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Food column by Kathryn Jezer-Morton

On their 1989 album Paul’s Boutique, the Beastie Boys included a collection of tracks known as “B-Boy Bouillabaisse.” There are eight sections to “B-Boy Bouillabaisse,” and their combined effect is not unlike the old-school French seafood stew from which the collection derives its name.

Bouillabaisse comes from Marseilles, a working-class seaport where hip hop and seafood are both taken very seriously. Marseilles has been known in the past as something of a loose-cannon factory. Its signature soup reflects the environment in which it grew up, because there are as many different recipes as there are ways to get into big trouble real quick, and they’re all terribly exciting.

The Beastie Boys called that group of tracks “Bouillabaisse” because this soup is traditionally prepared and eaten in a series of phases. Above all, it’s important to understand that, although this is a French dish, it isn’t fussy and it doesn’t require a serious ’tude in order to do it right. Bouillabaisse was first prepared by everyday Marseilleis using the fish that was leftover after the fishmarket closed. It’s what the glossed-out food-porn cookbooks like to gush about as ‘peasant food.’

It is important, however, to use the freshest seafood you can get, especially when you’re thinking about the shellfish — if you think it’s okay to eat whatever mollusks they have languishing on the crushed ice at Missler’s, talk to me when you wake up the next morning screaming from the hallucinations of your food poisoning, my friend.

A traditional bouillabaisse has three constituent parts, which, for the sake of easy memorization, we will associate with three lines from the Beastie Boys version.

The first part is, “One half science and the other half soul”, in other words, the soup broth base. MCA lays down the second component, “Mike my stromy don’t be so selfish/Get on the mic cause I know you eat shellfish”, which is how you remember the succulent seafood part.

Finally, Mike D reminds you of the third and final step, “Elevated platform never gonna conform/Riding over to the diner where I always get my toast warm” — the little baguette toasts topped with rouille or aioli, two kinds of garlic mayonnaise.

These three steps are prepared separately but added altogether when you serve the bouillabaisse. This is the Guinness of soups—a meal in a bowl, no questions. It’s best if you have a big shallowish bowl with a wide rim around it so you can rest your little toasts there before you dip them into the broth.

While I was studying abroad in Provence, I took my mother out to a ludicrously pretentious restaurant in Marseilles called Chez Fonfon (no joke about the name).

Fonfon sure knows how to make the bouillabaisse, but moms n’ I were a little disconcerted by the silver serving tureens that were circulated to the tables by taciturn busboys, each offering to refill a different one of the three parts of the dish.

For example, if moms got a pang for a little more broth to balance out her mussels, she could get an extra ladleful halfway through the meal. It sounds delightful but I found that the constant presence at our table of the weird ascot-wearing butler undermined the hearty hardcoreness that this dish evokes for me.
Making bouillabaisse at home is no sweat, in fact, I made it last weekend while hanging out with my dinner guests in the kitchen. The only part that should be prepared in advance is the broth, because the longer it sits at an anticipatory simmer, the better it will turn out.

Here is a recipe adapted from www.bouillabaisse.com, which is the website of a fancypants Marseilles restaurant right on the old port. Sorry about the metric measurements, but really everyone, it’s time live in the now.

2 T olive oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
3 kg tomatoes, diced
2 kg potatoes, chopped
2 onions, diced (mix some leeks in there, I can’t believe this recipe didn’t say that)
100 g saffron
100 g cumin
6 fennel stalks
chopped fresh parsley, salt, and pepper, to taste.
2.5 kg mixture of whatever best shellfish you can find (shrimp, prawn, mussel, clam, crab, lobster-tails, etc.)
2 kg of white-fleshed fish steak, like cod or snapper, chunked.

—Heat the oil and add garlic, onion and tomato. Add some shellfish meat and a tied bouquet of herbs; warm it on low heat, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes.
—Add four litres of boiling water and let it simmer for 30 minutes, adding salt and pepper to taste. AND THEN…
—In a large frying pan on medium-low (heat), put the potatoes and the white-fleshed fish.
—Put the soup base through a sieve (I don’t think I could bother with this), and add it to the pan, along with the saffron. Heat it up and boil on high for 10 minutes, till the fish is just cooked.
—To serve, remove the big pieces of seafood and put on a plate for self-serving, and pour the broth into bowls. Serve with toasts and aioli.