Chicken Bouillabaisse
- By Katie Roche
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- 02 Mar, 2019
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Harry Potter nerds unite! The only way I recognized the name of this dish is because, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Ron asks Hermione what it is and when she tells him that it's bouillabaisse, he responds with "Bless you." Apparently Hermione enjoyed this dish on her summer holiday in France. We'll get more into my thoughts on the dish later, but if Hermione were real (and you know I wish she was, #besties) I would definitely ask her why she enjoyed it and why she ate it in the SUMMER. This is a WINTER. SITUATION.
So getting into how to pronounce this, because Ron apparently finds the pronunciation reminiscent of a sneeze: I Googled it and listened to several people saying it and the closest I can tell is that you say "boo-yuh-bess". I'm aware that when you're speaking another language you're supposed to kind of try to get the words out with the correct accent and such, but all that makes me think of is that guy on the Yoplait commercial for Oui! and how he describes the yogurt as "cweamy". Makes me want to mute the TV. So I'm on board to try to use the French pronunciation here, but for the record, if you're describing something as being "creamy", go ahead and pronounce the "r" or you're going to sound like a toddler.
Not a super intense Itemquest, Dan just had to visit his BFF Old Korean Lady at the Forest Drive liquor store to get anise liqueur. For the edification of all of us, all further liquor store Itemquests will be done by Dan because his interactions with that lady are always so great. (Don't forget...if they have ugly faces, they have ugly hearts!!!) Anyway, for whatever reason, I already had fennel seed in my spice cabinet, and mostly just needed tomato puree and some bread and an entire chicken even though Ina says this recipe serves 3. When was the last time you sat down with two other people and ate an entire chicken? I mean??? Anyway, in and out of Ole Timey pretty quickly on that - thankfully they didn't decide for me this week which meat items are in season enough for them to have even though their entire job is to sell specialty meats. Whatever, still salty about last week.
So getting into how to pronounce this, because Ron apparently finds the pronunciation reminiscent of a sneeze: I Googled it and listened to several people saying it and the closest I can tell is that you say "boo-yuh-bess". I'm aware that when you're speaking another language you're supposed to kind of try to get the words out with the correct accent and such, but all that makes me think of is that guy on the Yoplait commercial for Oui! and how he describes the yogurt as "cweamy". Makes me want to mute the TV. So I'm on board to try to use the French pronunciation here, but for the record, if you're describing something as being "creamy", go ahead and pronounce the "r" or you're going to sound like a toddler.
Not a super intense Itemquest, Dan just had to visit his BFF Old Korean Lady at the Forest Drive liquor store to get anise liqueur. For the edification of all of us, all further liquor store Itemquests will be done by Dan because his interactions with that lady are always so great. (Don't forget...if they have ugly faces, they have ugly hearts!!!) Anyway, for whatever reason, I already had fennel seed in my spice cabinet, and mostly just needed tomato puree and some bread and an entire chicken even though Ina says this recipe serves 3. When was the last time you sat down with two other people and ate an entire chicken? I mean??? Anyway, in and out of Ole Timey pretty quickly on that - thankfully they didn't decide for me this week which meat items are in season enough for them to have even though their entire job is to sell specialty meats. Whatever, still salty about last week.
Speaking of salty, so is my chicken! Szn-ed it with salt, pepper, and some chopped rosemary. I had oil heating in the Dutch oven to brown the chicken pieces in batches, since my Dutch oven is medium and not large and therefore cannot fit all of the pieces in one tidy layer.
I wouldn't say they got super nicely browned, but they're more brown than they were before so I called it good there. My stove kind of sucks, and the one burner that's big enough to hold the Dutch oven + conveniently located for my short-armed self (bottom right burner) is somehow uneven or tilted or something so everything I cook on it is underdone/not brown on the side of the dish that's closest to me, and BURNING on the side of the dish that's toward the back of the stove. It's super annoying but I guess it keeps me humble.
