Soupe de Poisson

Early in the planning for our year away, Virginia gave me "The Provençal Cookbook" by Gui Gedda and Marie-Pierre Moine.  It is one of the  cookbooks that made the voyage with us but so far it has mainly served as a pleasant coffee table decoration as the photos within are spectacular.   Now that we have been in Provence for 8 months I am feeling more adventerous in the kitchen (the kids are tiring of fajitas as well), I decided it was time to search a recipe from my beautiful book and prepare a provençal repas.  Flipping through the cookbook I decided on Fish Soup.  As "The Provençeal Cookbook" promises that one will be able to shop, cook and eat like a local, we decided to make a day of it and Grace, Lily and I began our Saturday morning search for the required ingredients.

Avignon has "Les Halles", a wonderful indoor market where one can find almost anything one could wish for at a provençal market.  The girls and I always love exploring the stalls.  The first stop was the tapenade stall as a visit to Les Halles is not complete if the girls don't recieve their little baggie of free green olives.

With their olives in hand we then went next door to the spice shop as we needed three sticks of fennel.  The spice shop is probably my favorite store from an aesthetic standpoint as it looks like it jumped out of the pages of my cookbook.

We purchased a pinch of saffron and we found fennel seeds and fennel powder but alas no fennel sticks.  When I asked the owner where I could find them he began directions to what I thought was a store.  The deeper he delved into the directions the more I began to have difficulties following his french.  Words like "colline, sauvage, et faire un promenade" didn't seem to be leading me to a supermarket anywhere close.  I was dismayed to find out that I needed to go into the hills and collect the fennel sticks myself (the title of my cookbook has no mention of foraging like a local).  I was more than a little disappointed to be stopped so early into my search for the necessary ingredients but it turns out I just needed to go around the corner to a different spice store where the display was not nearly as eye-catching but there in a glass jar were the aforementioned fennel sticks for the low price of one euro.

Next stop was extra-muros or outside the city walls as every Saturday morning an excellent (and cheap) market sets up in the square beside the Prefecture.

We headed over to the poissonnerie.  I stated that my daughters and I needed some fish for a fish soup and the fellow there said to me "whoa you have some work to do today".  I told him that wasn't really interested in working that hard and he told me that you can't have a good fish soup without the hard work.  My friend Benoit came by to say hi and the first thing he said when I mentioned fish soup was of course "whoa you have some work to do today."

Realising that I may have bit off more than I could chew, we headed over to the baker/butcher and bought the rotisserie chicken/ potatoes/ donut lunch special.

On our way out of the market my girls went into consummation mode as you can't pass by a table with shiny objects without buying something can you? 

Upon returning home, I decided that fish soup sounded like a good activity for a Sunday morning.

Sunday morning, this motley crew of poissons stared me in the eye.  My father knows that I am not much one for cleaning fish but with my dull knife and a bit of fortitude I began the task.  Grace loved watching me gut these ugly, smelly minnows.  I came to the conclusion that Fish Soup would be more aptly named by-catch stew.  I was pretty proud of myself by the end of the process as I looked at the meagre flesh in the bottom of the soup pot.  

The actual cooking took about 2 more hours so at noon all four of us sat down to a nice steaming bowl of fish soup and it was then that I realized that I don't really like fish soup.  There was a reason why I have never eaten fish soup.  Virgnia hit the nail on the head when she said "I like my fish to be not too fishy".  That certainly did not describe my fish soup.  It was fishy and then some.  After the meal, both Virginia and I decided that if one liked fish soup then definitely my fish soup would have been delicious.

Next up "Hunter's Rabbit" on page 179 or maybe not.