Name: A Provençale Fish Soup
Yield: Serve six people
Cuisine: Australian
Ingredients: 1 tbl tomato paste; 100 ml olive oil; 3 sprigs thyme; 1 bay leaf; 6 stalks of parsley; pinch saffron; 12 peppercorns; (If fennel is not in season, substitute one tablespoon of star aniseed. The fennel (or aniseed) is the ingredient that gives the soup its most characteristic flavour.); salt; 500 ml semillon or chardonnay and an equal quantity of water; 300 g mirepoix; 5 tomatoes; 2 leeks, white parts only; 1 head garlic; 1 kg of 4-5 different fish and crustacea, as described; 1 head fennel

Preparation info

Serve
six
people

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Tony Bilson's Recipe Book

By Tony Bilson

Published 1987

About

There have been many esoteric arguments about what constitutes a true bouillabaisse. To me they are irrelevant. Provençale fish soup takes the flavours of local produce and transforms them into a dish that evokes the characteristics of the area. Depth of flavour is important and is achieved by choosing a mixture of different fish. I would recommend using schnapper, whiting, flathead, rock cod, red mullet and one type of shellfish — whether it be a small quantity of prawns, a crab or a lobst