BOUILLEBAISSE
Bouillebaisse is my favorite dish. I make it according to the recipe of Valentine Blanc, our cook in Nice, where we lived some years ago. Valentine could neither read nor write, nor could a story tell, but her Bouillebaisse was ever so much better than that they make in Marseilles (and I venture to say in Thackeray’s old restaurant either).
Melt about a half pound of butter in a sauce pan. I’m aware that in Marseilles they use oil, but Valentine used butter. Don’t let the butter burn. Have ready two large chopped onions—i. e.—onions chopped fine, and two “dents” of garlic also chopped fine.
Cook these in the butter until tender and without burning. Have ready three perch and one haddock. That is to say: cut off the heads and tails. Some people use eels instead of haddock. I detest eels. Cut into a large saucepan the heads and tails of the fish with about a quart of water and let simmer until well cooked, say about half an hour. Strain out the heads and tails and give them to the cat.
Add the cooked onions and garlic,—butter and all—to the strained bouillion from the heads and tails and allow to simmer for half an hour more, after seasoning to taste with salt and white pepper. Add about a gill of dry white wine of any variety,—Chablis, Cotes du Rhone or what not,—the cheaper the wine the better. Now take two smallish lobsters, alive, and if you have the heart, cut them into segments and take off the claws and cut them into segments. Cook the massacred lobster for about a quarter of an hour in the liquid or liquor or bouillon above described and add a saltspoonful of dried Spanish saffron, while the whole is cooking together. If you can get mussels, cook also with the entire mess, a dozen or so,—in their shells if the shells be well scrubbed in advance. Somewhere in this process add about a tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Last of all, add the fish cut into convenient slices rather small, and let cook until done, but not long enough so that the fish becomes disintegrated. Remember there ought to be no violent boiling.
Before serving strain off most of the liquor and serve it first as soup with a slice of toast in the bottom of the plate. If the toast has been fried in advance in good butter, so much the better, but this is not necessary. Then eat all the solid part except the shells and sop up all the remaining gravy with bread, using your fingers to do the job and not a fork. Don’t leave a bit of it.
There ought to be enough of this stew for four people, but I can usually manage the whole thing myself with only the slightest assistance from my wife. Wine ought to be drunk with the meal, a good Burgundy Beaune or Chambertin. Later one should eat an artichoke cold vinaigrette, then some fruit and cheese and two small cups of well made black coffee. After this it is necessary to smoke a Corona Corona not too mild, and drink a small glass of Cointreau Sec. The bread ought to be Pain Riche in flutes. The fruit may be fresh apricots, a few green almonds and perhaps some green gages.
The coffee ought to be drunk and the cigar smoked in the garden which must be in the vicinity of Mount Boron on the Grande Corniche or it may be in the Parc Imperial. God ought to be thanked either during or after the meal, and when it becomes a little too cold in the garden a fire should be built in the small living room and one should read Somerville & Ross’ Recollections of an Irish R. M., or Neil Lyon’s Simple Simon, or Belloc’s Path to Rome, or Richard Ford’s Gatherings from Spain until bedtime.
Repeat the whole process on the following Friday.
God! How hungry I am.