Bouille bouille bouillabaisse

The humble soup dish. This version is really frugal, made with fish leftovers that some people would discard and cheap veggies. The meal is still gorgeous. That’s the magic of the kitchen.

With fish heads and bits they don’t use for sashimi. Keep away the cuts with meats on them.

The first step is to make a soup by simmering the unusable parts with onion, garlic, herbs, tomato, salt, a little olive oil. Then passing gives a light broth. Blending, then passing gives a thick fish soup.

2 batches of fish soup to stock in the fridge.

Reheat soup with potatoes, more veggies, herbs, garlic…I’ve added paprika, red bell pepper, saffron.

Add the fish at the end.

It cooks quickly.

Fish and veggies make the main dish. And the first dish is this scarlet soup :

Petits farceurs – Joking veggies

Les petits farcis. Fancy stuffed and baked Summer vegetables. Delicious hot as meal. A delight cold, with an aperitive drink . Children love them.

Among millions on variations : tomato, bell pepper, zucchini, with beef, rice, egg, rosemary, the inside of vegetables, a few bread crumbs…

Stuffed :

Baked :

Chou-fleur à la tapenade – Provence on cauliflowers

Cauliflower with the Provençale sauce tapenade.

Tapenade is a classic paste or sauce from the South of France. I don’t know how popular it is over the world. You can see some ready to use in jars. Making yours is very easy.

It is made by pounding, or blending pitted black olives, with a little garlic, anchovy, lemon juice (a little) and olive oil (a lot). I added herbes de Provence.
You can use it as a dip for raw veggies, as a topping for bread, or like here for hot veggies.

Take a nice cauliflower.

Steam the blossoms.

Add a few cherry tomatoes.

Bring the tapenade.
Enjoy ! It’s simple and delicious.

Soupe de poisson provençale, and sunset on Osaka-ko

Provence’s simple fish soup. Sunlight is minimal these days, the indoor photos… ahem. So in compensation I put you a few outdoors. Osaka-ko, the port of Osaka, to go with a fish dish.

First I made the bouillabaisse.

For the broth, these fish :
mame aji (mini jack mackerels)
With garlic, tomato paste, herbes de Provence, olive oil, onion and potato. I passed it and served the onion and potato.
I was left with the cooked small fish and garlic cloves. Well, it’s easy : I added water, more tomato paste, salt, a little chili pepper, a little paprika, and I mixed with the plunging mixer. I simmered a few minutes, then I passed it again with a chinois (sieve conic like a Chinese straw hat), or any other sieve.

That’s the way to make the simple soupe de poisson with fish too small for other recipes and the parts you don’t use from big fish. That doesn’t cost much in ingredient. No wonder is a favorite offer of restaurants on the Cote d’Azur, they make great profit on it. And they are not alone as many jars of soup, ready to be reheated are sold. When I was a kid, that was a favorite dinner for us. Mum would open a jar for the 3 little piglets we were, and that was a party.

Prepare the eating props :

Rouille sauce. Recipe here.

Cheese (in France, it’s often shredded gruyere, here…that one that melts), and toasted bread. You can rub a cut clove on raw garlic on it, if you want.

Guests add rouille and cheese as they wish …

The steamy hot soup is poured on the bread, and eaten immediately.

Cal 468.4 F22.0g C39.4g P28.7g

Did you know that the initial meaning of “soupe” was bread ? Because “souper” had the meaning of eating bread in Middle-Age. Then, bread was a hard thing, that was systematically covered by broth to make it softer. Later the broth became the soup…