Bouillabaisse Quotes

“We had fish fritters to start, juicy and thick, about the size of your hand. We began by cutting them into tiny chunks, administering peanut sauce with the tips of our knives, but soon we just held them between our paws like burgers and dunked. The room smelled of citrus and salt, filled with the wet smack of our mastication. I looked around the room, delighted to see so many women ferociously eating fish.
We followed with bouillabaisse. When first suggested, it generated a ripple of controversy. It is not the sort of dish that we would normally want to endorse: a nonfood, lacking the heft and substance we usually favor. Soup seemed the kind of joyless meal women feel they should serve, rather than doing so out of any sense of appetite or desire. In the end the bouillabaisse was served with the fish on the side (as is tradition) and with a little pouring jug of double cream (which is not).”
― Lara Williams, Supper Club

“I volunteered to go down to the market to purchase fresh whitebait the day of the queen's arrival. Mr Angelo cooked a couple of capons to serve cold with a veronique sauce and grapes. And at dinner that night, we joined the French chefs, eating at the kitchen tables. I have to admit it: the bouillabaisse was one of the most delicious things I had ever tasted. The rich broth, tasting of both fish and tomato, and with a spicy tang to it, and the little pieces of fish and seafood coming unexpectedly on to the spoon. And the crusty bread to dip into it? Heaven.
"How do you prepare the sauce?" I asked. When I found out they started with twelve cloves of garlic, Mr Angelo shook his head. "The queen wouldn't approve, would she? Nothing that would make her breath smell bad," he said. "You know she's always forbidden garlic."
"How would she know?" Chef Lepin asked. "If garlic is cooked well, it does not come on the breath."
Then he came over to me. "And I saved you a morsel of the octopus," he said. He stuck his fork into what looked like a piece of brown grilled meat and held it up to my mouth, as one feeds a child. The gesture was somehow so intimate that it startled me. I opened my mouth obediently and felt the explosion of flavor- saffron and garlic and a hint of spiciness and flesh so tender it almost melted.”
― Rhys Bowen, Above the Bay of Angels

“The owner saw the way I ate and refilled my bowl without asking: the stew was rich with saffron and oil, and green anise, and orange. It's a cheap dish to make in Marseille: rockfish costs almost nothing. Mussels, too, are cheap, and squid, and the rock crabs that cost so much in elegant Paris restaurants are vermin here, good for nothing but stew. Food has a strange way of leaving home as a beggar and coming back a rich man, so the things we used to forage for free-- wild greens, razor clams, wild garlic, herbs, shellfish, rock crabs, even snails-- have been made into elegant dishes by chefs attempting to pique the jaded palates of those who lack nothing.”
― Joanne Harris, Vianne