Johan Liebenberg

Bouillabaisse Elizabeth David
“I was a child of ten. He was called Bauzan, my fisherman at Canet, our fishing rendezvous on the bank of the ètang de Berre. And before eating his bouillabaisse, I used to savour the delight of watching him fish for it.

“Hardly had my grandfather’s creaking but reliable old wagon, dusty from having carried us so far through the scrub, come to a standstill than I, with what alacrity, leapt to the ground, and into the arms of my friend the old sea-wolf.
“Quick, let’s get off.”
“The mistral is blowing; we shall dance about a bit.”
“Oh, how lovely –“
“The more the little cockleshell danced in the waves, the happier I was. actually, there was no danger. Bauzan, who had been round the world five times, took the helm, and the ‘sailor,’ his third son (the two eldest were serving in the squadron at Toulon), was at the oars. How I should always have liked to have been “sailor’s mate – if only my parent had let me have my way!”

“Already, a league out, Bauzan’s still piercing eyes had caught sight of a little indicator buoy. Stop! Sailor pulled towards the guoy. We dropped anchor. Now, round a pulley and across the boat the long rope was coiled in, two metres at a time, and the baskets came out of the waves. After we had drained off the water there was gurgling inside – sometimes, however there was nothing.



It was I was had the excitement of undoing the catch which closed the lid. And there, in the bottom of the boat, multicoloured and sparkling and smelling good, lay the bouillabaisse; rascasses and canadelles, red mullet and gurnard and muggione (grey mullet) and other rock-fish whose names I no longer remember, but not forgetting the exquisite little favouillles (crabs) nor the eels, those viscous and slippery sea-serpents which Bauzan had taught me to catch with three fingers.

“We returned by sail., in ten minutes, for we were hungry. On the shore, in the wind, Madame Bauzan had lit a great wood fire upon which, in a huge cauldron, a litre or olive was coming to the boil, with four sliced onions, as many cloves of garlic with, of course, salt, pepper and saffron, with a few tomatoes in the season, and two or three potatoes, not forgetting, for Parisians, a handful of flour mixed with a glass of water.
“The mob of little Bauzans and their mother wasted no time in jumping on board, cleaning the fish and throwing it, all fresh as it was, into the saucepan, where the poor eels, cut in slices, went on wriggling in the boiling liquid. No more than a quarter of an hour’s cooking and the divine golden yellow bouillon was poured through a strainer over a mountain of large slices of bread, and the fish served separately. And then, my children, our stomach hollow from the sea-voyage, we stuffed ourselves up to the neck!”

“Nowadays, I still feast sometime on bouillabaisse – Parisian bouillabaisse. But in Paris, alas, the little crabs have been replaced by mussels, the the raacasses and the canabeblles with a modest langouste, and so on. A makeshift, in fact. And it is a long time since I was ten years old, and Canet no longer belongs to us, and what has become of my friend Bauzan

Paul Alexis:
Quoted in L’Art du Bien Manger by Edmond Richardin, 1915.