June: Bouillabaisse

I hosted the (second) June dinner party on Saturday night. It was both my mom’s birthday and my 28th day on the Whole30. Now my mom basically only eats fish and vegetables as it is, my dad tries to avoid grains, and with me not eating dairy, grains, sugar, or legumes, I was left with the question of what do you serve people who don’t eat anything?

My first thought was cioppino, possibly because I knew I’d be heading out to San Francisco the next day. But I couldn’t really come up with anything to serve with that besides sourdough bread, which I couldn’t eat anyway. And then I got my answer at work. In a somewhat heated meeting, the CEO of my company made an analogy about bouillabaisse, telling us that if he asks for bouillabaisse, he doesn’t have to say that he wants saffron in it, because bouillabaisse obviously has saffron in it (obvious only to him because we don’t work at a culinary institute or in France). This spurred some healthy debate and led me to google bouillabaisse recipes – finally finding one that listed saffron as optional. As far as I knew bouillabaisse was basically French cioppino, and I had a lot more ideas about what I could do with a French theme than a San Francisco one (?), so I swapped fish stews.

String beans seemed like an obvious choice (mostly because I know they are sometimes called haricot verts), as did a green salad with a classic French vinaigrette, but I had no idea what low carb French hors d’oeurves could work (besides French olives and cornichons), but after googling French hors d’oeurves, I came across anchoiade with crudité, which is a Whole30 umami dream, and possibly the easiest recipe for a dip that I’d ever read. And I knew I’d end with a fruit tart, because there are only two good desserts to my mom: fruit tart, and a really good Danish (which she claims is almost impossible to find anymore)…not wanting to attempt the impossible re: the Danish, and with fruit tart feeling much more French, that was an easy call. The only thing I had to outsource was the coffee. My mom judges all meals by the coffee (go figure), she must have coffee with dessert, and she only drinks decaf, so when she asked what she could bring, I suggested she BYOC, to ensure everything would end smoothly.

On Saturday, there were the usual Fresh Direct errors – I’d forgotten to order lemons somehow (a critical ingredient for the string bean recipe I found) and I wasn’t sure I’d have enough tomatoes for the bouillabaisse. I headed over to the fish store that my parents go to (even though it’s in a different neighborhood, I trust them, and I feel like you can’t take any chances when you’re serving people seafood), and had to face the indignity of asking for the very specific number of mollusks dictated by the recipe – 8 mussels, 8 clams, TWO scallops – but they actually said they see this recipe a lot. They made so much fun of me for all of my asks, removing the skin of the fish, cleaning the shrimp, counting out the mussels, etc., that I forgot the clams. But I grabbed them at a store near me on a trip for lemons, sugar-free mustard for my vinaigrette, and more tomatoes. I will say, those clams never opened up, reinforcing my position on going to the far away fish store.

And then despite bouillabaisse feeling like a scary recipe, with a million different types of fish, the cooking was pretty seamless. I made the achoaide (which is just anchovies, garlic, and olive in the food processor – make it, it’s insane), the vinaigrette, and the gremolata for the string beans (just lemon zest, toasted pine nuts, and garlic). And then I got the stock ready for the bouillabaisse, lots of chopping, but basically you’re just making soup. I’d never used fish stock before and the fish stock I bought from our fancy neighborhood store was a combination of fish and lobster and it smelled incredible as soon as it started to heat up with all of the soup ingredients. I think it’s possible that I let the soup congeal a little too much, because after I added all of the fish I didn’t think there was a ton of soup left, but it was delicious! I did add some absinthe to the soup at the very end – but please do not tell the Whole30 police…I think it cooked off? And it was for a good cause!

My parents arrived at 7:29 on the dot and we were off to the races. Being my parents, my mom was effusive about my crudité presentation (just endive and radish, but I tried to make it look like a flower) and made me feel great.

I left Nick alone to chat and explain his week-long meditation retreat to my parents (if only I could have seen their faces), while I cooked the fish. We took everything to the balcony, where I hope no one else was as disgusting as I was – it was hot, but I was sweating profusely after having been in the kitchen and needed to keep mopping my face with my napkin. And except for when my dad loudly talked about my neighbor in front of her windows (we have this sort of funny configuration where our balcony is in front of her bedroom windows), we had what my dad refers to as “stimulating dinner conversation.”

Everything was a big hit, and it felt great to give my mom the exact meal that she would have chosen for herself and everyone was really into the bouillabaisse! We ended with the tart, and my mom drank her own coffee. My parents have fed me a zillion meals and thrown me a million celebrations, so while one dinner certainly does not even things out, it still felt really special to be able to do this (and a clear bonus that I could have a basically Whole30 compliant meal without making my guests suffer)! (I did serve toasts with the bouillabaisse and the tart, but I just skipped those.)

We’ll see what ends up happening for July – it’s only going to get hotter, and I have a feeling we’re going to have more people. But Nick assures me we’re not yet old enough where we have to worry about people passing out, so it’s okay…hospitality guru that he is.

The Rundown

Creamy Anchoiade with Crudites

Green Beans Gremolata (swapped cheese with an extra garlic clove)

Mark Bittman’s Bouillabaisse (I did make the rouille which the commenters insisted was necessary, and it was delicious, but we definitely didn’t need it)

Salad with Basic French Vinaigrette

Fruit tart from Breads bakery

Since it is very rare that my mom eats dessert, it is important to note that that is her fork in this photo.