Aaaaand here we have the broth for the stew; it simmers for 30-40 minutes, and I went for the 30 min side of that estimate, because for some reason Dan and I decided to go to public skate, 45 minutes from our house, come home and cram making this stew into a an hour and a half window, and then drive 45 minutes back to the ice rink to watch the Clemson/South Carolina hockey game. It was like a full-on Food Network game show in our kitchen for that hour and a half. We actually ended up not going to the hockey game after arriving to find the parking lot FULL...we opted to skip it along with our friends who were coming, and instead played Dutch Blitz in an empty Starbucks until they closed. Let's face it, when you're nearing 30 (ugh, I can only say "nearing" for 9 more days and then I'll BE 30), a hockey game where you're shoulder-to-shoulder crammed in with southern frat boys who l-o-v-e the Gamecocks but don't know what icing is and have probably never actually SEEN ice is a lot. There's only so much drunkenly ignorant yelling I can take, you know? Like, no Chad, stop cheering, icing is bad, ok?
ANYWAY, this broth is chicken stock, tomato puree, white wine, fennel seeds, saffron, and anise liqueur. If you're not sure what anise is, or how to pronounce it, here's what you should know: it's pronounced "Anne-iss" (LOL not "anus" but it's fun when people make that mistake) and although anise is different than star anise and different than fennel, they all kind of share a characteristic licorice flavor that is intensely polarizing. Most people love or hate anise - ok, most people just hate it - but I'd encourage you not to let the off-putting licorice aroma keep you from using it in your food. Once you cook it, it mellows out a lot and you'll know it's there but it's just not nearly as aggressive as it smells. I had to be sold on this, but after using fennel in soups and roasting it, I'm convinced. Just grit your teeth and go for it, and if you need an extra nudge I think you can find articles on the internet about its health benefits or whatever. Just pleeeeeease don't get any ideas about making it into smoothies or anything. I'm #overit with people trying to shove turmeric in my face at every turn, you know? I'll keep my turmeric where it belongs: AS A SPICE, when I feel like it, and not in, like, lattes. Please extend this same courtesy to anise/fennel/whatever it's called and leave it alone unless called for.
ANYWAY, this broth is chicken stock, tomato puree, white wine, fennel seeds, saffron, and anise liqueur. If you're not sure what anise is, or how to pronounce it, here's what you should know: it's pronounced "Anne-iss" (LOL not "anus" but it's fun when people make that mistake) and although anise is different than star anise and different than fennel, they all kind of share a characteristic licorice flavor that is intensely polarizing. Most people love or hate anise - ok, most people just hate it - but I'd encourage you not to let the off-putting licorice aroma keep you from using it in your food. Once you cook it, it mellows out a lot and you'll know it's there but it's just not nearly as aggressive as it smells. I had to be sold on this, but after using fennel in soups and roasting it, I'm convinced. Just grit your teeth and go for it, and if you need an extra nudge I think you can find articles on the internet about its health benefits or whatever. Just pleeeeeease don't get any ideas about making it into smoothies or anything. I'm #overit with people trying to shove turmeric in my face at every turn, you know? I'll keep my turmeric where it belongs: AS A SPICE, when I feel like it, and not in, like, lattes. Please extend this same courtesy to anise/fennel/whatever it's called and leave it alone unless called for.
After the broth is done simmering, you do what I consider a completely unnecessary step and puree it in a food processor. All this did was make a pee puddle of tomato-y anise-y broth on my counter, all for the sake of, what, grinding up the six garlic cloves in the broth? I've been known to eat whole garlic cloves when I find them amongst my roasted vegetables so if I ever made this again (not to spoil the conclusion but probably won't), I'd skip this. Pureeing soups sucks, and if a recipe says to do that, I have to think long and hard about whether or not I believe it's worth it. After returning the pureed broth to the pot, I added the potato chunks and then added the chicken back in. Just wanted to share this potato bag with you, because apparently the potatoes have been given a Tinder bio. It's a swipe left for me - they like hot places and the beach. Nope.
Going back in the oven, for some reason, I didn't take a picture with the potatoes in there.
This was a new thing for me - to start the rouille she had you chop garlic WITH the salt on a cutting board which turned it into this nicely mixed garlic salt.
I looked up what a rouille is exactly, since I'm sure I'm not the only one who was unfamiliar with the term. In my mind I was thinking of "roux", the flour/butter mixture used for thickening stuff, but it turns out "rouille" is a Provencal thing that's usually made with bread crumbs, which for some reason Ina has left out here in favor of making it as what basically turns out to be mayonnaise. This garlic goes in the food processor with egg yolks, saffron, lemon juice, and red pepper flakes, and then with the food processor running, you pour in olive oil to make an emulsion. So...you make mayonnaise. When I realized this is what was happening I was DEEPLY uncertain about the idea of dolloping a mayonnaise onto stew.
