As you have probably guessed by now, I love seafood and fish. Funny thing, my daughter loves them too. You don’t hear very often these days kids enjoying prawns or really ocean flavored fish..or octopus. By the way, she really wants an octopus dish, so hopefully Greece will win next game and I’ll get to do one, especially for her 
Getting back to the World Cup now, because France has won last night’s game I quickly looked for a seafood French recipe.
My hubby really wanted “coque au vin”, but there are so many chicken drumsticks you can have in one day So we found Bouillabaisse, a traditional Provencal fish stew originating from the port city of Marseille. Originally, this stew was made of fish that couldn’t be sold at the markets by the fishermen. Today we made it with fish and seafood that we really like, packed with huge prawns and the freshest Pacific cod. I am buying these always wild caught, never farm raised in strange places. You want seafood, you really need to be careful. It can either be excellent…or…plain bad. You just don’t want to bet on that. So wild caught and fresh (try to avoid as possible the previously frozen ones, especially if you cannot eat everything in one go and you need to keep some for later).
Probably the most important part of this stew is the seafood stock you are going to use. It has to be rich and full of flavors to get an amazing Bouillabaisse. The stock is enhanced with lots of seafood shells and trimmings (available at your fish counter) and flavored with the typical flavors of the region: garlic, saffron, olive oil and tomatoes. If you have enough time to make your stock, I will strongly recommend it. You can make a wonderful stock using all the undercuts from your fish and shellfish- such as heads, tails or prawn shells. Anyway- I was short of time today and I used All Natural - Original Seafood Stock for Cooking and was just great. For sure, not like the homemade one, but a very good substitute should you have any time constraints.
Hope you will enjoy it!
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion, finely sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, finely sliced
- 1 carrot, finely sliced
- 2 celery stalks, finely sliced
- 3 tomatoes, roughly chopped
- 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- pinch salt
- ½ cup fresh parsley, finely chopped
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 cup seafood stock
- ½ cup white wine
- 1/2 pound mussels
- 1/2 pound Sea Bass/ Pacific Cod fillet,
- 6 prawns, shell, tail and head removed
Instructions
Heat one tablespoon of oil in a frypan on medium heat and brown the onion and garlic for 2 minutes, then add the celery and carrot. Toss in tomatoes, Worcestershire and a pinch of salt, simmer for 5 minutes. Add parsley, bay leaves, turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, bring stock and white wine to the boil in a separate frypan with a lid, add mussels and cover until mussels open. Drain, keep the juice and set mussels aside. Add stock to the tomato base and bring to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer and reduce for five minutes.
In a frypan on medium-high heat, add the remaining olive oil and cook the fish for no more 2 than minutes each side. When you turn the fish over, ladle the sauce slowly to cover. When all the sauce has been added, bury the prawns at the bottom of the tomato base. After 2 minutes, remove pan from heat and top with the mussels.
Sprinkle over remaining parsley and serve with a french baguette.
Notes
This recipe was adapted from Recipe from The Healthy Cook by Dan Churchill.
This looks really delicious! Love all the ingredients in it – mussels, fish, prawns ans wine. Yum!
Thank you so much! It is so delicious