Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [256]
The correct wine is a rosé de Provence, well chilled. Other rosé wines can be substituted.
NOTE A friend told me that the water by Marseilles is becoming so polluted that the fisherman’s Bouillabaisse, caught and cooked on the spot, is becoming impossible to contemplate with serenity…
BOURRIDE
Any firm white fish can be used; one alone, or a mixture. The ideal fish is monkfish, turbot or John Dory, but squid make an excellent Bourride as well. Saffron is occasionally used to scent and colour the soup, but the most usual flavouring is orange peel, one or two good strips of it, preferably from a Seville orange. The ailloli is used to thicken the soup. Croûtons rubbed with garlic are served with it, as with Bouillabaisse. Potatoes can be cooked and presented separately, or included in the soup.
Serves 6
1½–2 kg (3–4 lb) firm white fish or squid
2 large onions, chopped
1 leek, chopped
4 cloves garlic
2 tomatoes (optional)
500 g (1 lb) potatoes, sliced (see above)
bouquet of herbs: thyme, fennel parsley, bay
strips of orange peel
salt, pepper
ailloli*
12 slices French bread toasted lightly in the oven, fried in olive oil, and rubbed with garlic
Clean the fish and cut into good-sized slices. Put onions, leek, garlic, tomatoes, and potatoes (if included), into a large pot. Lay the fish on top, with the herbs, orange peel, and seasoning. Add 1¼ litres (2 pt) of water, or enough to cover the fish; stock made from head and bones of fish can be used instead for a finer result; in some places seawater is used. Cook gently for 10 minutes at simmering point. Remove fish, and potatoes, to a warm serving plate.
Boil the liquor hard to less than 600 ml (1 pt). Correct the seasoning. Then strain slowly on to the ailloli, in a large bowl, mixing the two together carefully. Return to a clean pan and stir over a low heat until the mixture thickens slightly. Pour over the fish, sprinkle with extra parsley, and serve with bread as above, and with potatoes if not included in the soup-making.
CACCIUCCO ALLA LIVORNESE, see p. 401.
CAVIARE & OTHER HARD ROES
Caviare is a grand and painful subject. It is one of the most delicious, most simple things to eat in the world (and one of the most nutritious, too, but that is an academic point). It is also one of the most expensive. It has an air of mythical luxury – mythical to our modern experience at any rate. The food of Czars, of those incredible tyrants who cherished fine fat fleas and Fabergé knick-knacks, while most of their subjects lived in a poverty of indescribable squalor. The mainstay, along with champagne and oysters, of La Belle Époque. Odd that the caviare trade should never have been so efficiently organized as now, under the Russians and their pupils in the business the Iranians.
Another odd thing: caviare isn’t a Russian word at all (it is called ikra in the former Soviet Union). It seems to be a word of Turkish-Italian origin, derived perhaps from the port of Kaffa, on the south-east coast of the Crimea, which had been important even in classical times. Under the Genoese, from the mid-thirteenth century, to the mid-fifteenth century when it fell to the Turks, Kaffa was a vast international port, a depot on the trade route to China.
The origins of caviare must be as difficult to trace as the word itself. Aristotle remarked that the sturgeon was prized for caviare. The Chinese had developed methods of treating and trading in caviare as early as the tenth century AD. Probably earlier, as they had long used refrigeration to protect delicate foods on journeys across China to the Emperor’s court. Edward H. Schafer, Professor of Chinese1 at Berkeley University, California, sent me this reference from the T’ai ping