Fanesca Recipe
Fanesca is a traditional soup recipe from Ecuador. Its components and preparation vary from one region to other of the country, if not from one family to another. It is typically prepared and served only in the week before Easter. It is a rich soup, with the primary ingredients being figleaf sambo, pumpkin, corn, fava beans and twelve different kinds of grains, representing the disciples of Jesus, and salt cod, cooked in milk thickened with pumpkin seeds, due to the Christian religious prohibition against red meat during Holy Week (the week before Easter). It also generally contains hard boiled eggs, fried plantains, and sometimes empanadas. It is usually garnished with parsley and other native vegetables.
Cullen Skink Recipe
Cullen Skink is a thick Scottish soup made of smoked Finnan haddie, potatoes and onions. Lacking the traditional ingredient, any other undyed smoked haddock will suffice.
This soup is a local speciality, from the town of Cullen in Moray, on the north-east coast of Scotland. The soup is often served as a starter at formal Scottish dinners.
The name is not derived from Gaelic. The first element refers to the town of Cullen in Moray, skink is a Scots word for a shin, knuckle or hough of beef which has developed the secondary meaning of a soup, especially one made from these. The word skink is ultimately derived from Middle Dutch schenke “shin, hough”.
Cullen Skink appears in many traditional Scottish cookery books and appears on a large number of menus across Scotland. The soup is extremely easy and quick to make.
Cioppino Recipe
Cioppino is a fish stew derived from the various regional fish soups and stews of Italian cuisine. Cioppino is traditionally made from the catch of the day, which in the dish’s place of origin is typically a combination of dungeness crab, clams, shrimp, scallops, squid, mussels and fish with fresh tomatoes in a wine sauce, often served over spaghetti or other long pasta and toasted buttered bread, either sourdough or baguette. The dish is comparable to bouillabaisse, burrida, and bourride of the French Provence, and to cacciucco and brodetto from Italy .
It was developed in the late 1800s by Italian fishermen who settled in the North Beach section of San Francisco. Originally it was made on the boats while out at sea and later became a staple as Italian restaurants proliferated in San Francisco. The name comes from ciuppin, a word in the Ligurian dialect of the port city of Genoa,meaning “to chop” or “chopped” which described the process of making the stew by chopping up various leftovers of the days catch. At least one restaurant in San Francisco, the eponymous Cioppino’s, describes an apocryphal story in which the name derived from the heavily Italian-accented cry of the wharf cooks for the fishermen to “chip in” some of their catch to the collective soup pot.
Generally the seafood is cooked in broth and served in the shell, including the crab (if any) that is often served halved or quartered. It therefore requires special utensils, typically a crab fork and cracker. Depending on the restaurant, it may be accompanied by a bib, second possibly damp napkin, or a second bowl for the shells. As a variation, the “lazy man’s” cioppino is served with seafood shelled and crab legs cracked.
Bouillabaisse Recipe
An authentic bouillabaisse from Marseille. The fish and shellfish are served on one platter, the broth is served in a bowl with rounds of bread spread with rouille.
Bouillabaisse is a traditional Provençal fish stew originating from the port city of Marseille. The French and English form bouillabaisse comes from the Provençal Occitan word bolhabaissa, a compound that consists of the two verbs bolhir (to boil) and abaissar (to lower (heat)).
Bouillabaisse is a fish stock containing different kinds of cooked fish and shellfish and vegetables, flavored with a variety of herbs and spices such as garlic, orange peel, basil, bay leaf, fennel and saffron. There are at least three kinds of fish in a traditional bouillabaisse, typically scorpionfish; sea robin; and European conger; and it can also include gilt-head bream; turbot; monkfish; mullet; or silver hake. It also usually includes shellfish and other seafood such as sea urchins, mussels; small crabs; spider crab or octopus. More expensive versions may add langoustine. Vegetables such as leeks, onions, tomatoes, celery and potatoes are boiled together with the broth and served with the fish. The broth is traditionally served with a rouille, a mayonnaise made of olive oil, garlic, saffron and cayenne pepper on grilled slices of bread. In Marseille, the broth is served first in a bowl containing the bread and rouille, with the seafood and vegetables served separately in another bowl or on a platter.