Yes, you do spy bottled lemon juice but don't worry, it was just to supplement the lemon I hand-juiced because it didn't yield quite enough. Here I am pouring the olive oil into this suspicious yellow mixture. I got all the way done pouring it in and just knew it hadn't turned out right. Ina really fails you here at this point, because she doesn't tell you how important it is to pour the oil REALLY REALLY slowly. She just said "thin, steady stream" which I definitely did, and the mixture did not emulsify. Praise be to the internet, I turned to it in my time of need hoping for a way to repair this, and sure enough, it's fixable, but not without whisking until your hand falls off. No worries, I whisked a little, then switched to the food processor God gave me, aka, my husband. His hands are impervious to pain.
YUM, how about a dollop of that violently yellow substance in your tomato/licorice flavored stew???
And here we have it! This is an awful picture and I do think it's partially because of the lighting/my abysmal photography skills but I'm also going to go ahead and partially blame the dish for being irredeemably ugly. Yellowy mayonnaise and orangey-red stew just are not photogenic.
Dan's thoughts on the matter are that he is tired of eating stews with bone-in meat. I get it. How am I supposed to eat chicken like this? And yet, I asked him if he thought I should make this with chicken strips and like, obviously not, so here we are. I just wonder how Ina eats this? Like she doesn't pick it up does she? If she uses her utensils to get all the meat off of the bone, what does she do with the bone once she's done with that? So many questions. So it's inconvenient to eat, for sure, but as for flavor, it's not bad. I'm not leaping for joy or anything, and it is in no way crave-able, but it's adequate as far as a warm meal goes. The anise flavor mellowed out a lot, and it was edible. I can't really give it any higher praise than that. The leftovers fell into the category of "looked at it in the fridge and ate something else instead, threw it away a week later". (Yeah, sorry kids in China, we did.)
Ultimately, because bouillabaisse is inextricably linked to Harry Potter in my mind, this left me wondering what Hogwarts house Ina would be sorted into. I gave it some thought and then it hit me: Ina obviously would have gone to Beauxbatons. Pretentious, and mildly insufferable, but a social commodity nonetheless. Throws good parties, can't win a Triwizard tournament, is prob a DIVINE dancer, would receive many Yule ball invites, would turn down most of them. She'd ask Ron to pass the bouillabaisse for sure.
Dan's thoughts on the matter are that he is tired of eating stews with bone-in meat. I get it. How am I supposed to eat chicken like this? And yet, I asked him if he thought I should make this with chicken strips and like, obviously not, so here we are. I just wonder how Ina eats this? Like she doesn't pick it up does she? If she uses her utensils to get all the meat off of the bone, what does she do with the bone once she's done with that? So many questions. So it's inconvenient to eat, for sure, but as for flavor, it's not bad. I'm not leaping for joy or anything, and it is in no way crave-able, but it's adequate as far as a warm meal goes. The anise flavor mellowed out a lot, and it was edible. I can't really give it any higher praise than that. The leftovers fell into the category of "looked at it in the fridge and ate something else instead, threw it away a week later". (Yeah, sorry kids in China, we did.)
Ultimately, because bouillabaisse is inextricably linked to Harry Potter in my mind, this left me wondering what Hogwarts house Ina would be sorted into. I gave it some thought and then it hit me: Ina obviously would have gone to Beauxbatons. Pretentious, and mildly insufferable, but a social commodity nonetheless. Throws good parties, can't win a Triwizard tournament, is prob a DIVINE dancer, would receive many Yule ball invites, would turn down most of them. She'd ask Ron to pass the bouillabaisse for sure.
