Fish soup!

Now, here is one appetizing post...

We at the Paris Bistro make the best fish soup in the city, bar none.... Period. We started serving a "bouillabaisse style" fish stew a few months ago and the dish has proven a HUGE success.... It is a great way to accommodate odd pieces of fish that are too small to be sold as is.

Our fish stew a wonderful dish to be enjoyed anytime of the year, be it on a warm summer evening with rosé wine on our patio, or on a blustery, frigid winter night while watching the snow fall outside the window... The soup itself is a classical dish served in France by itself with cheese and garlic rubbed croutons, which one tops with rouille sauce and dunks in the soup... Ours is used as a stock to poach little pieces of fish, fresh mussels, clams, shrimp, scallops and sliced fingerling potatoes.

The other day, Eric asked me to train our chefs on making the soup.... I thought it would be a great idea to bring my camera and document the whole process in the blog....

We use fish bones (usually halibut), diced vegetables including lots of fennel, white wine, pastis (yes, pastis) orange and lemon zests, saffron... It is a lengthy process for the soup must cook for a couple of hours before being put through a food mill, then strained again before being served. Since we do not have a manual food mill and we make big batches of soup, we use a big "burr mixer" and blend the pureed soup in a high velocity blender to give it a smooth, unctuous consistency.

Click here to see pictures of the whole process.