Alain Allegretti's Provencal Fish Soup

The restaurant Allegretti is simply my favorite of the year and I wrested this incredible fish soup recipe from the proprietor, Alain Allegretti. I don't like soup for dinner ordinarily and I didn't like the bouillabaisse too much in Marseilles, but this fish dish demands a standing ovation! Extraordinary!

Provencal Fish Soup (I don't know how many it serves; just make it and have everybody get in line!)

SOUP INGREDIENTS:
1/4 bottle white wine, reduced by half
olive oil
2 lb Red Snapper, Monkfish, Cod, and Porgies, filleted (reserve bones)
1 lb Blue Crab
1 fennel bulb, sliced
1 onion, sliced
1 carrot
1 garlic head
16 oz canned plum tomatoes (drain and reserve liquid)
8 oz Pernod
½ oz saffron
water (to cover)
chicken stock (to cover)
1 Idaho potato, peeled and diced
3 basil leaves
3 black Peppercorns
1 star anise
½ lb fennel stalks
1 oz salt

EQUIPMENT:
large pot
food mill
cheesecloth
china cap

DIRECTIONS:
1. Reduce 1/4 bottle of white wine by half and set aside.
2. In a new pan, add olive oil to cover the bottom and heat until smoking hot.
3. Add the fish, their bones, and the crab to the heated pan. Lower the heat to medium-high. Sear all sides of the fish and remove. Flip the crab, and roast the bones until they have good color. Remove all and drain the oil.
4. Add fresh oil, fennel, onion, carrot, and garlic to that same pan, and sweat all until translucent. 5. Add drained tomatoes and caramelize. Then reintroduce the bones to the pot.
6. Add Pernod and saffron, and reduce.
7. Add reduced white wine and reduce entire mixture again.
8. Add chicken stock and water to cover. Place potatoes, basil, peppercorns, anise, and fennel stalk in a cheesecloth, tie and add it to the soup with salt.
9. Simmer for 1½ hours.
10. Remove all solids and run them through a food mill, then recombine with the liquid and strain through a china cap
11. Skim the fat as the soup settles. Or place the container of soup in an ice water bath to shock it and make it easier to skim.

ROUILLE INGREDIENTS:
½ cup fish soup (above)
1 Idaho potato, peeled and sliced
10 garlic cloves
1 pinch saffron
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 egg yolk
olive oil
canola oil
salt
white pepper

PROCEDURE:
1. Heat the fish soup with the potato, six cloves of garlic, and saffron.
2. Remove the potato and garlic and crush them, then reintroduce them to the soup.
3. In a separate bowl, combine the mustard and the egg yolk. Then drizzle in olive and canola oil and mix it as you would a mayonnaise.
4. Chop the remaining four cloves of garlic very fine, and add it to the mix.
5. Mix the soup and potato mixture with the mayonnaise. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve soup with rouille, grated gruyere, and garlic rubbed croutons.

Next Magazine - Allegretti

Allegretti
46 West 22nd St
212-206-0555
allegrettinyc.com

Chef Alain Allegretti deserves a humanitarian award of some sort. His alchemic culinary mastery drove us into spasms of delight, wringing our hands, rolling our eyes, leaving us with little choice other than a wish to shower him with kisses in thanks for serving us his illicit divinations summoned from regions of Italy and the southern part of France—and what a pleasure to simply be in the room that sommelier James Morrison graciously attends, so elegant and comfortably lit.

A Flatiron Negroni ($14) seemed appropriate to get us started, here with Bluedog gin and Campari but also inspirational additions of sparkling wine and muddled grapefruit. We skipped the Tuna Tartare ($16) served in a crispy lavender taco as it sounded vaguely vaginal, however we nearly wept over the criminally outrageous Burrata Cheese ($9) with olive oil and balsamic vinegar all wonderfully worthy of gross indecency charges. No less culpable was the Octopus ($16), extraordinary twists of the fish, gilded by a farro salad with fava beans and a few well-appointed daubs of tonnato (Italian for tuna) sauce.

Provencal Fish Soup ($13) tasted like the fresh, salty air in the Old Port of Marseille (but much better than the soup I had there), with garlic croutons, brisk shavings of gruyere and a gorgeous saffron rouille. We reveled in the fond orbs of Olive Ricotta Gnocchi ($16) with roasted tomatoes and crisp bacon. Deliver me!

The lord of the manor also treads the boards with equal dexterity when it comes to dishing out meat or fish, which is a rare and enviable talent. We loved the Branzino ($29) with a fennel trio that stunned with stuffed fennel confit, fennel salad and a fennel saffron jus on top of that. Perfectly pink Citrus Crusted Duck Breast ($28) was pretty devastating too with a savory, sumptuous spring vegetable gratin served alongside with scrumptious nuggets of rosemary polenta.

Dessert was beside the point but we had it anyway. Clafoutis ($10) has all of our favorite things including strawberries, rhubarb, chocolate and crème fraiche. Further props go out to chef Allegretti that we weren’t sent out in a wheelchair.

This article was first published in Next magazine.