Cuisine Category

French recipes

Food Category

Key Ingredient

Bouillabaisse recipe

Back to search results

Created by Angela Nahas

Add a comment

Enlarge text

Rate this recipe

Cuisine: French
Serves 8

Ingredients

2 whole sand whiting (soft-fleshed), cleaned
4kg whole fish*, cleaned
3 john dory fillets (firm-fleshed), skin on, cut into 6 pieces
4 (about 800g) thick blue-eye trevalla* fillets (firm-fleshed), skin removed, cut in half widthwise
125ml (½ cup) olive oil
2 leeks, thickly sliced
2 onions, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled
4 thyme sprigs
2 dill sprigs
5 parsley stalks, leaves picked and chopped
5 black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
3 strips (about 5cm) orange peel
1 pack (0.5g) saffron threads
4 ripe tomatoes
2 blue swimmer crabs, cleaned*, quartered
Toasted baguette slices, to serve

Rouille (garlic and capsicum sauce)
2 slices white bread, crusts removed, torn into pieces
2 large red capsicums
4 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp sweet paprika
60ml (¼ cup) olive oil

View conversion table

Preparation

Remove and reserve head and tail from whiting and cut each body into 2 pieces widthwise. Remove fillets from whole fish, reserving heads, tails and bones, and cut each fillet into 2 pieces. Place all fish on a large plate, separating firm-fleshed fish and soft-fleshed fish. Refrigerate until needed.

Heat 60ml oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan over medium heat. Add leeks, onions and garlic, and cook for 5 minutes or until leeks and onions are softened. Stir in thyme and dill sprigs, parsley stalks, black peppercorns, bay leaves, orange peel and saffron. Add 3.5L water and reserved fish heads, tails and bones, and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 45 minutes. Strain, discarding solids, and reserve 2L stock.

Meanwhile, bring a large saucepan of water to the boil. Cut a small cross in the skin at the base of each tomato then blanch in boiling water for 20 seconds. Remove from water and refresh immediately in a bowl of iced water. Cool, then remove skins from tomatoes and discard. Cut tomatoes into quarters. Remove and discard seeds, then chop flesh.

To make rouille, place bread in a bowl with 2 tbs reserved stock. Stand for 10 minutes to soften. Using tongs, hold each capsicum directly over a gas flame, turning until blackened all over. Transfer to a bowl, cool slightly, then rub off charred skins. Carefully cut open capsicums (juices will still be hot) and discard seeds. Roughly chop flesh and process in a food processor with garlic, paprika and soaked white bread to a paste. Gradually add oil until thickened. Season with salt and pepper.

Place firm-fleshed fish and crabs in a large, heavy-based saucepan with remaining 60ml oil, chopped tomatoes and remaining reserved stock over high heat. Bring to the boil and cook for 5 minutes. Add soft-fleshed fish and cook for a further 5 minutes or until fish is just cooked and crab shells turn bright orange. Remove pan from heat, season with salt and transfer seafood to a serving plate. Pour bouillabaisse into a soup tureen and scatter over chopped parsley. Serve with seafood, rouille and toasted baguette.

Photography by Brett Stevens.

*Choose a mixture of firm- and soft-fleshed fish such as red rock cod (firm), red snapper (firm), moonfish (soft) and ocean perch (soft).

*Blue-eye trevalla is often labelled as blue-eye cod at fishmongers.

*To prepare crabs, break off tail flaps on the underside and discard. Cut each crab in half lengthwise, then carefully pull off the back shells and reserve. Remove the ‘dead man’s fingers’ (soft gills) and discard, then rinse and discard the stomach sac.

If you enjoyed this Bouillabaisse recipe then browse more French recipes, soup recipes, seafood recipes and our most popular hainanese chicken rice recipe.

French Restaurants

Displaying 10 of 470 French Restaurants.

	Restaurant	Book Online	Suburb
1.	Perrins Restaurant		Glen Iris
2.	Morning Star Estate		Mt Eliza
3.	Breizoz French Creperies		Williamstown
4.	LA Chaumiere		Darwin
5.	Le Provencal		South Hobart
6.	Lebrina		New Town
7.	Arc of Iris		Margaret River
8.	The Loose Box		Mundaring
9.	Petaluma's Bridgewater Mill		Bridgewater
10.	Penfolds Magill Estate Restaurant		Magill

View all French restaurants | Start a new search

Comment on this recipe

PLEASE NOTE: All submitted comments become the property of SBS. We reserve the right to edit and/or amend submitted comments. HTML tags other than paragraph, line break, bold or italics will be removed from your comment.

Your Cookbook

Featured Food & Recipes

NEWLY ADDED
POPULAR
TOP RATED

Hot Tips

Rolling a lemon to get more juice out

Rolling a lemon back and forth on your work surface will soften it and allow for more juices to be extracted. This is a good technique to remember before squeezing out the juice of any citrus fruit.

Glossary

Macaron

A small biscuit or cake, crunchy outside and soft inside, made with ground almonds, sugar and egg whites.