For this post, I wanted to combine two summertime flavors into the crisp recipe one of my oldest Alaskan friends passed on to me years ago. Rhubarb, if you're unfamiliar, is a reddish stalk that kind of resembles really big celery. It's very tart and is most commonly paired with strawberry. I've rarely seen it star in its own show dessert-wise, but my friend Kylee has been making rhubarb crisp for years and it's the best crisp I know of. Blueberries are usually in season in late summer; I have not been home for a blueberry season since Dan's last deployment in 2018 so in order to make this recipe I actually used blueberries from a friend's parents' farm in upstate SC! They're a little sweeter than the blueberries I'd have picked at home, but they worked well. I'm going to pretend like I was actually picking blueberries at home in Alaska for the purpose of showing you what that would look like.
I was getting all ready to write this post, going through my process with photos starting in my kitchen when I realized that a lot of my friends probably don't know what fireweed is or where it comes from and this recipe actually starts far, far away from my kitchen. This will be the first of a few posts highlighting iconic Alaskan ingredients. I've wanted to do this for a while because my home inspires me in so many ways, writing and cooking particular among them. Fireweed is a wildflower that is rather ubiquitous in southcentral Alaska and is often considered a gauge for how long summer will last. It is said that when the blooms reach the top of the plant, winter is six weeks away. Whether or not that's accurate, fireweed is found all over in late summer in Alaska. Here is some I spotted in mid-July by Eklutna Lake:
If you know Dan and me very well, you probably know by now that if our life were a sitcom, he'd low-key be the funniest character. Because that is true, I thought I'd include his bottom ten with accompanying remarks before giving the actual bottom ten. His are hilarious, but aren't as legitimate as mine because he actually tried way fewer of these than one might think. I realized as he was flipping through the book that my old coworker Cam probably ate more of these foods than anyone else did. The overarching theme of Dan's song of Ina Garten hatred is not the actual taste of the finished product but more how asinine he finds that particular recipe to be. So here you are, Dan's bottom ten.
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
You guys asked for my top ten from the blog, so here we go! And I'm thinking that what you *really* want is actually the bottom ten, so I'll go ahead and give you those next week. That post will probably be A LOT funnier. While preparing to write this post, I had Dan flip through the cookbook to give me HIS top ten and he was all disgruntled as he did so and only came up with eight that he even liked at all. "I'm not a picky eater!" he insists. Yeah ok. Although to be fair, I've seen some cookbooks I would only make, like, one thing out of and plenty I'd make nothing out of, though sometimes that's because I find the chef so annoying. @ the Pioneer Woman. I just don't trust someone who puts sour cream in spaghetti and then bakes it. Plus all her recipe intros are about, like, Ladd or Tadd or whatever the heck her husband's name is "coming in from the fields starving for dinner". If I came in from working in a field and you tried to give me sour cream spaghetti, I'd be like, "How about a hot pocket instead? Thx." Anyway, this is not Dan's blog so these are not his top ten. You can ask him which ones he liked, but you'll end up in a long convo about how much he hates Ina Garten. Anyway, these are not ranked or anything, they're just in order from the cookbook.
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
It was Sunday afternoon and I thought to myself, "What a perfect time to make jam!" I mean, how positively quaint: just sitting in my home in suburbia, finished with weekend chores, relaxing with some knitting...why not? Why not make some jam? I mean, obviously my afternoon-kitchen-activity was directed toward jam-making because it was next up in the book BUT whatever, I was kind of excited! Also, this is the last recipe in this book!!! I'm still in the process of deciding what I'll do now, so if there's something you'd like me to make and tell you about in my own fashion - you know, with lots of tangents and jokes - please do let me know! I'll likely continue to tackle Ina content, but may start including some recipe faves and/or foods people text me about a lot! I get a lot of cake questions, a LOT of frosting questions (because meringue buttercream is bae and I've got everyone in my social circles who eats my food on board), and a lot of fish questions. So look for more food to come, even though this is the last recipe in Back to Basics.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
I was glad Ina gave me something easy for this week, because I was packing for Alaska and just *did not have the time* to mess with hunting lobsters or weird cheeses from the internet or whatever. ItemQuest was fairly straightforward, just took Dan a trip to the liquor store next to the Publix for some limoncello. I grabbed this particular lemon curd in the British aisle of Publix; I think last time an Ina recipe called for lemon curd I bought it from Trader Joe's and it was DISGUSTING. I mean, truly awful. I would like to recommend making your own lemon curd if you have the time and the inclination. Ina's lemon curd recipe is phenomenal and it is one thing for which I can say she is truly correct: homemade is BETTER and store-bought is not at all as good. The most beloved cupcakes I have ever made were filled with Ina's lemon curd, and had the lemon curd mixed into the meringue buttercream frosting. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!! Anyway, the rest of this was fruit that I had on hand, mint, and Greek yogurt which we did have to buy because I don't, as a rule, eat Greek yogurt of my own free will. It's chalky and disgusting.
