THE BOUILLABAISSE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 August 1940, Page 8

THE BOUILLABAISSE

HOW IT ORIGINATED. It should have been a day of happiness, but old Mama Marins sat weeping for today her son was returning from military service, and she had no good food to welcome him with. On her table lay a few onions, a little garlic, a loaf of bread, and that was all.

“Why are you crying?” asked a passing urchin, and when she told him, he scuttled off to the wharves where the fishermen were bringing in their catches. He returned to the old woman laden with a catfish, a whiting, a bass, a handful of mussels and a small lobster.

Mama Marins was grateful—but she was still a little doubtful. But she heated a little olive oil, added some garlic and chopped onions, a little saffron and salt, and then the fish. Then she cooked them for half an hour, added some water and cooked them again for 10 minutes.

She sniffed the good smell—but, she thought, what can I use for a garnish? There was only the bread. So she cut the bread into wafer thin slices, toasted them brown, and placed them in a dish. Then she poured over them the broth in which the fish had been cooked, and placed the fish in another dish, and said the chef of Australia Hotel (Sydney) in telling the story. And it tasted as good as it smelt — and the smell was so good that by the time her son had arrived home, the neighbours were around her door, begging for a taste, ahd spreading the news of her discovery through the village. Soon news of Bouillabaisse, as the new dish was called, spread through all Provence, to Paris, and to the whole world.