There are as many recipes for bouillabaisse as there are families in Marseille, and local restaurants dispute which versions are the most authentic. In Marseille, bouillabaisse is rarely made for less than ten persons- the more who share the meal, the more different fish that are included, and the better the bouillabaisse.
A real Marseille bouillabaisse must include scorpionfish, a bony rockfish which lives in the calanque and reefs close to shore. It usually also has conge and sea robin. According to the Michelin Guide Vert, the four essential elements of a true bouillabaisse are the presence of rascasse, the freshness of the fish; a real olive oil, and an excellent saffron.
The American chef and food writer Julia Child, who lived in Marseille for a year, wrote: “to me the telling flavor of bouillabaisse comes from two things: the Provençal soup base – garlic, onions, tomatoes, olive oil, fennel, saffron, thyme, bay, and usually a bit of dried orange peel – and, of course, the fish – lean (non-oily), firm-fleshed, soft-fleshed, gelatinous, and shellfish.”
This is the recipe of one of the most traditional Marseille restaurants, Grand Bar des Goudes on Rue Désirée-Pelleprat.
4 kilograms of fish and shellfish:
* grondin (eng. sea robin)
* Rascasse blanche (eng. scorpionfish);
* rouget grondin (red Gurnard);
* congre (eng. conger);
* baudroie (lotte, or monkfish);
* saint-pierre (eng. John Dory);
* live octopus[5]
* 10 sea urchins
* 1 kilogram of potatoes
* 7 cloves of garlic
* 3 onions
* 5 ripe tomatoes
* 1 cup of olive oil
* 1 bouquet garni
* 1 branch of fennel
* 8 pistils of saffron
* 10 slices of pain de campagne (country bread)
* salt and Cayenne pepper
The Rouille
* 1 egg yolk
* 2 cloves of garlic
* 1 cup of olive oil
* 10 pistils of saffron
* salt and Cayenne pepper
1. Clean and scale the fish and wash them, if possible in sea water. Cut them into large slices, leaving the bones. Wash the octopus and cut into pieces.
2. Put the olive oil in a large casserole. Add the onions, cleaned and sliced; 6 cloves of garlic, crushed; the pieces of octopus, and the tomatoes peeled and quartered, without seeds. Brown at low heat, turning gently for five minutes, for the oil to take in the flavors.
3. Add the sliced fish, beginning with the thickest to the smallest. Cover with boiling water, and add the salt and the pepper, the fennel, the bouquet garni and the saffron. Boil at a low heat, stirring from time to time so the fish doesn’t stick to the casserole. Correct the seasoning. The bouillabaise is cooked when the juice of the cooking is well blended with the oil and the water. (about twenty minutes).
4. Prepare the rouille: Remove the stem of the garlic, crush the cloves into a fine paste in a mortar. Add the egg yolk and the saffron, then blend in the olive oil little by little to make a mayonnaise, stirring it with the pounder of the mortar.
5. Cook the potatoes, peeled and boiled and cut into large slices, in salted water for 15 to 20 minutes. Open the sea urchins with a pair of scissors and remove the Corail with a small spoon.
6. Arrange the fish on a platter. Add the corail of the sea urchins into the broth and stir.
Serve the bouillon very hot with the rouille in bowls over thick slices of bread rubbed with garlic. Then serve the fish and the potatoes on a separate platter.
Another version of the classic Marseille bouillabaisse, presented in the Petit LaRousse de la Cuisine, uses congre, dorade, grondin, lotte, merlan, rascasse, saint-pierre, and small crabs (etrilles), and includes leeks. In this version, the heads and trimmings of the fish are put together with onions, celery and garlic browned in olive oil, and covered with boiling water for twenty minutes. Then the vegetables and bouquet garni are added, and then the pieces of fish in a specific order; first the rascasse, then the grondin, the lotte, congre, dorade, etrilles, and saffran. The dish is cooked for eight minutes over high heat. Then the most delicate fish, the saint pierre and merlan, are added, and the dish is cooked another 5-8 minutes. The broth is then served over bread with the rouille on top, and the fish and crabs are served on a large platter.
