. But in Paris, alas, the little crabs have to be replaced by mussels, the rascasses and the canadelles with a modest langouste, and so on. A makeshift, in fact. And it is a long time since I was ten years old, and Canet no longer belongs to us, and what has become of my friend Bauzan?’
PAUL ALEXIS:
Quoted in L’Art du Bien Manger by Edmond Richardin, 1913
AÏOLI
‘Provençal aïoli—dish of the farmhouse and the cabanon23—triumph of the Provençal kitchen, is composed of a garlic mayonnaise and an assortment, as varied as possible, of fresh vegetables cooked in salted water, white fish cooked in court-bouillon and cold meats.’
EUGÈNE BLANCARD: Mets de Provence, 1926
Aïoli is indeed one of the most famous and most beloved of all Provençal dishes. The magnificent shining golden ointment which is the sauce is often affectionately referred to as the ‘butter of Provence.’ With this wonderful sauce are served boiled salt cod, potatoes, beetroot, sweet peppers, either raw or cooked, carrots, a fine boiled fish such as a bream or mullet, hard-boiled eggs, sometimes little inkfish or octopus, French beans, globe artichokes, even little snails and perhaps a salad of chick peas.
The aïoli garni is, in fact, a Friday dish as well as one of the traditional Christmas Eve dishes; on non-fasting days the beef from the pot-au-feu or even a boiled chicken may form part of the dish: it then becomes le grand aïoli. It will be seen, then, that with all these different accompaniments, the aïoli garni is essentially a dish for a large family or a party of intimate friends, although personally I could quite well dispense with all the rest provided there were a large bowl of potatoes boiled in their skins and perhaps some raw peppers and celery to go with the aïoli. In a small country restaurant in Provence where I once asked, at short notice, if it were possible to produce an aïoli garni for dinner, it was too late for the patron to go out and buy anything specially, but he produced a handsome dish of ham