Dates are something I honestly never even thought about until I did Whole 30. I have mentioned my Whole 30 experience several times over the course of this journey through Back to Basics, but if you're new to reading the blog, this is what happened: I did Whole 30 one time, just to prove that I could, because salvation-by-diet apologists were obsessed with it as the newest fad in righteous eating practices. It was a terrible experience; on top of hating every minute of it for myself and finding exactly zero wellness benefits, I also hated it for Dan who was not allowed to eat popcorn for 30 days. Dan is in love with popcorn; his addiction to it is almost at the level of my addiction to coffee. He gets rage-y without it. But anyway, Whole 30 recipes are big into dates as sweeteners and some of the things you can eat, like Lara Bars, are made with dates. Dates are impossibly chewy. I ate more of them in that 30 days than I ever wanted to, and now when I see them in recipes I can't help but think of that Whole 30. Fortunately for me, I got to begin this recipe by chopping TWO CUPS' worth of dates. Oh, they also kind of look like cockroach bodies, so there's that. The only thing I actually had to get at the store for this was oranges! I had everything else on hand, even Cointreau, thanks to many previous Ina recipes.
Alright so, I'm not the Muffin Man. I don't really make a whole lot of muffins, for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being that on the rankings of breakfast foods they definitely do not crack the top five, maybe not even the top ten. If I have an option for a bagel or a waffle, I'll pick one of them over a muffin every single time. I also prefer cereal, cinnamon rolls, or *cue eye roll* avocado toast. I've just never risen from my slumber and been like, "You know what would really hit the spot right now? A MUFFIN." But!!! In recent months, since my friend Logan came into my life, I've been making muffins a lot more frequently because he really loves them. So the last blueberry muffins I made were from a 99cent Betty Crocker mix packet which he brought into my house and asked me sweetly to make, because they're what he grew up with and along with many preservatives, they are full of nostalgia for him. Here is Logan and me, preparing to mix the muffin batter. Out of respect (and to make up for the disrespect of rolling up with muffin mix), he wore one of my aprons. I will treasure this picture forever.
You guys...Ina has "a thing" about commercial granola bars. Her beef with them, apparently, is that they say they contain real fruit and nuts but that all she sees when she looks at the labels are like, ten different kinds of corn syrup. I'm going to go ahead and guess, just based on this, that none of the lunches her mom packed for her growing up contained any Fruit By the Foot. And surely if we introduced her to Gushers, she would die. This is a real shame. I also feel like this disdain for corn syrup is maybe just a tad self-righteous, coming from the woman whose frosting recipe calls for literally six entire sticks of butter. At that point, what's a little corn syrup to you really? People's nutritional hills-to-die-on really fascinate me (and also kind of annoy me sometimes) and the ones about sugar might get me the most. I feel like, at some point, sugar is sugar and whether you're baking with honey, white sugar, brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, etc you're still probably making something that's not amazing for you so, in terms of sugar, why not just be in for a penny in for a pound, amirite? So while I'm on this topic, before I even get to the actual point (please, I know you're here for the tangents), I would like to just let anyone and everyone know that I'm absolutely not interested in your "healthy substitutes" for things that taste good in their original form. I do not WANT a chocolate chip pancake made out of bananas and grains you harvested in your field this morning. If I want a banana I will eat one, and if I want a chocolate chip pancake I will eat one, and that's that. And DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT come @ me with "cashew cheese". Just don't. I don't even think I should honor that concept with an explanation of why it's so wrong. If that's not self-evident, I can't help you.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
At first I saw the pictures of this and thought, "YAY!!! Cinnamon rolls!" And then a couple of weeks ago, I actually tried making cinnamon rolls for the first time and realized that my inability to roll/shape/slice yeast doughs is still a thing. AND THEN I read this entire recipe and realized these get filled with raisins. So here we go!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!