Other variations add different seasonings, such as orange peel, and sometimes a cup of white wine or cognac is added.
A Bouillabaisse from Brazil
According to tradition, the origins of the dish date back to the time of the Phoceans, an Ancient Greek people who founded Marseille in 600 BC. Then, the population ate a simple fish stew known in Greek as ‘kakavia.’ Something similar to Bouillabaisse also appears in Roman mythology: it is the soup that Venus fed to Vulcan[citation needed].
The dish known today as bouillabaisse was created by Marseille fishermen who wanted to make a meal when they returned to port. They could not use the more expensive fish that they intended for the market, so they boiled the common rockfish and shellfish that they pulled up with their nets and lines, usually fish that were too bony to serve in restaurants, cooking them in a cauldron of sea water on a wood fire and seasoning them with garlic and fennel. Tomatoes were added to the recipe in the 17th century, after their introduction from America.
In the 19th century, as Marseille became more prosperous, restaurants and hotels began to serve bouillabaisse to upper-class patrons. The recipe of bouillabaisse became more refined, with the substitution of fish stock for boiling water, and the addition of saffron, brought by ship from the French colonies and ports of the Middle East and Asia. Bouillabaisse spread from Marseille to Paris, and then gradually around the world, adapted to local ingredients and tastes.
Three of the best-known restaurants in Marseille for traditional bouillabaisse are Le Miramar, on the Vieux Port; Chez Fonfon, at 140, Vallon des Auffes, and the Grand Bar des Goudes, Rue Desire-Péléprat.
The name bouillabaisse comes from the method of the preparation – the ingredients are not added all at once. The broth is first boiled (bouillir) then the different kinds of fish are added one by one, and each time the broth comes to a boil, the heat is lowered (abaisser).
This dish is used in an important plot point in the movie Our Man Flint. It is also mentioned in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Vichyssoise Recipe
Vichyssoise can be confused with its warm cousin Potage Parmentier. Its cold serving temperature is used for comedic value in entertainment. For example, in the 1992 movie Batman Returns, Bruce Wayne is surprised at its temperature, saying “It’s cold!” to which his butler, Alfred responds that “It’s supposed to be cold.” Similarly, on an All in the Family episode, Archie Bunker’s neighbor brings over a dish of vichyssoise for dinner. Before tasting it, Archie brings a spoon up towards his mouth, blowing on the soup to cool it, and then remarks as he tastes it, “Boy, this soup is cold, and I hardley blew on it at all!” On stage, in the Broadway Musical Nunsense, the convent’s cook, Sister Julia Child-of-God, made a breakfast of vichyssoise soup that killed 52 of the nuns with food poisoning. The soup’s influence is not limited to the comedic, however, as Chef Anthony Bourdain lists vichyssoise as the catalyst of his lifelong passion for food, telling of a transatlantic voyage on the Queen Mary at the age of 9, when he first discovered this “delightfully cool, tasty liquid.”
Vichyssoise, Bon Vivant, and botulism
On July 2, 1971 the FDA released a public warning after learning that a New York man had died and his wife had become seriously ill due to botulism after eating a can of Bon Vivant vichyssoise soup. The company began a recall of the 6,444 cans of vichyssoise soup made in the same batch as the can known to be contaminated. The FDA discovered that the company’s processing practices raised questions not only about these lots of the vichyssoise, but also about all other products packed by the company. The effectiveness check of the recall had revealed a number of swollen or otherwise suspect cans among Bon Vivant’s other products, so FDA extended the recall to include all Bon Vivant products. The FDA shut down the company’s Newark, New Jersey plant on July 7, 1971. Although only five cans of Bon Vivant soup were found to be contaminated with the botulin toxin, all in the initial batch of vichyssoise recalled and part of the first 324 cans tested, the ordeal destroyed public confidence in the company’s products and the Bon Vivant name. Bon Vivant filed for bankruptcy within a month of the announcement of the recall.