You Need a Good Bouilli

To get a really good bouillon, you need a bouilli. The trouble is we don’t do bouilli anymore. Put your hand on your heart and tell me when you last ate a piece of boiled meat. No? I thought not. Unless it’s an egg, we just don’t do ‘boiled’ anymore. Vegetables are ‘blanched’ or steamed, meat is seared or ‘pan-roasted’ or, very occasionally, ‘poached’, and fish is much the same – although that is, perhaps, less surprising. Once I had found ‘boiled carp in grey sauce’ in a Polish cookbook, I knew I had reached the nadir of unappetising dishes. However, boiled meat is different: it’s just getting over that ‘boiled’ word.