Name: Provençal Fish Stew
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 100 ml (3½ fl oz) pastis: Ricard, Pernod or Marie Brizard; 1 teaspoon mixed herbs: thyme, savory, oregano, marjoram, or whatever you choose; 2 kg (4 lb 8 oz) mixed whole fish of medium size, cleaned and scaled (red snappers, grey sole, mullet, whiting, or similar); 250 ml (9 fl oz) olive oil; 750 g (1 lb 10 oz) well-ripened tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and chopped; salt and black pepper; 500 g (18 oz) further fish (cod, halibut, sea bass), trimmed and thickly sliced; 2 medium onions, finely chopped; 1 French loaf, slightly stale, sliced; 6-7 garlic cloves, peeled; 1 strip of dried orange peel; 500 g (18 oz) white parts of leeks, finely chopped; 10 prawns, peeled and the heads removed; 500 g (18 oz) conger eel cut into 4cm (1½ inch) slices; 2.75 litres (4¾ pints) fish stock (you could have made the fish stock with all the trimmings of the fish you’re using but that mil of course be something you mil have done on another occasion to keep within the tenor of this book); 500 g (18 oz) soft-shell crabs (optional)

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Potty!

By Clarissa Dickson Wright

Published 2010

About

The south of France is noted for its hearty fish stews, and this is a general one to which you can add whatever fish you have, such as snappers, grey sole, lemon sole, mullet, whiting, sea bass, cod and halibut. This particular recipe calls for conger eel and soft-shell crabs, but if you can’t get those or you don’t want to use them just leave them out.