It’s another Fishy French Friday! We are really get down to the final recipes. There are some iffy ones left, but also some really good-sounding ones. I am looking forward to trying them all!
This week’s recipe was a little iffy-sounding to me. Pureed fish soup? It was hard to get my head around that one. But, I forged ahead in the name of French Fridays with Dorie. I bought my whole red snapper (I got the last one!). The nice folks at Whole Foods cleaned, scaled, and chopped it up for me. I made sure they left me the head.
When I arrived home, I simmered that snapper, head and all, with a bunch of lovely aromatics, including onions, fennel, saffron, tomatoes, and some herbs and spices. The secret ingredient is pastis, an anise-flavored liqueur. Next, I ran the whole shebang (minus the fish head) through my food mill! It was actually kind of hard work. After adding a little more salt, pepper, and pastis, my soup was ready for serving.
Another important element of this fish soup are the garnishes: a large crouton and rouille. I attempted to make my own rouille (a cousin of aioli) using Dorie’s recipe, but failed miserably. It was looking good. But, at the last minute it it suddenly turned to liquid! Did I add the last bit of olive oil too fast? Who knows? The next day I found this Saffron Rouille recipe using pre-made mayonnaise. It was delish!
So, back to the soup. To serve the soup, it is topped with a slice of toasted country bread and a large dollop of the rouille. I have to say, after eating this both with and without the rouille, it really adds a lot to the soup. Don’t skip the rouille!
This soup was met with mixed reactions in my house. I loved it! I loved the flavors and textures. It was unique (to me) and delicious. Certain other people couldn’t get past the fact that this was “fish soup”, and didn’t care for it.
I probably won’t have a chance to make this soup again because it was a lot of work for just one person to eat it. But if you are looking for a soup to impress a group of fish-liking, adventurous eaters, give this a try!
From Scratch 
My hubby wouldn’t go near this soup! I loved it with the toasts, too! What a beautiful bowl of soup!!!
It was an interesting soup, but I don’t know that I would do it again. Yours
does look quite delicious, and I guess if I had tried the rouille maybe mine
would have been tastier. I can’t wait for this fish “group” to be over.
Even after eating it, I wasn’t sold on pureed fish soup. I like it better chunky. The rouille was the star. My first attempt with Dorie’s mayo recipe failed also. When I couldn’t fix it, I made my usual mayo recipe to make the rouille.
I found this soup to be quite good, and for a change, so did my hubby! I’m glad that Whole Foods did such a nice job cleaning the fish for you. I used snapper filets for my soup and then threw it all into the blender! We loved it!
Wow- lucky you finding an actual whole red snapper. And luckier still – getting the store to prep it 🙂 So fun to read your results since you followed the recipe instructions perfectly. Your soup looks delicious. As I told my husband, even a good fish soup recipe is not going to delight someone who does not like fish (looks at self in mirror ….LOL). Always an adventure ~
Great idea that you had Whole Foods help you with the fish prep, that seemed to be an issue with many folks. I like that you used the word shebang in your review:) I think Dorie’s recipe for rouille has issues as others have talked about it not working for them.