friederike's Reviews
3 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 3Sort by: Title 
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Mediterranean Seafood: A Comprehensive Guide with Recipes
By Alan Davidson
Ten Speed Press - 2002
Aigo-Sau : page 266
A very delicious soup, very easy to prepare (just place all ingedients in a pan with boiling water and cook 'till done) and, added bonus for anyone who hasn't got the time to go to a fishmonger: you won't need any special ingredients either. It was very unfortunate that BF oversalted the soup, so beware, it can happen easily, and the soup probably doesn't need much salt anyway.
We served it with Rouille recommended, and it was really delicious.
Edited 15 May 2015:
One thing that's important for this dish is that the fish and the potatoes are cooked at just the same moment, meaning that you need to think how long the fish will need to be cooked, and then estimate how thick you need to cook the potato slices to make it work. We uses filets of cod, pangasius and tilapia instead of the small white fish, so we also cut those into chunks (about 2.5 cm/1 inch cubes), and cut the potatoes in about 3/4 cm / 1/4 inch slices.
It's a pity that you really need the Rouille to make this recipe work, as otherwise it would be an ideal dish to make while travelling - you need very few ingredients and no complicated tools to make the soup, but you might not have a pounder or small kitchen machine to make the Rouille.
Edited 25 January 2018:
Actually, you can skip the rouille if you add black olives to the soup (which is a good idea anyway). And also, pre-cook the soup, and only add the fish at the very end; this way, the soup will get a nice consistency and the fish won't overcook. As a bonus, this will turn the soup into a dish you can prepare in advance and then serve with minimal last-minute-effort.
useful (2)
Linguine alle Cozze in Bianco : page 315
This was a really nice dish, only that it was too salty. DB had put the mussels in a bowl of salt water before they were cooked, as instructed, and this was all the salt added - use normal tap water instead! Mussels are salty enough by themselves.
However, the result (apart from the saltiness) was so nice that it actually has the potential for a 5 star rating when done well. DB would suggest serving it as an elegant starter, possibly using shrimps too, and really liked that the recipe taught him to make a real good Pasta Marinara.
I had hoped that this would be a quick, ideal midweek supper dish - I should have known better, cleaning the mussels always takes a while, and in this instance, the sauce needed quite some time until it was reduced. But well, I can't blame the book for my expectations, right?
useful (0)
Rouille : page 266
I'm not sure whether this is really what a Rouille is supposed to be. Alan Davidson is quite an advanced cook and expects his readers to be one too. He said nothing whatsoever of roasting and peeling the red peppers, so I didn't do it, nor did he mention that the bread was supposed to be stale, so I didn't use stale bread - but I do suspect that it should have been otherwise, which is why I'll make it again in two days, with roasted peppers and stale bread.
Correct or not, it was very delicious. I'm not entirely sure how using a mortar would have made me get to where I wanted to get, so I used a hand blender. After adding the bread and the olive oil, it was still relatively liquid, so I added an extra chunk of (dry, not soaked!) bread. With this addition, the consistency was exactly right, so I omitted the fish stock and just seasoned. You might choose to use only dry bread instead of soaked bread to better control the liquidity of the sauce.
It's hard to describe the taste of the Rouille - on the one hand it still tasted slightly watery, on the other the roaring garlic and the sweetness of the red peppers were really nice. As a sauce added to the soup, it was really nice and strong. Much better than the Rouille from the Essential Seafood Cookbook.
Edited to add:
I made another version of the same Rouille again two days later - this time with stale bread and grilled and peeled red peppers. This Rouille strongly resembled the other Rouille, only that it was slightly less sweet. DB preferred the new, less sweeter version, I actually liked both.
Again the fish stock proved to be quite unnecessary as the Rouille achieved perfect texture without it. Because the bread was pretty stale, it needed to be soaked, so this is a possible indication that Davidson actually meant us to fill in the gaps in his recipe and use stale bread (and peeled peppers).
Edited 25 January 2018:
Grilled peppers or not, stale bread or no stale bread - nothing as important as the garlic: use roasted garlic, or otherwise be very very careful with the quantity (no two large cloves!).
useful (1)